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Embark says ARC Raiders is using fuller motion capture and a closer facial likeness to bring Celeste’s in-game performance closer to actor Diana Gardner’s. The change is tied to the Frozen Trail update, scheduled for October 8, 2026. It is not an announcement that the studio is removing every AI-generated voice line.
What Embark announced about Celeste
In an October 4, 2026 post, Embark Chief Creative Officer Stefan Strandberg said the studio is updating how Celeste’s performance is represented in the game. Gardner has voiced the character since ARC Raiders began, but Embark said Celeste’s previous expressive limitations did not fully convey the depth of her performance. Embark’s announcement describes the new approach as a way to better honor the actor’s work.
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For the Frozen Trail trailer, which Embark said was due October 6, the studio planned to use full motion capture for the first time, including a more detailed face to map expressions and emotion. The studio said the in-game change arriving with the update would make Celeste look more like Gardner, aligning the character’s real voice and face in-game for the first time.
Does this mean ARC Raiders is replacing all AI voices?
No such sweeping change was announced. Embark’s October post focuses on Celeste’s motion capture, facial likeness and alignment with Gardner’s voice. It does not say that every AI-generated line is being removed, specify how many lines use AI, or promise that all future dialogue will be recorded by actors.
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Earlier, Dot Esports reported on August 4, 2026, citing an interview with studio head Patrick Söderlund, that Embark had re-recorded some AI-generated lines with human actors while continuing to use licensed text-to-speech in selected situations. That report provides separate context; it is not a broader commitment made in the October Celeste announcement.
Motion capture, recorded dialogue and text-to-speech are different
These terms describe distinct parts of audio and character production. Motion capture records an actor’s physical performance so movement and expressions can inform an animated character. Recorded dialogue is the actor’s voice performance. Text-to-speech generates spoken audio from text. Embark’s October announcement describes expanding Celeste’s captured physical and facial performance and matching her appearance more closely to Gardner; it does not detail a wholesale change to the game’s dialogue pipeline.
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Embark’s older sound design article says most game audio comes from live recordings and discusses combining those recordings with procedural systems. That general account of the game’s sound does not establish how Celeste’s earlier dialogue was produced.
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Embark says it plans to bring more characters in line with their real-world actors in future updates. Strandberg wrote, “In future updates, we plan to bring more characters in line with their real-world actors.” The studio did not name those characters or give a timetable, so Celeste is the first stated example rather than a dated rollout plan for the full cast.
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When the change arrives and where to play
The official ARC Raiders site lists Frozen Trail for October 8, 2026. It lists the multiplayer extraction adventure on Steam, Epic Games Store, PlayStation 5, Xbox Series X|S and GeForce NOW.
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