While we really dug the game (you can check out our review for more on that), there’s one odd detail that stuck out we can’t help but give its own article: one of the game’s minor NPCs will be voiced by a text-to-speech program at launch, seemingly because someone — probably Ubisoft — forgot to record and add a human being’s voice for the role.
what a… weird thing to have happen. i’m not sure what the utility of it would be for one minor NPC but this being an accident honestly strains charitability, i think
Now, on a scale from 1 to 10, please tell us how strongly you feel about this. And, hypothetically, whether you’d mind if a few dozens more NPC were like that too.”
“On a scale from 0% to 500%, how much more would you pay for a game where main characters used [insert your favorite actors/people]'s AI cloned voices?”
Yep, looks really suspect. Even if it’s true that they forgot to get someone to record the lines, it does seem implausible that they couldn’t source any voice actor (or even someone on their own staff) to record the dialogue and get it added to the game, even at short notice.
Not saying this was a honest mistake, but I do see how that could happen:
Game story gets written
Dialogs are worked on
TTS versions of all dialogs are generated
Once they get approved, talent is cast
Talent is scheduled to record the dialogs and get paid
Final dialogs get included in the game
Knowing how game studios love to push everyone into “rush mode” the months before launch, I can see how, for a minor NPC, someone could have forgotten to cast and/or book a recording of some dialogs… while everyone is getting pressured to release NOW OR ELSE!!1!
Honestly, I wonder how many minor NPCs in games have been TTS all along, and nobody noticed or cared.
I can believe it being an accident. The character only has 8 lines of dialogue and it seems (if I am reading right) it’s just the English dub that has this problem? He’s voiced normally in the 4 other fully dubbed languages. It’s truly a bizarre thing to have happened though
This smells like WB making the game instead of Rocksteady. Arkham made you feel like Batman. Here you have Captain Boomerang and a Shark man using guns?!
Trailer looked interesting to me. Last performance of Kevin Conroy as Batman too, if I’m not mistaken. The Arkham series are part of my favorite games. Was hoping this would’ve been a decent continuation of that.
This was a scam from the start. They fucked themselves because their trailer was popular and they promised the world. Their goal was to create a shit early access game with pre-made assets, get lots of buy in when it was released, endure some bad reviews, promise to fix things but then slowly dump support for the game. I’ve watched this exact thing happen probably ten times now.
What killed them was the hype and popularity. They were called out immediately for what they were doing and got stuck having to now make an actual game or face legal repercussions.
At the very least these cash grabs are getting spotted early and they’re not getting to sneak by without facing consequences.
Scam is still scam, they could have been realising true gameplay trailers instead of wasting time on rendered false gameplay that does not reflect a game at all
This just feels more like incompetence rather than malice.
Yeah although I would argue one does not preclude the other. As in, of course with Hanlon’s Razor, this is because of incompetence not malice. But it’s also a scam, just one born out of not being any smarter/better.
I’d agree with you but then you hear about all the sketch shit with the discord and the volunteers. I think they intended to make a game but planned for it to just be a quick cash grab and then they could just slowly dump it. It’s honestly a great strategy, just look at every game the atlas devs have made. They’ve basically mastered the strategy.
Technically yes it’s still a scam. It’s just one that didn’t pan out for them. In this one particular instance anyways. It will continue to work for others.
I don't think consumers were the target of the scam; if they were, I don't see a reason why they wouldn't have accepted pre-orders for the game. In fact, I think they know that accepting pre-orders would have left them open to false advertising lawsuits which is why they didn't go for them, and I think they were well aware that people could just refund the game so trying to scam consumers (in this instance) was probably not worth attempting.
Instead, I think the investors were the target. The brothers who own(ed?) the studio have been living off investor money for the last few years, and which how suspicious their finances are (their ludicrously high travel expenses, in particular) I'm sure they've hidden away a bunch more money.
The game that exists is a shameless, cheaply-made asset flip that I suspect only exists at all because it makes it much harder for investors to sue for fraud when there's an actual product. If they'd just tried to take the money and run without releasing anything it'd be obvious fraud, but now they can claim they tried their best, expectations were too high, etc, and it's difficult for the investors to prove otherwise.
This makes the most sense by far. Owners of a company always pay themselves a salary, and for a tech company with investors I'm sure these people were able to give themselves an extremely high salary. That salary money is legally their money forever no matter how crappy or failed the company's output winds up being. Unless you can prove that an actual crime was committed to acquire that money, then it will remain legally theirs.
I get the impression there is a lot of this bait and switch in the mobile gaming circuit with great game play shown on IG ads but the actual gameplay is nothing like advertised?
Due to the way Steam refunds work I feel this wasn’t their end goal unless they really didn’t think it through at all.
The theory i subscribe to is that they intended to release a “decent” game but had no experience or intent to make it themselves. The marketing hype machine was to build community hype, which would drive investor funding so they could pay for new talent or to just outsource most of the work. I’m guessing that either didn’t materialize or they mismanaged that plan.
Nope, no Kickstarter or obvious public funding before the early access “release”.
There’s a chance some people weren’t able to get refunded but due to Steam’s refund policy I suspect most got their money back.
If it was always intended to be a total scam and never release they’d likely have used their own launcher to bypass the Steam revenue share and refund policy.
ign.com
Aktywne