If you’ve spent the day playing through Persona 5 Strikers and noticed the voice of the in-game digital assistant sounded familiar, it’s likely because it’s played by the original voice of Siri (via Kotaku). Susan Bennett originally provided the voice for Apple’s digital assistant, and now she’s playing EMMA, the in-game AI.
You can hear what she sounds like in the role in the video below, around the 9:44 mark.
If you ask your iPhone for directions to the nearest camping store, though, you may notice that its response doesn’t exactly sound like the game. That’s because, while Bennett was the original voice for Siri when it debuted with the iPhone 4S running iOS 5 (though technically Siri existed with Bennett’s voice before it was ever added to the iPhone), she was replaced with the launch of iOS 7.
Typeform has an interview with Bennett about how she became the voice of Siri, and it includes tons of voice recordings from her, which you can compare to her work in Strikers. You can also watch Apple’s ad that introduces Siri on the iPhone 4S to get a feel for what Siri sounded like back then in case its current iteration has overwritten 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. How about the person who played one of the first major voice assistants?” If you want to experience it for yourself, Persona 5 Strikers is out today on PlayStation, Steam, and Switch.
