If you spent the day playing Persona 5 Strikers and I realized that the game’s digital assistant’s voice sounded familiar, probably because it’s played by Siri’s original voice (via Kotaku) Susan Bennett originally provided the voice for Apple’s digital assistant, and now she is playing EMMA, the game’s AI.
You can hear how it sounds on paper in the video below, around the 9:44 mark.
However, if you ask your iPhone for directions to the nearest camping store, you may notice that the answer does not sound exactly like the game. That’s because while Bennett was Siri’s original voice when it debuted with the iPhone 4S running iOS 5 (although technically Siri existed with Bennett’s voice before it was even added to the iPhone), it was replaced with the launch of iOS 7.
Typeform has an interview with Bennett about how she became Siri’s voice, and includes tons of recordings of her voice, which you can compare with her work at Forward. You can also watch the Apple ad featuring Siri on the iPhone 4S to get an idea of what Siri was like at that time, if your current iteration has replaced those memories.
This is the kind of extra mile we love to see game developers go. “We need someone to play the voice assistant in the English version of the game. And the person who played one of the first great voice assistants? “If you want to try it for yourself, Persona 5 Strikers is available today on PlayStation, Steam and Switch.