The biggest stain on Arc Raiders is easily the use of AI voice acting. It stinks! There’s no soul to it, and it deprives actors from being able to perform their craft. But, based on some comments from CEO Patrick Söderlund, it sounds like Embark are finally starting to realise that, oh yeah, it is actually better to work with a real human being (though this doesn’t mean they’re not using AI any more).

Speaking to GamesIndustry.biz on the very legitimate criticism that using AI voice work replaces actual voice actors and is an opportunity to not have to pay people, Söderlund pushed back on this, saying, “We pay our actors for all time spent with us in the booth and continue to bring many of them back as we carry on updating the game. For select usage, we also pay them for the approval to license their voices through text-to-speech for lines that aren’t as essential to the immersion of the experience, mostly ping system audio.”

According to the CEO, some voice lines that were originally AI have now actually been done over with real voice actors too. “There is a quality difference. A real professional actor is better than AI; that’s just how it is,” Söderlund said. However, he did also go on to note that Embark still views AI as a “production tool,” testing voice lines prior to recording them so they then know what to record. “It’s also a way for us to work, not replace actors. We don’t necessarily believe in replacing humans with AI all the time.”

I do think this point is still worth pushing back on. Scratch recordings, i.e. quickly done recordings that simply act as a placeholder with minimal effort put into them, are a simple and quick way to test voice lines without the need for AI. Sure, it might take a few more minutes, but better that than emitting as much CO2 as New York (I recognise the hyperbole here) just to get a virtual voice to say “Med pack over here” or whatever. Still, I do at least welcome the ever so slightly greater human touch in Arc Raiders, even if behind the scenes things still aren’t as they should be.