Voice Over: A Sound Decision
(Editor’s note to the reader: This is a post we published on April 1st! You can do the math. Enjoy!)
Hello everyone! Hollister the audio guy here. Happy Easter!
As many of you know, the question of how to handle the audio in our game has been a hot topic within the team. We’ve gone back and forth about whether or not we want to just use the original audio, or if we should perhaps see about recreating it, as we are doing with the models.
The cutscenes are a great example of this. We could just use the original audio, but since we’re creating new character animations, the old audio, aside from being considerably low-quality, wouldn’t line up perfectly with the new animations.
So, this has been a point of contention within the team for a while, as everyone has different opinions on it. Luckily, I’m a very driven person, so I took the initiative and went ahead and used your incredibly generous donations to hire some equally incredible voice over talent.
I haven’t talked to the team about this yet, but I’m completely sure they’ll be on-board. Now, onto the good stuff! We’ve already recorded some of the cutscenes, and I’m eager to showcase them.
The first one is the cutscene of Ghen’s friend talking to you in the chamber you teleport to:
Next, we have Ghen himself, delivering his monologue about his son, who I presume is Atreus:
Then onto Catherine’s monologue when you kidnap her from Moeity:
And finally, we decided we can’t leave out the fan-favorite of Ghen singing, so we decided to have our very talented actor record that as well:
I hope you enjoyed this presentation. Stay tuned for more audio updates!
I’m so happy to be such a big part of bringing Myst 2 to life!
Take care,
Hollister
Sound Engineer / Composer, The Starry Expanse Project
April Fool’s!
April 1st, 2018 at 1:44 am
Wow nice update. Great to see a different, equally important, aspect of this fantastic game. Makes us realise how many details there actually are in Riven that create the perfectly balanced ambiance.
Will you cast for the in game voices? Jeremy Irons for Ghen for instance? (If only…)
Thanks for your unstopable effort! Happy Easter!
April 1st, 2018 at 2:27 am
I reckon Charles Dance would make a spectacular Ghen, no offence to Mr Irons.
Can’t for the life of me figure out who will play atrus though… That’s some big shoes to fill.
January 7th, 2019 at 3:40 pm
This is exactly what I proposed after seing Game of Thrones. Charles Dance is perfect for the job.
April 1st, 2018 at 1:51 am
Hello, for the voices in Spanish I do not know if you could hire the original actors
Atrus: Juan Antonio Castro
Catherine: Luisa Ezquerra
Gehn: Javier Franquelo
But in the event that you can not ask for volunteers for the voices … by the way, the scene of Catherine hahahaha was great
April 1st, 2018 at 1:57 am
Wow amazing. So great to see your continuous devotion to create the perfect experience. It is stunning to hear how close the voices are to the originals and I had to do several side by side comparisons to check if you didn’t just use the original track, but then a tad it of synch.
Now the game is finally nearing completion, I can’t wait to play it when it is released in October.
April 1st, 2018 at 2:24 am
Frankly, I am blown away.
Although I will say that the acting was no where near as bad as I expected from a video posted on the 1st of April.
April 1st, 2018 at 2:41 am
Dang… and I was hoping that singing Gehn would be belting out “Let it Go.” What a missed opportunity! 😉
April 1st, 2018 at 4:01 am
It took me way too long to understand what was going on… Must be a slow sunday morning. Well dome. Gehn’s song was especially great. 🙂
April 1st, 2018 at 4:49 am
Hmmm, ok, much as I applaud this I would just ask why Katran’s voice is male? Or have I missed something obvious? Gehn is very good, very good indeed, a slightly more mature voice would make it better. Cho is good too, you have a very high standard to reach and are well on your way, Katran needs a good female voice though.
April 1st, 2018 at 4:50 am
Hmmm, yeah, April 1st, fell for that one alright. Nice job ha ha ha…
April 1st, 2018 at 6:49 am
Very interesting! Thank you for the update and Happy Easter to you all.
April 1st, 2018 at 1:43 pm
I think you should go original.
April 1st, 2018 at 2:16 pm
Catherine sounds a little more masculine than when I last remembered. I guess that’s what happens to you when you’re banished away all these years…
April 1st, 2018 at 7:52 pm
We’ve been April fooled!
April 3rd, 2018 at 12:37 am
This has to be a joke right, these voice overs are terrible!
April 3rd, 2018 at 12:19 pm
Oh thank God it’s April 1st…
April 6th, 2018 at 3:34 pm
Well… I always supported this project but, maybe because of my nature, always in the middle of art works to preserve or to repair… I think original would be the best choice. Even RealMyst Masterpiece Edition used not only original voices but also original videos (and original 2D frames of brunt books)… It is like to rebuild a vintage car, or better, a sculpture in the Opificio delle Pietre Dure of Florence.
This happens to buildings too… The ones we call “in style” buildings are, most of time if not always, surely not as nice as the originals. Like the Parthenon in Nashville.
Well, I stop myself now, but I go to bed hoping this was just, as we say in Italy, a “Pesce d’Aprile”.
April 15th, 2018 at 8:57 pm
As soon as I heard Kermit the frog I knew you were either joking or crazy!
April 22nd, 2018 at 1:30 pm
Voice-overs would be fine by me, even if they aren’t as good as the originals (they’ll never be the same, but they could be as good) there are good reasons to record new audio.
Just a tip for the real voice-overs, in case you didn’t think about it: it usually sounds better when the voice actors mimic the movements of the characters so their voice actually sounds like they’re pulling away a book, or doing stuff when they’re talking.
July 5th, 2018 at 2:29 pm
I must admit, I was a little surprised…not much though. I got through the first half of Cho’s scene when I realized what was going on. I thought the scene with Katran was hilarious! At first I was like “Now, are they going to do a female voice?” And then when I heard it I started laughing…especially after the patting of her feet as she ran away….LOL. Also, thinking about it, the original voice of Katran was a voice-over, so this was basically a voice-over of a voice-over.