‘Cyberpunk 2077’ used AI to recreate a late actor’s voice for ‘Phantom Liberty’

CD Projekt used synthetic intelligence to recreate the voice of an actor who had handed away after the launch of Cyberpunk 2077 in order that the developer might reuse his character within the sport’s just lately launched growth.

• READ MORE: ‘Phantom Liberty’ is a surprising swan music for ‘Cyberpunk 2077’

Miłogost Reczek voiced the ripperdoc Viktor Vektor within the Polish localisation of the sport. He additionally appeared in The Witcher and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt as Vesemir and Thaler, in The Witcher 2: Assassins Of Kings as Baran Ravanen Kimbolt and Thaler’s Spy, and in The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt‘s growth Hearts of Stone as Kestatis von Everec.

Reczek handed away in 2021, earlier than Cyberpunk 2077‘s growth Phantom Liberty was revealed in late 2022. Phantom Liberty permits gamers so as to add much more cyberware to their characters, and in the event that they exceed the restrict, they obtain a name from Vektor to treatment their situation and reset their augmentations.

Chatting with Bloomberg, CD Projekt acknowledged that it “obtained permission from Reczek’s household to do that” and the staff had “thought of changing him within the growth and rerecording his traces within the authentic sport” earlier than altering their course in order that they wouldn’t need to recast Vektor.

“We didn’t like this strategy,” stated Mikołaj Szwed, localisation director at CD Projekt, relating to changing Reczek with a special actor.

Szwed stated that Reczek was “top-of-the-line Polish voice skills” and that his efficiency was “stellar” in Cyberpunk 2077.

He additionally added that the actor’s sons “have been very supportive” of the plan to recreating their late father’s voice to star as soon as extra within the story.

The staff achieved this by means of using a voice-cloning software program known as Respeecher. One other actor recorded Vektor’s traces in Phantom Liberty after which the “pool of voice samples” from Reczek that have been fed to Respeecher allowed the bogus intelligence to create an algorithm.

That algorithm modified the voice of the opposite actor within the recordings to sound like Reczek.

Localisation mission supervisor Marta Cannilla stated final month that this was the developer’s way of “honouring him” and his contributions to verify he was nonetheless part of the sport’s future.

In different gaming information, Microsoft‘s acquisition of Activision Blizzard has been accredited by the Competitors And Markets Authority, which means that there aren’t any extra obstacles to the deal.