You can trust VideoGamer. Our team of gaming experts spend hours testing and reviewing the latest games, to ensure you're reading the most comprehensive guide possible. Rest assured, all imagery and advice is unique and original. Check out how we test and review games here
The Witcher 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and The Blood of Dawnwalker game director Konrad Tomaszkiewicz has revealed that Dispatch is his “game of the year” in an interview with Eurogamer, discussing the benefits of AI but also its pitfalls.
Speaking to Eurogamer, Tomaszkiewicz says, “I finished Dispatch recently,” and it is “my game of the year. I love this game”. Tomaszkiewicz doesn’t believe it’s possible AI could create something like Dispatch because “You need to have people who feel, who have this creative fire, who want to prove something, who want to tell you a particular story and create emotions in these particular moments”. This is something a “machine will not understand”.
While “not totally against AI,” Tomaszkiewicz is firm in his belief that AI can’t replace creative people, as games created only with AI will not have a soul. Instead, the game director thinks AI “needs to evolve to the place where it will be the tool which helps us, like Google Translate, not something which steals the author rights and creates the graphics or the animations because it learns from the creations of people”.
Tomaszkiewicz admits Rebel Wolves “used AI for voices during the testing period of [The Blood of Dawnwalker]”. This is because Tomaszkiewicz wanted to “hear the voices” and “have it as soon as possible to test the game and iterate on it”. Once Rebel Wolves were happy with the story, they started “the proper recordings with actors”.
Rebel Wolves is also using AI to help the Dawnwalker quality assurance team comb the game’s world for intersections between environment meshes to check they all line up correctly, and that there aren’t any holes where players can fall through. This is using AI to assist the developer and allow the team to use their time better.
Dispatch dev says AI is only a creative solution if “you aren’t creative”
AdHoc Studio co-founder and Dispatch creative director Nick Herman has also discussed AI with gamesindustry.biz. Herman believes AI is a “production solution, not a creative one,” and that it’s only a “creative one if you aren’t creative”.
Herman also strongly believes AI will never be a good substitute for voice actors. This is because actors such as Jeffrey Wright, who plays Chase in Dispatch, “brought something to that character that [AdHoc] weren’t expecting”. Breaking Bad’s Aaron Paul and the rest of the cast also elevated the “material in a way that you’re just not going to get [with AI]”.
AI will remain controversial and divisive for years to come. Baldur’s Gate 3 voice actors have called for AI regulation to prevent companies seeking to replace human talent, and the Baldur’s Gate 3 publishing director has also recently criticised Square Enix’s “stupid” plans of hoping to achieve 70% of QA and debugging through automated AI by 2027.
On the flipside, Dead Space creator, Glen Schofield, is “100% behind AI,” and is of the opinion that it will make the games industry better by helping developers make games “cheaper, more efficient, and faster”. Arc Raiders is also seeing a lot of success, and, while it uses “no generative AI whatsoever,” it has the same text-to-speech system used in The Finals.
About the Author
