Trial balloon.
This character is the thin edge of a very large wedge.
Comment on Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown Will Have a Character Voiced by Text-to-Speech at Launch - IGN
alyaza@beehaw.org 10 months ago
While we really dug the game (you can check out our review for more on that), there’s one odd detail that stuck out we can’t help but give its own article: one of the game’s minor NPCs will be voiced by a text-to-speech program at launch, seemingly because someone — probably Ubisoft — forgot to record and add a human being’s voice for the role.
what a… weird thing to have happen. i’m not sure what the utility of it would be for one minor NPC but this being an accident honestly strains charitability, i think
Pxtl@lemmy.ca 10 months ago
frog@beehaw.org 10 months ago
Yep, looks really suspect. Even if it’s true that they forgot to get someone to record the lines, it does seem implausible that they couldn’t source any voice actor (or even someone on their own staff) to record the dialogue and get it added to the game, even at short notice.
jarfil@beehaw.org 10 months ago
Not saying this was a honest mistake, but I do see how that could happen:
- Game story gets written
- Dialogs are worked on
- TTS versions of all dialogs are generated
- Once they get approved, talent is cast
- Talent is scheduled to record the dialogs and paid
- Final dialogs get included in the game
Knowing how game studios love to push everyone into “rush mode” the months before launch, I can see how, for a minor NPC, someone could have forgotten to cast and/or book a recording of some dialogs… while everyone is getting pressured to release NOW OR ELSE!!1!
Honestly, I wonder how many minor NPCs in games have been TTS all along, and nobody noticed or cared.
brsrklf@jlai.lu 10 months ago
“We didn’t mean to do this, honest!
Now, on a scale of 1 to 10, please tell us how strongly you feel about this. And, hypothetically, whether you’d mind if a few dozens more NPC were like that too.”
jarfil@beehaw.org 10 months ago
“On a scale from 0% to 500%, how much more would you pay for a game with main characters using [insert your favorite actors/people]'s AI cloned voices?”