The Fall development diary #7

[Mr. Teatime]

<strong>[ -> Editorial]</strong>

There's a new <a href="http://rpgvault.ign.com/articles/539/53 ... evelopment diary</a> for <a href="http://www.the-fall.com">The Fall</a> on <a href="http://rpgvault.ign.com/">RPG Vault</a>, where <b>Carsten Strehse</b> talks about the audio in the game. Here's a quote:
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<br><blockquote>There are hundreds of NPCs in The Fall, and I wanted every single of them to be voiced. It would hurt the atmosphere if only a selected few were able to speak....
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<br>You can guess though that it would hardly be possible to hire hundreds of voice actors for this purpose [voice acting]. Apart from the costs, I don't even want to think about the efforts it would take to coordinate them! And that's why we had to analyze and evaluate the characters to determine the number of persons it'll take to voice them. Typically, a voice actor can do about five characters - very skilled ones 10 or more. Of course, a very significant character or one you get to hear frequently, for example party characters, has to be voiced by someone who does this and only this role. And we naturally picked the best choices for those, usually known people - well, voices, to be more precise - who sound familiar thanks to their involvement in commercials, TV projects or movies.
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<br>In the end, it boiled down to us needing 84 voice actors.</blockquote>
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<br>The entire game being voice acted is impressive, though unnecessary in my opinion. I end up skipping most voiced dialogue after the novelty has worn off. I like the fact that they're hiring some good voice actors for the main parts, though. <b>Carsten</b> talks about text-only conversations hurting the atmosphere, but bad voice acting can ruin a game as well.
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[PsychoSniper]

Sounds sweet.

[Jimmyjay86]

I think it would be wholly unnecessary to voice act everything. How many extra cd's will I have to deal with on installation. Is this going to increase my enjoyment factor? Consider that with text more detailed things can be said whereas with sound there will be limitation based on storage space and development costs. Give me more not less...

[ExtremeDrinker]

3 Dual sided DVDs!

I could do without voices for everyone. The general "Hey" or "What" when you first start talking to someone, like in Gothic, is okay, though...But damn, that's a lot of HD space and/or disc swapping if everyone has their own voice.