There’s no separating Wayne June from Darkest Dungeon. Like Logan Cunningham’s work as the narrator in Supergiant Games’ Bastion, every narrow victory and heart-wrenching defeat in Red Hook Studios’ dark fantasy dungeon crawler is punctuated by June’s grim, unwaveringly sorrow-filled voice. He passed away in January 2025, and director Chris Bourassa recently confirmed he would never use generative...
The tension presented here is not merely about artistic ownership but about the ontological status of performance and the definition of human contribution in the digital age. The conflict revolves around the boundary between utilizing a performance as data and respecting the integrity of the performer's legacy. The refusal by Red Hook Studios to engage with the AI voice training stems from a principle that the voice and delivery were "human," and this distinction is framed as an inherent, irrepl...