Battlefield devs’ multiplayer shooter The Finals is full of AI voices - and oof, you can tell
The Finals, the cash-grabbing, destructible-scenery multiplayer FPS from former Battlefield devs, is currently in the middle of an open beta that allows anyone to go and give its shoot-y, smash-y, cash-y gameplay a look. You’ll also be able to give it a listen - and you might notice something a little off about the announcers for its game show-within-a-game when you do. That’s right: they’re AI-generated voices, not human actors.
Embark Studios audio designer Andreas Almström confirmed the decision to use AI text-to-speech technology on a podcast episode about the making of The Finals back in July, which was recently spotted by Gianni Matragrano. Matragrano is himself an actor for video games, having appeared in Genshin Impact, Evil West, Trepang2 and more.
“So here’s the kicker: what did the voiceovers?” Almström replied when asked by the podcast host about who provided the voiceovers in The Finals. “The thing is, we used AI with a few exceptions.”
Almström explained that “all the contestant voices, like the barks, and both of our commentators are AI text-to-speech”, with “things we call vocalisations” - including the breathy noises and grunts made by player characters when running, vaulting and jumping - provided by Embark’s own devs. Not for lack of trying, mind: “We can’t really get the AI to perform those kinds of tasks, yet,” Almström said.
Almström claimed that the decision to use AI-generated voices came down to the technology’s ability to provide voices that get close enough to sounding human, while being able to be generated in a relatively short time compared to getting human actors in the booth.
“The reason that we go this route is that AI text-to-speech is finally extremely powerful,” Almström
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