Hey all. I've been thinking about FF7 a bit lately and AI has been doing wonders in the graphical department while hand-made assets continue along.
However, did you know that AI can be used to replicate voices to a fairly accurate extent? Including hitting very close to the official voices. Lyrebird is a great example of this.
Now, to voice the entire game like this would be quite labor intensive. After training voices for various characters in game to sound accurate, you would then need to go through all of them to best replicate the tone of voice, good emphasis on certain things, clean up any "it's obviously a machine voice" instances that would inevitably come up, etc. While I believe it's possible, I also think it's pretty unrealistic to expect such a massive undertaking to get completed at this time.
However, how about a much more abbreviated version of this in the meantime? Skies of Arcadia come to mind, where often you get a single word or short phrase spoken here or there in written dialog as a simple sort of immersion. This would be much easier to do. A quick "ALRIGHT!" from Barret, "Not interested." from Cloud, etc. sprinkled throughout the game. From there, maybe dialog in the cutscenes since that's short enough.
I see it as a doable "baby steps" approach that could even please purists since having a far more official sound would appeal to all. I can't make promises because I have irons in the fire for days, but if the concept is unclear or anyone is in doubt as to the potential of the AI tech here, maybe I could bust out a demo of what it would feel like in game.
