The Fall voice recordings

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Odin

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The latest press release from Silver Style Entertainment (the ones doing The Fall) talks about the voice recordings for The Fall:<blockquote>THE FALL: Voice Recordings Break New Ground in Germany
Silver Style Entertainment today finished the voice recordings for their post-apocalyptic role-playing game "The Fall – Last Days of Gaia". With 84 actors managing 380 parts with a total of 182,000 words it marks the most extensive voice production a computer game made in Germany has ever seen. A number of prominent voice actors is featured in the game; the player will recognize the German voices of George Clooney and John Wayne among others.

"We were aware that the quality of the voice recordings had to match the high standards of The Fall itself", said Stefan Hoffman, Project Manager at Silver Style Entertainment. "No efforts and costs were spared. After more than six weeks of hard work it's safe to say that we have set a new benchmark in the field of dubbing computer games in Germany."</blockquote>Link: The Fall
 
Do they mean they have German actors that sound like George Clooney and John Wayne, or they actually are using George Clooney and John Wayne w/german accents?

If they are the actual actors, I would think that would be pretty damn expensive...
 
As John Wayne died in 1979, I believe the former, although it sounds a bit cheesy.

Might it be the guys who dub George Clooney's and John Wayne's movies in Germany?
 
the player will recognize the German voices of George Clooney and John Wayne among others.
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The way I see it, they've forced Cloony and Wayne to speak german. Man, this is not only expensive, it's hillarious too. :D
EDITED:
What do they actually mean by saying that they'll use ''german voices of...''?! And yes, just now I realized that J.W. is dead for good. Man, this is weird.
 
Wow great sound but what point does it has if they dont make high qualyty english dialoges :?:
 
Gnidrologist said:
the player will recognize the German voices of George Clooney and John Wayne among others.
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The way I see it, they've forced Cloony and Wayne to speak german. Man, this is not only expensive, it's hillarious too. :D
EDITED:
What do they actually mean by saying that they'll use ''german voices of...''?! And yes, just now I realized that J.W. is dead for good. Man, this is weird.
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Yep. According to this, George Clooney and John Wayne both have distinct English and German voices. While they're both talented actors, I still find this a bit hard to believe. :p
 
In Germany they have voice actors that handle all the dubbing work for the various international stars, like George Clooney, Richard Dean Anderson and John Cleese. So the people are the guys who dub all the Clooney and Wayne movies in Germany.
 
Oh, well that clears things up. I feel dumb for having had no idea the great John Wayne was dead, but the way they worded their press release was dumber.
 
Deutschland über alles!

Er, anyways, I do hope the voice acting is of good quality and not just something that makes me laugh and shake my head.

Edit

There, I fixed it. AND removed the random rant against humanity
 
[derail]
FFS, can't you get it right ONCE? The Ü is not a U with accent, it's an umlaut (yes that is an English word):

Umlaut \Um"laut\, n. [G., from um about + laut sound.] (Philol.)
The euphonic modification of a root vowel sound by the
influence of a, u, or especially i, in the syllable which
formerly followed.
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That means Ü is written out as Ue. Therefore it's Ueber Alles if you can't print umlauts. Umlauts are entirely different letters. Like Mücke and Mucke. The first is a mosquito, the latter is 80's-ish slang for "music". Geez.
[/derail]

Yeah, popular foreign actors tend to have their own voice actors in Germany. They basically lend their voice to the foreign actors, hence "German voices of..." (people tend to identify the voices by the actors they dub, not the actual voice actors).

[derail]
The German voice of Bruce Willis for example was used for the main character in the German dub of Infrogrames' game "Outcast". The voice is quite well-known so that was a big marketing bonus. There's also a German movie called "Der Eisbär" (might be called "The Ice Bear" if it ever got translated to English) which starred said voice actor as an actual film actor.

I'm sure you can find one of the CDs of the music band "E Nomine" at Amazon or your favorite music store. The lyrics are in German, but basically it's the German voices of various Hollywood actors doing the vocals of bible-inspired techno tracks (it's not as bad as the description makes it sound, not that you'd understand the lyrics anyway).

By the way: Arnold Schwarzenegger has a German voice as well. He does NOT dub his own movies. Considering his Austrian accent nobody would take him serious if he did anyway, although there are some comedy shows which tend to do sketches about that (an Austrian saying "Asta la vista, Baby" tends to make most Germans giggle). His early movies have been dubbed by other voice actors though, which might be part of the reason they are almost never aired on tv.
[/derail]

Oh, and as for dubbing of video games: Westwood didn't care enough to get the same guy dub Kane in C&C 2: TS (marketed as C&C 3: Operation Tiberian Sun because someone screwed up and labelled Red Alert "C&C2") who lent him his German voice in the first part. The result was that Kane, the ultra bad-ass leader of the bad guys, got a rather voice that sounded like someone mashed his cojones. That didn't exactly help sell the game (the lack of success might be more related to the general not-living-up-to-the-hype it suffered from internationally, tho).

I've only seen a few German games in their English dubs, but they mostly sucked. Seeing whom they hired for the German voices (maybe I should point out that German voice acting in game is usually very poor), they might plan to get actors of a similar calibre to do the English version, so maybe there's hope.
 
Ashmo said:
I'm sure you can find one of the CDs of the music band "E Nomine" at Amazon or your favorite music store. The lyrics are in German, but basically it's the German voices of various Hollywood actors doing the vocals of bible-inspired techno tracks (it's not as bad as the description makes it sound, not that you'd understand the lyrics anyway).
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I can't imagine anything being as bad as that description sounds ;)

Won't it limit their international sales to have german dubbing though?

I suppose they could re-dub it in english, but it seems like a waste of resources to do both. I'd think their target audience all speak english.
 
Torpedo said:
I can't imagine anything being as bad as that description sounds ;)
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Oh, I can.

Won't it limit their international sales to have german dubbing though?

I suppose they could re-dub it in english, but it seems like a waste of resources to do both. I'd think their target audience all speak english.
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It's a German game. That means it will be German. Germany is a large marketing sector and also a very important one (even more important if you are a German company anyway). The German target audience won't be expected to speak English (in fact there are many German gamers who for some reason prefer localised games).
The German version will most likely be sold in Germany (duh), Austria, Switzerland, ... . I doubt they will produce other localised versions tho.

Internationalisation is a different issue. A German game that is meant to be internationalised (The Settlers, Anno 1602, just to name a few) is usually basically a UK or US localisation. It's distributed everywhere but Germany though (I've never seen or heard of a French or Russian localisation of The Settlers for example).

Part of the reason most games are only localised for Germany and then internationalised is that most German publishers aren't as big as their American counterparts. As English, German and French are the big three for Europe (Russian being close fourth after French, at least in Western Europe) they always have Europe covered with only two languages (I suppose sometimes there are other localisations, but I doubt they will have localised dubbing).
America would be English and Spanish (and French if you count certain parts of Canada) with English being the more important market, so that is covered as well. Asia and the Middle East is less interesting for most western publishers anyway and the rest of the world tends to be fine with English versions to some degree or another.

If the international language would be French, US American companies would still be producing the US version first and then internationalise it. Maybe that helps you get an idea as to why German games are done in German first and then translated to English (maybe another factor is that most German games sell better in Germany than they do anywhere else, regardless of the translation quality -- Settlers and Anno 1605 were huge successes in Germany, but rather marginal in other parts of Europe and even less in the US).

Therefore Germany is always the first market German publishers aim for. I personally think different, but that might come from the fact I always buy the UK versions of foreign games and movies, understand English just as well as I understand German and tend to hate German localisations in almost all cases (Outcast being an exception to the rule).

For you I can only hope they will ready a larger budget for the internationalisation than most American publishers seem to allow for German localisations lately. The castrated Kane of C&C2, the transvestite Barbarian of Diablo 2 and the drug addicted Orcs and Humans of WarCraft 2 were a nightmare (and also the reason I chose to pay a little more and import games via Amazon UK).
 
Ashmo: Is a direct comparison with North America really a good example? I mean, if you are developing a game with the intention of release in North America, you have a significantly larger market that speaks english. While Germany, or any other european country for that matter, has to deal with a much larger number of countries that have much smaller number of people speaking the same language.

If you want to see a game that had international release planned from the beginning, check out Beyond Good & Evil. While i really haven't followed the development of Beyond Good & Evil, it wouldn't surprise me if it was a game that was developed in europe since it had like 7 different recorded languages to choose from right out of the box.

But to be honest, I would think that a RPG with as many lines of recorded dialog that The Fall claims could be a serious problem for the game to be actually completed. All those actors were presumably paid for their performances, and I really don't know how good dubbed Hollywood films pay their voice actors, but from the sound of it, it seems like these voice actors are well known in your country, and may ask for more money compared to an American voice actor. So this adds a tremendous cost to game development versus a game like Soldner that had less recorded dialog, yet the actual population that can be certian would understand the game and the smaller sub group that actually plays games (and quite possibly a third sub group that plays RPGs [as i've seen more German players playing FPS action games like Counter-Strike and Battlefield 1942, as i have seen playing MMORPGs]), may not be able to justify the budget a game like The Fall would require.

However, I'm glad Germans are getting a game that has been developed in their own country and language, as I'm sure you're getting sick of all the crap games that the US turns out, since most of the recent games i have enjoyed playing have been developed outside of the US. And if european companies are making more and more games, then that means i have a better chance of playing more and more enjoyable games. However, from the screens and videos i've seen of The Fall you guys have quite a high standard to maintain, cos The Fall looks really good.
 
You criticize a German developer for developing a game in German first? Come here so I can kick you in the nuts you little Fallout console spin-off. :evil:


However, I'm glad Germans are getting a game that has been developed in their own country and language,
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That's too kind. :P


And if european companies are making more and more games, then that means i have a better chance of playing more and more enjoyable games.
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Actually when I recently had a look through my old game manuals I noticed that quite alot of my old games had been developed by German companies. Did you ever play Realms of Arkania? Or maybe you heard of Rainbow Arts?

PS: Oh my, I forgot Blue Byte. I mean, dude! Battle Isle!
 
One little correction: if you want to make a game popular in Europe you need only three to four language versions, not one per country.
These are English, German, French and Russian (in that order, both by economical importance and audience size). As far as I know, actual voice dubs of English versions are only produced for German and French anyway (and most Germans don't mind English versions as long as there are German subtitles and a German manual (which tends to be smaller than the English manual anyway because European releases usually don't contain any of the swag they hand out to North Americans, such as large boxes, big manuals and various collectibles)).

Now that means you only need a lot of translators. If you are developing for North America, the UK and New Zealand are easily included, there is no language barrier at all.

Furthermore in times of online shopping there is no justification in providing FedEx as the only service for cross-atlantic deliveries. UPS is cheaper and it's not like the import taxes Europeans have to pay aren't expensive enough already, paying 50 USD for the shipping alone is ridiculous.

It's absolutely ridiculous that Europeans don't have any chance to get swag without finding an American to buy it for them and send it to them first. It would be no problem at all to sell limited editions in Europe as well (or at the very least, in the UK) or at least allow people to pre-order online for other countries than the US so non-Americans can get pre-order versions as well and don't have to search eBay.com for them.

Troika had no problem selling Arcanum with a big manual in the UK (and Germany too I've heard), Interplay had no problem with selling Fallout 1 and 2 in Germany with localized versions of their pretty manuals. I'd be far less disgruntled by games being sold in DVD/console cases now instead of boxes if they at least let me order the limited editions.

Sure, Europe consists of multiple markets, but the European sales mean at least as much to the success of a game as the US American ones do (yes, Canada is a seperate market too! If you are going to speak of North America, aknowledge that the North American market has demand for three languages (English, French, Spanish), not just one, and consists of more than one market as well).

While we're at it, remember that Korea is a big player in online gaming too. In the modern world you can't neglect the rest of the world if you are developing a game that will sell best on other markets.

On the other hand I have to say that with the exception of Fallout and some others, the majority of the best and most innovative (or unconventional) games I have ever played came from European developers. Bullfrog produced various great titles, Max Design created a lot of unique experiences too.

Right now I'm rambling about two partially related topics: service and quality, both boiling down to the treatment of non-American customers. There are companies that do it right (Blizzard was always known to support its community, they produced collector's editions even for localized versions (even though the sole difference was the box) and no StarCraft player felt as if he was being treated as a second class customer, just to name one example), so it is possible. It's more a question of attitude than of possibility.
 
Now there are some voice and music samples up in the german download section of the official site. Voices are in german but the music is instrumental.
 
With the exception of #12, which is the German voice of George Clooney, the voice samples suck. They are the typical exaggerated hysterical or generic voice actors you will find in most German games. I'm getting the feeling they are only holding the famous ones up so people don't pay attention to the rest. Most of the voices remind me on characters from audio stories, which is a bad thing. They also have that typical lack of background noise, hopefully they'll fix that in the game.

There's also some spoilers in them. Apparently you'll meet someone thinking of himself as a timetraveler (the technology seems to be a reference to Back to the Future) who'll ask you to get some parts for him and then blows himself up.

The player character also seems to have an ingame voice actor. That one sounds very generic and is one of the voices reminding me on said audio tapes. Sounds 20-ish, age wise.

Judging by the voices the game will be very ... off. Seems to be a very exaggerated setting, lots of meant-to-be-funny lines of dialog, I suspect. I hope I'm wrong. I also hope the English voice actors will be better.
 
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