The Finals adding real-time AI commentary in new update that'll call out

The predecessor to Arc Raiders is bringing in some dynamic commentary through the power of AI. The Finals, the multiplayer FPS Embark Studios released before its mammoth extraction shooter, is introducing a way to recognize players in real time through in-game play-by-play.

The team revealed the feature in a short video, explaining the idea and how it'll work. Essentially, now Scott and June, the two voices you hear while playing The Finals, will start mentioning people's nicknames whenever they do something cool.

So, instead of just hearing, "And that's a good headshot," you'll get, "[Player] just scored a good headshot." A small, but noticeable change that can help make gameplay feel more exciting.

Initially, the list of ways you'll hear this will be relatively short, to help the devs test the technology in motion. "Keeping it narrow means we can curate what he actually says," Carl Strandberg, audio director on The Finals, explains. "Make sure it sounds good, and like the Scotty we all know and love."

This is all powered through AI, since the voice is essentially performing an automatic text-to-speech function. The commentary already uses this technology, and Embark took some flak when the fanbase learned about that a few years ago.

It appears the team on The Finals weren't deterred. I'm curious about how this goes down. In theory, it could be fun, but it seems likely it'll be switched off because players set up accounts with naughty words to hear them out loud.

It's disappointing to see Embark double down on gen-AI as well. I'm not convinced this is a necessary use of the technology, but I'm open to being proven wrong. It arrives in the Prime Time update on October 20.

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