Peer into the bowels of SWTOR's voice production

Quantity != quality and despite the developer's stated goal of maintaining a high level of quality throughout production, the emphasis in the diary was on the amount of content. Voice over work in games is notoriously bad even without the heady goals of this project. Michael Abbot over at The Brainy Gamer wrote a great post (http://www.brainygamer.com/the_brainy_gamer/2009/04/voice-for-change.html) reflecting on current industry practices regarding voice actors and some of their shortcomings. Will the voice actors for SW:TOR be able to work in groups (where appropriate to the scenes in which they appear) and thereby more naturally play off each others' performances? Will there be any chance for actors to improvise, to discover new aspects of their characters as they work through a scene? I fear that in the rush to get as much voice over content in the game, the resulting narration will be as staid as the text it was meant to supplement, or for some replace entirely.

7-11-2009 @ 10:23PM
D said...

"By the time the project is finished, we will have worked with hundreds of actors - many on multiple occasions."

4 voice actors?



Seriously... Are you honestly going to buy a game where "story" and "voice acting" ARE THE PRIMARY SELLING POINTS?
Seriously...????

I find sound important, but game mechanics should always be the primary selling point. It's easy to add sound, but flawed mechanics will always ruin a game