The Ascent is the first game to use Altered speech-to-speech technology

Neon Giant, developer of the popular Cyberpunk action RPG The Ascent, has teamed up with sound design company Sweet Justice Sound and Altered, developers of Altered Studio, a new AI-based tool to improve human voices, with a suite of innovative single voices for new lines of dialogue. The Ascent, published by Curve Games, is the first game to use this new software. Created 800 lines of dialogue for 40 different NPCs using Altered Studio’s precompiled side quest tool. These additional audio recordings will be added to the game with today’s update, along with a free downloadable “Winter Pack” for players to enjoy in-game.

Altered Studio provides developers with the opportunity to add trusted spoken dialogue to games and thus enrich the gaming experience. Based on recordings by an actor, in this case, Sam Hughes, sound design company Sweet Justice, used Sound Altered Studio to amplify his sound. The result is many different high-quality audio recordings that can be used for a variety of NSCs that cannot be tuned to music due to budget, time, or staff shortages.

An example of how to use Altered Studio can be seen here:

Arcade Berg, co-founder and creative director of the studio, said, “We are always striving to make The Ascent the best game possible, and adding more voiceovers has always been on our to-do list. We are delighted to work with the Altered team who have come up with a great solution to this task that fits our mindset. As a small studio that wants to work smarter and more efficiently with a small team.

As a small development team we always like to find and support people and businesses with new and effective cutting edge technology solutions, and Altered Studio definitely fits this category. It’s been great working with them and we hope that other developers can take advantage of Altered Studio when it comes to increasing the need for audio recording, as we have.”

Samuel Justice, Co-Founder and Senior Sound Designer at Sweet Justice Sound: “The results speak for themselves, Altered makes it possible to significantly increase the VO range of projects without the huge financial investment or time normally required. It bridges the gap between AAA and independent developers and helps drive the naturalization Democrat on game development, which is very exciting!”

Voice actor Sam Hughes, who has written 800 new lines of dialogue for The Ascent, said, “Hearing someone else act like me, literally in my performance, will forever be one of the most amazing and weird experiences I’ve ever had… It was a unique opportunity to introduce my performance to more. Of the characters in the game in this way. It is unbelievable, and the end result is absolutely amazing.

Simon Barford, Head of Audio at Altered added: “With Altered Studio, we wanted to deliver a solution that would enable developers to create natural, reliable audio in their games at AAA production values. As with many projects undertaken by independent studios with limited resources, The Ascent’s interactions are often localized within the game. Altered Studio is designed to give developers the tools to realistically add sound to interactions like this and improve their games. Using powerful speech-to-speech technology, Altered Studio removes barriers associated with dubbing media and enables dialogue and pronunciation to be created quickly, easily and locally for prototyping and production.