If you’re not playing Cyberpunk 2077 in English or Polish, don’t worry--CD Projekt Red is making sure all facial animations will be fully lip-synced in every language.
This isn’t something that comes lightly. CD Projekt Red had to use cutting-edge facial animation software to pull off this feat, but the results will certainly be worth it for Cyberpunk 2077 to be a truly global phenomenon.
The super dubbing is all explained by senior quest designer Philipp Weber, who took to Twitter to reveal the next-gen tech that Cyberpunk 2077 is using for lip-syncing. The developer partnered with JALI Research to use their facial animation technology to automatically sync the facial movements with the sounds being produced. First, JALI's tech did the heavy lifting, and only afterward did CD Projekt Red's animation department come in to do the touchups.
This allowed Cyberpunk 2077 to offer fully lip-synced animations for every language that the game supports, according to senior level designer Miles Tost.
CD Projekt Red even made a complimentary video with JALI to showcase the technology in action and show exactly how Cyberpunk 2077 makes use of it. This tech allowed the devs to save thousands of man-hours in animations that would have previously been performed by hand.
Either that or Cyberpunk 2077 would have had to go the anime route and re-dub lines that match the facial movements of the characters.
We can expect Cyberpunk 2077 to arrive supporting quite a few languages, including Polish, English, German, French, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Japanese, Simplified Chinese, and most recently, Korean.
If languages and facial animations aren't your things, then maybe automotive vehicles from over 50 years in the future are your wheelhouse? The latest Night City trailer showcased dozens of potential rides, including tanks, miniature cars, and hypercars that look like space Bugattis. Strangely, they all still use internal combustion, which is bizarre given the current push for electrification. Then again, this is a game about a cyberpunk dystopia, so maybe folks are just going all-in on global warming.
Source: Twitter/CD Projekt Red