Arc Raiders, the latest extraction shooter tearing up the charts, appears to make use of AI tools in generating some voice lines in the game, according to disclosures from developer Embark Studios. This mirrors a controversy that brewed around the studio’s 2023 breakout, The Finals. Rust Cohle, you may have been onto something.
Released Oct. 30 for PlayStation 5, Windows PC, and Xbox Series X, Arc Raiders is billed as a gentler on-ramp to the extraction shooter genre, something more approachable than behemoths like Escape from Tarkov. It’s largely been well-received, currently sitting at a “very positive” rating on Steam based on more than 8,000 reviews. (As of this writing, there aren’t enough critical reviews for it to clock a score on Metacritic or Opencritic.) This marks two consecutive bona fide hits for Embark Studios, following the success of The Finals.
But on the game’s Steam page, a disclosure about “AI Generated Content” draws comparisons: “During the development process, we may use procedural- and AI-based tools to assist with content creation. In all such cases, the final product reflects the creativity and expression of our own development team.”
The Finals, a multiplayer first-person shooter that gained prominence for its smooth gunplay and Battlefield-style destructive environments, drew backlash for its use of AI, before it even released. During its October 2023 open beta, the game’s audio designer mentioned in a podcast (via VGC) that Embark used AI tools in developing its vocal tracks. Immediately, voice actors and game developers alike slammed the decision, saying AI vocal tracks were of notably lower quality than human ones, and that the use of the practice replaced voice-acting jobs.
In response, Embark Studios told IGN in a statement that it hired professional voice actors to record voice lines for The Finals, but used text-to-speech tools to create additional lines based on those voices. The studio’s rationale, at the time, was that it significantly speeds up the production process.
Speaking to PCGamesN this week, Arc Raiders design director Virgil Watkins said the game “in no way uses generative AI whatsoever,” but declined to elaborate on exactly what the content creation the Steam disclosure referred to, saying that it’s not his purview. Watkins did acknowledge that the same vocal tech used in The Finals was used in Arc Raiders, however.
“As [you] stated, [it’s] the same as The Finals, we use that text-to-speech model,” Watkins said. “That is, we hire and contract voice actors for it — it’s part of their contract that we use it [AI] for this purpose, and that allows us to do things like our ping system, where it’s capable of saying every single item name, every single location name, and compass directions. That’s how we can get that without needing to have someone come in every time we create a new item for the game.”
“We use a combination of recorded voice audio and audio generated via TTS tools in our games, depending on the context,” a representative for Embark Studios told Polygon in a statement. “Sometimes, recording real scenes where actors get together — allowing character chemistry and conflict to shape the outcome — is something that adds depth to our game worlds that technology can’t emulate. Other times, especially when it relates to contextual in-game action call-outs, TTS allows us to have tailored VO where we otherwise wouldn’t e.g. due to speed of implementation. Making games without actors isn’t an end goal for Embark and TTS technology has introduced new ways for us to work together.”
At the time, the consensus around the use of AI voices in The Finals — to whatever extent the tools were used — amounted to “this sucks.” Immediate response to the use of generative tools in Arc Raiders, though, is a bit more nuanced, at least in the early days.
That said, some players are virulently against it. “AI voices are a stain on an otherwise incredible game,” one player said in a Reddit post focused not on the ethical concerns about generative AI (which they said is “more complicated discussion”) but rather on what they claim has resulted in poor-quality voice work. Another player responded by saying it was immediately noticeable in the vocal lines for Shani, Arc Raiders’ person-in-a-chair character. “I hate they did it for the finals and sad to hear they did it again for this game,” responded another.
But others have taken more of an open-minded stance.
“Don’t give a fuck, they paid voice actors and used it well,” one Reddit user wrote in response to an article citing Watkins’ comments. “This is as ethical as it gets these days, I’m afraid.”
