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Music Media Entertainment Games

Giving Voice to Video Games 48

Posted by Zonk from the who-doesn't-love-lazlow? dept.
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."
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Giving Voice to Video Games More

Giving Voice to Video Games

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  • I bet you hate me. (Score:4, Funny)

    by AtariAmarok ( 451306 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:23PM (#10728359)
    All those takes to get the line right? I've been playing videogames with the sound off for months now.

  • No subtitles in voiced games... (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    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
    • More and more games are being subtitled: Final Fantasy always has been, Metal Gear Solid certainly is, as are broken sword... possibly GTA San Andreas (not sure on that one). Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic. These are the major releases. I see that things like FPS games, sports sims etc. don't have sound so much; but the voices are (in these games,) far from essential for the story to progress (if there is a story)

      • Re:No subtitles in voiced games... (Score:1, Informative)

        by Anonymous Coward
        Yes many games are subtitled, however even some of the games you listed do have instances of voice acting. For example KOTOR and most definately GTASA. They may not be entirely voice over, but there are moments where voice comes in. A good voice actor can add an element that can greatly increase the games impact in terms of reality and fun.
      • Have you played a recent Final Fantasy Game? It's all audio, subtitles are optional. Personally I like it better with out the voices. You relize quickly that you ignore most of what is said in a game, or just speed read through it. When your having to sit there watching people carry on a coversation, that is taking 10 times longer to listen to then it would to just read... Well it's just very annoying.
      • I'd hate to play KOTOR without subtitles.
        How long does it take to learn Ithorian?
        • Well... I have a distinct feeling that any non-Basic speaking people just have a standardised voice that sounds *exactly* the same throughout the whole of KOTOR ;). It says in the manual that no subtitles allows for a cinematic experience. It also allows for a more incomprehensible one.

    • Re:No subtitles in voiced games... (Score:4, Interesting)

      by plagioclase ( 454483 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @06:09PM (#10728897) Homepage
      The quick and dirty answer:

      It's just one more thing to worry about. They're avoiding it because they don't want to have to search though thousands of lines of text in five languages every time a voice over changes, or do the same thing correct obscure spelling errors.

      Oh the other hand, In lower budget games, there are subtitles there because it's a lot easier to and cheaper just have the voices in one language, and provide for the others with translated subtitles.

      I personally think more games should have them, particularly Halo, but working at a game studio, I can understand why they often don't.
    • Name a game in the current console generation (or a relatively modern PC game) that has voices but not subtitles. Seriously. I've yet to see any, ever.
    • Accessibility is really an elective for most games.

      Several games use color or slight variations in shade as the only differentiator between items, hence color-blind people may have issues with it.

      Alternative methods of entry are rarely, if ever, included in test passes, so don't be surprised if your one-handed keyboard won't work when you're playing "Leisure Suit Larry: Magna Cum Laude."

      However, subtitles are gaining ground. Not because they're easy. They're a total resource hog. No, they're gaining g
    • I don't think this is as true now as it once was. I both play a lot of games and am a huge fan of subtitles (my hearing's not all that bad, but it's a lot easier to glance at the bottom of the screen when you miss something than to figure out how to get the cutscene to replay) and I can't recall the last time I played a game without that option. In fact, I see more DVDs without subtitles these days than video games.
    • Half-Life 2 does, and the engine directly supports them. Not only does it allow for subtitles for sound issues (hearing loss, sound off) but also subtitles in other languages.

  • Harder with celebrities... (Score:3, Interesting)

    by RomSteady ( 533144 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @05:59PM (#10728787) Homepage Journal
    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.

  • Doing voiceovers (Score:5, Interesting)

    by plagioclase ( 454483 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @06:02PM (#10728825) Homepage
    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.

    • Another Reason... (Score:5, Interesting)

      by cgenman ( 325138 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @08:58PM (#10730422) Homepage
      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).

      • A perfect example of this is David Duchovney in XIII. I like David in some of his films, but in XIII it was the worst performance I've ever heard.
        Just listen to the first scene, when he wakes up on the beach. Walking along, he says "Ow, my head." The way he says it seems like he's just reading from the script. I felt pained every time I heard his voice, it was that bad.
    • That's more big-budget than when I played the American Bombadier in IL-2: Forgotten Battles. Microphone was free with a rebate, left the A/C on, and it was in the dorm on a friday night.

      But I'm the only person in my apartment with voice acting credits. I'm practically Bruce Campbell!
    • I'd do it in a second, for free (the first time ;)

  • All those takes due to unprofesionalism! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Zangief ( 461457 ) on Thursday November 04, 2004 @06:10PM (#10728901) Homepage Journal
    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 have the same problem with my answering machine (Score:1, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I keep recording the message over and over, because it never sounds just the way I want it to.
  • As long as they let me skip through these voice-acted dialogues, I could care less.

    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.

  • 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..
    • (Minella is also the voice of Omochao, which is a pretty impressive, if slightly annoying, voice.) IMHO the english Omochao voice was somehow too "grown up". I know japanese voices usually tend to sound a bit (okay, a lot) younger, but the japanese Omochao voice was spot-on, while the english sounded , gosh, sooo like a teenager.

  • Onimusha 3 was almost ruined (Score:3, Informative)

    by Dusabre ( 176445 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @05:04AM (#10732777) Homepage
    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.

  • Bungie has the best VO's (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CoffeeJedi ( 90936 ) on Friday November 05, 2004 @11:15AM (#10734224)
    the cast they got for ILoveBees was amazing!
    here are some hilarious Halo 2 outtakes:
    Halo 2 Outtakes [bungie.net]
    betcha can't stick it!
  • ... where's Barry? We all remember the torture of the Resident Evil dialogs :(

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