Black Myth: Wukong's Beth Park says AI removes the "human, chaotic emotion" from game performances

This year's BAFTA Breakthrough 2024 cohort has been announced, and one of the standouts is Beth Park, lead performance director on Black Myth: Wukong, the beautiful video game from Chinese developer Game Science that showed how powerful Unreal Engine 5 can be.

Beth has been working in games for almost six years, starting her career working on Baldur's Gate 3, before moving onto Metaphor: Refantazio and Warhammer 40,000 Space Marine 2 and Black Myth: Wukong, for which she became recognised by BAFTA. Not a bad career roster, all three games have won plaudits in 2024 and are all nominated in the prestigious The Game Awards.

"I've kind of been swimming around in a lot of different worlds, but every single one of those projects has informed the other and I've learned a lot throughout the process of working on all of them," comments Beth. "So yeah, I'm just really proud to have kind of been involved in so many different successful games."

When it comes to her BAFTA, she tells me, "It feels good. I feel special,." And adds: "It's really many, years in the making, years of hard work, slogging away down in the mines, mining for good performances out of actors, and then getting them into the games. So, yeah, it's been a lot of hard work, and I also kind of feel like, 'yeah, I deserve to be here'."

What exactly does a performance director do? As Beth tells me, her role is to interpret the concept art for game characters into realistic, lively and befitting performances. She asks herself questions inspired by the art - "What kind of voice would suit this unbelievable picture?", she says.

Beth describes how the team working on Black Myth: Wukong would send her concept art, "and it's this, like, little decrepit monster with a lantern, and you think, 'right, okay, who could be this little freak'?"

She adds: "You know, that's really fun. There's a lot of lovely characters in [Black Myth: Wukong], like Zhu Bajie, the little warthog guy. You're probably with him for the most part of the game. So getting to know that character throughout the whole of the game was really nice. And working with Jack Ayers, who plays that character, was lovely."

When it comes to the role Beth says, "we're very much focused on getting the best performances, and hopefully we get the information about what the game looks like, what the characters look like, in order to inspire us".

But Beth says the role can be restricted, because the character design is set and she's building a performance around it. As we chat, she mentioned her short films, Fishwife and psychological thriller Wild Animal, and an upcoming folk horror feature film, and it's here where games and film merge, but for Beth, her film work offers greater creative freedom.

She explains: "One of the reasons I'm really excited about my film work is I get to direct the whole mise en scène and design the whole atmosphere of the world from the ground up."

The perfect balance for Beth would be to "straddle both worlds" and work in video games and film. This is something many creatives have expressed, as tech like Unreal Engine 5 is being used for more than just game creation. Of course, the spectre of AI overshadows all creative industries, and Beth is acutely aware it's encroaching on voice acting, game development and filmmaking.

She comments: "I can't really see myself welcoming AI voices, because I think you're going to lose the element that people care about when they're interacting with characters in games, which is human, chaotic emotion, which AI might be able to replicate in intonation, but it will never, ever be able to replicate; you know, the feeling behind something. And I think that matters."

Adding: "I think when you play games, you have to really care about the story in the world that you're in. And I think that matters. And I think companies that are going to cut out that element are losing value in the products that they're making. I can see that AI can be a tool in some cases, but you know, if people are suffering, and in order for that to happen, then surely that's a bad thing. That's my stance on it."

Visit the BAFTA Breakthrough 2024 website for more information.