Oblivion - voice acting
KJH
number of different voice actors in Oblivion is not a new thing, but in my
current game I did run into two characters in the Cheydinhal Fighters'
Guild, standing next to each other, who had exactly the same voice. You
know, the deep male one.
And I'm finally motivated to vent. Can someone please explain this to me?
Does it cost more to hire 5 voice actors to do 10 hours of voice work
apiece than to hire 50 voice actors to do 1 hour of voice work apiece?
Because the latter option would make the game so tremendously more
satisfying to play that I have to think it would be worthwhile.
I've been playing a long time, and I'm so used to those same 5 voices that
it feels like I'm running around in a world of clones. The immersion
suffers a lot from this.
Badbark
> I've been playing a long time, and I'm so used to those same 5 voices that
> it feels like I'm running around in a world of clones. The immersion
> suffers a lot from this.
They should have hired the 'Beyond Divinity' voice actors. They were
excellent.... :o)
Badbark
Ross Ridge
>And I'm finally motivated to vent. Can someone please explain this to me?
>Does it cost more to hire 5 voice actors to do 10 hours of voice work
>apiece than to hire 50 voice actors to do 1 hour of voice work apiece?
Of course. No one is going to take a job that only pays for one hour
of work. It also takes a lot more work to audition and hire 50 actors
than it does 10 and that work doesn't get done for free.
Ross Ridge
--
l/ // Ross Ridge -- The Great HTMU
[oo][oo] rri...@csclub.uwaterloo.ca
-()-/()/ http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/~rridge/
db //
WDS
wrote:
> KJH <kj-hil...@yaw-hoooo.com> wrote:
> >And I'm finally motivated to vent. Can someone please explain this to me?
> >Does it cost more to hire 5 voice actors to do 10 hours of voice work
> >apiece than to hire 50 voice actors to do 1 hour of voice work apiece?
>
> Of course. No one is going to take a job that only pays for one hour
> of work. It also takes a lot more work to audition and hire 50 actors
> than it does 10 and that work doesn't get done for free.
Yup, the cost of 50 people working for 1 hour is going to be higher,
probably a lot higher, than 5 people working for 10 hours. Read _The
Mythical Man Month_.
Kendrick Kerwin Chua
I agree with your statement, but I don't think 'The Mythical Man Month'
adequately covers this particular circumstance. That book was specifically
about software development and posits that programmers have to become
familiar with a project and communicate with each other, which leads to
more delays. In ADR or other voiceover work, such communication is not
necessary at all, to the point where many recordings are simply done with
one engineer and one actor only.
The one assumption I do want to take issue with is the idea that one hour
of voiceover work is equivalent to one hour of usable sound. If you're
lucky, one hour of work will end up producing about seven or eight minutes
of content. Script changes, content revision and technical issues are all
out of the control of the actor, who still gets paid for recording lines
that can't be used in the final product. On top of that, you have the
additional problem that SAG and AFTRA union actors are only permitted to
do four hours of voiceover work per day.
Under those restrictions, it makes a lot of sense to reduce the number of
actors and retain their services over the weeks and months of production.
But there's the unrelated problem in the Elder Scrolls games that you have
lots of interchangable dialogue that can be spoken by any character that
fits the race and gender flags. This, more than any lack of talent, is the
main reason why so many characters sound the same.
-KKC, who regrets not slogging it out in California or Vancouver to do
more voiceover performance...
--
-- kendrick - Buy All Pro Football 2K8 from one of these online vendors
- @ io.com - http://www.cduniverse.com/productinfo.asp?pid=7394101 -
- - http://www.gamequestdirect.com/710425391590.html -
- - http://shop3.outpost.com/product/5187946 -
WDS
> >Yup, the cost of 50 people working for 1 hour is going to be higher,
> >probably a lot higher, than 5 people working for 10 hours. Read _The
> >Mythical Man Month_.
>
> I agree with your statement, but I don't think 'The Mythical Man Month'
> adequately covers this particular circumstance. That book was specifically
> about software development and posits that programmers have to become
> familiar with a project and communicate with each other, which leads to
> more delays. In ADR or other voiceover work, such communication is not
> necessary at all, to the point where many recordings are simply done with
> one engineer and one actor only.
It actually applies pretty well in most any human undertaking. As you
add more people to a task it inevitably takes longer than the task
time divided by the number of people, even if they are only working in
pairs. Someone has to coordinate it all if nothing else. Trying to
use 1000 voice actors to record 100 hours of in-game speech would be a
nightmare and take forever.
Sometimes it can work out, but it always takes a lot more total effort
than if fewer people had done it and a lot more careful planning.
Those Extreme Makeover houses are a good example. They can tear down
an old house and build a (huge!) brand new one in under 100 hours
which is totally amazing. Yet the sum of effort of all the (tens of)
thousands of people is a lot more than if you had a normal crew work
on it for a few months.
Pibbur
I didn't mind that there were so few different voices in the game that
much, although I agree that it was kind of primitive. My main problem with
the voice acting was that some NPC's, especially the beggars changed
voices during conversation - one voice for asking for money, another for
thanking you.
IMO voice acting is not important in a game, I usually prefer reading
(it's faster as well) - especially if the voices are bad.
--
Pibbur
"- Luce, pater tuus sum"
"- Minime! Minime!"
Kendrick Kerwin Chua
WDS <Bi...@seurer.net> wrote:
>On Aug 30, 11:21 am, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendr...@nospam.io> wrote:
>> >Yup, the cost of 50 people working for 1 hour is going to be higher,
>> >probably a lot higher, than 5 people working for 10 hours. Read _The
>> >Mythical Man Month_.
>>
>> I agree with your statement, but I don't think 'The Mythical Man Month'
>> adequately covers this particular circumstance. That book was specifically
>> about software development and posits that programmers have to become
>> familiar with a project and communicate with each other, which leads to
>> more delays. In ADR or other voiceover work, such communication is not
>> necessary at all, to the point where many recordings are simply done with
>> one engineer and one actor only.
>
>It actually applies pretty well in most any human undertaking. As you
>add more people to a task it inevitably takes longer than the task
>time divided by the number of people, even if they are only working in
>pairs. Someone has to coordinate it all if nothing else. Trying to
>use 1000 voice actors to record 100 hours of in-game speech would be a
>nightmare and take forever.
The advantage in voiceover work is that there's standardization. The end
result of the voice actor's individual work is all the same, no matter how
many of them are contributing. It really is equivalent labor, if you don't
take into account the talent of the actor. Also, the act of editing all
the recordings together into a single soundtrack is largely unchanged by
the number of actors who participate. Adding editors to such a project
wouldn't work out quite as well, though. I do agree with you that it's not
a one-to-one cost savings.
There's a principle in military tactics called the fuzzy-wuzzy rule, after
some British general's less-than-sensitive racial observation. He noted
that a soldier with two guns is not worth twice a soldier with one gun,
since the one with two guns can't shoot in two directions and dies just as
easily. The only lesson I'm taking away from this topic is that it's a
mistake to try to quantify anything any more. :)
>Sometimes it can work out, but it always takes a lot more total effort
>than if fewer people had done it and a lot more careful planning.
>Those Extreme Makeover houses are a good example. They can tear down
>an old house and build a (huge!) brand new one in under 100 hours
>which is totally amazing. Yet the sum of effort of all the (tens of)
>thousands of people is a lot more than if you had a normal crew work
>on it for a few months.
In that case the labor really is interchangable all over the workplace,
where driving a nail on this end of the house is equal to driving a nail
in the other end of the house. It's also arguable that something like a
construction project will be less subject to artistic considerations and
disputes, especially since the end of the work is more clearly defined and
less subjective. I forget who said that great art is never finished, only
abandoned. Which means that Star Wars is not great art. :)
-KKC, who can't think of how to get back on topic now...
Nostromo
Domini:
>On Aug 30, 11:21 am, Kendrick Kerwin Chua <kendr...@nospam.io> wrote:
>> >Yup, the cost of 50 people working for 1 hour is going to be higher,
>> >probably a lot higher, than 5 people working for 10 hours. Read _The
>> >Mythical Man Month_.
>>
>> I agree with your statement, but I don't think 'The Mythical Man Month'
>> adequately covers this particular circumstance. That book was specifically
>> about software development and posits that programmers have to become
>> familiar with a project and communicate with each other, which leads to
>> more delays. In ADR or other voiceover work, such communication is not
>> necessary at all, to the point where many recordings are simply done with
>> one engineer and one actor only.
>
>It actually applies pretty well in most any human undertaking. As you
>add more people to a task it inevitably takes longer than the task
>time divided by the number of people, even if they are only working in
>pairs. Someone has to coordinate it all if nothing else. Trying to
>use 1000 voice actors to record 100 hours of in-game speech would be a
>nightmare and take forever.
That's amusing in light of my Mrs was just watching a re-run of the Frasier
episode 'Ham Radio' (S04E18) last night that I hadn't seen before. I was
pissin myself laughing all the way through!
>Sometimes it can work out, but it always takes a lot more total effort
>than if fewer people had done it and a lot more careful planning.
>Those Extreme Makeover houses are a good example. They can tear down
>an old house and build a (huge!) brand new one in under 100 hours
>which is totally amazing. Yet the sum of effort of all the (tens of)
>thousands of people is a lot more than if you had a normal crew work
>on it for a few months.
Sounds reasonable. I've always understood first hand the principle that in
(IT) projects, the total time it will take to complete it starts to rise
exponentially as you add more people after the first 0-12. I think there's a
law that describes this truism disguised as a witticism :).
--
Nostromo
Michael Cecil
<rri...@caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>KJH <kj-h...@yaw-hoooo.com> wrote:
>>And I'm finally motivated to vent. Can someone please explain this to me?
>>Does it cost more to hire 5 voice actors to do 10 hours of voice work
>>apiece than to hire 50 voice actors to do 1 hour of voice work apiece?
>
>Of course. No one is going to take a job that only pays for one hour
>of work. It also takes a lot more work to audition and hire 50 actors
>than it does 10 and that work doesn't get done for free.
I still don't understand why more of these games just don't use the dev
team, etc. to do the voices. It'd be like little cameo/easter eggs.
--
Michael Cecil
http://macecil.googlepages.com/index.htm
Kendrick Kerwin Chua
Acting is hard. Not everybody can do it convincingly, or at all. If I
recall correctly, the old Hudson Soft title 'The Legend of Heroes: Dragon
Slayer' is a case where the American localization team provided the
voices, and did so very poorly. Voiceover work is just like any skill,
where professional talent generally gives you a better quality result.
-KKC, tearing into his new copy of Carnage Heart...
Michael Cecil
>That's amusing in light of my Mrs was just watching a re-run of the Frasier
>episode 'Ham Radio' (S04E18) last night that I hadn't seen before. I was
>pissin myself laughing all the way through!
"I swear, as God is my witness, I thought hams could fly!!"
Oh wait, wrong show.
Michael Cecil
<kend...@nospam.io> wrote:
>In article <suced3l7ruphu5l91...@4ax.com>,
>Michael Cecil <mac...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:49:26 -0400, Ross Ridge
>><rri...@caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
>>>KJH <kj-h...@yaw-hoooo.com> wrote:
>>>>And I'm finally motivated to vent. Can someone please explain this to me?
>>>>Does it cost more to hire 5 voice actors to do 10 hours of voice work
>>>>apiece than to hire 50 voice actors to do 1 hour of voice work apiece?
>>>
>>>Of course. No one is going to take a job that only pays for one hour
>>>of work. It also takes a lot more work to audition and hire 50 actors
>>>than it does 10 and that work doesn't get done for free.
>>
>>I still don't understand why more of these games just don't use the dev
>>team, etc. to do the voices. It'd be like little cameo/easter eggs.
>
>Acting is hard. Not everybody can do it convincingly, or at all. If I
>recall correctly, the old Hudson Soft title 'The Legend of Heroes: Dragon
>Slayer' is a case where the American localization team provided the
>voices, and did so very poorly. Voiceover work is just like any skill,
>where professional talent generally gives you a better quality result.
Sure "acting" is hard for some people. I wouldn't call reading the simple
lines we found in Oblivion to be acting however.
Kilgaard
news:7lmcd3hs2h36hf2qp...@4ax.com...
> On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 04:20:52 -0000, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, KJH
> wrote:
>
>>I've been playing this game long enough that the, shall we say, limited
>>number of different voice actors in Oblivion is not a new thing, but in my
>>current game I did run into two characters in the Cheydinhal Fighters'
>>Guild, standing next to each other, who had exactly the same voice. You
>>know, the deep male one.
>>
>>And I'm finally motivated to vent. Can someone please explain this to me?
>>Does it cost more to hire 5 voice actors to do 10 hours of voice work
>>apiece than to hire 50 voice actors to do 1 hour of voice work apiece?
>>
> the way
> they set up the Radiant AI system. The design is not so much limited by
> the
> cost of a greater number of actors as it is the number of lines *per*
> actor.
>
> Every actor in Oblivion has to have a large range of generic lines for
> various
> AI reactions and interactions, and this places limitations on how many
> people
> you can hire, because there's a *lot* of general audio for Radiant, and
> then
> there's specific audio for dialogue.
>
> You need to have that large pool of general audio for every voice type in
> the
> game because everyone talks. Few people stand around mute for long.
>
> Result: There are few "minor" roles or cameos, which are cheaper. Instead,
> every single voice requires a lot of studio time. Since the generic AI
> lines
> *have to match the voice* of the specific ones, it's the cost of producing
> the
> larger number of generic lines, for independent AI reactions/interactions,
> that
> limits the size of the cast.
>
> It would otherwise be very jarring for the general dialogue to be done in
> five
> basic voices, yet the specific dialogue is voiced by a large cast. People
> would
> be talking in two voices. This actually happens with certain older women
> in the
> Imperial City, during a quest I won't spoil, and it's not pretty.
>
> It's either few voices, or that kind of problem across the game, I
> believe.
>
> Can anyone with better knowledge of the design confirm this guess?
It must be that you played a different game to me. When I played the game
the vast majority of NPCs did not even keep the same voice for the whole
dialog tree. An obvious example is the beggars around the port at the IC.
When asked normal questions they would talk in one voice, but when asked
about the "Grey Fox" they would spout a line in a completely different
voice. I think the issue here was that the voices for the quest were done
separately to the generic "background" dialog, and that they hired only one
actor to do the quest voices.
This was not a unique occurrence, and can be found with many many NPCs.
Different branches of the dialog tree would be voiced differently.
--
Posted via a free Usenet account from http://www.teranews.com
Nostromo
> exponentially as you add more people after the first 0-12. I think there's a
^^^^
oops! - 10-12
--
Nostromo
Kilgaard
news:j0ked3pp7f1d4915k...@4ax.com...
There have been quite a few games that too your approach, and used the dev
team for voice actors. Most of them got absolutely crucified in the reviews
because the quality of the acting really was sub-par. If you are making a
low budget production, (for you and your three mates to play) then go ahead.
But if you are making something *major* that is all about the slick
presentation (and, ahem, lack of depth) like Oblivion, then quality
professional voice actors is absolutely a must. They even used the voice
actors names as PR during their hype.
Seriously, those game companies that thought they could save a few dollars
on voice actors ... are the companies that are no longer in business.
Nostromo
> Another standout for terrible voicework by the staff was Frontier First
> Encounter (Elite 2), but that's so esoteric that I hardly expect you to be able
> to find it, let alone know it.
Dude, I blew several *hundred* hours (many months) on that gem of
open-ended, non-linear, space-sim gaming! Oh, but then you weren't
talking to me...;)
--
Nostromo
magnate
So did I, and as usual Zag beat me to the punch - it remains the most
compelling example of why the dev team should NEVER be used for acting
roles in a game. FFE even had little video clips of them - I always
wondered how the great Imperial Navy and the renowned Federation
Whatevertheywerecalled could use the *same* teenage dirtbags in
baseball caps as their logistics and admin guys for all the
missions ...
CC
Morgan
> Encounter (Elite 2), but that's so esoteric that I hardly expect you to be
> able
> to find it, let alone know it.
If you want to be really picky then Frontier First Encounter was Elite 3.
Elite 2 was simply called Frontier. Or possibly Elite 2:Frontier. Anyway
I'll stop being pedantic now. :-)
Morgan
> Another standout for terrible voicework by the staff was Frontier First
> Encounter (Elite 2), but that's so esoteric that I hardly expect you to be
> able
> to find it, let alone know it.
Alos if you want a laugh they're on youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=frontier+first+encounter
Morgan
>
> What a way to waste bandwidth. LOL.
I didn't even remember the acting being that bad. Come to think of it I
don't rememember *anyones* acting being that bad. And I've seen Eastenders
before. :-)
htn963
> "Michael Cecil" <mace...@gmail.com> wrote in message
>
> news:j0ked3pp7f1d4915k...@4ax.com...
>
>
>
>
>
> > On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 17:25:55 -0500, Kendrick Kerwin Chua
>
> >>In article <suced3l7ruphu5l91sh0qip8kud30pq...@4ax.com>,
> >>Michael Cecil <mace...@gmail.com> wrote:
> >>>On Thu, 30 Aug 2007 11:49:26 -0400, Ross Ridge
> >>><rri...@caffeine.csclub.uwaterloo.ca> wrote:
Jagged Alliance 2 didn't have a big budget but had surprisingly
good voice acting, esp. considering that there were dozens of
characters with radically different personalities. There weren't many
lines for each character -- so it looked like a situation where the
developers did managed to hire many actors for minimal work or were
able to do much of it themselves -- but the delivery was uniformly
(and hilariously) dead-on. One of the main reasons I enjoyed that
game.
--
Ht
Kilgaard
> Yup. That was the specific spoiler I wasn't mentioning (certain older
> women in
> the Imperial City). Utter pants.
Ah, ok. I just would not consider that a spoiler.
That was not the only example, but it was certainly the one that hit
everybody, and very early in the game experience. Ok, ok, you didn't *have*
to go to the IC once you get out of the sewers ... but I think nearly
everybody did. And it just kept hitting you again and again and again until
you finally got far enough to unlock the next part.
Nostromo
> On Fri, 31 Aug 2007 09:31:22 GMT, in comp.sys.ibm.pc.games.rpg, Morgan wrote:
>
>
> What a way to waste bandwidth. LOL.
Congrats Zag - you've just described 95%+ of the Internet & 99%+ of
humanity! >8^D
--
Nostromo
Werner Spahl
> Jagged Alliance 2 didn't have a big budget but had surprisingly good
> voice acting, esp. considering that there were dozens of characters with
> radically different personalities.
The best voice acting I heard so far was in Vampire: The Masquerade -
Bloodlines (of course ;). After experiencing all those cool dialogues
Oblivion appeared flat and STALKER a joke...
--
Werner Spahl (sp...@cup.uni-muenchen.de) Freedom for
"The meaning of my life is to make me crazy" Vorlonships
Michael Cecil
<sp...@cup.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
>On Fri, 31 Aug 2007, htn963 wrote:
>
>> Jagged Alliance 2 didn't have a big budget but had surprisingly good
>> voice acting, esp. considering that there were dozens of characters with
>> radically different personalities.
>
>The best voice acting I heard so far was in Vampire: The Masquerade -
>Bloodlines (of course ;). After experiencing all those cool dialogues
>Oblivion appeared flat and STALKER a joke...
Was there a German language version of VTMB?
Werner Spahl
Yes, but they only translated the subtitles and text :)!
Michael Cecil
<sp...@cup.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
>On Mon, 3 Sep 2007, Michael Cecil wrote:
>
>> On Mon, 3 Sep 2007 13:45:08 +0200, Werner Spahl
>> <sp...@cup.uni-muenchen.de> wrote:
>>
>>> The best voice acting I heard so far was in Vampire: The Masquerade -
>>> Bloodlines (of course ;). After experiencing all those cool dialogues
>>> Oblivion appeared flat and STALKER a joke...
>>
>> Was there a German language version of VTMB?
>
>Yes, but they only translated the subtitles and text :)!
Well that hardly counts. At least with some of the Ultimas they did the
voices too.
Werner Spahl
>>> Was there a German language version of VTMB?
>>
>> Yes, but they only translated the subtitles and text :)!
>
> Well that hardly counts. At least with some of the Ultimas they did the
> voices too.
I remember this from one Jedi Knight game, but I always buy only english
versions because most of the translations are really bad. One guy is even
right now retranslating Bloodlines into german because he didn't like the
original localisation. He will include all my patch changes as well :)!
johns
all the characters are the same voice, and it is up
to me to pay attention to which character is speaking.
As a child, I really enjoyed having my Mom read
a story to me. And even as a child, I could tell
which character was speaking because of the
pointers .. "sss", she said. So, in a good game,
the pointers are the actual characters on the screen,
and the number of voice actors doesn't need to
be all that many. In Oblivion, I really miss having
my "own" voice, but even there, I can follow the
story pretty well.
johns