Eurogamer's review is precisely the kind of activism they specialize in, but they're so earnest about it that I consider it an aesthetic. It only makes me mad when they pretend they aren't doing it - by and large they just have tender hearts and venerate the priors of their social class. I'm only mentioning them again because they gave the best shooter this year a two out of five because Embark used AI voices. Well, kinda. They might have, or they might do more in the future. I, uh… Goddammit. Far be it from me to venerate a prior, but I gotta give it to 'em.
Maybe not all of it, I guess. I don't disagree that the trend is revolting; we have been fairly clear on our position, and you're welcome to consume the strip for a salient metaphor. I had read a piece at Kortaco about some authentically cringe AI Studio Ghibli banners, the kind of thing that was real hot on Twitter for about four picoseconds seven months ago. Slop is ubiquitous. My instinct is to try and rhyme that with Iniquitous, get some juice out of that maybe - luckily, cooler head prevailed. But I don't agree that it's appropriate to embed that in the score. I think it's much more unpleasant to consider that this 5/5 game has some sliver in it, ethical or otherwise, that you simply can't abide.
We know Embark listens; they rolled out Duo Queues, cut prices on cosmetics, and also - lest we forget what we're even talking about - undertook a project in a wooly genre that has been the top seller since it came out. I'd much rather talk about that. I mean, check the last few strips. For content production, I recognize that from a VO pipeline perspective this must seem like an eminently practical decision. Obvious. It's also the least interesting part of the whole thing, and now we're talking about that instead.
I'd say that the vast majority of people would find this discussion somewhere between esoteric and incomprehensible. A game they paid forty to sixty dollars for used real voice actors, but then licensed their voices to make content with later. There are a variety of reasons why you might leverage Generative AI - the kind we tend not to like. Our shit has been ripped off six ways from Sunday, by ghouls, to make ghoulish works. We start peeling the onion when we say it's trained on someone who was actually paid for it. But a line has to be drawn somewhere, at some point in the process; I guess we gotta draw it here.
(CW)TB out.
