Bringing Celeste to life: how we’re adapting to better honor actor performances

Toledo is full of life. Among the bustling streets of our underground home, the neighborhood of Speranza endures.

It has always been our aim to make the human stories in ARC Raiders believable and immersive; after all, the full spectrum of human psychology is central to both the narrative and gameplay.

Our actors play an important role in this endeavour, and I want to speak a little about the work we’re doing to better capture their authentic performances and bring them into the ARC Raiders universe for a more immersive player experience - we’re starting with Celeste.

Behind Celeste

By now, you all have come to know Celeste, the unofficial leader of Speranza. At Embark, she is better known to us simply as Diana.

Diana Gardner has been with us since the very beginning of ARC Raiders, voicing Celeste’s lines and breathing life into one of Speranza’s central characters.

But Celeste has never fully represented the depth of Diana’s performance. Celeste’s limited expressive capabilities have been immersion-breaking for players, resulting in facial animations that fall short in communicating the stakes and stories we want to tell. Sometimes high fidelity, dynamic facial expressions are important to anchor the gravity of the story, and this is something that has constrained us up to this point.

Frozen Trailer

On October 6, our trailer for Frozen Trail will be released. This is the first time we have used full motion capture, including a more detailed and accurate face, that allows us to map expressions and emotion in more detail. This means that more of Diana’s performance and identity comes through the screen.

Naturally, Celeste has come to more closely resemble Diana, and that means she’ll look a little different to what you’ve seen before. Celeste and Diana are no longer hiding behind an imaginary face, they are now one and the same - what you’re watching is the authentic performance of an incredibly talented actor, the real Celeste on screen for the first time.

Plans for Speranza

We’re not stopping with our cinematic videos. It’s important to us to bring Celeste closer to Diana within our game as well. When Frozen Trail drops, you’ll also notice that Celeste looks more like Diana, her real voice and face matching up for the first time. It’s a start, and we will continue to improve our technology over time, to keep you all more immersed.

In future updates, we plan to bring more characters in line with their real-world actors. Not only will this mean more faithful representations of actors, it’ll be felt by players themselves. The Rust Belt is immersive, grounded, and wondrous - but we want you to feel invested in it, and that means finding more ways to integrate real human performances into every interaction.

We can’t wait to see you all on the Frozen Trail!

All the best,

Stefan Strandberg

Chief Creative Officer