New Prince Of Persia Game Has A Wild NPC Oopsie

Reviews for are popping up ahead of the game’s official launch on January 18. With 14 hours under my belt, I can tell you that it’s great, as evidenced by the myriad positive scores on aggregators and . But during previews something puzzling was uncovered: One of the 2.5D side scrolling Metroidvania’s NPCs was voiced by a text to speech program, a feature Ubisoft said was implemented as a placeholder and will get swapped out in an upcoming update in either late January or early February, .

| senior reporter Rebekah Valentine, in talking to other folks who had early copies of , uncovered a minor character that doesn’t sound all that human. As you make your way through the game, you unlock Wak Wak trees, golden saplings that replenish your health and flasks. These trees occasionally house spirits that’ll sometimes aid you in your journey.

Kalux is one of them, and they help illuminate the path to the darkened Catacombs. This NPC doesn’t have many voice lines, but when it does speak, it does so in a stilted, staccato manner. The character sounds like a robot doing its best human impression, which is kind of accurate, because according to , Kalux’s eight lines were recorded via that’s available online.

Valentine discovered this After noticing the strange way Kalux speaks, and that there’s no name attached to them in ’s credits, reached out to Side UK, the production studio credited for the game’s voiceover work. The team there didn’t have answers, but Ubisoft did. “During the development process of a game, some teams use multiple placeholder assets, including [TTS] voiceover, until final dubbing is delivered,” a spokesperson for the company said.

“The English version of these 8 lines of text for this character were not properly implemented but will be swapped out and updated with an upcoming patch. is fully voice overed in English, French, Spanish, German and Farsi with more than 12,000 lines in total. It is also subtitled in Italian, Portuguese Brazilian, Chinese, Korean, Russian, Arabic, Polish and Japanese.” I’ve had the game for almost a week now and can confirm that in the review guide sent to me, has a day one patch that’ll balance some boss fights and enemy encounters, polish the user interface, update some audio mixes, and more.

Ubisoft told the gaming publication that those eight lines will get replaced with a real human voiceover in an update currently planned for either late January or early February. reached out to Ubisoft for further clarification. Placeholder voices aside, is an excellent Metroidvania, one that in quite some time.

I’m having a blast with the game, so be on the lookout for my review next week..