Remowned

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?!