REPLICA
Replica utilises AI models and talented voice actors to create AI voice actors to use in indie games and films. This creates efficient ways to do pre-vis and save on initial production costs. Replica contracts voice actors across the world to provide a source for their models, allowing a more ethical method to ai voice generation.
Prototype of the Dialogue system
Skullcrab Island
Replica Studio decided to showcase their AI voice actors through an experiment we called Skullcrab Island. A pirate adventure for players to follow through a classic whodunit mystery. While the team were hard at work building the game, we at Storytale took ownership of the words and Dialogue.
While writing the character scripts were the core deliverable, we needed to make sure the interaction flowed with the game. We built out the above prototype to mimic a way the dialogue would be shown in a game like the Witcher.
While the demo allowed for us to rapidly iterate without stepping on development's toes, the team were able to use the spreadsheet system of importing that was used for the prototype as their way to quickly take written words, to the Replica app and then onwards into the game. This would be take and iterated on to be more automated in the year after this prototype was created.
We were able to increase the script to triple it's size within a short amount of time. Giving us the team the ability to iterate on the script and camera angle, and direction, we were able to take further ownership of the island by building out the island's inhabitants, breathing life into the market and high society areas.
This took the team to building out ambient chatter systems so when the players wander around the island they would listen to the island folk going about their day.
As we went deeper into the world of Skullcrab we built out side game concepts and more stories that build on the world. The aim was to make the island filled with mystery, wonder and interconnected stories that would build on from prior work the players had done.