Does Viktor Vektor sound slightly off to anyone in the Polish version of Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty? If so, there’s an obvious explanation for that, as CD PROJEKT RED has revealed that it used AI to bring back the voice of Miłogost Reczek, the character’s original voice actor who died in 2021, for that version of the game’s new expansion. According to a report from Bloomberg (alternate link), the company had to hire a new voice actor to perform new lines first, which were then fed to a voice-cloning software called Respeecher to create an algorithm that could be used to alter the dialogue to sound like Reczek. Mikołaj Szwed, CD PROJEKT RED’s localization director, said that Reczek’s sons have been “very supportive” of the decision.
In a statement to Bloomberg, the company said it received permission from Reczek’s family to do this and that it had considered replacing him in the expansion and rerecording his lines in the original game but decided against it.
“We didn’t like this approach,” CD Projekt localization director Mikołaj Szwed said in the statement, as Reczek “was one of the best Polish voice talents” and his performance in the game as the doctor Viktor Vektor “was stellar.”
“This way we could keep his performance in the game and pay tribute to his wonderful performance as Viktor Vektor,” Szwed said.
