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Giving Voice to Video Games
The New York Times (registration required) has an article up on the process and attention that Voicing Video Games is now getting. From the Article: "My role, as a psychotic talk-show caller, seemed straightforward. But struggling through a dozen takes to perfect that one line one day in early August impressed upon me the high expectations levied on today's video game voice actors."
All those takes to get the line right? I've been playing videogames with the sound off for months now.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
I don't understand why, but developers seem to avoid putting subtitles in their games with voices. Not everyone has the ability to hear, and sometimes people want to play quietly, or hear something else besides the game.
I think the IDSA should start requiring this or otherwise reward developers for doing it.
Melissa
When you've got a celebrity voice, the worst thing that you can do is have their agent in the room during the voice recording, especially if you ask the celeb to ad-lib.
Sergio Garcia was chosen to be the cover personality for "Links 2001." He was selected because he had an amazing amount of energy. However, after his selection, his agent decided that he (Mr. Garcia) should start to tone down his behavior on the golf course.
His agent was around during the voice recording sessions as well, and it just drained all of the energy out of him.
As a result, listening to his voice-over work in "Links 2001" is a sure cure for insomnia.
RomSteady - I came, I saw, I tested. GamerTag: RomSteady / http://www.romsteady.net
I did character voiceovers for a smaller (and sadly still unpublished) video game a couple years ago.
The sound studio we went to was actually in the back of some guy's suburban home. Once we were inside, it was a very interesting experience, putting the headphones on and talking into the microphone in the sound booth all by yourself while a few people sit ouside and fiddle with the computers. Oh yeah, and every so often you hear "(click) ok, let's try it again, but this time..."
Initially I thought that it was going to be easy - just say the line, right? After you try it, you begin to realize that there are a _ton_ of subtleties for every word you say. I would do a line a half dozen times, and only one of those would be even halfway decent. Every so often, I would say a line and know I had it, but most of the time it was just trial and error.
After being in the recording booth for an hour or so, I had quite a headache, but was excited to see what it would sound like in-game. Turns out that it's odd to hear your own voice coming out of a computer paired with a person who looks nothing like you.
We were a small time studio, so everyone who did voices for the title already worked at the company (I was a programmer) in some capacity, but, IMHO, the resulting voice overs were far better than a lot of the laughable, flat performances I've seen in other games recently.
All in all, It was facinating to see how much equipment, time, and effort goes into even small-time game voiceovers.
Yeah, I have a webcomic...
Look at Castlevania: Symphony of the Night on the PSX, THOSE GUYS WERE PRO!
I bet they got their lines right the first time they said it, because, it sounds like it.
I keep recording the message over and over, because it never sounds just the way I want it to.
I really, really, really want my one-handed keyboard to work with "Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude."
It's important that I free up my other hand while playing this.
So put that in your pipe and smoke it, buster!
Hence the Doom3[cc] project. A fair bit of the story comes through audio logs, with no text transcription at all.
-ReK
md5sum -c reality.md5
reality: FAILED
md5sum: WARNING: 1 of 1 computed checksum did NOT match
Another reason voiceovers are frequently bad is that often times the one with the resources to setup a voice recording session, hire talent, and get everything running for a one-day session is the publisher, who frequently hasn't the slightest clue who the characters are or what they are supposed to be doing. Many a game development team put their faith in the publisher that vetting good voice actors was enough, only to have things come back completely flat, unemotionative, too emotive, or just plain wrong.
I don't think I've ever seen a VO go less than three iterations before being right (Stand-in, first totally wrong take, second livable take).
The ______ Agenda
The thing that has always appealed to me about subtitles is that most of the games using them let you fastforward through them. The other benefit is that you can scan them for the information you need, and quickly go through, which you can't easily do with voice.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
Lani Minella once got into an argument with Sonic creator Yuji Naka (through a translator!) over who should be Knuckles's English voice... Minella wanted Ryan Drummond, the voice of Sonic, to do Knuckles as well, and Naka did not think one person should do two roles. So they got (sort of) movie star Michael McGaharn to do the part in Sonic Adventure... who made Knuckles sound like he was hitting the valium pretty hard. For future Sonic games the voice was changed to somebody who didn't constantly sound so... bored.
(Minella is also the voice of Omochao, which is a pretty impressive, if slightly annoying, voice.)
By French and Japanese characters speaking American English with awful American accents. I cringed at every cut scene. Would have been so difficult to get some French actors to do the dubbing but in English - so the characters would have at least had French accents?
Hearing some guy dubbing the Jean Reno character was probably the worst of all. I would have preffered French with subtitles - the scenes with Reno speaking French were a pleasure.
Do you actually play those? Last time I did play them, I did have the sound up. However, I will say that these games are not as musical as they could be. There is a lot of silence anyway.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
the cast they got for ILoveBees was amazing!
here are some hilarious Halo 2 outtakes:
Halo 2 Outtakes
betcha can't stick it!
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
... where's Barry? We all remember the torture of the Resident Evil dialogs :(
"When life gives you lemons, don't make lemonade. Make life take the lemons back!" -- Cave Johnson