A few questions about the voicework

[Calsetes]

I'll start with the biggest, most obvious one - is it AI generated? I know the male avatar was only in the demo, but it sounded AI generated there. Nothing wrong, it's a demo, voicework might still have been in the works and it could have been placeholder stuff. We're at full release now, and the female voice... also sounds AI generated - in fact, suspiciously similar to one I use on ElevenLabs for some TTS stuff on my streams. I can't find on the store page where it says it's early access, so I'm assuming what's here is essentially "completed, finalized features" outside maybe tweaks or an update down the line.

Are there plans, if they are AI generated, to hire voice actors and have them re-record the lines to plop back into the game down the road? If not, it's a bit disappointing, but nothing that's make-or-break the game for me - it's still fun, it still has co-op, it's still a solid game. If so, then... I think it would be beneficial in the long run to do it. Even if they're not big name VAs - amateurs looking for a break into the professional VA thing who do good work would even be a good choice - I think it'd help alleviate some of the awkward bits with tone and cadence.

Just my two cents. Game's just as good as it was in the demo. If I could make any changes other than the voicework one I mentioned, it'd be naming your tavern yourself instead of it being the default Ale & Tale. Could be fun for multiplayer sessions and such, and help cement that this is *their* tavern, not someone else's.

[Arcyne]

I dunno, after hearing the spirit of the forest, i have to beleive it's not AI, because i dont think an A.I could ♥♥♥♥ up pronouncing Prejudice that badly.

That being said, npcs like the mermaid and the alchemist are 1000% A.I.

[Calsetes]

Yeah, I haven't gotten through the game too far - mainly the demo, and just a bit last night after making a character and starting a new game. I'm 99% sure the avatars are AI generated. And this isn't some big crusade against it - as a placeholder, AI works. For an actual release... I'm less hesitant to accept it outside, say, a one-person production or something (and even then, ideally getting someone down the line to record them would probably be best, but I know it can be expensive depending on how much dialogue is present.)

[Scienart Games]

Hello everyone!
I feel compelled to jump into the discussion :)
I can assure you 100% that all the actors who took part in the voiceover are real people. Nothing was generated. We take sound design, music, and voiceover very seriously, as we have extensive experience in this area from the past. And, of course, we have great respect for voice actors, who cannot be replaced by AI at this point. I’m telling you this as an expert. AI-generated voiceovers would sound completely different. The same goes for the tavern visitors. Generating incoherent speech is a task far beyond AI's current capabilities. Trust me, I'm confident in this.
To back up my claims, here are links to some of the profiles of the actors who participated in the voiceover. I won’t list everyone, just a few. But again, all the actors are real people.

Our main character:
https://www.fiverr.com/mattsindt/voice-act-and-do-voiceovers?source=order_page_summary_gig_link_title&funnel=920ccb1ec3304e7ea466d7ac9a282cee

Our Herbalist:
https://www.fiverr.com/dizzinea/perform-a-voice-over-based-on-your-script?source=order_page_summary_gig_link_title&funnel=13a708e0b8364abda3fa933df1aafaa6

Our Fairy:
https://www.fiverr.com/arithrashva/voice-over-anything-you-want-in-a-basic-anime-girl-voice?source=order_page_summary_gig_link_title&funnel=a8f685b7b13342adac53e74a72d85db6

Our Merchant:
https://www.fiverr.com/heirwavman/record-a-professional-voiceover?source=order_page_summary_gig_link_title&funnel=a1bf581148d84f828af869ae15b36a1c

Our Scarecrow:
https://www.fiverr.com/tamdingtenzin/record-a-character-voice-over-for-video-games-and-animation?source=order_page_summary_gig_link_title&funnel=b1a0e88b3edb45c0b5df43306de0e1a9

And so on. You can even check and compare the voices :)

Why did I decide to step in and clarify your assumptions? The reason is that we put a lot of effort into this part of the work, and we didn’t do anything related to the game that would show disrespect to either the players or the voice actors. Everything is authentic :)

[Scienart Games]

Originally posted by Calsetes:

I'll start with the biggest, most obvious one - is it AI generated? I know the male avatar was only in the demo, but it sounded AI generated there. Nothing wrong, it's a demo, voicework might still have been in the works and it could have been placeholder stuff. We're at full release now, and the female voice... also sounds AI generated - in fact, suspiciously similar to one I use on ElevenLabs for some TTS stuff on my streams. I can't find on the store page where it says it's early access, so I'm assuming what's here is essentially "completed, finalized features" outside maybe tweaks or an update down the line.

Are there plans, if they are AI generated, to hire voice actors and have them re-record the lines to plop back into the game down the road? If not, it's a bit disappointing, but nothing that's make-or-break the game for me - it's still fun, it still has co-op, it's still a solid game. If so, then... I think it would be beneficial in the long run to do it. Even if they're not big name VAs - amateurs looking for a break into the professional VA thing who do good work would even be a good choice - I think it'd help alleviate some of the awkward bits with tone and cadence.

Just my two cents. Game's just as good as it was in the demo. If I could make any changes other than the voicework one I mentioned, it'd be naming your tavern yourself instead of it being the default Ale & Tale. Could be fun for multiplayer sessions and such, and help cement that this is *their* tavern, not someone else's.

Hello! Thank you for asking the question. I’ve answered above.

[Scienart Games]

Originally posted by Arcyne:

I dunno, after hearing the spirit of the forest, i have to beleive it's not AI, because i dont think an A.I could ♥♥♥♥ up pronouncing Prejudice that badly.

That being said, npcs like the mermaid and the alchemist are 1000% A.I.

Hello! Thank you for asking the question. I’ve answered above.

[Scienart Games]

In addition, I’d like to express my deep gratitude to you for caring about these topics. As a professional composer, both in the past and present, I’m also deeply concerned about AI, especially since some neural networks are already composing music. Thankfully, they’re not very good at it yet. There’s so much AI now that it feels like it’s everywhere.

By the way, here’s a fun little story from the development process. The Deer makes a mistake in one of his lines for a simple reason—I voiced him myself! I sometimes do character voices, and I really wanted to voice the Deer. But since I’m not a native English speaker, I accidentally misspoke. I’m a bit embarrassed! Now I’m debating whether to redo the line or leave it as a little Easter egg...

As for the Mermaid and the Coachman, I have to admit, we’re not entirely happy with how those turned out. This might be one of those cases where AI could’ve done better, but we didn’t use it. First, there are a lot of characters, and our budget is pretty tight. Second, at some point, we started to feel like the silly dialogues and absurd quest situations would work well with somewhat poorly performed voices—like a B-movie. We didn’t want all the characters to sound like that, though. For example, I love the Scarecrow and the Hermit. But we decided to keep the Mermaid and the Coachman as they are. Still, they’re both voiced by real people whom we paid for the voice work.

So, that’s a little behind-the-scenes info on the voice acting, in case you find it interesting!

Once again, thank you so much for bringing up this topic.

[Calsetes]

Alright, thanks for the info. Glad to hear it.

[MoffCH]

SM, I'm of two minds. The mispronunciation is, under this context, a quirky Easter egg. However, you will also have an audience segment which will turn into raving Grammar Nazis. (I've only Level 4 so far, but a friend has 3x the hours and when I joined it was during the deer segment.)

If there are more extended lines then it could be considered a character quirk of the possessing spirit. It really depends on your vision for the character. Are they a quirky ESL spirit or would you really prefer they have correct grammar and pronunciation?

I look forward to your decision.

[Floki*13MSFT*]

I personally miss the original voice for the deer. It was like the deer was actually an alien pretending to be a deer and we loved it. i honestly stopped playing after the change

[Scienart Games]

Originally posted by Floki:

I personally miss the original voice for the deer. It was like the deer was actually an alien pretending to be a deer and we loved it. i honestly stopped playing after the change

Thank you for this feedback!! It's very nice to hear that people still liked the original Deer. We were surprised that it was received so ambiguously by the audience initially, especially since the setting allows us to make the character anything we want, with any speech patterns, quirks, etc. It’s just a glowing deer, and he can hold many secrets :) That’s part of the slightly strange, sometimes simple, sometimes awkward humor of the game. And that was our goal from the start. However, we still decided to update the voice of this character.
We believe that the new voice for the Deer turned out quite well, and we don’t think the game loses anything because of it. However, personally, it makes me sad that you stopped playing because of this.
We will think about how to bring the old voice back in some form in the game. At the very least, as an Easter egg.

[DeltaPeak]

Originally posted by scienart.media:

...By the way, here’s a fun little story from the development process. The Deer makes a mistake in one of his lines for a simple reason—I voiced him myself! I sometimes do character voices, and I really wanted to voice the Deer. But since I’m not a native English speaker, I accidentally misspoke. I’m a bit embarrassed! Now I’m debating whether to redo the line or leave it as a little Easter egg...

Are you perchance talking about the "clean-st" i just heard on dev stream when talking to the deer? :D

[Scienart Games]

Originally posted by DeltaPeak:

Originally posted by scienart.media:

...By the way, here’s a fun little story from the development process. The Deer makes a mistake in one of his lines for a simple reason—I voiced him myself! I sometimes do character voices, and I really wanted to voice the Deer. But since I’m not a native English speaker, I accidentally misspoke. I’m a bit embarrassed! Now I’m debating whether to redo the line or leave it as a little Easter egg...

Are you perchance talking about the "clean-st" i just heard on dev stream when talking to the deer? :D

The deer has already been re-voiced by a native English speaker. So, that strange, accent-prone deer now only exists in memories and early game stream videos.

[Duke Dudeston]

This may sound a bit controversial but although the developers did indeed "credit" where their voice actors are from.. can we be sure that those who done the voices didn't use AI? Or used AI tools to enhance the voices?

Who actually knows right, as far as the developer is concerned they paid a voice actor to do the work, if they still sound AI then it could be that the "Voice actor" used AI to generate the voice.

Its not totally impossible.

[Steel Panther]

Originally posted by scienart.media:

Originally posted by DeltaPeak:

Are you perchance talking about the "clean-st" i just heard on dev stream when talking to the deer? :D

The deer has already been re-voiced by a native English speaker. So, that strange, accent-prone deer now only exists in memories and early game stream videos.

This VA happen to be the same one that did the main character Rivers in the Terminator Resistance game and one of the Swat officers in the Robocop game those devs also made?

[Scienart Games]

Originally posted by Steel Panther:

Originally posted by scienart.media:

The deer has already been re-voiced by a native English speaker. So, that strange, accent-prone deer now only exists in memories and early game stream videos.

This VA happen to be the same one that did the main character Rivers in the Terminator Resistance game and one of the Swat officers in the Robocop game those devs also made?

The actors we hired could very well voice other games as well. So, their appearance in other games is quite likely — that's their job. If you were a voice actor, would you want to voice only one game?