Posted: December 6, 2008 at 1:59 am | Tags: interview, Lucasarts, the witcher, voice acting
I have been very lax with the posting lately as you may have noticed. At least I hope there is is someone out there to notice.
I like to picture you, Dear Reader, sitting in front of your monitor – a beverage in a mug on your desk growing cold unnoticed – clicking the ‘refresh’ button on your browser compulsively all the while furrowing your brown in concern…
Well, I have been busy. Firstly with the opening of the short play I’ve plugged here previously, which went very well. Here is a photo taken at a particularly poignant moment.
(You can’t really see it in the photo of course, as the raw particles which together form the element of Poignancy, called Poignans, are notoriously hard to capture on film – at least without specially designed lenses of the most expensive type.)
And secondly, well, I’ve been playing The Witcher.
And Geralt won’t let me leave his side, the demanding mutant albino killing-machine that he is.
I am really enjoying my return to some RPG gaming action – I haven’t had this much fun since the superb “Vampire:Bloodlines.” it has not escaped my notice that they are both games with mature content and a deliciously dark sensibility. And good dialogue. The dialogue is very important.
Which leads me to one of the Witcher’s excellent features. The Enhanced Edition that I’ve got my hands on means that I can play the game with the original Polish dialogue with English subtitles. It really can’t be overestimated how great this is. And it should without a doubt from this point on be the standard. (Why don’t they release all the Japanese RPG’s like this?)
I love the authentic sense of otherness listening to the game in a language that is completely foreign to me. I also appreciate the fact that I am hearing it as originally intended by the creators. And last but not least, this feature helps mask the terrible voice-acting that has marred so many adventure/rpg games since they went ‘talkie’ in the mid 90’s.
Don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that there haven’t been games that have used brilliant voice acting to great effect and that we should try to wind back the clock to displayed-text dialogue only. (This could never happen anyway, despite how well the first two Monkey Island games stack up against more recent, full voice recorded titles… ) But for every brilliant example of voice acting in a game (Tony Plana in Grim Fandango anyone?) I could find you three dozen terrible ham-fests of cringe worthy folly (Any actor who worked on Oblivion and isn’t Patrick Stewart for example.)
It can really ruin a game that has potential. There are quite a few RPG’s I’ve played that were recorded originally in English, but would be immeasurably improved if I could play them in German with English subtitles, just to mask the dire voice acting.
On a related note it so happens that a friend of mine recently did some voice work on the upcoming Heroes Over Europe, so I sat down and had a bit of a chat with him about what the job entailed.
I shall post the full transcript of the interview below. Please read at your leisure. Or if long blocks of text in blog posts have the tendency to make you run and hide (And I do understand this impulse, believe me…) then just listen to Paul Soundbite followed by Another Paul Soundbite and then go have a lie down.
INTERVIEW WITH PAUL DAVID GODDARD about his work on HEROES OVER EUROPE
H: I’m talking with Paul Goddard about his work on …
PDG: Heroes over Europe.
H: How did you get involved?
PDG: Well, I was going around to a whole bunch of studios, introducing myself after just signing up with my new agent. And I walked in to this place and went “ahhh – this is where Karnivool [Paul’s brother’s band] recorded a lot of their last album.” And then I recognised another guy who was working there, that I knew. So it was one of those perfect schmoozing opportunities. He basically said, “We are doing a game in here. Do you do accents? Could you come in next week?”
H: So it was through your agent.
PDG: Well, I was there to introduce myself. And I went in next week and auditioned for it.
H: What did the audition consist of?
PDG: I was essentially just trying out different things to see what parts of the world I could sound like. They gave me these big spreadsheets, listed into the wav files they were going to be using. It had the line, then another column saying the emotion it required. You are ‘happy’ you are ‘stressed’. It would say “Commander, you have to turn around you are going the wrong way.” In one column and then “Panic” in the other. That kind of thing,
H: And what accents did you do?
PDG: I auditioned with British and American. And they brought me in for British.
H: Did you just play one character or several?
PDG: About three in the end. There was Ground Control, Mission Commander, and a random cockney bastard who gets shot down a lot.
H: So all military personnel?
PDG: Yes.
H: Was there any actual dialogue? As in scenes?
PDG: There were scenes with dialogue but it was recorded separately, no other actors about or anything to listen to They would just say, “Here is the context, here are the other lines you would be hearing.”, and then you recorded what you had to do.
H: Was it challenging?
PDG: It was a little strange. Considering you had no idea how they [the other actors] were going to deliver it. I’m always surprised at how well those things end up matching though.
H: So you are recording a response to a line you haven’t heard, or you are recording a line that someone else’s is going to respond to without hearing it?
PDG: Yes. There is a someone there directing the voice action. Because there was so much to do, generally he would just go… [thumbs up gesture]… And you’d do them all.
H: So did you have a list and go through all of them in one go, or did you do one, make sure you’d got it right and then move on?
PDG: One at a time. I’d just keep going unless they interrupted and said, “Try it this way.”
H: Was it usually just technical?
PDG: There were a few towards the end of the missions and the very end of the whole game where we were tying the story together that were important, and we took a bit more time on them. But the more generic “you are going the wrong way” ones, as long as I got the accent right they were pretty happy with that. Or I’d say “Could I do that again?”
H: Did you say that much?
PDG: Occasionally, yes. If it didn’t come out well enough.
H: Did you see any of the game for context? Images or concept art or anything?
PDG: No. It sounded good from what he was telling me though.
H: Having done it, does it change your appreciation of the voice stuff in games?
PDG: Definitely. I’ve been listening carefully to the delivery and it makes me even more annoyed at the ones I don’t like. The big budget ones will always have the time and the money to get it right. But even then sometimes they don’t get it.
H: Like, Oblivion, say, where if feels like they have four voice actors to populate the entire world? And not even particularly good ones…
PDG: Yes. [Paul does his impression of some Oblivion voice acting] Even if it’s not obvious something grates.
H: Which is when we have to mention Grim Fandango. Because it’s brilliant. How did they do that, did they have all the cast in the room I wonder?
PDG: I don’t know. And these days, in adventure games, when better voice acting is required they are often appalling. With an older game like Monkey Island, you are reading the script, and it is straight from the writer to you, and it works. But then a sub-par voice actor, or a good actor that has 6 hours to get a whole games worth of stuff done, comes along and gets in the way.
H: Having been through the experience, how would it be done better?
PDG: I’ll have to hear the product.
H: Well, what would you change?
PDG: Time. Which is just money. That is the luxury. I did go in twice, there was one section, they needed pick-ups, they had forgotten changes from multiplayer that they needed to do.
H: Can you give us a few lines?
PDG: Ah… what was there. Thousands of them. One that stuck in my head. Mission Commander, I just pretended to be Tom Baker for a few hours.
[In a Tom Baker-ish voice] “God Save the Queen – We’ll save the rest of em.”
It was very tongue n cheek and cheesy.
H: Was there anything you read and thought, “What the…?”
PDG: If something did sound cheesy or strange, the voice director would pick up on it.
He was re-writing as we went.
H: Where there good lines?
PDG: Yes, there were some, definitely.
H: That you’ll remember after playing the game? Like ‘stop touching me’ from the peons in Warcraft?
PDG: I hope so. I played the first one, and in the recording sessions they mentioned were aiming for a less naggy delivery, a less annoying delivery. In the first game there was a lot of, “Turn Around!” [PDG screams this…]
And you’d be all, “I’m learning, stop yelling at me. I’m bleeding from my ears, where is my teddy.”
So they pulled me up a few times, made it a more friendly reminder.
H: What kind of voices did you give them?
PDG: Mission Commander was very regal. Ground control was still fairly RP [Received Pronunciation] He had the most lines, but he was more generic, no sense of humour. Just go there do this. “Thank you, 72, head over to the cliffs. They are waiting there.”
H: And the cockney?
PDG: Had some goodies, some screams.
“YEEEEEEEARG!” [PDG makes explosion noise] “Stay on target!” I had to remember not to do the sound effects.
Because it was such a rush though, 3000 lines in 5 hours, I wish I could remember more but it flew by.
H: Would you be interested in doing it again?
PDG: Yeah. Great fun. I mean, I’m presuming there are no graphical representations of the characters I did in the games, but it would be great to do one where there was.
H: Thanks Mr Goddard.
Posted: November 22, 2008 at 6:10 pm | Tags: Cold War, former czechoslovakia, photography, Theatre
As I may/may not have mentioned here, I am in the midst of directing a play as part of Short and Sweet, which is an annual competition held at the Arts Centre, Melbourne.
The play I am working on this year is called “Kanat and the Red Army” by Dan Giovannoni and it is a really solid piece of writing. (Obviously I think it’s good or I wouldn’t have picked it…)
It tells the story of a couple from the former Czechoslovakia, and features them – as adults – re-telling an important event from their days as students during the Cold War. The play is about music, about freedom and censorship, about stories and memories and the differences between them.
It manages to cram a lot of meaning and sentiment and humour into ten minutes and I was immediately taken with it on the first reading.
Also – it has a drum-kit. And a drummer, Elijah Ungvary who just happens to moonlight as an excellent actor. (Or is it the other way round?)
Here he is in one of the publicity images I shot, looking a bit like a fashion model.
He is joined by Elly, played by the gorgeous and talented Zoey Dawson.
So if you are in Melbourne come down and watch it. Its part of Week One, which is Wed 3rd December – Sat the 6th, all shows at 8pm. You’ll also get to see 9 other short plays, so the odds are good that you’ll enjoy one or two of them.
Tickets through Ticketmaster or in person at the Arts Centre Box Office
End of plug.
