Comments on: Voiceacting in your head

By: Andrew Armstrong

Andrew Armstrong — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 14:27:45 +0000

Eeek, good point you’re entirely correct now I think about it – it’s only the major characters who have the full voiceacting done for them. A good compromise perhaps – the minor characters don’t need the voiceacting, which leads to perhaps more variety in opponents then Knights of the Old Republic that does voiceact everything.

Although I still would prefer only the major major bits to be voiceacted, such as Baldur’s Gate was, which was a lot easier to read with your own ideas of voices.

By: Dave Mark

Dave Mark — Wed, 26 Mar 2008 13:57:23 +0000

NWN2 voiced all of the cut scene dialog – however, all the menu driven interaction was text. Sometimes, there were combinations of the two at the same time – an introduction line or two that then went into the menus. That was an odd disconnect.

By: Andrew Armstrong

Andrew Armstrong — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:13:57 +0000

In dialogue, I think a move back to reading text (which most people do anyway!) would be a good idea – get as far away from Oblivion and back to rich dialogues.

Record combat phrases, introductions, and dramatic speeches or important lines, but the rest doesn’t need drastic voiceacting, does it? I love getting the feel of a character from their initial phrases (those help a lot, although nowadays faces look a lot more detailed which helps too), then putting that voice to later dialogue.

Some games can come closer to pulling it off – although not a great story, Neverwinter Nights 2 voices all it’s dialogue (there’s a ton of NPC’s in it). Knights of the Old Republic is long (and rather detailed in places) and has all it’s text voiced. So some do succeed – but probably at the expense of the recording studio like you said!

For faster games, there usually isn’t that much audio needed – Call of Duty has snippits of battle dialogue which is easier to manage, but in any game with choices or longer non-combat dialogues need some effort to work well.

By: Dave Mark

Dave Mark — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 18:07:42 +0000

I would have to agree that this is an issue that needs to be addressed somehow. If animation continues to expand, and AI continues to grow more realistic, dialog will have to keep pace. Voice acting is becoming a major bottleneck in a lot of productions. Unlike animation, for example, you can’t easily construct things procedurally. People will notice if you try to piecemeal a sentence or paragraph together.

What to do? Is there a novel solution out there or do we spend more time and money in the recording studio?

By: March ‘08 Round Table - UPDATE 3/25 : Man Bytes Blog

March ‘08 Round Table - UPDATE 3/25 : Man Bytes Blog — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 09:26:15 +0000

[...] Andrew has joined us once again, with a post on the power of the imagination titled voiceacting in your head. [...]