Learn more about how Nvidia's cutting edge technology delivers better performance and visual fidelity in games like Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake II and The Finals: www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/the-finals-released-reflex-dlss-3-ray-tracing-geforce-rtx/
Wooo love SkillUp Reviews. Don't worry, I don't watch you to fall asleep (I have ASMR for that 😅) Just here to distract my brain from the sadness that is the holidays this year for me.
On the battlepass point, I really love what 343 have done with Halo Infinite allowing you too OWN and grind the battlepass beyond the current season once you purchase it. You can even go back and buy previous seasons passes if you finish the current one or missed out on a season, and swap between owned battlepasses at any time. It's a really good system that eliminates FOMO and removes pressure to grind ONLY that game during a three month period.
Yep, I've been praising 343 for awhile now about this. If you're going to do a Live Serivce game with a Battle Pass then copy what Halo Infinite is doing.
I like what Deep Rock Galactic does even more: every battle pass is 100% free for every tier, and the stuff you don't earn at the end of the season gets added to your loot and shop pools.
@@BlissBatch Seconded regarding DRG. I have been finishing the season rewards each season so far, but the fact that you can earn everything even as a new player is wonderful.
On the battle pass topic, Halo Infinite's model should be the industry standard. Having Battle passes that last forever if you chose to purchase it. And having the option to go back and purchase it if you missed it when it was new. Plus with season 5 they cut the battle pass tiers in half while keeping the amount of items earned the same. Making it very easy to get through the full pass.
I agree except for the first season. Early players should get something special for the first pass, but they should definitely add passes that don't expire 100%
@@aBadWizard There are Events every couple of weeks in Infinite that have a free pass. In the past, once these events were finished (they usually lasted about 2 weeks) then you would never be able to get the skins again. Now they are changing that so that you can still get the free cosmetics, but now you have more time to do so, and if you miss the event, then you are able to purchase that event's pass for around 5 bucks. So you still get special stuff for being a frequent player
Ehhh I'd personally prefer Deep Rock Galactic's model to be Industry standard as not only it doesn't have any FUMO, you also don't even need to PURCHASE the battle pass period and you can effectively unlock everything simply by playing the game.
one under-looked aspect of The Finals I haven't heard anyone talk about is the Sound. everything from the UI sounds to shooting , stealing cash, kill sounds with coins falling and menu/lobby music is banger. Imo they have nailed the sound which adds to its whole atmosphere and definitely adds to making this game stand out from the rest.
Sometimes I log off after a session, not even a particularly intense one, and I can STILL HEAR the banking effect or the cashout steal effect. Like my brain is replaying it. Whoever made this stuff was crazy good at their job.
One thing that I think makes arena style shooters so much more fun than tactical shooters is that when you have quick respawns you don't have to care as much about balance, if you die to something stupid in a tactical shooter or an extraction shooter then you get mad and have sometimes upwards of 10 minutes until you get to try again, but if you respawn in 15 seconds it's hard to be that mad about something even if it is a bit overpowered because you can just go "oh well" and try again in just a few seconds
that's the reason why i dont play tactical shooters, im bad at fps in general and i dont want to ruin other people experience so i just played these casual shooter game
The moment that made go wow when I noticed it was that every single door on the map opened and that every building was open and traversable. Nothing painted on walls just for looks, everything is interactable and it’s awesome
@@ikewaranarinji2721 true, I meant more that it’s something that I feel is under appreciated by most people. I do love the maps in this game, they’re great!
For the first five games I really couldn't grab on to why this game was fun. After that fifth game I was screaming n hollering at my teammates laughing and going for the victory. It's a blast to play.
I believe The Finals also really pulled off the "f2p" aesthetic. Probably the best a game have ever done. Like, the theme of The Finals is "f2p", the art style is intentionally "greedy chaotic corporate sponsored short attention spam grabbing ad bombs". As a result, the art style often have a weird "Awful Taste But Great Execution" type of feeling to it. Which actually makes all the in game monetization cosmetics feels really in place. Compared to like, rainbow is magic themed stuff in Rainbow 6 Siege really breaking the atmosphere. On a sidenote, it reminds me of the biggest flaw (or triumph) of Mirror's Edge, it created a world that you are supposed to hate and fight against, yet it's so beautiful that it makes you wish you are living in it. In this way, The Finals feels more cohesive. The theme of the game is party and have fun, and you are playing this game to party and have fun.
This game is deeply special, it hooked me instantly and I've only loved it more and more with hundreds and hundreds of matches. So refreshing! It's devoted to adrenaline and fun but doesn't lose sight of strategy and competition. Incredible combination
I’m so happy that the finals launched in the state it’s in. Embark released a polished title and communicates well with the player base, and it is the most fun I’ve had in an fps game with friends in a while
O boy I'm sorry to tell you this...... but it obviously won't. It doesn't matter if it's a fun game. It's a barebones competitive arena shooter in an overwhelmingly oversaturated market. This will be quietly shut down within a few months.
Wow absolutely excellent commentary on the AI voice issue - you don't use it to discredit the developers or their fine achievement in the game design, but do acknowledge how melancholic it is to celebrate this work when it seems to be the dawn of a worrisome precedent. Foremost you were sympathetic to both Dice's creative staff and the voice actors who are against the practice, which was hard to do I imagine. Really fantastic journalism here
It’s much more balanced compared to the immature and childish “I wont buy a game made with AI!”. I say to them, do you use a car? Or eat food processed by machines? Everyone loathes technology advancing then takes it for granted a few decades later.
I definitely think they could use more voiced lines. But I also think AI could work to keep those lines fresh with some kind of modulation. No one wants to hear the same exact line of dialogue repeated many times with the same delivery. Being able to tweak that delivery after the fact could keep it fresher longer
The other thing to me about the voice lines seeming canned is that it actually sounds kind of authentic to bad stilted gameshow commentary, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not dynamic to the gameplay at all? They use the same lines over and over again and it doesn't sound any different than if they just prerecorded all of them in an intentionally canned wipeout style game show way.
Yeah hugely agree. I think so many people in this conversation do not understand that the trepidation is not where things are now it's where they're going to be. Remember when DLC was something that people were worried about and a lot of people defended it? Now you have young gamers that have never even experienced the fact that games used to come COMPLETE. It was like you were given a cake and then later on they offered you a cupcake separately but it was still complimentary and nice. Now they give you a plain cake and sell the frosting to as day one DLC with features that should have come on launch.
21:00 This is probably one of my favorite things about this game. While Call of Duty has explosions kicking up client side dust and smoke that you could be shot through, The Finals has entire buildings falling down in perfect synchronization. And my god it runs like butter thanks to this design as well
It fully came out right after The Game Awards. So if it keeps it up with a good first year, this will be my game of the year. Its the first FPS in a very long time thats caught my interest this much. The destructibilty alone is amazing with almost every surface being capable of being destroyed. Also its free to play and all payment is for cosmetics. Something im willing to spend money on to support the game as i want it to continue.
I normally play single player games or online coop with my brother. How do you go about playing something like this? is it just you against a hundred strangers? Any way to play together with one other person?
@@formulaic78 you can add eachother as Embark friends or Steam friends and you will show up in each other's in-game social menu where one of you can press "invite to party" and play with eachother xx ps. if you find someone else online that you enjoy playing with, add them as friends in the end-game menu and do the same
I absolutely love how you always take time to talk the nuance and ethics of gaming man. Its super appreciated and really shows that you do true journalism not just "game news" always incredible stuff.
"shows that you do true journalism" Journalists are supposed to be unbiased, unopinionated. He's an entertainer who injects these segments with his opinion. Nothing wrong with that, but there's some level of cringe when it comes to the old "mah working class" schtick.
@@MrCooper89 I can see where you're coming from with "true journalism" being unbiased. The part that feels like true journalism to me personally is the fact that he highlights both sides of the argument and dosnt give overwhelming attention to just one side. When he talks about the AI voice over stuff in this video he very clearly covers why some people feel it's not a problem but then proceeded to go into how at the moment it might not be much of an issue but in the future it could lead to some big problems. To me bias can never be truly avoided but if someone can at least let their bias be known while not hiding parts of the full story I think that's a really great way to go about it.
@@MrCooper89journalism can never be unbiased, the simple act of reporting is bias. What gets reported on and considered newsworthy is an editorial opinion. Instead journalism is about recognizing your own biases as a journo as well as recognizing the bias of your news sources as a reader. SkillUp has opinions on workers' rights as well as opinions about game design that I mostly agree with. Hence why I trust his reviews are accurate to what I get out of games
Thank you for dedicating a portion of the review to the voice generation issue. It's always frustrating to see industry problems ignored whenever a game has a positive response from the public. Even more so when people seem to pretend or are unaware that Embark Studios isn't some plucky indie out of nowhere, but rather an stablished studio owned primarily by the multi-billion dollar company Nexon. The Finals is definitely a good experience and, while I don't think it's necessarily as innovative as it is just taking established principles and polishing them to an extreme level, they've clearly created something fun that people enjoy. I think it has the foundation and population to be something great, but none of that needed to sidestep paying voice actors to actually perform lines. While many, *_many_* people won't care at all, it's always going to be this badge they carry. One that looks even more ridiculous when they released a development video of engineers recording fresh audio of gunfire on-location to 'perfect the audio experience,' but are totally fine with the inauthentic human voice delivering total subpar performances.
If they didn't pay voice actors and had consent then they wouldn't be able to publish their game on steam as in the platforms crack down on unregulated use of AI content. The issue is not how embark handled the AI voice generation but how studios in the future might handle it. There needs to be a licensing model that ensures that voice actors will be fairly compensated in the future. It could be a tool that benefits both sides but if it isn't regulated then powerful corporations will benefit while voice actors are left behind.
I care about the issue but I’m on the opposite side of it I feel. I’ve replied to some stuff and written a comment about it so my short reply isn’t being blunt or rude but in summary Embark haven’t done anything wrong on any level by leveraging AI tech. Nobody would bat an eyelash at them using generative tools for texturing or lighting. Nobody is saying hey where’s the job for the lighting artist gone! Or hey that 3D artist using ZBrush! You made the sculptor lose a job. Etc The VO folk could easily band together and create rules and guidelines. Heck you’d only need about 4-5 of the big names in gaming VO to speak up and the industry would have to follow suit. That said, the VO in The Finals isn’t close to bad. It comes off as blandly funny in a b-rate comedy / not taking itself too seriously kinda way. I do think it’s pretty cherry pickery for people to get annoyed at this specific issue but literally and seemingly no other jobs AI, ML and other automation that has taken / diminished jobs not just in games but overall
I personnally didn't notice some lines were tts generated, but definitely noticed some uncanny/un-authentic vibes from the hosts, and considering the game takes place in a futuristic VR setup, it just adds a subtle layer of irony to it all. I also understand how practical it can be for the devs, and even though VO actors can work fast, i'm pretty sure they tend to minimize the amount of labour and time that surrounds their sessions because they're not there to witness it.
There is an Easter egg in the game. The radio plays a band starting a gig, talking to the crowd, and introducing the first song. The song name is Domination 🤞
Also they listened A LOT to community feedback. I gave them a whole list of potential improvements to consider during the closed beta and they implemented most of them.
I think something that wasn't mentioned, which really deepens the gameplay, is the kind of rock-paper-scissors that you get with the elements/gadgets. Path is blocked by goo? Burn it with fire. Area is on fire? Put it out with smoke. Area covered with gas? Clear it with fire.
I did not know you could burn the gas away, that is big. there are times when the other teams are both dead but the cash out is won by the gas the defending team threw on it. Being able to remove it is so big, I thought the only ways around it was somehow displacing the cash out box, or having a heavy tank whilst a medium with beam heals them. Thanks for this, gas just got less frustrating to play against, and less mandatory to run.
every single review is so thorough, intentional, and well executed and i love watching them whether i have played, want to play, or will never touch the game. my friends won’t listen to my voice memos if they’re over 2 minutes, but i stay sending them your 30+ minute game reviews and begging them to watch lol for any that i have played (like this one!) you always take the thoughts right out of my head and put them into well worded complete thoughts (couldn’t be me) and cover all the important topics, the section on AI/voice actors was really well done and you hit the nail on the head with calling that a bit of a damper on the success of this game.
The only use of AI voice acting in The Finals I would approve of is if the announcers would *actually say your gamer tag* in the lines. With how much The Finals focuses on the contestants and their way to the top, becoming legends - it would make so much sense. Image a turning moment in the match, where you wipe an enemy team, or steal a cashout seconds before it finishes to make you team win, and the announcers are all hyped up cheering for you, *actually calling out you name!* That would be so cool
i think my favorite thing about this game is just how fresh it feels. yes it pulls inspiration from a lot of different games, but it puts all together in a unique new way. on top of that it does it all with more polish than 95% of games released nowadays.
@@CasualCat64Fortnite is boring to a lot of people, including me, without friends. It’s all a matter of preference. I actually don’t mind playing this game alone most of the time. Also game chat is also a thing. I wish people were still as social in video games as they used to be.
I feel like, I would be okay with AI VO if the VA received royalties or a licensing fee for the full duration in which their voice is used. For a live service game in which there are tons of players playing matches that change in real time, it makes sense from a design and cost perspective to want to be able to generate the commentary in real time also, and AI is really the only way to reasonably do that at scale. I'm an AI-anti because I think it displaces real artists, but in this case I think it would be okay so long as the VA was getting paid the whole time the game was using their AI voice, and the VA had the right to stipulate how long their voice could be used, how it could be used, etc.
Agreed to this, but obviously there's a skewed power dynamic between the producers/studios and their contracted employees. Unless people leverage collective action to demand better treatment (eg WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes this year) the people on top will always continue trying to strip as much as they can in the name of profit
I think the argument that Ralph was making was that it's NOT true that "AI is really the only way to reasonably do that at scale". Voice actors can absolutely churn out lines on quick notice, and The Finals hasn't demonstrated yet that its real-time dialogue is actually very specific to the gameplay at all. (They just make bad puns about the team names)
I'd personally like to add to this in a different light. Based on the setting and feel of a game you could get away with pulling off something like this. You are disposable mercs selling yourself to the highest bidder to the point where you have a different team name every time you go into a different match. It makes sense in a way to have these phoned in ai genned announcers. Ontop of the mirror's edge visuals which bring to mind those similar themes from mirror's edge I want to say that it could likely be a stylistic choice and might be the only game with the ability to get away with pulling off something like that without feeling jarring. The logistics and competitive fairness for VAs should be brought into question 100% and proper royalties should be negotiated for extensive use for the VAs and if this was attempted in a more typical genre setting I'd be far more appalled.
interesting note on the voiceover - after the beta they released some highlight reels of players doing cool stuff, and the announcers were able to make specific comments calling out MVPs by name, something that might not have happened if they had to get human voiceactors on the phone again for essentially a social media post. So we have already seen some utility from it, even if you discount what's in the game. Personally, while I actually don't mind the corny writing and occasionally janky delivery in-game, I think you nailed it at 26:28 . This isn't a super-egregious labor setup here, and there are probably ways to do this ethically by paying actors for their initial session and then something like royalties whenever their likeness gets used for some new callout or social media post. But is that the direction the industry will actually go? Not a chance. Just look at how VAs and devs are treated today, that's not going to get *better* with AI tech devaluing them. The Finals voiceover isn't especially terrible itself, but it feels bad knowing we're setting foot on the first inch of a very steep and very slippery slope.
FR. After the endless extraction shooters and battle royales, it’s nice to have a new game that combines complete destruction with unique classes. If it weren’t for the hackers, I would’ve had a perfect experience.
its just a generic class shooter with some slightly unique game modes and environmental destruction. "breath of fresh air" - maybe if you have only been alive for the battle royale/extraction generation of shooters.
I know you're technically in the same industry (as in, the same TTS AI is technically coming for your exact job too), but the whole rant section on AI coming over to take our jobs was a bit ridiculous. We don't have 1000s of people making every little thing anymore, we have machines. Factories that used to employ 20k now employs 2k. You adjust and you adapt, you don't go around fighting against technology that will make things MUCH easier to achieve, and you know the quality will be there give it a couple more years. I can't wait to see the first fully voice acted games from indie/solo devs thanks to this.
I feel the battle pass problem could be easily fixed if a) they made shorter battle passes and b) let us buy and earn previous battle passes. Publishers have been relying on fomo for a while but it creates intense burnout and needs to be dialed back for both the consumers and developers.
i feel like a system where you just swap out which pass you want to put xp into at any given time would be fine. And none of them go away. It also be a more interesting way to choose what cosmetics you end up with, making all players even more diverse.
On the point of the AI assisted VO, I'm right there in that 0.01% with you. I'm friends with artists, with writers, with programmers, with some of the most incredible and creative people you can think of. I've seen this AI shit happening from day 0, I've had the second-hand accounts and opinions of the people its trying to rob jobs from and I've gotten those accounts from the horse's mouth. SAG-AFTRA didn't strike throughout Hollywood for over three and a half months to let this fly, and now that Embark have a smash hit on their hands that they're no doubt making bank on they have an ethical obligation to pay for voice actors. That's a cost of creating something, and everyone has to pay it. Nintendo pays it, indie startups pay it. I write homebrew for a tabletop game called Lancer which is a mech game, and mech art is expensive. I'm a student, I don't even get half of minimum wage in the UK. Guess what I did when I, someone with zero artistic talent, needed visual assets for my project? I paid an artist, a damn good one at that, and it was not cheap. I applaud the coders who worked their ass off to make this server-side destruction model work as well as it does. I congratulate the level designers and texture artists that made everything flow so well and look so good. I would love shake hands with everyone who helped create this amazing and novel concept that feels so perfect that it must make other devs kick themselves wishing they had come up with such an idea themselves. At the same time, I will not financially support this game, nor will I give it my engagement metrics. Knowing that any money I gave to Embark for this wonderfully brilliant game will only serve to encourage this abhorrent and disturbing practice poisons this fruit for me. When they finally pay for voiceover fully acted by real humans, I will open my wallet for these people.
there is no ethical obligation for any studio to pay. AI is the future and there is nothing SAG-AFTRA can do to stop it. they were on strike for all that time because their demands were outrages. most people not connected with that industry didn't support the strike and saw it as just a money grab for the unions. if people really wants a bigger paycheck then they should be negotiating more for themselves instead of paying an entity to get you potential work. I could care less if they went full AI or not but people like you are what hold back progress in humanity.
You are fighting a battle that has already been lost my friend. Might as well say you are against microtransactions. Are you just going to entirely stop playing games? I highly doubt that. So what are you going to do when the next major game you are excited for is using AI voices? Or how about the game after that? It is the future, and there is no stopping it. Your mindset is an unhealthy one, what you need to do is realize that technology is going to advance and trying to shun it and pretend like it is evil is not the solution. Finding how to coexist with new technology and setting it up in a way that benefits everyone is how you need to be approaching this. Like maybe the voice actors in The Finals are getting paid for every voiceline the devs make using their voice. So the devs get to create voicelines on the spot while the voice actors are still paid, and even passively paid. Not saying that is how it works for them, we have no idea what the details of their deal is, but it is a possibility. Quit trying to shove your head in the sand. Stand up and do what is right, pretending like an issue will just disappear if you ignore it is childish. Be a grown up and think of healthy solutions for the way the industry is moving.
@@truedps8 Not supporting products that use a technology you think is harmful to the industry as a pipeline to create art is, for all intents and purposes, "Standing up and doing what you think is right". Just biding down and playing the game would be hoping it disappears if you ignore it. Even if one voice isn't enough to enact change, being outspoken and principled in your opinions is the only way to actively contribute to bettering the industry towards your ideal. In the end there are more than enough games out there that abstaining from some that use a technology you think is harmful doesn't really diminish the pool you have available to choose from.
@@BisaPKMN well said! plenty enough games out there to support instead of the ones doing this. The future isn't set in stone, and acting like change is inevitable is sad and fatalistic. Even if it's a losing battle, that doesn't mean we should toss aside our principles. You don't change your vote as soon as the other party looks to be winning. It's up to us to remind developers that we value art and creativity over greed
I do think AI TTS *could* be an interesting addition to video games. What if the announcers were talking about your character by name? What if you were playing a hero shooter and when you speak in voice chat, it's your character's voice instead of your own? ..But it kind of just feels like they used it here as a shortcut/cost cutting measure. Maybe they'll rectify this in future by hiring the announcers to re-record those lines.
It’s hard not to be excited thinking about the *possibilities* of AI voices in games, as like you said it can make a game even more immersive or lifelike if used correctly. However, I think that it’s impossible to get those cool things WITHOUT the slippery slope it introduces. One good dev with good intentions using AI voices for “ethical” use STILL opens the door for a million other devs to just cut corners on voice work or skip out on it altogether. In a perfect world, AI voices would revolutionize games for the better and bring them another step closer to real life. But in the real world, it will do far more damage than we want unfortunately
As cool as it would be to hear the announcers call out your username, I feel like that kind of tech would be abused by people having some "silly" usernames. Imagine this: " *DIG_BICK_420* is opening a vault!" " *TIG_BITTIES_69* just started a cashout!" "There's only one teammate left for the Live Wires! Can *MISTER_LISTER_THE_SISTER_FISTER* hold out to avoid a team wipe?!" Not suggesting that it still wouldn't be cool to have, but boy the announcers would have to say some funny things if it ever got implemented. Also personally speaking: The only real thing I am hoping for with the AI TTS if they don't plan to do re-records (because let's face it: They're not going to rehire the the voice actors): I just want to know if those voice actors are getting residuals/royalties for each new voice line that's generated through AI. They might get a lot less money for it but it would be good that they would be getting an easy check for as long as the game lasts.
This. If the A.I. voices were being used to accomplish something that would be otherwise impossible, like custom team names or extremely specific and dynamic play by plays, that would be a great and understandable reason for it. Here, it just feels lazy.
@@udontknowme00 I agree because some can be held accountable as a result of how large they are as a public facing entity but those who are much smaller are unlikely to be held accountable. Unless the storefronts change their policy and establish an "ethical" grounds for AI voice over work, then it's a situation whereby voice over artist will have to strike in the near future. I'm surprised Shillup didn't go "as hard" as he could have when writing the script and avoided explicitly saying it how it is: "a race to the bottom". But I understand there's a certain level of industry relationships he has as is natural to get exclusive previews, access, etc, and can't put too much emphasis on the controversial actions for decisions made at the executive level.
It's pennies to the dollar financially to comparatively make that enhancement with only 10% of the player base buying the standard battle pass. Behind the scenes, they've already made analysis behind how noticeable are these voice overs. They will change it if gets enough attention online and/or if it doesnt detract from dev time too much. But we're talking about Nexon as the parent publisher, not the relatively new Embark Studios as the subsidiary. They made a subsidiary to detract from their hot water publicity recently. The current heads and devs at Embark Studios might be treated well so far, but I'll color myself surprised if they implement these minimal quality of life improvements. Possibly in the next season. Or AI voice over will have advanced so far in the next couple of months that by not iterating on what they have already built for these announcers, it will detract from the possibility of eliminating the announcers to re-record those lines as a cost cutting measure. As this decision will also have the effect of one less dependability in the production pipeline. BUT, there will likely be a nuanced decision made (hopefully).
On the topic of AI voices, I'm glad you called them up on that point of it "taking months" to get VAs in the booth. It just doesn't happen anymore, especially not in a post-Covid industry, where most VAs have a home space for audio recording. Respawn can wrangle 17 or so VAs from all over the world, including guys like Roger Craig Smith and Allegra Clark, to talk about bamboozling for an LTM. It's not like 10 years ago where such a quick turnover was unlikely. Now, you can get good VA at a moment's notice. I'm not one of those guys who will say "Oh, VAs will do it pro-bono", that shit's a lie, but so is saying that VA takes too much time
People shit on Apex a lot but the voice work is absolutely the finest work done by any of these live service shooters out there. They record so much VO for every season, there's so many different ping lines and character specific combinations for dialogue, and they record new lines for every new gun or item added to the game for every legend, which they usually add another one every season. So much work just to build their characters, and I really love going in every season and playing a few matches as new legends to hear all their voice lines. With the precedent of AI assisted voice models, companies would just have zero incentive to do that ever again!
Agreed on battle passes (also the game, The Finals is dope and really feels like playing quake with the boys again). They need to just let you complete them at your own pace. Theres no reason for a battle pass to GO AWAY except for FOMO. Just have a screen with all your old battlepasses on it, still gaining XP.
Totally agree with AI generated voice lines part, I do care about talent and authenticity. Event though the game is fantastic, it’s sad to see studios rely more on technology and efficiency than handcrafted art and originality. We can’t stop progress I guess.
Do you care about all of the musicians who have lost work due to computer generated instruments taking their jobs? Because almost every video game soundtrack uses virtual instruments rather than hiring musicians to play the instruments, which is exactly the same thing.
@@bf5175 I mean the comparison is kinda not fitting since making a virtual soundtrack requires a lot of skill and there's still a job there for an actual human. Not really going to be a job position for "put it into chat gpt"
@@bf5175 People can still distinguish live performance vs digital studio recordings, there's two different audiences for it. I understand your point though, but honestly I don't really care much for AI voice lines. I'll probably use them in my own projects because I don't have the budget to hire real people
@@lmaoborgini9471 Yes, there is a composer, which is analogous to the writer, not to the voice actors. There's literally no difference to the humans being replaced except one is an actor and one is a musician.
@@babytiny5807 I'm sure actors can probably tell the AI lines from the actually voiced ones as well but 99% of people can't tell. I feel like this whole reaction is just because the term AI is a hot button topic right now and people like getting upset about stuff for some reason.
As a battlefield fan this game was always going to be on my radar. This game is bloody fun, but I hate the idea of the AI voices, at first I ignored how boring they sounded. But you make such a good point how much better this game could be with just better voice lines and acting. I’m just imagining why Halo is just that much better because of the announcer , and how many iconic moments are made because of it.
Your bang on with the battlepass length section, I hate deciding not to play a game because I won’t finish the battle pass. I’m very much reward orientated when I play games
Two approaches I wish games with battle passes would do more often: 1) Deep Rock Galactic - Anything you miss in a pass simply gets added to the regular loot pool/store 2) Halo Infinite - Passes don't go away and you can unlock everything in your own time even as new seasons are released
If you're gonna use AI it's gotta be moment to moment calling what's happening accurately and using the players names to make it fun and interesting and adding the wow factor.... They have to be saying brand new things all the time based on the match. If it's not that then ya pay the people.. like they said they can crank out those lines from home.
Imagine if there were a spectator system tracking everything that happens in the game: What classes people are using, which teams they're on, how they're fighting, and on what part of the map. All that information is then fed into a text generation model to create unique lines of dialogue for that specific situation that you'll never hear again. Those lines are then fed into the TTS model so the announcers are always saying something new and interesting every time. Right now I'm pretty sure the generation time would take way too long, so you'd be hearing the relevant dialogue about 30 seconds *after* the events it's describing, but that would actually be an appropriate use case of AI to do with that humans can't
Absolutely! Considering the exceptional quality of the game at its initial release, with minimal bugs and glitches, one can only envision the remarkable improvements it will undergo as they introduce additional weapons, modes, events, and overall enhancements to the quality of life.
On the AI voice topic: I feel like the “ethics” debate is a carefully constructed distraction from the real issue with The VO AI debate. The main issue is fair compensation. Companies are all about subscriptions, tokens, V-bucks, so throwing these practices back in their face would be a poetic end to a very real human problem. VOs with AI-add-ins should be paid more upfront and paid a licensing fee on a per game sold/phrase/etc basis. This would mean that games cost more and this is a valid reason for the price to go up, the margins on games is at most 50%. I really think this ethics focus is engineered by companies so we don’t try to legislate this type of solution. Debating the existence and validity of AI in video games is ludicrous. AI voices will only get better and I do want to have real-time conversations, debate while bartering in Elder Scrolls or No Mans Sky. Invent new languages that are consistent, hear tremendous variety of voices, etc. You can’t do this with canned voices and clips.
This game makes me feel things I haven't felt in a while, and that on a consistently high level. It combines the best I loved from Battlefield with the uniquely beautiful vibe of Mirror's Edge utilizing the most fun destruction I've had since yapping in excitement at Red Faction. The high TTK feels super rewarding when you manage to really land your shots. Imo, many games nowadays have the problem where most of the game is spent with walking, waiting, etc. while Finals comes around and makes the most fun aspects of its game last longer while that longer time also extends the time in which you can strategize and make moves which keeps tension and rush up perfectly. It's pure non-stop dopamine with barely any frustration in-between.
On the battlepass discussion, I want to mention that Fortnite also has a pretty good system. Near the end of the season, if you haven't been playing a lot, you earn a MASSIVE amount of XP, to the point where playing one match can earn you around 5 levels. I find myself playing a lot more during that time, it feels good. Plenty of games have come up with solutions to the FOMO problem, I just wish more games would implement them.
This game has been a lot of fun. I hope they can flesh this out. More weapons for each class, more maps especially, and some new gamemodes would be really nice. The game has solid foundations, but with only 4 gamemodes, all incredibly team-focused, it feels like you gotta get the boys to have a good time. A free for all, or a large scale gamemode with like, 9v9 maybe could be a lot of fun.
On the topic for destruction, I noticed buildings tend to fall in weird patterns that naturally form a slope you can climb on to reach higher places. Like, when a whole floor collapses, the floor will fall in a way that forms natural slopes for you to climb back up to the higher levels. I wonder if there is any video game trickery going on here. Like when a whole floor is gonna collapse, the game divides the floor into a few polygons that will fall into staircases so people can climb up.
its very interesting. most destructible stuff in shooters are more just about removing cover and maybe changing the map a bit but I think the Finals really makes it add alot to how encounters are changed. at times its alot like R6S with defending or breaching defended points but the added mobility makes for all kinds of possibilities
No its not lol I have seen people run this game on low rigs and get great frame rates especially if people are willing to play on lower settings @@TCRIPE
What’s impressive for me is finally getting a great competitive team shooter that’s cross platform. Valorant means nothing to use stuck on console, and even the Steam Deck can’t get past anticheat naturally.
Another quality video. I do not often comment on videos but I have to say I am really loving this game! Just have to get that out there. I'm hoping this game sticks around for a while to come. Thank you
The studio being made up of former DICE (Battelfield, Mirrors Edge) devs makes so much sense considering this game seems like a promised that was kept from Battlefield's LEVELUTION era where that ended up becoming a broken promise of sorts because of the potential that it wasn't able to meet. Combining all the lessons learned from pretty every modern competitive shooter game and taking elements from them to make something of their own and people have responded positively to it is such a great story.
I wanna see what games come out that try to follow suit. The finals feels a game that's is finally taking advantage what these new physics and graphics can do. This gets me excited for what games are coming in the next few years
Does feel like a step in the right direction in some ways not so much in others... It is a great game though for f2p... I would prefer it be a game u pay for and get more than live service bs but other than that yes it utilizes physics that should be commonplace but devs are lazy
@kevinyeager9023 I mean isn't embark a fairly new studio. Let them get they shit off lol they just started in 2018. I mean that's not saying much when u got 80 dollar full game that aren't as good
@@Juline1221 wasn't saying embark was lazy(I think they've done a great job with the finals) Said modern devs in general aren't utilizing physics engines as they should in this era making them lazy... An example being COD being the same damn thing every year, example of lazy devs lol
When I first heard about the AI voice stuff I thought that they might use it for having the voices read off players names to include them in the sudo shout casting or that it would be used to string things together live-in-game to make more direct and specific announcing about things that happen when could expand a couple hundred lines into tens of thousands of very unique callouts that would be genuinely impossible to record all of for every scenario. I think this is a pivot that could still be made and would be awesome, but as is I really don’t see why they would put this negative press on themselves to be the frontrunner on this and save a few bucks.
Totally agree. I was expecting specific callouts or even a guild system where, during the intros, they read out your guilds name and throughout the game. Ofc it would take away the awful puns…which imo isn’t a total loss. But yea- AI should be used for dynamic in the moment calls that have some personalization instead of saving some bucks
yep, as it stands it's the exact same canned commentary system we've been hearing since Madden, just with weird inhuman voices instead of some VAs that could have done something interesting with the terrible script
It's kinda disappointing to see so many people endorse a game that unabashedly and proudly uses AI voicework to save money :/ the message that sends to the industry is not good. if the game's good they clearly could've just...put money into VA and avoid all of this
@@KisekiFox Even if this game did pay their voice actors more, the industry is like a wolf and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner, nothing you ever say will stop the inevitable in the games industry or... well, most industries. The fact that Bobby Kotick did leave, but only after he was given a golden parachute and his company was gobbled up by an even more insidious, crooked corporate shark, while everyone cheered, should also prove that, in the world we live in now, the correct, ethical decision is usually impossible, and that no amount of appeasement will ever fix true, long-standing issues.
It’s super addictive and when u learn each class u feel like u have a major impact in every game. That was lacking in battlefield games for me and the reason I couldn’t get into them
Talking about Mirror's Edge, it do feel weird that, The Finals resembles Mirror's Edge's art style so much. Like, I know Mirror's Edge is in the DNA of Embark. But it feels like in theory, The Finals should be the polar opposite of Mirror's Edge, theme wise. As in, Mirror's Edge is all about the calm, the cleanness, the lack of violence, and the pre-rendered baked in lighting showing people "holy fuck you can do this kind of graphics in 2008?". Meanwhile, The Finals is all about the chaos, the destruction, the glorification of boom, and "holy fuck why am I getting 4K 100+ FPS on high raytracing this shouldn't be possible in 2023!". Yeah, The Finals often feel like "Imagine Mirror's Edge, but Evil!" As in, it's the opposite of Mirror's Edge but it's also Mirror's Edge, not sure if I'm making sense lol.
Hey Ralph, the art director for this game is a fellow Aussie I studied with named Andrew Hamilton. He also art directed the battlefront and battlefield games (all the best looking ones), he's now the creative director for the unreal 5 engine, absolute monster artist.
I LOVE the destruct able environment. When we hold the point. If we get overrun on the floor I just yell "I'M DROPPIN THE POINT" and rpg the floor 🤣 it's such a fun game
If this reaches you, SkillUp, this is one of your best-written pieces. You always write your videos really well, but this one is perfect. You articulate such detail and explain such nuance so well. This video can speak to Hardcore FPS players looking for details of The Finals, casuals looking to DL a free game, and everyone in between. Also, good points on the Battlepass tangent. Well done, well said, and well put.
1: Way to throw Red Faction Guerrilla under the bus with the destruction remark. Everyone forget about that game? 2: I think Finals biggest issue long term will be how absolutely miserable it is to play Solo. All of the biggest surviving and thriving Shooters may be team games, but they're still either good or even equally enjoyable Solo. The Finals is an absolutely miserable Solo experience though and I think that will end up driving down interest in it long term.
On the Point of the Battlepass: I do agree that its annoying that all of them are so big. But especially with the Finals the amount of quality Animations and skins you get is insane. For me the Finals has (since Hunt Showdown) a Battlepass wich I actively want to grind so I can get Most of the Things. They also dont lock the coolest stuff behind the later Levels, you get Tons of awsome stuff really early on in my opinion.
I think AI generated voice lines are fine as long as the VA who was hired to provide the source voice agrees to the terms and conditions whatever those terms are. The claim that a pro VA can knock it out in just a day is probably true, but doesn't take into account changes to the script that might occur after the recording. If you have 10 hours of recorded dialogue and you only need to make minor changes to 5 min worth of it. Why would you pay the VA a full day's pay to redo 5 mins worth of dialogue when you can pay them a small fee to allow you to use AI to generate new lines to replace the 5 mins that needs to be replaced. As long as everybody is clear on what the terms are and everyone agrees to it, then I think it's fine. Of course the contracts will need to be fair as well. A VA shouldn't say yes to a contract that says "we will pay you to record 1 hour at your normal rate and then generate 1000 hours worth of dialogue for free"
every game should have dynamic AI voicelines. i don't want to hear a pre-recorded line from an actor, i want custom audio based on what's happening ingame
On the AI voices aspect I truly do not see an issue with it. While nobody wants a future where AI replaces talent, they clearly DID hire talent with their consent to use and implement future dialogue. In terms of making implementation faster, it was a big assumption to presume that the delay in implementation was due to time to record, and not due to time to upload that dialogue and put it in the game without issue. AI is certainly divisive and overall a sensitive topic, but the backlash stated here seems like an overreaction to what is truly only future speculation.
The Voice Actor debate is stupid. Animators are also being replaced by neutral networks that learn to traverse the environment. Technology replaces jobs all the time while new jobs are created. The AI driven VO doesn't magically come into being, there are still people involved and how it's monetized is decided by the marketplace, not Twitter.
I have to say, I don’t really agree with most of the hate towards AI TTS. It feels like it’s just the current trend of hating things made with AI technologies. Like, can you imagine? In a video game like The Finals, instead of actually hiring actors to shoot each other with real guns and blow up real buildings, the game uses those cheap techniques like 3d modeling to make those buildings and character models. Even compared to the good old days of Mirror’s Edge, where people meticulously hand craft every pre-rendered shadow and lighting effect, The Finals just cheat by using ray tracing and DLSS to save on budget and not actually hiring artists! /s? Not /s? idk …but yeah, I really don’t see Embark’s decision to use TTS for in game announcements being weird. The whole team’s ideologies is “You see all those technologies that are just lying around and no one uses them? Yeah let’s make some games that actually pushes boundaries technology wise.” You can see this attitude from things like, how crazily good the game is optimized. When the game defaults to high RTX in a competitive shooter, I was like “hmm are you sure I want to game at 40 fps?”. But after trying it out, and realize this game can actually do 4k90fps consistently on High RTX Ultra Graphics settings with DLSS with my old 3090, I was super surprised. The whole DNA of Embark is trying out new technologies to see what works, and I do respect them as a team this way.
Ethics of voice acting in a free to play fun multiplayer shooter.... its a losing battle unfortunately. If this TTS ever reaches a triple A singleplayer game, I think a lot more people would be definitively against it
Having worked in game audio for nearly two decades, I will say I have extremely mixed feelings on their use of AI for voice content. On one hand, dynamic dialogue has existed for years. All your sports games saying "number three scores the third goal of this championship match" and whatever is all stitched together in realtime. The announcer records "number three" and "scores" and "goal" and "championship match" and we've had the tech to turn that into a seamless line in engine, at runtime since like 2010. They're just doing the same thing with AI, turning eight pre-recorded lines into one situationally relevant line, just in a different method. What's scary is the potential that a few years from now we could have the technology to record a VA to say some sort of "quick brown fox" line and turn that into anything we want, generated on the fly. That means every VA could just walk into a booth, record one sentence, and never work again. That's good for them if we can figure out a fair licensing agreement for using their likeness. It's good for games because we can make any dialogue changes on the fly during development. It's really not good for the art of games though, so much of a game's character comes from the performance of the voice actors. In the Finals, I think this is a great technical direction and exactly what DD/AI/stitching tech is made to do. I'm just afraid there'll be a decision maker somewhere down the road that overrides a voice director and this becomes the future for all game voice performances. So you're not wrong. This shouldn't be a thing, but this is the exact application for what it was designed to do at the moment. They did it the way the tech is intended, they showed some restraint, they may have taken some advantage of it, but Finals 2027 might be a totally different story.
Peasants and farmers worried about losing their jobs to tractors and combine harvesters were decried and anti-technology and are made fun of to this day with the derogatory term "luddite". All of a sudden automation is an issue because it effects middle class people?
The generated voice stuff should be a credit system, sort of like when you pay for tokens when using a server's resources for AI prompts etc. Every time you use generated lines in the game from a voice actor, that actor should get compensated. Just need a publisher to set a good precedent with this (doubtful) or need some union power for these voice actors to get their contracts ahead of this stuff.
This level of destruction harkens back to BF Bad Company 2. They walked back the level of destruction for BF 3 and 4 and I always thought that was a mistake. Excited to give this a go!
Was looking forward to this unfortunately i wont touch anything that supports ai destroying the human soul .... Im actually an artist in real life and ai genuinely makes me sad the next generation probably wont bother to learn how to draw etc .... something that has been so important to my very existence and frankly id have ended said existence without it will become something missing from the human experience and that just really paints a world i want nothing to do with
One thing i love about the higher time to kill mixed with the mobility and destruction is that it can create incredibly fun moments of chasing or being chased. you're rewarded for your knowledge of the map and how you can use it, both in escaping pursuers and also in being able to lay trapes or catch opponents off guard for huge plays.
Great video as always! The only thing lacking imo is a mention to Ubisoft's Hyperscape, the deceased game that had its roots way more entangled with the arena shooter(quake/doom weapons) and battle royale( you had to actually loot instead of loadouts), not to mention the futuristic city environment with real time events that The Finals definitely took inspiration from... As much as I love The Finals, I miss that game lmao
Don't get the whining regarding voice actors, it's evolution. If you don't like it i get it but whining about it just makes it so silly, did you whine when tons of factory workers lost their job because of robots? Just silly. The gamepass everywhere i do get though :O, there isn't enough time hence i don't buy any.
Dayum Ralph, your aim is kinda cracked, ngl. Nice to see a videogame reviewer who can actually play said videogames. Thats one of the reasons you're the best.
Bro, AI helped coding this game. AI's helping game developers all over the world in coding new games. Game designers make decisions and come up with ideas through AI nowadays. Does it hurt creatives? Maybe. But doesn't it also embolden smaller dev teams to create bigger things with less resources too? Can we stop and let things play out first maybe? In whatever way AI may hurt gaming as a whole - it's not AI itself, it's regulation, and you know that. You philosophizing about it for however long won't do shit and just takes me out of your review.
Disagree with you arguments against AI technology. You're making the exact same arguments against digital art or 3D animation when they were brand new - lifeless and lacking "skill". Technology takes time to evolve, and we won't see the full benefits of it till many years down the road. Are you going to boycott 3D animators for replacing 2D animators in film? No? Then please be consistent with your views.
Man the review was hyping me up indeed for the game but that TTS talk truly gave me a good jolt and more hesitation to approach this title. That's why I love your reviews, you go the extra mile and actually look at the wider picture and you consider the games you approach in the context they exist rather than evaluating them in some imaginary void. Excellent stuff and review, I might not agree with you on some topics and considerations but your regard for the wider implication of trends in videogame impacting people who work on them is something that I truly admire and respect, keep up at it mate, great job!
It has me bothered as well If theyre going to use AI id prefer they used it to shore up graphics and visuals so they can focus more on fine tuning. Voice actors are just much preferred over a computer speaking to me
The Finals definitely caught my attention when it first launched, but at least on Steam, when you go to download it demands you accept a EULA and Privacy Policy without actually showing it to you. Where every other game I've ever had to hit "I Agree" to has just listed it in the popup, The Finals instead lists an un-selectable URL that you need to manually type in another window with no ability to follow a link or even copy-paste. It's a small thing, and if I wanted to parse the legal-ese I'm sure I wouldn't find any sell-your-soul clauses or any "you agree to let us mine bitcoin" nonsense, but it's really the principle of the thing.
Balance wise, I think it's good for Embark to not be super kneejerky and balance thing too much too quickly. Since the game is very new, and it's pretty different from everything people are used to before, I believe the Metas we see right now might not be permanent. And the player base may find ways to actually play against the Meta. As in, currently, because everyone is pretty newbie at the game, the Meta tends to devolve towards "run as much healers and tanks as possible" type of GOATS strats. Teams often win games by out sustaining the opponent. But I feel like as players get better, it might be possible for different strats to develop. Like light players that are "you know they are only one RPG in the face away from a complete team wipe, yet they are just able to dodge every one you throw at them". And yeah, it didn't really feel like anything is super game breaking OP, and pretty much everything can be used to have fun when playing casually.
Thank you for bring up the AI Voice Acting. It's a losing war. And this game absolutely is the first strike. I doubt anyone will honestly care aside from people like me, who have friends who will be out of a job within the next few years solely because devs like this would rather cut corners and save money. This looks like a cool game but yep, it's the storm of things to come.
Text to speech is cheaper, that is all, everyone will do it from now on, so some actors will need to sign lifetime (cheaper) contracts for their voices to be used.
Frankly this VA debate is so overblown. You can bet your ass that the VA got a very decent long term deal for the use of their IP (IE using their voice ad infinitum) Secondly, VAs will still be used in story driven games for years to come. There's a point of diminishing returns using AI effectively for Voicework and when you start doing the script of an RPG with nuanced characters left and right and dialog trees...yeah humans will still have a place because Dev work for this would be exhausting.
Not only is The Finals my first multiplayer shooter, but it's the first only-multiplayer game that I've gotten into. I'm surprised with how much fun it is, and as a result, it's been really satisfying seeing my skills constantly improve. I've also been playing with a friend and we've been having a blast! Really good game
23:47 Thank you for really investigating the truth behind the use of A.I. voices in this game, and especially for speaking up about why - even if Embark did it in what may be the most ethical way it can be - it's still very concerning. People having to quite literally sign away the rights to their voices, likenesses, and even past performances in order to get work is a very possible and scary future for art. This isn't the first case we've seen like this at all, but the fact that it's becoming more prevalent in a medium where the art itself tends to be very fluid as changes and updates are made could result in a lot of people being taken advantage of. Just to give another example of what this could look like, take the main cast of Baldur's Gate 3 as an example. Many of these actors worked for literal years on this project. The game was constantly being written and rewritten in that time, requiring them to continue to do the necessary work to bring their characters to life. Even since the game's release, they've been brought back in for new voice and motion capture sessions for the game's new epilogue. They're being paid for this, just as are all of the other people involved in these processes. Now imagine instead as if these actors had simply been brought in for a few months early on during production to record some initial dialogue pieces, and then Bizarro Larian had just bought the rights to use their voices however they saw fit as the rest of the game was made? What if A.I. butchered Astarion so badly that Neil Newbon was never able to get work again? The end result wouldn't have been as good, certainly, but it might have been just good enough to make it seem worth the money and resources saved for an alternate universe version of Larian with no morals or passion. And let's face it, this industry has a LOT of people that have proven time and time again that they value cheap and easy over good. It's those kinds of game developers and publishers that make this sort of future seem plausible, or even inevitable. That's scary.
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Learn more about how Nvidia's cutting edge technology delivers better performance and visual fidelity in games like Cyberpunk 2077, Alan Wake II and The Finals: www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/the-finals-released-reflex-dlss-3-ray-tracing-geforce-rtx/
Wooo love SkillUp Reviews. Don't worry, I don't watch you to fall asleep (I have ASMR for that 😅)
Just here to distract my brain from the sadness that is the holidays this year for me.
BattlePass is you, problem, mate. Stop playing so many Online-only games and being a Consoomer.
@@diamondhamster4320love how he hates battle passes of other games but loves the scummy practices by destiny devs and loves that shit game's shop
Imagine how brand safe and milquetoast you have to be for Nvidia to sponsor you. Shillup is that man
@@hello4694 Duality of a man at its finest, mate.
On the battlepass point, I really love what 343 have done with Halo Infinite allowing you too OWN and grind the battlepass beyond the current season once you purchase it. You can even go back and buy previous seasons passes if you finish the current one or missed out on a season, and swap between owned battlepasses at any time. It's a really good system that eliminates FOMO and removes pressure to grind ONLY that game during a three month period.
Halo MCC did the same thing without locking the cool stuff behind the Shop, though
@@EmilyKimMartin MCC also isn't free to play. Love or hate that Infinite went FTP, they have to make money on it somehow
Yep, I've been praising 343 for awhile now about this. If you're going to do a Live Serivce game with a Battle Pass then copy what Halo Infinite is doing.
I like what Deep Rock Galactic does even more: every battle pass is 100% free for every tier, and the stuff you don't earn at the end of the season gets added to your loot and shop pools.
@@BlissBatch Seconded regarding DRG. I have been finishing the season rewards each season so far, but the fact that you can earn everything even as a new player is wonderful.
On the battle pass topic, Halo Infinite's model should be the industry standard. Having Battle passes that last forever if you chose to purchase it. And having the option to go back and purchase it if you missed it when it was new. Plus with season 5 they cut the battle pass tiers in half while keeping the amount of items earned the same. Making it very easy to get through the full pass.
This should be industry standard
I agree except for the first season. Early players should get something special for the first pass, but they should definitely add passes that don't expire 100%
@@aBadWizard There are Events every couple of weeks in Infinite that have a free pass. In the past, once these events were finished (they usually lasted about 2 weeks) then you would never be able to get the skins again. Now they are changing that so that you can still get the free cosmetics, but now you have more time to do so, and if you miss the event, then you are able to purchase that event's pass for around 5 bucks. So you still get special stuff for being a frequent player
Ehhh I'd personally prefer Deep Rock Galactic's model to be Industry standard as not only it doesn't have any FUMO, you also don't even need to PURCHASE the battle pass period and you can effectively unlock everything simply by playing the game.
You lose out on items tho you dont get all the items
I really love how you always give context. The recap for the FPS genre at the top is great
Nothing really like Ralph's perspective is there 😊
"FPS genre"
This is MULTIPLAYER FPS ffs, aka FPS for plebs.
@@Shinkajook grandad let’s get you back to bed
one under-looked aspect of The Finals I haven't heard anyone talk about is the Sound. everything from the UI sounds to shooting , stealing cash, kill sounds with coins falling and menu/lobby music is banger. Imo they have nailed the sound which adds to its whole atmosphere and definitely adds to making this game stand out from the rest.
Preach. Have not played such a good sounding game in years. That OST is godlike too, hope they release it soon!
Agreed, good sound design goes a long way whether it’s RDR2 or the finals.
Sometimes I log off after a session, not even a particularly intense one, and I can STILL HEAR the banking effect or the cashout steal effect. Like my brain is replaying it. Whoever made this stuff was crazy good at their job.
@@donovanjoseph737 it is available on TH-cam, I listen to all the time
My main shooter is Hunt Showdown, the sound is one of the first things I noticed and liked about The Finals. Big props!
One thing that I think makes arena style shooters so much more fun than tactical shooters is that when you have quick respawns you don't have to care as much about balance, if you die to something stupid in a tactical shooter or an extraction shooter then you get mad and have sometimes upwards of 10 minutes until you get to try again, but if you respawn in 15 seconds it's hard to be that mad about something even if it is a bit overpowered because you can just go "oh well" and try again in just a few seconds
that's the reason why i dont play tactical shooters, im bad at fps in general and i dont want to ruin other people experience so i just played these casual shooter game
I love fast respawning. Fast paced skill based arena shooters can be soooo much fun.
we'll see how long that lasts. imbalance is a great way to kill your game rapidly.
Def, I dropped Tarkov because it takes 14 to 20 minutes to queue, I'd rather play video games
And yet even still I find myself complaining about that 15 second respawn. I'll spam click 'Deploy' until it finally works.
The moment that made go wow when I noticed it was that every single door on the map opened and that every building was open and traversable. Nothing painted on walls just for looks, everything is interactable and it’s awesome
nope. most of them are empty and lifeless fodder. they are just soulless copy pasted assets
still doesnt make you better at the game though XD
I thought that too! Small detail but is really cool that the whole map feels accessible.
@@EjayT06that’s a HUGE detail 😁 the fact that the whole map is traversable is huge for an fps, especially with how big the maps actually are
@@ikewaranarinji2721 true, I meant more that it’s something that I feel is under appreciated by most people. I do love the maps in this game, they’re great!
For the first five games I really couldn't grab on to why this game was fun. After that fifth game I was screaming n hollering at my teammates laughing and going for the victory. It's a blast to play.
Ok for solo/those without friends to play with?
@@xSabinx1 Definitely. I jump online, say something ridiculous about winning it all. Lose the game and make a friend lol
Its called fomo cope. Dont worry it will be gone in a week.
@@KABLAMMATS youre literally coping with its success
@@KABLAMMATSnah cause I’ll undoubtedly still be playing well into next year and hopefully more
I believe The Finals also really pulled off the "f2p" aesthetic. Probably the best a game have ever done.
Like, the theme of The Finals is "f2p", the art style is intentionally "greedy chaotic corporate sponsored short attention spam grabbing ad bombs".
As a result, the art style often have a weird "Awful Taste But Great Execution" type of feeling to it. Which actually makes all the in game monetization cosmetics feels really in place. Compared to like, rainbow is magic themed stuff in Rainbow 6 Siege really breaking the atmosphere.
On a sidenote, it reminds me of the biggest flaw (or triumph) of Mirror's Edge, it created a world that you are supposed to hate and fight against, yet it's so beautiful that it makes you wish you are living in it.
In this way, The Finals feels more cohesive. The theme of the game is party and have fun, and you are playing this game to party and have fun.
This game is deeply special, it hooked me instantly and I've only loved it more and more with hundreds and hundreds of matches. So refreshing! It's devoted to adrenaline and fun but doesn't lose sight of strategy and competition. Incredible combination
I’m so happy that the finals launched in the state it’s in. Embark released a polished title and communicates well with the player base, and it is the most fun I’ve had in an fps game with friends in a while
Man, I love this game so much. I can't wait for more weapons and maps to be added. I really hope this has a long life
O boy I'm sorry to tell you this...... but it obviously won't. It doesn't matter if it's a fun game. It's a barebones competitive arena shooter in an overwhelmingly oversaturated market. This will be quietly shut down within a few months.
@@DrFrogglePhDbarebones? It has full environmental destruction… enough said
@@DrFrogglePhD There arent many arena shooter though. The most popular ones that are casual like this one is COD and that game is gaga trash
@@DrFrogglePhDwhat are you smoking, there’s no other shooter like this 😂
@@DrFrogglePhDThere's no way you actually have a PhD based on this comment alone.
Wow absolutely excellent commentary on the AI voice issue - you don't use it to discredit the developers or their fine achievement in the game design, but do acknowledge how melancholic it is to celebrate this work when it seems to be the dawn of a worrisome precedent. Foremost you were sympathetic to both Dice's creative staff and the voice actors who are against the practice, which was hard to do I imagine. Really fantastic journalism here
It’s much more balanced compared to the immature and childish “I wont buy a game made with AI!”. I say to them, do you use a car? Or eat food processed by machines? Everyone loathes technology advancing then takes it for granted a few decades later.
I definitely think they could use more voiced lines. But I also think AI could work to keep those lines fresh with some kind of modulation.
No one wants to hear the same exact line of dialogue repeated many times with the same delivery. Being able to tweak that delivery after the fact could keep it fresher longer
@@zeektm1762these are not even remotely comparable
The other thing to me about the voice lines seeming canned is that it actually sounds kind of authentic to bad stilted gameshow commentary, but that doesn't change the fact that it's not dynamic to the gameplay at all? They use the same lines over and over again and it doesn't sound any different than if they just prerecorded all of them in an intentionally canned wipeout style game show way.
Yeah hugely agree. I think so many people in this conversation do not understand that the trepidation is not where things are now it's where they're going to be. Remember when DLC was something that people were worried about and a lot of people defended it? Now you have young gamers that have never even experienced the fact that games used to come COMPLETE. It was like you were given a cake and then later on they offered you a cupcake separately but it was still complimentary and nice. Now they give you a plain cake and sell the frosting to as day one DLC with features that should have come on launch.
This is the first multiplayer shooter game I've played and loved in years. Haven't had this much fun since Battlefield 1
Same. Haven't felt this way since CS 1.6
21:00 This is probably one of my favorite things about this game. While Call of Duty has explosions kicking up client side dust and smoke that you could be shot through, The Finals has entire buildings falling down in perfect synchronization. And my god it runs like butter thanks to this design as well
The Finals is a breath of fresh air to the FPS landscape. This gives me Bad Company 2 vibes with the level of destruction. Love this game!
It fully came out right after The Game Awards. So if it keeps it up with a good first year, this will be my game of the year. Its the first FPS in a very long time thats caught my interest this much. The destructibilty alone is amazing with almost every surface being capable of being destroyed. Also its free to play and all payment is for cosmetics. Something im willing to spend money on to support the game as i want it to continue.
iirc it actually went live the second the trailer aired!! how cool is that
I normally play single player games or online coop with my brother. How do you go about playing something like this? is it just you against a hundred strangers? Any way to play together with one other person?
@@formulaic78 you can add eachother as Embark friends or Steam friends and you will show up in each other's in-game social menu where one of you can press "invite to party" and play with eachother xx
ps. if you find someone else online that you enjoy playing with, add them as friends in the end-game menu and do the same
@@formulaic78there is a way to play with one other person, you just need to add them on steam beforehand and send them an invite to your party
I absolutely love how you always take time to talk the nuance and ethics of gaming man. Its super appreciated and really shows that you do true journalism not just "game news" always incredible stuff.
"shows that you do true journalism"
Journalists are supposed to be unbiased, unopinionated.
He's an entertainer who injects these segments with his opinion. Nothing wrong with that, but there's some level of cringe when it comes to the old "mah working class" schtick.
@@MrCooper89 I can see where you're coming from with "true journalism" being unbiased. The part that feels like true journalism to me personally is the fact that he highlights both sides of the argument and dosnt give overwhelming attention to just one side. When he talks about the AI voice over stuff in this video he very clearly covers why some people feel it's not a problem but then proceeded to go into how at the moment it might not be much of an issue but in the future it could lead to some big problems. To me bias can never be truly avoided but if someone can at least let their bias be known while not hiding parts of the full story I think that's a really great way to go about it.
@@MrCooper89journalism can never be unbiased, the simple act of reporting is bias. What gets reported on and considered newsworthy is an editorial opinion.
Instead journalism is about recognizing your own biases as a journo as well as recognizing the bias of your news sources as a reader.
SkillUp has opinions on workers' rights as well as opinions about game design that I mostly agree with. Hence why I trust his reviews are accurate to what I get out of games
@@joshuaamy3010 that part 👌
@@joshuaamy3010 Yea the whole "So and so should be unbiased" is cringe. It's not even possible to be unbiased.
Thank you for dedicating a portion of the review to the voice generation issue. It's always frustrating to see industry problems ignored whenever a game has a positive response from the public. Even more so when people seem to pretend or are unaware that Embark Studios isn't some plucky indie out of nowhere, but rather an stablished studio owned primarily by the multi-billion dollar company Nexon.
The Finals is definitely a good experience and, while I don't think it's necessarily as innovative as it is just taking established principles and polishing them to an extreme level, they've clearly created something fun that people enjoy. I think it has the foundation and population to be something great, but none of that needed to sidestep paying voice actors to actually perform lines. While many, *_many_* people won't care at all, it's always going to be this badge they carry. One that looks even more ridiculous when they released a development video of engineers recording fresh audio of gunfire on-location to 'perfect the audio experience,' but are totally fine with the inauthentic human voice delivering total subpar performances.
If they didn't pay voice actors and had consent then they wouldn't be able to publish their game on steam as in the platforms crack down on unregulated use of AI content. The issue is not how embark handled the AI voice generation but how studios in the future might handle it. There needs to be a licensing model that ensures that voice actors will be fairly compensated in the future. It could be a tool that benefits both sides but if it isn't regulated then powerful corporations will benefit while voice actors are left behind.
I care about the issue but I’m on the opposite side of it I feel. I’ve replied to some stuff and written a comment about it so my short reply isn’t being blunt or rude but in summary Embark haven’t done anything wrong on any level by leveraging AI tech. Nobody would bat an eyelash at them using generative tools for texturing or lighting. Nobody is saying hey where’s the job for the lighting artist gone! Or hey that 3D artist using ZBrush! You made the sculptor lose a job. Etc The VO folk could easily band together and create rules and guidelines. Heck you’d only need about 4-5 of the big names in gaming VO to speak up and the industry would have to follow suit.
That said, the VO in The Finals isn’t close to bad. It comes off as blandly funny in a b-rate comedy / not taking itself too seriously kinda way.
I do think it’s pretty cherry pickery for people to get annoyed at this specific issue but literally and seemingly no other jobs AI, ML and other automation that has taken / diminished jobs not just in games but overall
I personnally didn't notice some lines were tts generated, but definitely noticed some uncanny/un-authentic vibes from the hosts, and considering the game takes place in a futuristic VR setup, it just adds a subtle layer of irony to it all.
I also understand how practical it can be for the devs, and even though VO actors can work fast, i'm pretty sure they tend to minimize the amount of labour and time that surrounds their sessions because they're not there to witness it.
The game is so fun.
If they added a domination mode I feel it would be really cool, especially with the destruction mechanics.
There is an Easter egg in the game. The radio plays a band starting a gig, talking to the crowd, and introducing the first song. The song name is Domination 🤞
That’s always been my game mode and would be so much fun for this game.
And an escort mod like in overwatch and i may try the game
and as the destruction ensues maybe it can randomly reposition the capture point after some time
domination would be so good
Also they listened A LOT to community feedback. I gave them a whole list of potential improvements to consider during the closed beta and they implemented most of them.
Same with the first balance patch, can't really complain since the addressed most of community concerns.
I think something that wasn't mentioned, which really deepens the gameplay, is the kind of rock-paper-scissors that you get with the elements/gadgets. Path is blocked by goo? Burn it with fire. Area is on fire? Put it out with smoke. Area covered with gas? Clear it with fire.
Fire beats two things though. But I get what you mean
I did not know you could burn the gas away, that is big. there are times when the other teams are both dead but the cash out is won by the gas the defending team threw on it.
Being able to remove it is so big, I thought the only ways around it was somehow displacing the cash out box, or having a heavy tank whilst a medium with beam heals them.
Thanks for this, gas just got less frustrating to play against, and less mandatory to run.
Smoke puts out fires??
Yes@@Shinkajo
every single review is so thorough, intentional, and well executed and i love watching them whether i have played, want to play, or will never touch the game. my friends won’t listen to my voice memos if they’re over 2 minutes, but i stay sending them your 30+ minute game reviews and begging them to watch lol
for any that i have played (like this one!) you always take the thoughts right out of my head and put them into well worded complete thoughts (couldn’t be me) and cover all the important topics, the section on AI/voice actors was really well done and you hit the nail on the head with calling that a bit of a damper on the success of this game.
The only use of AI voice acting in The Finals I would approve of is if the announcers would *actually say your gamer tag* in the lines.
With how much The Finals focuses on the contestants and their way to the top, becoming legends - it would make so much sense.
Image a turning moment in the match, where you wipe an enemy team, or steal a cashout seconds before it finishes to make you team win, and the announcers are all hyped up cheering for you, *actually calling out you name!* That would be so cool
queefsniff186 has just wiped out the entirety of Team Boundless! What a play from queefsniff186 indeed, Scottie!
to be fair Id love to hear that lmao@@jayc6894
i think my favorite thing about this game is just how fresh it feels. yes it pulls inspiration from a lot of different games, but it puts all together in a unique new way. on top of that it does it all with more polish than 95% of games released nowadays.
It’s boring without friends
@@CasualCat64As are a lot of online shooters.
@@provoltox3 that’s why it’ll die it’s not Fortnite
@@CasualCat64Fortnite is boring to a lot of people, including me, without friends. It’s all a matter of preference. I actually don’t mind playing this game alone most of the time. Also game chat is also a thing. I wish people were still as social in video games as they used to be.
I feel like, I would be okay with AI VO if the VA received royalties or a licensing fee for the full duration in which their voice is used. For a live service game in which there are tons of players playing matches that change in real time, it makes sense from a design and cost perspective to want to be able to generate the commentary in real time also, and AI is really the only way to reasonably do that at scale. I'm an AI-anti because I think it displaces real artists, but in this case I think it would be okay so long as the VA was getting paid the whole time the game was using their AI voice, and the VA had the right to stipulate how long their voice could be used, how it could be used, etc.
just so you know, the AI voices are not from a VA. they are separate personas
Agreed to this, but obviously there's a skewed power dynamic between the producers/studios and their contracted employees. Unless people leverage collective action to demand better treatment (eg WGA/SAG-AFTRA strikes this year) the people on top will always continue trying to strip as much as they can in the name of profit
I think the argument that Ralph was making was that it's NOT true that "AI is really the only way to reasonably do that at scale". Voice actors can absolutely churn out lines on quick notice, and The Finals hasn't demonstrated yet that its real-time dialogue is actually very specific to the gameplay at all. (They just make bad puns about the team names)
The VA is the head developer
I'd personally like to add to this in a different light. Based on the setting and feel of a game you could get away with pulling off something like this. You are disposable mercs selling yourself to the highest bidder to the point where you have a different team name every time you go into a different match. It makes sense in a way to have these phoned in ai genned announcers. Ontop of the mirror's edge visuals which bring to mind those similar themes from mirror's edge I want to say that it could likely be a stylistic choice and might be the only game with the ability to get away with pulling off something like that without feeling jarring. The logistics and competitive fairness for VAs should be brought into question 100% and proper royalties should be negotiated for extensive use for the VAs and if this was attempted in a more typical genre setting I'd be far more appalled.
interesting note on the voiceover - after the beta they released some highlight reels of players doing cool stuff, and the announcers were able to make specific comments calling out MVPs by name, something that might not have happened if they had to get human voiceactors on the phone again for essentially a social media post.
So we have already seen some utility from it, even if you discount what's in the game. Personally, while I actually don't mind the corny writing and occasionally janky delivery in-game, I think you nailed it at 26:28 . This isn't a super-egregious labor setup here, and there are probably ways to do this ethically by paying actors for their initial session and then something like royalties whenever their likeness gets used for some new callout or social media post.
But is that the direction the industry will actually go? Not a chance. Just look at how VAs and devs are treated today, that's not going to get *better* with AI tech devaluing them. The Finals voiceover isn't especially terrible itself, but it feels bad knowing we're setting foot on the first inch of a very steep and very slippery slope.
Been loving the finals. Such a breath of fresh air in the FPS multiplayer Genre.
FR. After the endless extraction shooters and battle royales, it’s nice to have a new game that combines complete destruction with unique classes. If it weren’t for the hackers, I would’ve had a perfect experience.
its just a generic class shooter with some slightly unique game modes and environmental destruction. "breath of fresh air" - maybe if you have only been alive for the battle royale/extraction generation of shooters.
If only it had better cosmetics.
yikes@@powerbeard5653
@@powerbeard5653 there hasnt been any focus on destruction since BF4, and this has some very different game modes
I know you're technically in the same industry (as in, the same TTS AI is technically coming for your exact job too), but the whole rant section on AI coming over to take our jobs was a bit ridiculous. We don't have 1000s of people making every little thing anymore, we have machines. Factories that used to employ 20k now employs 2k. You adjust and you adapt, you don't go around fighting against technology that will make things MUCH easier to achieve, and you know the quality will be there give it a couple more years.
I can't wait to see the first fully voice acted games from indie/solo devs thanks to this.
I feel the battle pass problem could be easily fixed if a) they made shorter battle passes and b) let us buy and earn previous battle passes. Publishers have been relying on fomo for a while but it creates intense burnout and needs to be dialed back for both the consumers and developers.
i feel like a system where you just swap out which pass you want to put xp into at any given time would be fine. And none of them go away. It also be a more interesting way to choose what cosmetics you end up with, making all players even more diverse.
On the point of the AI assisted VO, I'm right there in that 0.01% with you. I'm friends with artists, with writers, with programmers, with some of the most incredible and creative people you can think of. I've seen this AI shit happening from day 0, I've had the second-hand accounts and opinions of the people its trying to rob jobs from and I've gotten those accounts from the horse's mouth. SAG-AFTRA didn't strike throughout Hollywood for over three and a half months to let this fly, and now that Embark have a smash hit on their hands that they're no doubt making bank on they have an ethical obligation to pay for voice actors. That's a cost of creating something, and everyone has to pay it. Nintendo pays it, indie startups pay it. I write homebrew for a tabletop game called Lancer which is a mech game, and mech art is expensive. I'm a student, I don't even get half of minimum wage in the UK. Guess what I did when I, someone with zero artistic talent, needed visual assets for my project? I paid an artist, a damn good one at that, and it was not cheap.
I applaud the coders who worked their ass off to make this server-side destruction model work as well as it does. I congratulate the level designers and texture artists that made everything flow so well and look so good. I would love shake hands with everyone who helped create this amazing and novel concept that feels so perfect that it must make other devs kick themselves wishing they had come up with such an idea themselves. At the same time, I will not financially support this game, nor will I give it my engagement metrics. Knowing that any money I gave to Embark for this wonderfully brilliant game will only serve to encourage this abhorrent and disturbing practice poisons this fruit for me. When they finally pay for voiceover fully acted by real humans, I will open my wallet for these people.
very well said
there is no ethical obligation for any studio to pay. AI is the future and there is nothing SAG-AFTRA can do to stop it. they were on strike for all that time because their demands were outrages. most people not connected with that industry didn't support the strike and saw it as just a money grab for the unions. if people really wants a bigger paycheck then they should be negotiating more for themselves instead of paying an entity to get you potential work. I could care less if they went full AI or not but people like you are what hold back progress in humanity.
You are fighting a battle that has already been lost my friend. Might as well say you are against microtransactions. Are you just going to entirely stop playing games? I highly doubt that. So what are you going to do when the next major game you are excited for is using AI voices? Or how about the game after that? It is the future, and there is no stopping it. Your mindset is an unhealthy one, what you need to do is realize that technology is going to advance and trying to shun it and pretend like it is evil is not the solution. Finding how to coexist with new technology and setting it up in a way that benefits everyone is how you need to be approaching this.
Like maybe the voice actors in The Finals are getting paid for every voiceline the devs make using their voice. So the devs get to create voicelines on the spot while the voice actors are still paid, and even passively paid. Not saying that is how it works for them, we have no idea what the details of their deal is, but it is a possibility.
Quit trying to shove your head in the sand. Stand up and do what is right, pretending like an issue will just disappear if you ignore it is childish. Be a grown up and think of healthy solutions for the way the industry is moving.
@@truedps8 Not supporting products that use a technology you think is harmful to the industry as a pipeline to create art is, for all intents and purposes, "Standing up and doing what you think is right". Just biding down and playing the game would be hoping it disappears if you ignore it.
Even if one voice isn't enough to enact change, being outspoken and principled in your opinions is the only way to actively contribute to bettering the industry towards your ideal.
In the end there are more than enough games out there that abstaining from some that use a technology you think is harmful doesn't really diminish the pool you have available to choose from.
@@BisaPKMN well said! plenty enough games out there to support instead of the ones doing this. The future isn't set in stone, and acting like change is inevitable is sad and fatalistic. Even if it's a losing battle, that doesn't mean we should toss aside our principles. You don't change your vote as soon as the other party looks to be winning. It's up to us to remind developers that we value art and creativity over greed
I do think AI TTS *could* be an interesting addition to video games. What if the announcers were talking about your character by name? What if you were playing a hero shooter and when you speak in voice chat, it's your character's voice instead of your own?
..But it kind of just feels like they used it here as a shortcut/cost cutting measure. Maybe they'll rectify this in future by hiring the announcers to re-record those lines.
It’s hard not to be excited thinking about the *possibilities* of AI voices in games, as like you said it can make a game even more immersive or lifelike if used correctly. However, I think that it’s impossible to get those cool things WITHOUT the slippery slope it introduces. One good dev with good intentions using AI voices for “ethical” use STILL opens the door for a million other devs to just cut corners on voice work or skip out on it altogether. In a perfect world, AI voices would revolutionize games for the better and bring them another step closer to real life. But in the real world, it will do far more damage than we want unfortunately
As cool as it would be to hear the announcers call out your username, I feel like that kind of tech would be abused by people having some "silly" usernames. Imagine this:
" *DIG_BICK_420* is opening a vault!"
" *TIG_BITTIES_69* just started a cashout!"
"There's only one teammate left for the Live Wires! Can *MISTER_LISTER_THE_SISTER_FISTER* hold out to avoid a team wipe?!"
Not suggesting that it still wouldn't be cool to have, but boy the announcers would have to say some funny things if it ever got implemented.
Also personally speaking: The only real thing I am hoping for with the AI TTS if they don't plan to do re-records (because let's face it: They're not going to rehire the the voice actors): I just want to know if those voice actors are getting residuals/royalties for each new voice line that's generated through AI. They might get a lot less money for it but it would be good that they would be getting an easy check for as long as the game lasts.
This. If the A.I. voices were being used to accomplish something that would be otherwise impossible, like custom team names or extremely specific and dynamic play by plays, that would be a great and understandable reason for it. Here, it just feels lazy.
@@udontknowme00 I agree because some can be held accountable as a result of how large they are as a public facing entity but those who are much smaller are unlikely to be held accountable. Unless the storefronts change their policy and establish an "ethical" grounds for AI voice over work, then it's a situation whereby voice over artist will have to strike in the near future. I'm surprised Shillup didn't go "as hard" as he could have when writing the script and avoided explicitly saying it how it is: "a race to the bottom". But I understand there's a certain level of industry relationships he has as is natural to get exclusive previews, access, etc, and can't put too much emphasis on the controversial actions for decisions made at the executive level.
It's pennies to the dollar financially to comparatively make that enhancement with only 10% of the player base buying the standard battle pass. Behind the scenes, they've already made analysis behind how noticeable are these voice overs. They will change it if gets enough attention online and/or if it doesnt detract from dev time too much. But we're talking about Nexon as the parent publisher, not the relatively new Embark Studios as the subsidiary. They made a subsidiary to detract from their hot water publicity recently. The current heads and devs at Embark Studios might be treated well so far, but I'll color myself surprised if they implement these minimal quality of life improvements. Possibly in the next season. Or AI voice over will have advanced so far in the next couple of months that by not iterating on what they have already built for these announcers, it will detract from the possibility of eliminating the announcers to re-record those lines as a cost cutting measure. As this decision will also have the effect of one less dependability in the production pipeline. BUT, there will likely be a nuanced decision made (hopefully).
On the topic of AI voices, I'm glad you called them up on that point of it "taking months" to get VAs in the booth. It just doesn't happen anymore, especially not in a post-Covid industry, where most VAs have a home space for audio recording.
Respawn can wrangle 17 or so VAs from all over the world, including guys like Roger Craig Smith and Allegra Clark, to talk about bamboozling for an LTM. It's not like 10 years ago where such a quick turnover was unlikely. Now, you can get good VA at a moment's notice. I'm not one of those guys who will say "Oh, VAs will do it pro-bono", that shit's a lie, but so is saying that VA takes too much time
People shit on Apex a lot but the voice work is absolutely the finest work done by any of these live service shooters out there. They record so much VO for every season, there's so many different ping lines and character specific combinations for dialogue, and they record new lines for every new gun or item added to the game for every legend, which they usually add another one every season. So much work just to build their characters, and I really love going in every season and playing a few matches as new legends to hear all their voice lines. With the precedent of AI assisted voice models, companies would just have zero incentive to do that ever again!
Agreed on battle passes (also the game, The Finals is dope and really feels like playing quake with the boys again). They need to just let you complete them at your own pace. Theres no reason for a battle pass to GO AWAY except for FOMO. Just have a screen with all your old battlepasses on it, still gaining XP.
Totally agree with AI generated voice lines part, I do care about talent and authenticity. Event though the game is fantastic, it’s sad to see studios rely more on technology and efficiency than handcrafted art and originality.
We can’t stop progress I guess.
Do you care about all of the musicians who have lost work due to computer generated instruments taking their jobs? Because almost every video game soundtrack uses virtual instruments rather than hiring musicians to play the instruments, which is exactly the same thing.
@@bf5175 I mean the comparison is kinda not fitting since making a virtual soundtrack requires a lot of skill and there's still a job there for an actual human. Not really going to be a job position for "put it into chat gpt"
@@bf5175 People can still distinguish live performance vs digital studio recordings, there's two different audiences for it. I understand your point though, but honestly I don't really care much for AI voice lines. I'll probably use them in my own projects because I don't have the budget to hire real people
@@lmaoborgini9471 Yes, there is a composer, which is analogous to the writer, not to the voice actors. There's literally no difference to the humans being replaced except one is an actor and one is a musician.
@@babytiny5807 I'm sure actors can probably tell the AI lines from the actually voiced ones as well but 99% of people can't tell. I feel like this whole reaction is just because the term AI is a hot button topic right now and people like getting upset about stuff for some reason.
Yes glad you reviewed this!
This game is out right a freaking blast!
ShillUp, you forgot to mention how bangin the music is!
As a battlefield fan this game was always going to be on my radar. This game is bloody fun, but I hate the idea of the AI voices, at first I ignored how boring they sounded. But you make such a good point how much better this game could be with just better voice lines and acting. I’m just imagining why Halo is just that much better because of the announcer , and how many iconic moments are made because of it.
Your bang on with the battlepass length section, I hate deciding not to play a game because I won’t finish the battle pass.
I’m very much reward orientated when I play games
So happy you reviewed this game. It's needs all of the positive attention possible. It's a fantastic game.
Two approaches I wish games with battle passes would do more often:
1) Deep Rock Galactic - Anything you miss in a pass simply gets added to the regular loot pool/store
2) Halo Infinite - Passes don't go away and you can unlock everything in your own time even as new seasons are released
If you're gonna use AI it's gotta be moment to moment calling what's happening accurately and using the players names to make it fun and interesting and adding the wow factor....
They have to be saying brand new things all the time based on the match.
If it's not that then ya pay the people.. like they said they can crank out those lines from home.
Imagine if there were a spectator system tracking everything that happens in the game: What classes people are using, which teams they're on, how they're fighting, and on what part of the map. All that information is then fed into a text generation model to create unique lines of dialogue for that specific situation that you'll never hear again. Those lines are then fed into the TTS model so the announcers are always saying something new and interesting every time. Right now I'm pretty sure the generation time would take way too long, so you'd be hearing the relevant dialogue about 30 seconds *after* the events it's describing, but that would actually be an appropriate use case of AI to do with that humans can't
Absolutely! Considering the exceptional quality of the game at its initial release, with minimal bugs and glitches, one can only envision the remarkable improvements it will undergo as they introduce additional weapons, modes, events, and overall enhancements to the quality of life.
On the AI voice topic: I feel like the “ethics” debate is a carefully constructed distraction from the real issue with The VO AI debate. The main issue is fair compensation. Companies are all about subscriptions, tokens, V-bucks, so throwing these practices back in their face would be a poetic end to a very real human problem. VOs with AI-add-ins should be paid more upfront and paid a licensing fee on a per game sold/phrase/etc basis. This would mean that games cost more and this is a valid reason for the price to go up, the margins on games is at most 50%. I really think this ethics focus is engineered by companies so we don’t try to legislate this type of solution.
Debating the existence and validity of AI in video games is ludicrous. AI voices will only get better and I do want to have real-time conversations, debate while bartering in Elder Scrolls or No Mans Sky. Invent new languages that are consistent, hear tremendous variety of voices, etc. You can’t do this with canned voices and clips.
This game makes me feel things I haven't felt in a while, and that on a consistently high level. It combines the best I loved from Battlefield with the uniquely beautiful vibe of Mirror's Edge utilizing the most fun destruction I've had since yapping in excitement at Red Faction. The high TTK feels super rewarding when you manage to really land your shots. Imo, many games nowadays have the problem where most of the game is spent with walking, waiting, etc. while Finals comes around and makes the most fun aspects of its game last longer while that longer time also extends the time in which you can strategize and make moves which keeps tension and rush up perfectly. It's pure non-stop dopamine with barely any frustration in-between.
On the battlepass discussion, I want to mention that Fortnite also has a pretty good system. Near the end of the season, if you haven't been playing a lot, you earn a MASSIVE amount of XP, to the point where playing one match can earn you around 5 levels. I find myself playing a lot more during that time, it feels good.
Plenty of games have come up with solutions to the FOMO problem, I just wish more games would implement them.
This game has been a lot of fun. I hope they can flesh this out. More weapons for each class, more maps especially, and some new gamemodes would be really nice. The game has solid foundations, but with only 4 gamemodes, all incredibly team-focused, it feels like you gotta get the boys to have a good time. A free for all, or a large scale gamemode with like, 9v9 maybe could be a lot of fun.
Yes plssd
On the topic for destruction, I noticed buildings tend to fall in weird patterns that naturally form a slope you can climb on to reach higher places.
Like, when a whole floor collapses, the floor will fall in a way that forms natural slopes for you to climb back up to the higher levels.
I wonder if there is any video game trickery going on here. Like when a whole floor is gonna collapse, the game divides the floor into a few polygons that will fall into staircases so people can climb up.
its very interesting. most destructible stuff in shooters are more just about removing cover and maybe changing the map a bit but I think the Finals really makes it add alot to how encounters are changed. at times its alot like R6S with defending or breaching defended points but the added mobility makes for all kinds of possibilities
I’m hoping the finals is here to stay. I would love a 120hz mode for consoles.
This game is demanding even on high end PCs. If you look at Skill ups frame rate counter during the video he’s averaging only 100fps.
No its not lol I have seen people run this game on low rigs and get great frame rates especially if people are willing to play on lower settings @@TCRIPE
@@TCRIPEI’ve been keeping 240 on pc with ultra high settings and no dlss or fsr. Feel like a ps5 could do 120 on low.
@@MrMaxzillion what rig do you have?
"for consoles"
Jesus Christ.....
What’s impressive for me is finally getting a great competitive team shooter that’s cross platform. Valorant means nothing to use stuck on console, and even the Steam Deck can’t get past anticheat naturally.
Another quality video. I do not often comment on videos but I have to say I am really loving this game! Just have to get that out there. I'm hoping this game sticks around for a while to come. Thank you
The studio being made up of former DICE (Battelfield, Mirrors Edge) devs makes so much sense considering this game seems like a promised that was kept from Battlefield's LEVELUTION era where that ended up becoming a broken promise of sorts because of the potential that it wasn't able to meet. Combining all the lessons learned from pretty every modern competitive shooter game and taking elements from them to make something of their own and people have responded positively to it is such a great story.
I wanna see what games come out that try to follow suit. The finals feels a game that's is finally taking advantage what these new physics and graphics can do. This gets me excited for what games are coming in the next few years
Does feel like a step in the right direction in some ways not so much in others... It is a great game though for f2p... I would prefer it be a game u pay for and get more than live service bs but other than that yes it utilizes physics that should be commonplace but devs are lazy
@kevinyeager9023 I mean isn't embark a fairly new studio. Let them get they shit off lol they just started in 2018. I mean that's not saying much when u got 80 dollar full game that aren't as good
@@Juline1221 wasn't saying embark was lazy(I think they've done a great job with the finals) Said modern devs in general aren't utilizing physics engines as they should in this era making them lazy... An example being COD being the same damn thing every year, example of lazy devs lol
When I first heard about the AI voice stuff I thought that they might use it for having the voices read off players names to include them in the sudo shout casting or that it would be used to string things together live-in-game to make more direct and specific announcing about things that happen when could expand a couple hundred lines into tens of thousands of very unique callouts that would be genuinely impossible to record all of for every scenario. I think this is a pivot that could still be made and would be awesome, but as is I really don’t see why they would put this negative press on themselves to be the frontrunner on this and save a few bucks.
Totally agree. I was expecting specific callouts or even a guild system where, during the intros, they read out your guilds name and throughout the game. Ofc it would take away the awful puns…which imo isn’t a total loss.
But yea- AI should be used for dynamic in the moment calls that have some personalization instead of saving some bucks
yep, as it stands it's the exact same canned commentary system we've been hearing since Madden, just with weird inhuman voices instead of some VAs that could have done something interesting with the terrible script
It's kinda disappointing to see so many people endorse a game that unabashedly and proudly uses AI voicework to save money :/ the message that sends to the industry is not good.
if the game's good they clearly could've just...put money into VA and avoid all of this
@@KisekiFox Even if this game did pay their voice actors more, the industry is like a wolf and a sheep deciding on what's for dinner, nothing you ever say will stop the inevitable in the games industry or... well, most industries. The fact that Bobby Kotick did leave, but only after he was given a golden parachute and his company was gobbled up by an even more insidious, crooked corporate shark, while everyone cheered, should also prove that, in the world we live in now, the correct, ethical decision is usually impossible, and that no amount of appeasement will ever fix true, long-standing issues.
@@NotTheGaslighter 90% of what you said was irrelevant to the topic.
It’s super addictive and when u learn each class u feel like u have a major impact in every game. That was lacking in battlefield games for me and the reason I couldn’t get into them
Talking about Mirror's Edge, it do feel weird that, The Finals resembles Mirror's Edge's art style so much.
Like, I know Mirror's Edge is in the DNA of Embark. But it feels like in theory, The Finals should be the polar opposite of Mirror's Edge, theme wise.
As in, Mirror's Edge is all about the calm, the cleanness, the lack of violence, and the pre-rendered baked in lighting showing people "holy fuck you can do this kind of graphics in 2008?".
Meanwhile, The Finals is all about the chaos, the destruction, the glorification of boom, and "holy fuck why am I getting 4K 100+ FPS on high raytracing this shouldn't be possible in 2023!".
Yeah, The Finals often feel like "Imagine Mirror's Edge, but Evil!" As in, it's the opposite of Mirror's Edge but it's also Mirror's Edge, not sure if I'm making sense lol.
I rarely play multiplayer, but when I do it's this absolute banger.
Hey Ralph, the art director for this game is a fellow Aussie I studied with named Andrew Hamilton. He also art directed the battlefront and battlefield games (all the best looking ones), he's now the creative director for the unreal 5 engine, absolute monster artist.
I LOVE the destruct able environment. When we hold the point. If we get overrun on the floor I just yell "I'M DROPPIN THE POINT" and rpg the floor 🤣 it's such a fun game
I am extremely happy with you covering the use of AI voices. Keep using your platform for good, Ralph!
If this reaches you, SkillUp, this is one of your best-written pieces. You always write your videos really well, but this one is perfect. You articulate such detail and explain such nuance so well.
This video can speak to Hardcore FPS players looking for details of The Finals, casuals looking to DL a free game, and everyone in between.
Also, good points on the Battlepass tangent.
Well done, well said, and well put.
1: Way to throw Red Faction Guerrilla under the bus with the destruction remark. Everyone forget about that game?
2: I think Finals biggest issue long term will be how absolutely miserable it is to play Solo. All of the biggest surviving and thriving Shooters may be team games, but they're still either good or even equally enjoyable Solo. The Finals is an absolutely miserable Solo experience though and I think that will end up driving down interest in it long term.
On the Point of the Battlepass: I do agree that its annoying that all of them are so big. But especially with the Finals the amount of quality Animations and skins you get is insane. For me the Finals has (since Hunt Showdown) a Battlepass wich I actively want to grind so I can get Most of the Things. They also dont lock the coolest stuff behind the later Levels, you get Tons of awsome stuff really early on in my opinion.
Elvis skin is clean ✌🏽
I think AI generated voice lines are fine as long as the VA who was hired to provide the source voice agrees to the terms and conditions whatever those terms are.
The claim that a pro VA can knock it out in just a day is probably true, but doesn't take into account changes to the script that might occur after the recording. If you have 10 hours of recorded dialogue and you only need to make minor changes to 5 min worth of it. Why would you pay the VA a full day's pay to redo 5 mins worth of dialogue when you can pay them a small fee to allow you to use AI to generate new lines to replace the 5 mins that needs to be replaced.
As long as everybody is clear on what the terms are and everyone agrees to it, then I think it's fine. Of course the contracts will need to be fair as well. A VA shouldn't say yes to a contract that says "we will pay you to record 1 hour at your normal rate and then generate 1000 hours worth of dialogue for free"
Totally agree
The Finals 10 GB - Warzone 150 GB....
every game should have dynamic AI voicelines. i don't want to hear a pre-recorded line from an actor, i want custom audio based on what's happening ingame
Love the channel and all your opinions so happy for covering this game much love keep it up
The AI-text-to-speech vs standard-VO and Battle Pass commentary should be their own videos mate. Really well said.
This game deserves every bit of praise it gets and I hope it continues to be successful
On the AI voices aspect I truly do not see an issue with it. While nobody wants a future where AI replaces talent, they clearly DID hire talent with their consent to use and implement future dialogue. In terms of making implementation faster, it was a big assumption to presume that the delay in implementation was due to time to record, and not due to time to upload that dialogue and put it in the game without issue. AI is certainly divisive and overall a sensitive topic, but the backlash stated here seems like an overreaction to what is truly only future speculation.
The Voice Actor debate is stupid. Animators are also being replaced by neutral networks that learn to traverse the environment. Technology replaces jobs all the time while new jobs are created. The AI driven VO doesn't magically come into being, there are still people involved and how it's monetized is decided by the marketplace, not Twitter.
I have to say, I don’t really agree with most of the hate towards AI TTS. It feels like it’s just the current trend of hating things made with AI technologies.
Like, can you imagine? In a video game like The Finals, instead of actually hiring actors to shoot each other with real guns and blow up real buildings, the game uses those cheap techniques like 3d modeling to make those buildings and character models. Even compared to the good old days of Mirror’s Edge, where people meticulously hand craft every pre-rendered shadow and lighting effect, The Finals just cheat by using ray tracing and DLSS to save on budget and not actually hiring artists!
/s? Not /s? idk
…but yeah, I really don’t see Embark’s decision to use TTS for in game announcements being weird. The whole team’s ideologies is “You see all those technologies that are just lying around and no one uses them? Yeah let’s make some games that actually pushes boundaries technology wise.”
You can see this attitude from things like, how crazily good the game is optimized. When the game defaults to high RTX in a competitive shooter, I was like “hmm are you sure I want to game at 40 fps?”. But after trying it out, and realize this game can actually do 4k90fps consistently on High RTX Ultra Graphics settings with DLSS with my old 3090, I was super surprised. The whole DNA of Embark is trying out new technologies to see what works, and I do respect them as a team this way.
About to start this video so you might address it but even with the AI voices?
Ethics of voice acting in a free to play fun multiplayer shooter.... its a losing battle unfortunately.
If this TTS ever reaches a triple A singleplayer game, I think a lot more people would be definitively against it
Having worked in game audio for nearly two decades, I will say I have extremely mixed feelings on their use of AI for voice content. On one hand, dynamic dialogue has existed for years. All your sports games saying "number three scores the third goal of this championship match" and whatever is all stitched together in realtime. The announcer records "number three" and "scores" and "goal" and "championship match" and we've had the tech to turn that into a seamless line in engine, at runtime since like 2010. They're just doing the same thing with AI, turning eight pre-recorded lines into one situationally relevant line, just in a different method.
What's scary is the potential that a few years from now we could have the technology to record a VA to say some sort of "quick brown fox" line and turn that into anything we want, generated on the fly. That means every VA could just walk into a booth, record one sentence, and never work again.
That's good for them if we can figure out a fair licensing agreement for using their likeness. It's good for games because we can make any dialogue changes on the fly during development. It's really not good for the art of games though, so much of a game's character comes from the performance of the voice actors. In the Finals, I think this is a great technical direction and exactly what DD/AI/stitching tech is made to do. I'm just afraid there'll be a decision maker somewhere down the road that overrides a voice director and this becomes the future for all game voice performances.
So you're not wrong. This shouldn't be a thing, but this is the exact application for what it was designed to do at the moment. They did it the way the tech is intended, they showed some restraint, they may have taken some advantage of it, but Finals 2027 might be a totally different story.
Peasants and farmers worried about losing their jobs to tractors and combine harvesters were decried and anti-technology and are made fun of to this day with the derogatory term "luddite". All of a sudden automation is an issue because it effects middle class people?
The generated voice stuff should be a credit system, sort of like when you pay for tokens when using a server's resources for AI prompts etc. Every time you use generated lines in the game from a voice actor, that actor should get compensated. Just need a publisher to set a good precedent with this (doubtful) or need some union power for these voice actors to get their contracts ahead of this stuff.
This level of destruction harkens back to BF Bad Company 2. They walked back the level of destruction for BF 3 and 4 and I always thought that was a mistake. Excited to give this a go!
Was looking forward to this unfortunately i wont touch anything that supports ai destroying the human soul .... Im actually an artist in real life and ai genuinely makes me sad the next generation probably wont bother to learn how to draw etc .... something that has been so important to my very existence and frankly id have ended said existence without it will become something missing from the human experience and that just really paints a world i want nothing to do with
What a fucking L take 😂
One thing i love about the higher time to kill mixed with the mobility and destruction is that it can create incredibly fun moments of chasing or being chased. you're rewarded for your knowledge of the map and how you can use it, both in escaping pursuers and also in being able to lay trapes or catch opponents off guard for huge plays.
Great Review. For the AI use alone this is a hard pass for me
I really hope they would use the voice actors for the announcers as actual esport casters when it eventually goes mainstream it would be so sick
My main gripe with The Finals are the annoying AI hosts.
Great video as always!
The only thing lacking imo is a mention to Ubisoft's Hyperscape, the deceased game that had its roots way more entangled with the arena shooter(quake/doom weapons) and battle royale( you had to actually loot instead of loadouts), not to mention the futuristic city environment with real time events that The Finals definitely took inspiration from... As much as I love The Finals, I miss that game lmao
Don't get the whining regarding voice actors, it's evolution. If you don't like it i get it but whining about it just makes it so silly, did you whine when tons of factory workers lost their job because of robots? Just silly.
The gamepass everywhere i do get though :O, there isn't enough time hence i don't buy any.
Dayum Ralph, your aim is kinda cracked, ngl. Nice to see a videogame reviewer who can actually play said videogames. Thats one of the reasons you're the best.
Bro, AI helped coding this game. AI's helping game developers all over the world in coding new games. Game designers make decisions and come up with ideas through AI nowadays. Does it hurt creatives? Maybe. But doesn't it also embolden smaller dev teams to create bigger things with less resources too? Can we stop and let things play out first maybe? In whatever way AI may hurt gaming as a whole - it's not AI itself, it's regulation, and you know that. You philosophizing about it for however long won't do shit and just takes me out of your review.
couldnt have said it better myself 😂
The first thing I noticed was the voices. I was like hey the NBA Jam guy is perfect for this… but he sounds off. The text to speech explains why.
Disagree with you arguments against AI technology. You're making the exact same arguments against digital art or 3D animation when they were brand new - lifeless and lacking "skill". Technology takes time to evolve, and we won't see the full benefits of it till many years down the road. Are you going to boycott 3D animators for replacing 2D animators in film? No? Then please be consistent with your views.
Man the review was hyping me up indeed for the game but that TTS talk truly gave me a good jolt and more hesitation to approach this title. That's why I love your reviews, you go the extra mile and actually look at the wider picture and you consider the games you approach in the context they exist rather than evaluating them in some imaginary void.
Excellent stuff and review, I might not agree with you on some topics and considerations but your regard for the wider implication of trends in videogame impacting people who work on them is something that I truly admire and respect, keep up at it mate, great job!
It has me bothered as well
If theyre going to use AI id prefer they used it to shore up graphics and visuals so they can focus more on fine tuning.
Voice actors are just much preferred over a computer speaking to me
This game is def the best decision you will make
Apex Legends "excellent characters"? lmao. More like the worst soulless-corporate CalArts zoomer cringe characters ever seen.
Yeah, no idea wth he's talking about
That bringing buildings down feeling you're talking about around 5:00 has not left me since the good old days of Battlefield: Bad Company 2.
Just now I noticed all the gameplay is SkillUp shooting a bunch of players up. That's some skills from SkillUp.
The Finals definitely caught my attention when it first launched, but at least on Steam, when you go to download it demands you accept a EULA and Privacy Policy without actually showing it to you. Where every other game I've ever had to hit "I Agree" to has just listed it in the popup, The Finals instead lists an un-selectable URL that you need to manually type in another window with no ability to follow a link or even copy-paste. It's a small thing, and if I wanted to parse the legal-ese I'm sure I wouldn't find any sell-your-soul clauses or any "you agree to let us mine bitcoin" nonsense, but it's really the principle of the thing.
Balance wise, I think it's good for Embark to not be super kneejerky and balance thing too much too quickly.
Since the game is very new, and it's pretty different from everything people are used to before, I believe the Metas we see right now might not be permanent. And the player base may find ways to actually play against the Meta.
As in, currently, because everyone is pretty newbie at the game, the Meta tends to devolve towards "run as much healers and tanks as possible" type of GOATS strats. Teams often win games by out sustaining the opponent. But I feel like as players get better, it might be possible for different strats to develop. Like light players that are "you know they are only one RPG in the face away from a complete team wipe, yet they are just able to dodge every one you throw at them".
And yeah, it didn't really feel like anything is super game breaking OP, and pretty much everything can be used to have fun when playing casually.
Thank you for bring up the AI Voice Acting. It's a losing war. And this game absolutely is the first strike. I doubt anyone will honestly care aside from people like me, who have friends who will be out of a job within the next few years solely because devs like this would rather cut corners and save money. This looks like a cool game but yep, it's the storm of things to come.
Text to speech is cheaper, that is all, everyone will do it from now on, so some actors will need to sign lifetime (cheaper) contracts for their voices to be used.
Frankly this VA debate is so overblown. You can bet your ass that the VA got a very decent long term deal for the use of their IP (IE using their voice ad infinitum)
Secondly, VAs will still be used in story driven games for years to come. There's a point of diminishing returns using AI effectively for Voicework and when you start doing the script of an RPG with nuanced characters left and right and dialog trees...yeah humans will still have a place because Dev work for this would be exhausting.
After such a long time of no new fps games to play that are actually fun to me we get MW3, WZ3 and The Finals and I’m loving every second of it!
Not only is The Finals my first multiplayer shooter, but it's the first only-multiplayer game that I've gotten into. I'm surprised with how much fun it is, and as a result, it's been really satisfying seeing my skills constantly improve. I've also been playing with a friend and we've been having a blast! Really good game
23:47 Thank you for really investigating the truth behind the use of A.I. voices in this game, and especially for speaking up about why - even if Embark did it in what may be the most ethical way it can be - it's still very concerning. People having to quite literally sign away the rights to their voices, likenesses, and even past performances in order to get work is a very possible and scary future for art. This isn't the first case we've seen like this at all, but the fact that it's becoming more prevalent in a medium where the art itself tends to be very fluid as changes and updates are made could result in a lot of people being taken advantage of.
Just to give another example of what this could look like, take the main cast of Baldur's Gate 3 as an example. Many of these actors worked for literal years on this project. The game was constantly being written and rewritten in that time, requiring them to continue to do the necessary work to bring their characters to life. Even since the game's release, they've been brought back in for new voice and motion capture sessions for the game's new epilogue. They're being paid for this, just as are all of the other people involved in these processes.
Now imagine instead as if these actors had simply been brought in for a few months early on during production to record some initial dialogue pieces, and then Bizarro Larian had just bought the rights to use their voices however they saw fit as the rest of the game was made? What if A.I. butchered Astarion so badly that Neil Newbon was never able to get work again? The end result wouldn't have been as good, certainly, but it might have been just good enough to make it seem worth the money and resources saved for an alternate universe version of Larian with no morals or passion. And let's face it, this industry has a LOT of people that have proven time and time again that they value cheap and easy over good. It's those kinds of game developers and publishers that make this sort of future seem plausible, or even inevitable. That's scary.
No one forced the actors to sell their rights tho which invalidates the rest of it