Video Game Voice Acting Advice II: The…
In the comments of my last post, my esteemed Thumbs colleague Duncan pointed out another terrible property of most video game voice recording, one on which I have often commented elsewhere. It is the tendency of voice actors, under poor direction or using poor scripts, to perform an interrupted statement by actually stopping where the ellipses or dash occurs in the script, rather than actually being interrupted.
Now, in this case, it’s slightly more understandable. I realize that most games aren’t budgeted to actually have actors in the same room during the same session, able to play off one another and cut each other off if the script calls for it. But, in the end, there’s really no reason the actor can’t simply record a longer version of the line, and have a sound designer or editor cut it off convincingly.
There’s also no excuse for that unintentional pregnant pause that inevitably occurs between the end of the interrupted actor’s painfully weak trail off into ellipses, and the so-called interruption. With the amazing dynamic sound blending and manipulation that goes on across five channels in so many of today’s games, it should not be too much to expect a sound engine that can, in a completely pre-scripted sequence, position two recordings close enough to one another to produce a vaguely realistically abrupt interruption during a–
Sound designer: Can’t be done, you see, because–
Snake: METAL GEAR?!
June 25th, 2008 at 3:13 pm
Got any good examples of this?
June 28th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
I have a six year old, so I watch way too much Nickelodeon, and they keep playing an ad for an upcoming b-string 3d animated movie called Space Chimps and it’s driving me nuts because it’s a PERFECT example of what you’re talking about.
In it, they show this scene where all the chimps are running on treadmills, and one of them is doing the old cadence “I am Titan and I am strong” … and then there’s this way-too-long pause before the other chimp chimes in with “…no one wants to sing along.”
It’s just terrible and I blame you for it irritating the shit out of me. Thanks Chris. ;)
July 3rd, 2008 at 11:22 am
I also noticed this in Mass Effect. “Oh no… we are brea- signal is… losing-” It sounded artificial to me as if the people were recorded speaking the skips and breaks themselves.
July 9th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
That Mass Effect sequence must be the Mother of All Terrible Signal Breaking Up Sequences. These kinds of sequences are usually done pretty poorly, but this one was just terrible.
Also, the thing that surprised me the most about Mass Effect’s dialogue system was that, even though you chose all the lines in real time, indicating that a main concern was to have dialogue flow smoothly and convincingly, there were still all these long pauses between all the lines! Before playing it, I had the impression there would be all kinds of dynamic dialogue shit going on, but they could almost just as well have the dialogue picking appear between lines.