29-Apr-2010 Developer Blog: Voice Overs - Look Who's Talking

[Lady_Shahdie]

As many of you have noticed, RuneScapes tutorial now has voice acting on the key characters. If you havent tried it yet, wed recommend doing so the next time you load up the game (and if you use the new instant demo mode, you wont have to go through the process of creating a new account, youll just jump straight to the start of the tutorial).

 

Everyone has an opinion on how the characters should sound. When we first started discussing voices, it wasnt long before we were saying things like "She should be older", "He should be more gallant" and "How does a goblin speak?"

 

Weve experimented with vocal sounds in RuneScape before, but, up until now, its been mostly restricted to certain creature grunts and squawks (such as the troll in this years Easter update), but trying to create a realistic human voice without a real recording is incredibly difficult. Naturally, we were very excited to try out new techniques and bring something fresh to the game.

 

As Jagex is based in the UK, it was a natural choice for us to use British voice actors. We considered other English-speaking countries, as well as different accents from around Britain, but it was felt that our players in other countries might have trouble with some of the more unintelligible British accents, so the result was something fairly neutral. Also, adding voices allows us to pronounce names and places as originally intended, which settles a lot of arguments!

 

The main thing we wanted to achieve was providing clear and easy to understand instructions to accompany the new tutorial, appealing to new players and making the introduction a more exciting and immersive experience.

 

Mod John A edited the tutorial's text to make it more 'voice friendly'. Mostly this was to make it snappy and to the point. People generally read faster than they speak, so you can get away with some long sentences in written dialogue that you can't when it's voice acted. We also removed any places where the player character's name appears, since we obviously can't record a line for every possible name! Integrating voices into the game brought up other challenges that we've never had to deal with before, but we tried to consider everything and, after a fair fit of feedback from the teams, we settled on what we thought would be a good result.

 

After the initial amusement of the auditions, the serious business of recording the vocals started, consisting of a long day in a small London recording studio, a microphone, a selection of professional voice actors and a long list of repeated phrases. There were other considerations, such as whether or not to voice the advisor system or books in the cellar, as well as aesthetic and practical concerns, and striking a balance between ensuring important lines are heard and them repeating too frequently. After the 28th take of the goblin saying "Me get rich!", Mods Adam R and Kris J were going a little crazy, but did an admirable job.

 

The project appears to have been well received, and we have enjoyed reading threads such as Which famous actors would you like to hear in Runescape?. Also interesting to us was hearing about the sheer amount of non-English-speaking players who have learnt English by playing the game!

 

The burning question now is, "Will other characters in the game be given voices?"

 

Dependent on the overall feedback we receive, we may look into the feasibility of doing this, but this brings up questions of just how far do we go?

 

For instance, should we concentrate on central characters only, just the advisor, or perhaps go for opening/first line sentences or a kind of faux-speech (akin to games like The Sims)? There is also the potential to use accents from around the world to give additional character. Should the player-character have a voice? Discussion on this is something we definitely want to encourage as, although it could add a lot of additional flavour and atmosphere to the game, everyone has their own opinion.

 

You may not agree on how a character should sound and it will certainly take a fair amount of time to get everything perfect. In fact, we are looking forward to seeing what suggestions players come up with. Our personal favourite at the moment is casting Vinnie Jones as the voice of Zamorak!

 

There are also the different types of creatures to think about, with a potential cast of thousands. Obviously, with a game as large as RuneScape, this needs careful consideration, as mentioned earlier. Initially, we werent going to add vocals to the goblin and dragon in the tutorial, as they already had sound effects attached, plus these kinds of voices are probably harder to get right, but we ended up with something that we think fitted and that might be a bit of fun.

 

The primary goal for this project was to enhance the tutorial, but perhaps there will be more news on this in the future. In the meantime, we hope you have as much fun listening to the new voices as we had in adding them!

 

If you'd like to discuss this blog on the forums, please visit this forum thread.

 

Project: Voice Overs

Tags: audio, development, voice

Voice Overs - Look Who's Talking

 

Step in the right direction if you ask me :thumbup:...more immersiveness ftw!

[Hedgehog]

Can't say that I'll be looking forward to this; the tutorial voices annoyed me to no end. It doesn't really matter to me; however, since my sound is always off anyway, but if you're into this kinda stuff then that's great and I hope you enjoy it.

[Rien]

I loved the voice acting in the tutorial, and certainly hope that we'll be seeing more in the future. :thumbup:

 

The game's too large to (feasibly) provide voices for every NPC or anything on such a large scale, but I'm looking forward to seeing it done in future quests and the like. Perhaps that would work out well?

[Danqazmlp]

I think it would be great to hear more voices around runescape, but I know just how much of a herculean task it would be. Also, as they said, adding accents to different NPC's could really aid the immersion felt during the game. Arabic accents for Kharidians, Scottish accents for dwarves (it just fits!). Could be a real step in the right direction, but i wouldn't expect anything huge for another 3 years at least, the amount of speech in the game is astronomical.

 

Also, Vinnies jones for Zamorak made me laugh. 'That wasn't a good idea now was it' *gets struck by lightning*

[Bobbington]

John Clease for Wise old man please!

[Omali]

John Clease for Wise old man please!

 

This, this oh god this.

[Clay_More12]

I'd really like it, but wouldn't it give us more lagg?

[Myu]

Only in important cuscenes in quests. We don't want bankers yelling at us every time we bank.

[Doomster]

Maybe cut scenes should be voiced, as it would move things along more smoothly if you didn't have to keep stepping the dialogue forward.

 

It would be nice to have a choice of just voice (and no stepping), just text, or voice and text

[RSBDavid]

Super nanny as Sandwich Lady plox.

[Bobbington]

Maybe cut scenes should be voiced, as it would move things along more smoothly if you didn't have to keep stepping the dialogue forward.

 

It would be nice to have a choice of just voice (and no stepping), just text, or voice and text

 

 

It would be a good place to start I think!

 

However It would bring in alot of hard feeling from those with quest capes/near to quest capes as they will have missed out on so much.

 

But ignoring that, it would be a great place to start.

[Golvellius]

I'd love to see Patrick Stewart do a voice.

He was great in Oblivion as usual.

 

For an actress, I'd pick Sofia Myles.

She speaks great american english.

Sometimes, I forget she is british.

Also, I think she is hot. <3:

 

Also, who the hell is Vinnie Jones?

Simon Templeton (Kain from Legacy of Kain Series) would be so much better as Zamorack.

I hope they can do better than some no-names who are only popular in Whales.

[Obtaurian]

Whoever did Skeletor needs to do Lucien.

 

/two cents.

[Danqazmlp]

I'd love to see Patrick Stewart do a voice.

He was great in Oblivion as usual.

 

For an actress, I'd pick Sofia Myles.

She speaks great american english.

Sometimes, I forget she is british.

Also, I think she is hot. <3:

 

Also, who the hell is Vinnie Jones?

Simon Templeton (Kain from Legacy of Kain Series) would be so much better as Zamorack.

I hope they can do better than some no-names who are only popular in Whales.

 

 

British actor/ex-footballer. Youtube him.

[Peronix]

Voice overs would be a wonderful addition to the game, as long as they add a new volume option in addition to music / sfx / ambient so people can turn them off.

 

Though before they even think about doing voice overs, they really need to start on improving the sfx in the game. The dropped item sfx are a start, but there are still so many effects that just sound so outdated when you compare them to the improvement in graphics. The foremost example, IMO, being the sound your character makes when you get hit. Sounds a bit like a bird; not really humanlike at all.

[Kiriyama]

I'd love to see Patrick Stewart do a voice.

He was great in Oblivion as usual.

 

For an actress, I'd pick Sofia Myles.

She speaks great american english.

Sometimes, I forget she is british.

Also, I think she is hot. <3:

 

Also, who the hell is Vinnie Jones?

Simon Templeton (Kain from Legacy of Kain Series) would be so much better as Zamorack.

I hope they can do better than some no-names who are only popular in Whales.

 

Damn..I didn't know voice actors were popular in marine mammals..You learn something every day I suppose. Unless you meant the country, Wales.

 

I didn't care too much for the voices, as long as we have the option to turn off voices, I'll be pleased.

 

I could only see Jagex hiring some cheaper voice actors, well, you don't need big name people to do it anyway, as long as the person can actually do a voice.

[ccesssu]

Jagex needs...

Morgan Freeman :thumbsup:

[A0z9]

Lol! When I first read the title, I thought they were calling some ranters hypocrits when I suddenly laughed at my foolishness. Anyway, looking forward on hearing more voices!

 

PS: I like to hear Tony Robinson's voice to one of the dwarves.

[Kata_Phfract__the_slayer]

as i see it besides knowing how on gleniour i am to pronounce ardougen, and adding a bit of depth, it will do nuthing but still take an overly long and hard efort just to do this even to a small exstent.

as thay sayd, thay cant use your name but man how many times have i ran in to npc's saying my name? at least 3 today alone :mellow:

 

i wouldent mind it, but something betwen a sound efect and a voise (makeable without haveing to get voise actors) would probably be easyer to do.

[Racheya]

I wonder if they would use Vocaloids to do somet of the voices XD

 

Miku Hatsune in RS would be hot :P Only it's hard to get her to do English so... maybe Luka since she does English, and maybe some of the English Vocaloids that nobody knows :P

 

Jagex needs...

Morgan Freeman :thumbsup:

 

YES!!

[Dire_Wolf]

Voices in a game? That is stupid, if you consider Jagex will not get TOP voice artists. Without top artists you might as well just not do it. A shame that they spend time on a thing like this, i doubt many people would care about it.

 

Working on sounds in Runescape enviroments would be better than this.

[Zepheras]

Voices in a game? That is stupid, if you consider Jagex will not get TOP voice artists. Without top artists you might as well just not do it. A shame that they spend time on a thing like this, i doubt many people would care about it.

 

Working on sounds in Runescape enviroments would be better than this.

 

Your doubted wrongly obviously. A lot of people commented postively on the voice acting heard during the tutorial, both on tip.it and RSOF when it came out.

[Youmu]

If they're going to implement voice acting in Runescape, they should only do it to quest cutscenes and stuff.

 

It would be really annoying to hear voices in normal play, though that's just me. <_<

[Dire_Wolf]

OK, i got my headset and checked the voices out. I think it's good. The female voice actor is really good! The male is OK. I'm not saying that i could do better when it comes to voicing, but the female voice actor/artist was better than the male.

 

This should be educational. And i support this, but i am more for refining of sounds than this. This voice actor sounds british, hire him Jagex?

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tpQfq8Y8vcA

[Slayer_Jesse]

Morgan Freeman + Patrick Stewart = OMG FANGASIM

both of them have awesome voices... and both of them are probably to obig to even consider using rs as a tissue. but it would be hilarious if patrick voiced the monk that is parodying him in an enlightened journey.