Last month, Matthew McConaughey became one of the most prominent actors to endorse artificial intelligence by signing a deal with AI company ElvenLabs that will allow it to utilize his voice. McConaughey is also lending his voice to Exodus, an upcoming sci-fi title from BioWare veterans at Archetype Entertainment. But given the timing of McConaughey’s new deal, Archetype co-founder Chad Robertson wants players to know that the actor really is lending his voice to the game.
“Everything that’s in Exodus … is bespoke VO recording just for us,” Robertson told Eurogamer. “He has a completely separate deal of his own design that he’s worked out with Elevenlabs, which happens to be one of the most prominent, AI voice-generation tools, that is being used by other video game companies. Such that people could leverage his voice in non-bespoke VO sessions in a different way. He has a bunch of really strict rules around how it could be used.”
Robertson went on to note that Archetype is not using generative AI in the production of its game, but added that using it in the future is a possibility under the right circumstances.
“So if we ask what our long-term studio stance [on AI] is, we want to be smart technologists, and we want to make great games,” said Robertson. “And if for cost reasons or quality reasons, that becomes something that becomes more acceptable and becomes more commonplace, I think we’re gonna have to be smart and intelligent about how we adopt it ourselves. But currently we don’t have plans.”
Exodus was originally announced at he title at 2023’s The Game Awards, and it casts players as The Traveler, a character who is tasked with dangerous missions in space to steal technology and weapons from an alien race called the Celestials. McConaughey is lending his voice to a character called C.C. Orlev, but more information about his role is being held back for now.
A previous trailer for Exodus revealed some of the horrifying Celestials that the Traveler will encounter. The game also plays with time dilation, as events in space or on an alien world can take place in days and hours while decades pass on Earth–a similar narrative thread used in the McConaughey-starring film Interstellar.
Exodus is coming to PS5, Xbox Series X|S, and PC, but it doesn’t currently have a release date.