Same voice acting localization problems from 2013

[Aquitaine]

Let's set aside that:

1) We're all used to this and probably don't even notice anymore,
2) It's too late to do anything about it (somehow this was true in 2013 also), and
3) Neither of those things is an excuse for this problem to still be as significant as it is three and half years after the initial release.

The voice actress for Yisha (English) is clearly not a native English speaker. It's not that she isn't comprehensible - she very much is, but she sounds very forced and stilted and the inflection is all wrong. I can't tell that Paradox is Swedish from playing Stellaris but I know you're all German the minute I hear Yisha's voice.

This was understandable 10 and 15 years ago in previous X entries since you had to spend a lot of money on localization studios abroad to get access to talent outside your home office city. That hasn't been the case for years now. It wasn't the case in 2013 and it's even less true today. Get yourselves a producer account on Voicebunny or Voices123.

You guys are doing great work on the tech front but you can't get away with a hometown recording session anymore.

I recall from a thread on this subject after the original release that the German VO was not any better. I'm not picking just on Yisha here, either, but given the quantity of dialog she has if you could only redo one character, it'd be her.

[X2-Illuminatus]

A couple of things to clear up here:

• Voices in X Rebirth weren't recorded in Würselen or Aachen by Egosoft, but by a professional studio in Munich called violetmedia.
• Proper voice recording is still expensive. Even game studios way bigger than Egosoft will hardly ever re-record voices for their games unless they absolutely have to, and the reason for this are quite simply the costs.
• Yisha was spoken by a German-American professional voice actress called Anna-Sophia Lumpe.

[Aquitaine]

It looks like Violetmedia has a single soundstage and they specialize in localization to German that is cost efficient.

I don't see a single German title in their portfolio that they localized from German -- interestingly, they don't include X in their portfolio.

I don't have enough information to know whether it's them or "the client" as I've certainly seen it both ways. A VO actor may be superb in one niche and not suited for others. This is certainly the case for my own work. What I don't do, and what isn't even considered in any professional quarters I've ever seen, is to record a character speaking a language in which I do not have native dialect ability unless a foreign sound is expressly called for. If I submit an audition for a native German character, and they can tell right off that I'm American, I will not only not get the job, I will probably get blacklisted by that production company for wasting their time when they expressly asked for a native dialect.

Some VO actors can do this just fine, but it's very hard. If I want to record a radio commercial in Austin, Texas and I want it in German, I with my limited resources can get a professional native German speaker, in Germany, to do it in a couple of days. The ecosystem for it is tremendously accessible these days, and if I can do that, surely violetmedia can as well. Gone are the days of having people line up physically outside the studio.

Ego is full of programmers and artists and it isn't their job to care about those things. It is the job of a line producer to care about them, and it's certainly the job of Violetmedia to care about them if they were responsible for casting. It's also true that some of the lines she has to say are not "natural sounding" in the least, but I'm trying to limit the scope of this critique to one thing.

It doesn't help anybody to say "it's hard, it's expensive, she's a professional." All those things are no doubt true. It's just as true that it sounds artificial, jarring, and wrong. I'm not talking about some mild subjective difference, here. Go get a critique from any professional UK or US studio. I don't believe for a moment that anybody seriously thinks it's fine; I believe that they think it's not important, and it shows.

[dertien]

One can only gawk at some of the games that have had the ability and budget to do this correctly. Here are some notable examples of space games:

- Privateer 2: the darkening

The cutscenes (with actors like Clive Owen, John Hurt, and Christopher Walken) and the 'blade runner' atmosphere is epic.

How the ingame targets react to being shot at in Privateer 2 is amazingly well done and believable.

Shooting at a military vessel for example, the pilot will scold with the curt remark: "careful.... civilian...!"

or...

The pirates would say: "Oy, pretty boy, kiss my arse..." with a cockney accent reminiscent of the movie "snatch".

Never the mind the rant just before their ship explodes. There's some pretty cool Youtube videos depicting this.

OR another game series that did this right with voice alone and CGI:

- I-War + Defiance and I-War-2.

In some sectors in I-War 2 for example there are posses like in the old wild west. When contacted, the ships captains would answer with a southern drawl like:

What can I do for you, Boy?

OR

Will that be all', Boy?

Tachyon the fringe was another game that really did this right.

The NPC's remarks could do with some emotion in all the X-series. I had no idea though that it was that costly.

[Aquitaine]

It's not at all costly for short clips. If you need a page of dialog you can get pretty much whatever you want at an excellent quality for $100.

It does get considerably more expensive as you get into major characters. The minute 'the talent' knows they're doing a character integral to your game, they're going to want either a larger up front fee or residuals if they have an agent that knows what they're doing. But for every excellent VO actor you'd have to pay at a higher rate, there are two dozen of varying quality who are looking for their big break and will do it for peanuts.

Used to be you had to use union talent for any big project. Not the case anymore. It's a startling difference between, say, the stage (whose US union I belong to) and the VO world. There's lots of chaff but there's also lots more wheat - you just have to have a good system (e.g. VoiceBunny or Voices123) for sorting through them.

[dertien]

Since you're in the business...

Would you know if one voice sample from a single person could for example be believably modulated as to sound coming from for example:

- a boy
- a girl
- an adult male
- an adult female

I know software like Audacity for example can change the pitch, but is this method used professionally or do you guys prefer to get someone from the correct age to voice act a little girl/boy and an old man should such tone be required.

[Aquitaine]

Generally not. It depends a little bit on what type of sound is being made or words are being said but anything more than a slight pitch correction is usually noticeable, and you don't want anything like that to be noticeable.

There is a whole niche of the business that is adults who can sound like children. That is usually what's done. The Last of Us is a pretty good example though it's easier to get somebody who can sound 14 than it is to get somebody who can sound 4.

The short explanation for this is that there are a lot more differences between any two of those four groups you listed than just the frequency (pitch) of the tone. I wouldn't know much about the real cutting edge here but the tech I've seen is more along the lines of enhancing an existing capability than completely altering it. Ordinarily it's just easier to bring in a new actor unless you're recording live dialog or doing motion capture -- but I'd bet that VO for X is recorded solo (rather than having all the actors in a scene in a room together and performing off of one another, which is obviously much more expensive and limits you to people you can get in one room).

This is not unrelated to the topic of the thread and it's why I want to be very clear about not picking on the voice actress behind Yisha -- it is a very technically proficient performance in the sense that if you were to strike up a conversation with that actress in English you'd be impressed at how good she is; it's just the wrong performance in that there is everything to lose and nothing to gain by using a non-native speaker. This is one of many reasons why actors who can convincingly play TV roles as 'native' to another country as so remarkable, e.g. Hugh Laurie in House (who is English), Eliza Taylor in the 100 (who is Australian) and Rose McIver in iZombie from New Zealand. It happens but these people are stars in part because of it -- much harder on a TV series as well because the quantity of lines (and opportunity to slip up and betray your roots) is so much higher than in a movie.

[dertien]

Interesting exposé. That was very helpful.