Voice Acting in Games - Up For a Chat or STFU?

(Article Disclaimer: The opinions and theories put forth in these articles are purely the result of the authors' twisted mind. If you fail to agree with its statements, or find anything you read offensive to you, then you're probably just bitter from getting pwned by noobs. Remember: exploitz make you cool!)

With the major advances in storage medias and hard drive capacities these recent years, gamers have slowly come to realise something interesting: we are no longer as tolerant of the fabled "text adventure".

It's a sad, but true, fact. The days of developers neglecting oversized WAV files for the sake of fitting their games onto one CD are over, and endless text walls are just not sufficient enough to convey a game's story. Nowadays we require our plots to be brimming with enthralling voice acting, spouting dialogue that's both well written and informative directly into our headphones!

But is this feature a double edged sword? What are the do's and don'ts of voice acting in the gaming world? When does vocal conversation cross the line from adequate into annoying? Is it possible, when all is said and done, that silence could really have been the best option in the end?

Well, read on and see.

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With all the end-of-year releases arriving thick and fast, I've had the chance to play more high quality games in the past few weeks then I have in years. Horror, action, RPG and niche... all kinds of new and interesting worlds to explore! And as I finished them one by one, I began to notice how much the voice acting and dialogue affected my experiences.

Some were fantastic! Well written, immersive, intriguing, and atmospheric... by the end it almost felt like I'd taken part in an epic length movie! The feelings of satisfaction and fulfilment were hard to describe, and definitely put the games high on my respect list. Because of this, I wasn't prepared for my reaction when I came across a few that were not just badly voiced, but written so awfully you'd think a drunken infant had attacked a keyboard.

Suddenly I was being verbally assaulted by horrible actors, subjected to grating repetition, and pulled viciously out of the game by fourth-wall breaking one-liners that were well beyond cringe worthy. It had such an impact on the way I felt towards the games I found them difficult to play at all. And as my mouse moved towards the 'uninstall' button, I started to wonder what they could have been like if the developers had taken the effort to do things right.

In this study, I shall attempt to explore the depths of text and voice acting in the gaming world. Using many recent titles (and a few old classics) as a benchmark, I'm hoping we can unearth some of the major do's, don'ts, and the darn near unbearable's that plague our favourite media. Who knows? Maybe we'll even save Diablo 3's new "chatty heroes" from a rather unpleasant fate...

Bear in mind, there are exceptions to everything, but you get the general idea. And yes, Hellgate is going to cop it as usual. There's still some left of that dead horse yet (at least until Feb 1 anyway)!

                                    

Dialogue and Writing

The most important part of a game's storyline is the writing itself. It doesn't matter how good your voice actors are: if what they are saying sounds like an extract from George Bush's teleprompter, your game is on the fast track to phale.

Writing in games needs to adhere to a few simple rules:

DO: Keep It Simple

Or at least have the option to do so. Developers must remember that some gamers have an eight second attention span. After that, if they haven't blown anything to pieces, their going to switch the game off.

These are the type of people that have been playing Counterstrike for the past seven years and think "AWP" is a real word. The eternal twelve year olds. And while there's a small chance that they'll drag themselves away from pwning noobs long enough to try your game, you need to accommodate their needs anyway. Just in case.

When writing the main story for your game, make sure that it's clear, precise and (after the first viewing) skippable. Not even seasoned gamers want to sit through a ten minute cut scene they've seen six times before. (Final Fantasy X, how I hate thee. So very much) If you're planning a tale that's a bit more intricate, filled with clever twists or anything that requires a moderate level of thinking, by all means do so. Just be prepared for an onslaught of "OMG WTF? EXPLAIN ENDING PLZ!" posts to appear in your forums.

With the ADHD generation looked after, it's time to focus on the important part of the writing, the real meat of the story:

DO: Supply Additional Texts

For people who play games for the full experience, additional texts are a must have. This can be through extended conversation options with NPC's, books or recordings that you can find lying around, or simply a journal of your characters own thoughts as the game progresses.

All these things are like icing on the cake for story ****** like myself. We thirst for knowledge. We yearn for side stories. We want to absorb every piece of information the game's world has to offer, so we can get a complete view of where, and why, we're playing.

Having a seemingly simple tale unravel into something huge and involved through our devoted exploration is extremely rewarding, and players that put in those extra hard yards should be given that opportunity.

Some recent games to employ this feature:

Bioshock - Blast through like crazy, or stop and listen to the recordings to find the true story behind Rapture. Even the Splicers inane mumblers provide some interesting tidbits of info.
The Witcher - Get involved or remain as neutral as you like. Entire towns of people reveal the land's history, and perhaps even your own if you're willing to listen.
Dead Space - The Necromorphs aboard the fast failing Ishimura spaceship aren't going to tell you want happened before your arrival. The audio logs they made when they were still human, however, will.
Fallout 3 - Like Oblivion before it, Fallout's main story can be finished in around 20 hours. The real fun lies in exploring the other 60+ hours worth of extras.

While all this extra story might sound great, there's something else that must be acknowledged:

DON'T: Waffle

I'll use two examples of this: F.E.A.R., and Hellgate: London.

The game "F.E.A.R." was littered with terminals; one would assume full of enlightening knowledge behind the Alma incident and the ghastly experiments preformed on her. However, only about one in every five had something worthwhile to read in them. Most the time you'd switch on a monitor, read an email, and be presented with something lame like "Hey Marty, you coming to lunch today? My wife made ham sandwiches again." What's the point in that?

Hellgate: London, on the other hand, was all crap. Up until the last few quests of the game, none of the story mattered an inch. Every side quest had endless blocks of explanation, but when it has absolutely no bearing on the main story, what's the purpose? Why would we bother to read mountains of information that is essentially useless? (Because Roper needed his sushi fix, peon!)

This is NOT good additional content. Adding more writing in for the sake of bulking up content is not content at all: its rubbish.

Every piece of text that appears in the game should have a point. It should tell us something about the game's past, a character, a weapon, an enemy... anything! So long as it's informative! We don't want to read or listen to three pages worth of dialogue, only to realise that it's got nothing to do with the game at all. We get enough of that crap from people in our everyday lives, thank you very much.

Probably the only exception to this rule would be the Metal Gear Solid series. Those guys have built their games entirely on banter and waffle; from philosophy to radio conversations with co-workers, you can spend more time just listening to the dialogue then actually playing the game. But in these rare cases, fans wouldn't have it any other way.

Now let's move onto the next most important part of story delivery:

Voice Acting

If two thirds of your game's plot is told through spoken word, it's obvious how much care and effort is needed to ensure it's done well. Would you like to listen to twenty hours of a drama school drop-out attempting to "break into the industry" by reciting his lines like Keanu Reeves on Valium? NO! We'd all slip into boredom induced coma's! (Some viewers of the Matrix sequels still haven't recovered)

When using voice acting, the rules are about as straight forward as you can get.

DO: Hire Quality Actors

For the love of God: do, do, DO do this. Many games have been forgotten for everything but their horrible voice acting. Would you really want your game to be one of those?

Darkstar One, Thief 3, and the original Resident Evil are all offenders, but the most recent release to fail this rule - and the game that prompted this entire article - is none other then the long awaited Sacred 2: Fallen Angel. So bad is the voice acting in that game, I would rather turn the sound off completely then listen to it. You might think text walls preferable to the incompetent drivel Sacred spews at you, but behold! It's full of them too! Lots and lots. Texts walls for all!

Why would developers hamstring their own product? Surely they put their games through rigorous testing before release (right, Hellgate?). And they've got to have played the game at least once themselves, how could any sane creator sit and think:
"Gee, the voices sound pretty bad, but you know, I'm just going to release the game like this! Only good things can come of it, after all."

Now some may think that there's no such thing as a second chance at fixing such a deeply inground problem, but recently the team at CD Projekt Red proved otherwise with their release of The Witcher: The Enhanced Edition.

Due to the developers being Polish, the original Witcher suffered from poor translation and bad English acting, as well as the stiff way in which their character models delivered the lines. This hampered the game's overall rating, and put many people off buying it. So, instead of packing it in (coughflagshipcough) the team worked for a whole year and produced a 950MB patch, featuring improved models and more then 5000 lines of re-recorded dialogue! Among numerous other things, of course.

How's that for dedication and love for their product? Did I mention it's a completely single player game, subject to piracy? As a result, the Enhanced Edition has received rave reviews, and scored 10/10 from many prestigious sources. Amazing what tweaking the voice acting can do. And those guys were Polish! You English developers have no excuse. Hire good actors or else.

DON'T: Speak ALL THE TIME

The original hero's from Diablo 1 and 2 spoke little, but when they did you knew it was important. Whether it was a snappy yet appropriate one liner, or a matter of urgency the player needed to attend to straight away, we cherished the things our characters had to say because they spoke so rarely.

In many cases, not speaking is just as important as doing so. We don't mind enemies shouting things occasionally, or chattering amongst themselves. It adds to immersion. What we don't want is for our own characters to blurt out some random unnecessary phrase in the middle of battle... every few kills!!

Older games, like Postal or SiN are examples of this. In recent releases, I'm once again looking at you, Sacred 2. For some reason the team at Ascaron thought it a good idea to make their characters do this. Hmmm... call me crazy, but I don't think that "Bad Voice Acting + Random Shouting Every Two Minutes = Success!" Not only that, there's no option to turn the damn thing off! It's like being forced to go to a rap concert... ... what? That's the end of the joke. I f**king hate rap.

So while the characters in Diablo 3 seem to have more speaking opportunities, we can only hope they won't be abused. I may love my Amazon, but that doesn't mean I want her stating things like "Oh! I'm almost dead!" every time her health gets low.

Grrr... you suck, Sacred.

DON'T: Use Unnecessary Accents

Unless they are 105% realistic. Despite what some developers may think, a phoney accent is very easy to distinguish from the real thing.

Used properly, they can greatly improve a gaming experience. And in some cases they're actually required: dwarves are always Scottish, elves speak in a wispy manner, comedic characters must be british. The wrong accent can very quickly ruin even the best dialogue.

This was one of Thief 3's only hang ups. I loved that game, but the accents... ugh. Tree huggers that soundsee likesee Gollumsee? Traders sporting a sleazy tone that sounds more forced then Sarah Palin trying to think? Please, mein ears, zey are bleeding!

Even Call of Duty's over enthusiastic portrayals of the American army can get a bit grating at times. It's got nothing on Sacred 2's "Elven Pirates"... *shudder*...

Of course, some games can still get away with these annoying little discrepancies: Dues Ex required its actors to perform numerous different accents - none of which they really knew how to do - yet it still stands up there as one of the best games ever made. Imagine what it could have been if they'd hired some real Asian or European voice actors to say the lines? Nothing short of a nano-enhanced God, I'm sure.

But as long as the Witch Doctor isn't Jamaican, I'm sure Diablo 3 will be ok. Worse case scenario; the Wizard will quote Harry Potter. Ick.

Moving on, we come at last to one of the most important traits a game should have:

Immersion

Since gaming is essentially an escape from reality, the last thing we want is to be wrenched brutally from the world we're exploring by some character reminding us that we're playing a game.

Immersion relies on many things: atmosphere, the realism of the game's universe, the music, and of course the amount of relevant information the additional texts supply. If most of the game's story is conveyed via NPC's, however, the way they deliver it quickly becomes the most important factor in your immersive experience.

For maximum impact, a few simple rules should be followed.

DON'T: Be Unnecessarily Inappropriate

When it comes to coarse language, sex or violence, I get the feeling that some developers feel "the more the better". Either that or they think it makes an effective distraction... if your writer is a drunk, your gameplay boring and repetitive, and your players punished at every turn by a crippling level system, immersion is only going to make them notice how bad your game is even more.

Slow people may not recognise that many Hellgate: London references in one sentence, so I should probably just mention it properly. This game thought that making every NPC a foul mouthed Monty Python incarnate was a pathway to success. Sadly, not all players have the mentality and sense of humour of a fourteen year old pre-pubescent boy, and let's just say that "good" games usually last longer then fifteen months.

When it comes down to it, it's not about what occurs in the game, but whether its suited for that game's environment. It's always been fine in Grand Theft Auto, because that's what the entire game is about: crime and violence. Harsh language and hookers just go hand and hand with that. It was also fun in The Witcher because playing Geralt is all about dealing with the scum of the fantasy world and nailing buxom wenches. It's essentially a more mature version of Lord of the Rings... minus the gay Hobbits.

If it's appropriate for the game; fine. No issue there. It's when it crosses into unnecessary, then we have a problem. Sometimes we don't need heaps of swearing or gratuitous amounts of bouncing boobies to be absorbed into a story (but it helps at times).

Some offenders of this include:
Blood Rayne - An arguably fun game (who doesn't like a hot red head in leather, slicing Nazi's into little pieces?), but rather flawed in the story department. To make up for this, the creators took an 'offensive as possible' approach. Rayne would often utter obscenities for no plausible reason, every nasty Nazi neck-suck sounded like a near orgasmic venture, and scantily clad doktors featured more bounce then a Wall Street pavement. Still... hot chick killing Nazi's... pretty cool.

Alone in the Dark - A game of such epic failure, it not only had to use the 'f' and 'c' words, it had to use them in every sentence! Yeah, that's really going to distract us from the ****ty controls, horrible driving sections and awful story. A plotline involving Hell should not refer to what you put your players through.

Killer7 - The game all 'true' gamers have played even managed to make the unswayable Yahtzee its *****. And while it was cool and awesome in every sense of the word, Suda51 did make an odd choice: every time you shot a 'vital point' on an enemy, your assassin-at-the-time would shout out a phrase. Thing is, these phrases usually consisted of a variation on "You're f**ked". Once you got good at shooting vitals, it wasn't uncommon to hear that phrase many, many times in a row. Hmmm... Killer 7: not a game for your Grandma.

Sometimes even the most mature of games can benefit from omitting certain details: Fallout 3 dealt with everything from cannibalism to slavery, but it drew the line at sexual content or violence against children. Did we miss these unnecessary features? No! We're too busy blowing the brains out of Super Mutants and that annoying bum who keeps begging us for water.

(Note: if your do enjoy maiming children or preforming unspeakable acts against women, you may wish to seek psychiatric help. Or just lock yourself up far, far away from the rest of us. Yes, 'Mother' says its ok)

And finally, we have the biggest no-no of all:



DON'T: Break the Fourth Wall

For those who are unfamiliar with the term, "Breaking the Fourth Wall" refers to characters in a game or movie recognising that they are in a game or movie. This should never be done in any game that takes itself even the slightest bit seriously.

Nothing ruins immersion faster then breaking the fourth wall, and very, very few media's can get away with it. More so in games, as we're not just watching them, we're involved with them. We're a part of the process. Anything that reminds us that we're sitting in a chair watching some pixels run around shooting each other is going to be frowned upon far heavier then if some stupid comedy movie pauses to point out the camera man and sound guys.

Yet, even with more then twenty years of history, recent games still insist on sodomising what should be an impenetrable rule. (Next article: Appropriateness in Internet Articles - Necessary or Nigglesnoosh?) Hellgate: London, as many can guess, was overflowing with more pop culture references then an unwanted Shrek sequel, and didn't even bat an eye at telling gamers: "You can't enter Stonehenge. Please go to www.hellgatelondon.com and make a subscriber account".

Another recent offender is, once more, Sacred 2. If it isn't you main character screaming "Zero hit points means death. That's how this game works!" or dying enemies choking "Blast! I knew... I was just... an extra", its tombstones stating gems like "There's no prize in the game for clicking on ALL the graves in the game, you know". Tsk tsk, Sacred. Could I be anymore disappointed with you right now?

Alright, alright. Perhaps I'm being a tad harsh with this. There are actually a lot of cases where it's worked well. Again, it's all about appropriateness. Metal Gear Solid 1 featured numerous fourth-wall-breaking scenes, but most of them went down in history. Especially Psycho Mantis.

And who can forget Starcraft's little "click on units multiple times" easter eggs, such as 'This is not just Warcraft in space... its... its much more sophisticated!"

Even Suda51's (worship worship buttkiss) last game No More Heroes features a few awesome scenes right near the end, where the characters intentionally 'fast forward' some of the dialogue in order to keep the game PG. But Suda is the Stephen King of the gaming world; the imaginative bastard can get away with anything.

As a rule though, most developers can't pull this stuff off, so avoiding 'the wall' altogether is the easiest way to avoid epic and failure meeting. You hear that Blizzard? Don't try anything funny in Diablo 3: it's just not that kind of world.

                                 

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And that'll about do. I think I've ranted long enough. Blizzard has a fairly decent track record with their voice acting and storylines, so at least we can breathe a little easier when it comes to Diablo 3's future. No doubt they'll hear about it if we find something we don't like.