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The newest release in Bandai Namco and CyberConnect2’s popular Naruto Ninja Storm franchise has been mired with controversy. In the days since the game came out, fans immediately noticed how strange the voice acting sounded and made jokes about it online.
Naturally, these jokes soon reached the actual voice actors from the game. One of them was Michael Schwalbe, the voice actor who plays Kawaki. Schwalbe had fun laughing alongside the internet at his performance but also admitted that it sounded odd.
Michael Schwalbe went on to explain to people that when dubbing a game, actors are rarely given any context for the scene they are dubbing. At best, they are given a few lines in the script that say a character is hurt while speaking. Even then though, he had no memory of giving the take the game used.
The plot thickened when the voice actress of Naruto himself, Maile Flanagan, commented on a clip from the game. Claiming that she definitely didn’t say the line that way and that no voice director in for the franchise would have her read a line so awkwardly.
This additional allegation led Michael Schwalbe to send clips of the game to a friend to run through an AI detection program. The results of said program claimed that the voices were indeed generated by AI.
While AI detection programs aren’t perfect or 100% accurate, the combination of this positive result and the voice actors themselves saying they do not remember delivering these lines does not reflect favorably upon the game.
If the voices were indeed AI-generated, this would reflect very poorly on Bandai Namco as a publisher and game localization team. Especially since this was a union dub, which explicitly does not allow the use of AI voices in this manner.
Bandai Namco and CyberConnect2 have yet to respond to these allegations, leaving them unconfirmed. However, with the controversy spreading across the internet, it is likely we will hear from one of the company’s PR teams soon.
Boruto x Naruto Ultimate Ninja Storm Connections is currently available to purchase for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series S|X, Nintendo Switch, and on PC via Steam.
