Why are modern video games still having problems with voice acting? And what can be done to solve
them? Gamesblog investigates...
Most admirers of Quantic Dreams' interactive drama Heavy
Rain will readily agree on the game's most glaring fault – the
inconsistent voice acting. The visuals are astonishingly atmospheric, the plot (though choppy at
times) is compelling, and the lush orchestral score is wonderfully resonant... But... Well, some
of the acting performances are wooden to the point of somnambulism.
The thing is, Heavy Rain is far from alone. Although the videogame industry loves to compare
itself with the movie business, and clearly has ambitions to become the story-telling medium of
the 21st century, poor vocal performances are common, even among Triple A titles. In the last few
months Aliens vs Predator, Army of Two: 40th Day and even Final Fantasy XIII have drawn criticism
in the areas of scripting and performance. So what's going on?
"Although improving all the time, there is still a lack of focus on story and character in
games," says Andy Emery creative director at Side, a leading
provider of casting, directing and recording services to the videogame and movie sectors. "This
has to be an integral part of the project from start to finish. We see problems with poor scripts
all the time. A professional scriptwriter is an essential part of modern game development but
still we get 'developer written' scripts with alarming regularity. Even with the best Hollywood
actors on board, a poor script can result in poor voice acting."
A sometimes mediocre script certainly contributes to the problems in Heavy Rain, where key
snippets of dialogue are so laboured and cliché-ridden, they more or less eject you
straight out of the experience. But then, actors work with dodgy scripts all the time, and can
still put together a reasonably compelling performance (just ask anyone who's appeared in a
romantic comedy in the last decade). Experienced direction helps, too.
Clearly, there are deeper problems, involving the whole process of recording voice performances.
And it starts with timetabling.
Traditionally, voice acting has been recorded toward the end of the cycle, when the over-arching
structure of the game and its narrative are safely locked down. There are compelling reasons for
this. Games tend to evolve enormously over the standard two-year process, with whole missions
often culled at a late stage, as playtesting reveals unforeseen fault lines and design issues.
Having to recall actors and record chunks of new dialogue to reflect story changes is perceived
as an expensive, time-consuming chore – the last thing a hassled studio needs
in the generally hellish run up to a major delivery deadline.
But while those justifications made sense in the old days, when voice performances tended to be
restricted to skippable cut-scenes there for decoration only, they begin to look less convincing
in the modern era. With titles like Heavy Rain and the forthcoming psychological thriller Alan
Wake, where cinematic fidelity is a cornerstone of the experience, voice recording can't just be
something jammed in at the end ostensibly to cut costs. But more on that later.
There are also fundamental differences between voice acting in a videogame and voice acting in
linear artforms such as radio plays and animated movies. Due to the interactive nature of games,
actors can't be given a standard film script from which they're able to gauge the throughline of
their character and a feel for the dramatic development of the narrative. Instead, lines of
dialogue need to be isolated into chunks so they can be accessed and triggered within the game in
line with the actions of each individual player. Consequently, the performer will usually be
presented with a spreadsheet jammed with hundreds of single lines of dialogue, with little sense
of context or interaction.
As Emery argues, there's really not a lot of alternative. "For large complex RPG and MMO games,
with dialogue that could add up to over 30hrs of play time, it's simply not practical to give the
actors the whole script. You also risk information overload, with the actor struggling to focus
on the areas of importance for their character. Star Wars: The Old Republic, the new MMO being
developed by Bioware is a great example, as the project contains over 40 novels worth of scripted
dialogue. The key is to give the actors the information they need for their scenes and ensure
they are well directed by a professional and well-briefed director."
But according to David Sobolov, one of the most experienced videogame voice actors in the world
(just check out his website), the significant time
pressures mean that close, in-depth direction is not always possible. "Often, there's a need to
record a great number of lines, so to keep the session moving, once we've established the tone of
the character we're performing, the director will silently direct us using the spreadsheet on the
screen by simply moving the cursor down the page to indicate if he/she liked what we did. Or
they'll make up a code, like typing an 'x' to ask us to give them another take..." It sounds, in
effect, like a sort of acting battery farm, a grinding, dehumanising production line of
disembodied phrases, delivered for hours on end. Hardly condusive to Oscar-winning performances.
Yet the establishment of a fully-rounded character is a vital element of the acting process. Most
western drama schools conform to the model of acting developed by Russian Theatre practitioner
Constantin Stanislavsy. His works on the development of character - An Actor Prepares, Building a
Character and Creating a Role - remain essential reference texts, even though his methods have
been superseded and remixed by dozens of acting luminaries ever since – most
notably perhaps, Lee Strasberg, at The Actors Studio. Stanislavski placed enormous emphasis on
the ability of the actor to understand and inhabit the character's life, not just the two hours
of it presented on screen or stage, but everything that took place beforehand. This takes time
and imagination – elements seemingly absent from the factory-line schedules of
many recording sessions.
It's clear, however, that some studios have grasped this vital element. "The actors always have
the opportunity to learn about the character before the session," says Emery of the work
undertaken at Side. "For most leading roles the actor would have had a full audition, with a
director present to brief them about the character and their motivations. Prior to a session they
are sent their script and character bios, and where possible, an overview of the general story
arc. This allows them to better understand the character they are to play and how they should be
played."
But then there's an added inhibitive element in the videogame voice recording session
– actors usually perform in isolation. This is, of course, a necessary evil as
in-game dialogue will need to be chopped up, mixed and played in a variety of contexts. But this
isn't much consolation to the actor. "I've only worked on one game where that wasn't the case,"
says Sobolov. "When I played The Arbiter in Halo Wars, they recorded cut scene dialogue with all
the principal performers in the same room together much as they do in television animation. Most
times we have to silently skip over the other character's lines (if they're shown to us at all)
then deliver our dialogue as if we were having a conversation in real time." Again, this runs
counter to drama training where the art of reacting to other performers is an intrinsic element.
Little wonder, then, that without a full script, a character chronology to study or other
performers to interact with, voice acting can be both stilted and lacking in nuance. It's an
intrinsic problem that the key voice over studios are really looking in to. Mark Estdale,
director at casting and voice recording agency, Outsource
Media, has been working for ten years on a system to provide voice over actors with a
quick-n-dirty frame of reference for their characterisations.
"What the actor needs is something at the point of performance that they can react to," he
explains. "To provide that, you need to throw away all previous script models. What we've done is
build a database that can actually emulate game engine behaviours and recalls for the actor any
kind of pertinent information - visuals from the game, audio, other actors' lines
– and it's all instant recall. So you get the actor in the studio and when
they're in the zone you hit them with this radical system – it's all on screen
in front of them, and they're getting all the cues they'd get in the theatre or on a film
production, they're not reliant on trying to figure out what the heck's going on."
Added to this, there's a very simple way to improve the quality of acting in most videogames:
start early. "To achieve a cinematic level of quality that so many titles demand now, the voice
acting can't be left to the end of the development cycle," maintains Emery. "Making character
performances an integral part of the pre- and main production stages opens up a whole range of
opportunities to improve the final quality." Mark Estdale wholeheartedly concurs. "Actors need to
be cast when the developer is starting the design process. I'm working on one production now
where we're there really early in development, and the whole cast is involved - they're giving
voices to the characters as they're being designed."
Not only does this create a sense of ownership of the character, it also means that the director,
writer, cast and game designers get to spark off each other – schlocky lumps
of leaden dialogue, implausible character volte-faces and rampant cliché may all be
avoided in a truly collaborative and respectful environment. In some ways, what developers need
to do it stop drawing all their cinematic reference points from the big CGI-stuffed blockbusters
and start looking at the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh who employ improvisation and
collaboration to build drama.
Ultimately, Emery pinpoints an evolving role within the game development process; instead of
script writers, what is needed now are 'narrative designers', experts in the creation of plot and
dialogue for an interactive medium. "Good narrative designers can work with game designers to
ensure the story and dialogue becomes a fully integrated element of the game design, rather than
a hindrance to pure interactivity. A lot of game players do not like to be stopped while a cut
scene delivers story elements and clever Narrative design can ensure the story is delivered in a
less obtrusive way.
"As narrative designers become more adept at delivering a compelling story in ways less obtrusive
to game play, the distinction between 'Story' dialogue and 'World Filling' dialogue will continue
to blur. The challenge will be to ensure ALL acting in games is believable, from in-game
greetings, to death cries, to the epic monologue."
And Emery also highlights other vital elements of convincing non-linear narrative. "Good audio
implementation ensures that individual files, separated for reasons of interactivity, can sound
like fluid, natural, overlapping dialogue once triggered in the game. Using a professional
director who is involved in casting, rehearsal and dialogue recordings makes a huge difference.
It's essential to have someone who knows the project inside out, has been on board from the
start, can talk to actors in their language and translate that into a performance."
The ultimate solution for Emery, however, is the emerging field of full performance capture, in
which one actor provides motion and facial capture, as well as the voice. "For full performance
capture sessions, it is more like a film shoot with script table reads, rehearsals and further
familiarisation with the project all prior to an actual shoot," he says. "On the actual shoot the
director will rehearse each scene with the actors together so they can get a feel of what will be
going on in each scene and how they will interact and then have multiple live takes to get the
required performance.
"On Dead Space: Extraction it was clear from the outset that the team was taking character
performances in the game very seriously. They looked for actors to provide not only a vocal and
facial performance but also facial likeness to be used in the game. Although the actors needed to
have the right voice and the right look, the team were happy to be flexible about accent. The
most important thing was to cast a group of distinct, believable characters and I think we really
hit the mark, and the gaming press agreed with us."
The weird thing is, this is exactly the avenue Quantic Dream chose. Of the four principle
characters in Heavy Rain, three were played by actors who provided the voice, motion and
facial capture data.
According to Madison Paige's body actor, Jacqui Ainsley, all the actors were given full
scripts, and they spent three years on the project – ample time to inhabit
their roles. Throughout the process, the game's creator and writer David Cage also provided
oodles of background detail regarding the moral choices at the heart of the drama. They did
everything right.
And certainly there are moments of profundity in the game, moments when the dialogue and
performances click into place with spinetingling effect. It could be that the actors were
inexperienced in games, that the audio implementation, with so many branching dialogue elements
to cope with, could not always call up exactly the right vocal intonations for the moment.
Perhaps it is down to the ambition of the project, the fact that it has effectively created its
own genre, that a few inherent weaknesses are cruelly magnified. The sheer size of the script
(apparently 16 movies worth of text) may have contributed, though this scale is becoming more
common these days. According to a preview of Rockstar's forthcoming adventure, LA Noire, in this month's Edge, the script weighs in
at 22,000 pages. Yet still, the interactive drama, a genre at the forefront of narrative
development, is in its infancy.
Most titles, however, sit in well-defined game types, developed by experienced studios. For them,
there is no excuse anymore. David Sobolov is predictably passionate on the subject. "We're moving
into a time where games are attempting to create an emotional experience rather than simply a
visceral one. If developers intend to tell more complex stories they're going to need to hire the
best talent they can find to complete that journey.
"A game can't be successful anymore if it's developed as a piece of software. It has to evoke
emotional reactions and create a reality a gamer wants to buy into to be successful. In the best
titles, good voice acting can be the glue that keeps a gamer immersed in the world that the
developer is creating, often subconsciously. The human voice is the one thing in a game that's
100% real..."
Keith Stuartguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use
of this content is subject to our
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