"The Actors Would Just Go Crazy": Why Embark Studios Defends AI Voices in ARC Raiders While Admitting Criticism Was Fair
Just days after ARC Raiders celebrated its first anniversary with a massive milestone of 16 million daily raids and 6 billion matches played, Swedish developer Embark Studios has directly addressed the most controversial aspect of its extraction shooter: its reliance on generative AI voice acting. In the latest installment of its official documentary series (The Evolution of ARC Raiders S2: EP5 - Sound & Music), the audio team openly acknowledges that much of the launch backlash was justified, while arguing that recording every contextual callout manually would have driven human voice actors "crazy."
"There Was Some Really Fair Criticism": Audio Director Bence Pajor Reflects on Speranza's Traders
When ARC Raiders first launched in late 2025, players and voice acting advocates quickly zeroed in on the flat, robotic delivery of several non-playable characters inside the underground settlement of Speranza. While the game's mechanical soundscape, environmental acoustics, and lethal ARC machines earned widespread praise, key quest-givers and merchants such as Shani and Celeste frequently sounded detached and artificial during mission briefings.
Speaking in the new behind-the-scenes documentary on the official ARC Raiders YouTube channel, Embark Studios audio director Bence Pajor admitted that players had every reason to call out those shortcomings: "There was some really fair criticism." Pajor acknowledged that the initial balance between studio-recorded voiceover and text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis left noticeable gaps in emotional delivery where human warmth was needed most.
Thousands of Contextual Pings: Why Embark Considered Traditional Recording "Too Impractical"
Building on the same proprietary text-to-speech pipeline that powers the dynamic AI announcers in The Finals capable of calling out live player names, Embark Studios emphasized that its voice models are trained on contracted, compensated professional actors. As Chief Creative Officer Stefan Strandberg states in the documentary: "We are not in the industry of replacing actors."
According to Bence Pajor, the primary reason for adopting generative speech in ARC Raiders was the sheer combinatorial scale of its squad ping and tactical callout system. In an extraction shooter where Raiders constantly tag hundreds of weapons, crafting parts, enemy machine variants, landmarks, and distances on the fly, recording every permutation quickly balloons into tens of thousands of lines. Pajor explained that it was "too impractical to record every version of something," adding a remark that has already sparked fierce debate across the community: "The actors would just go crazy if they had to read all of that."
One Year Later: Replacing AI Quest Dialogue With Real Studio Performances
Perhaps the most significant takeaway from the documentary is how Embark Studios has adjusted its audio pipeline over the past twelve months in response to player feedback. Recognizing that text-to-speech prototyping had bled too far into the game's narrative presentation at launch, the studio confirmed that it has spent the past year bringing human actors back into the recording booth.
Across multiple post-launch updates, numerous trader interactions, quest briefings, and story lines that originally relied on AI synthesis have been replaced with authentic human performances. Meanwhile, Embark continues to reserve its generative TTS engine for rapid internal prototyping and the endless permutations of in-raid tactical pings, drawing a much clearer line between utility callouts and narrative acting.
My Take
I can understand Embark Studios' practical argument when it comes to stitching together dynamic squad pings for a rusted bolt 140 meters away, but claiming that voice actors "would just go crazy" reading item variations is a pretty weak excuse. Massive productions like Red Dead Redemption 2 and Baldur's Gate 3 recorded hundreds of thousands of lines with real actors in the booth, and nobody lost their mind doing the job they were hired and paid for. Reading long spreadsheets of item callouts and combat barks is literally bread-and-butter work for video game voice talent. Still, credit where it's due: Bence Pajor is honest enough to admit that the AI trader voices in Speranza missed the mark at launch, and replacing those narrative quest lines with real human performances over the past year was the right call.
SEO consultant for over 20 years and digital entrepreneur, Charles "Grimtag" is the founder of Pro-Gamer.gg, Retrocharting.com, and Gamescharting.com. A competitive gamer, streamer, and retro game collector, he has worked in the video game industry for over 15 years, notably as a consultant for leading game price comparison platforms. Passionate about real-time performance data and gaming technology, he analyzes competitive esports, gaming hardware benchmarks, and creator workflows on Pro-Gamer.gg with an authentic player perspective.
