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Stellaris Dev Diary #77 - Ethics Voice Packs

Hello everyone and welcome to another Stellaris development diary. This week’s diary I’m taking charge and going to write about Voice Over’s for the (unannounced) Story Pack coming alongside the 1.8 ‘Čapek’ update! We still can’t tell you any further details about the name or release date of the Story Pack, but stay tuned for future dev diaries!

For the upcoming Story Pack we felt that we wanted to experiment with VIR, our friendly advisor, see how it would feel to have different set of VO cues depending on your Empire’s ethic. A VO Cue is a term that we use to describe a Voice Over line that triggers at a certain point in the game as for example “Hostile Fleet Detected” or “Research Complete”.

We started with a test case in-house to try it out and we concluded that it was a great experience! From then on we moved on with the process and allocated time to write unique script for each role, character description, casting, auditions and finally recording sessions. It has been personally a long and hard process but in the end I’m really pleased to finally show of 3 samples out of 10 Voice Packs!


There will be a automatic settings for the VO Packs in the game so that the VO will switch depending on what Ethic you start with in the game and also switches while you're playing if you decided with switch Ethic's in your campaign. If you're not into that you will be able to select with set of VO Cues you want to play and you will always be able to switch back to the original VO if you desire.

Now that you have heard some of the results you might ask yourself how the whole procedure works with recording VO? So I’ll describe to a certain detail how the whole process goes by. :)

First of you need to write a script and if you have talented Content Designers. and we do have in our team, there is no problem to get good a script. Once the script is complete and approved it gets handed to me and I take it to the next step: Casting!

Casting of it’s own is also a long process which takes time. With help of a Casting Director you can get in touch with several possible Voice Actors that can help you to deliver the best result out of each script. When you have picked out potential actors that you think will suit for the role, you bring them in for a audition. In an audition you let the actor read a certain part of the script which usually depict the character the most and also give the best material for the Voice Actor so that they can perform as good as possible. After all the auditions are done you pick the actor that suited the best for the role. Sometimes during auditions actors comes for a certain role to read but during the session you realize that the actor would be more fitted for another role and that happened to our Militarist! We brought her in to do a audition for another role first but while she was reading the part for the first role I heard that she might be better suited as a angry general, so I asked her to try out for the Militarist and it was a really good fit! So good that we ended up with her as the Militarist.

With all the casting/auditions done you move on to the actual recording session, get as much possible material from your actors. It is important that you’re there to act as a “director” for the actors so that you can give the instructions and guidelines so that they can give you all the right emotions and takes that you require for your character in the game.

As soon as the recordings were done I moved on to editing. There is a lot of editing when it comes to VO since it is not only about how the recording equipment sound but also the sheer amount of assets you need to go through..

VY1grVq.png


While editing you usually “zoom in” really close in the waveforms of the recordings to mess around/cutting noise such as clicks and pops. So yes, we Sound Designers tend to get really nerdy when it comes to VO editing:

aHHJbEZ.png


After you have done all the editing which is removing “clicks” and “pops”, ugly breath takes, add fade in/out, you move into adding “effects” to the VO so we can get that cool Robotic style. For each VO I gave them something else than just using the same settings as for “Default VIR”.

So in short terms that is how you record VO!

That's all for today! Next week we'll be talking about robots and robotic modification.
 
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Wiz said:
Here's the thing: No matter The validity of such criticism, if we had picked a male voice, even one that sounded far 'crazier', we would have gotten at most 10-20% of the complaining we've gotten now. I make no judgment about any individual critique but this is an observable enough fact that we literally accounted for it in our planning. That's all.
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So what you are saying is that you were planning to have criticism because you can never do well enough to avoid criticism?

Wiz said:
It's both. We'd be having this discussion regardless but it would not be nearly as pronounced. There's been a few comments about Xenophobe tone, there would likely have been more if we had cast a woman in the same role (but not as many, since it's a more 'appropriste' tone for a woman)
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What? There has always been women is these kind of areas, we are complaining about bad voice acting.
 
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Wiz said:
Because it does, in fact, have a lot to do with that.
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Despite all the dislikes. I thought all Wiz's comments about it have been insightful. Why? You might ask. Because instantly when I heard the female voice for militarists I was hoping for it to not be 'gender locked' a old critique from many different games which can be transfered onto here. And I'm yet again reassured of Wiz's competency directing this game. And I hope future species / voice packs will come as a thing now.

EDIT: Maybe even alien speech? :O
 
Summin Cool said:
So what you are saying is that you were planning to have criticism because you can never do well enough to avoid criticism?



What? There has always been women is these kind of areas, we are complaining about bad voice acting.
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The voice acting isn't bad.
It's the feel and emotion it is trying to convey to the player that simply doesn't seem to fit a militaristic tone.
And a lot of people seem to feel the same.
If fits a certain kind of militaristic, true, but that's only a niche.
 
Fine.
Write down the messages in the three voices.
Ask people who didn't listen the DD if it fits the ethos.
Compare with the thread complaints.
There you go, scientific method profit.
 
Wiz said:
To be clear, what I am saying is not that the Militarist VO is perfect and beyond all critique, what I am saying is that we had a script for the Militarist VO that called for a more 'crazy' approach, and we picked the actor (after auditioning both male and female voices) that did the role best, knowing that picking a male voice would have been a safer bet no matter the quality of the actor. So it's a bit amusing, like I said, to see the backlash and the absence of self-distance and self-reflection coming with it, because we *knew* this would happen and chose to pay that price. :)
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But no one here (literally not a single post) want to change the voice from female to male... why you still think being female is a problem?
 
CrowScape said:
First post on page 8, and every single one of his posts since.
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I mean, I guess if everyone wants to interpret that as him calling them sexists individually, no one can stop them. I certainly didn't take it as an insult to myself, but then I'm just one person, not a demographic.

Or is the community on this forum really so full of themselves that they think that as a whole and individually on a collective level, we are all of us flawless, perfect, and beyond reproach in any manner? That any criticism to the collective environment that this forum is a subset of is a direct attack on the individual that dares call themselves a member of it in any capacity?
 
Wiz said:
Here's the thing: No matter The validity of such criticism, if we had picked a male voice, even one that sounded far 'crazier', we would have gotten at most 10-20% of the complaining we've gotten now. I make no judgment about any individual critique but this is an observable enough fact that we literally accounted for it in our planning. That's all.
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Wrong, wrong and wrong again. I wasn't even thinking about male/female, I was thinking about how people from Sweden, a country that recently, officially recognized that it cannot defend itself, are so ingrained with an anti-military ethic that they cannot conceive of a militarist as being anything other than a foaming-at-the-mouth lunatic. Sorry if that offends you as a Swede (although it was the subject of an official government report), but I'm just revealing deep background in order to defend myself from charges that I am a misogynist. So you started it.

The chief protagonist in one of my favorite military sci-fi sagas? Honor Harrington. And you would have gotten no complaints from me if you had asked Angelina Jolie to do the military voice she used in Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow. Instead, we got Zorak from Space Ghost Coast to Coast.

In my opinion, you really missed an opportunity to make fun of militarists, however. You could have had someone do Homer's voice from The Simpsons. Or, excuse me, that's my ill-concealed misogyny coming through again. Make that Marge Simpson.
 
Refragmental said:
The voice acting isn't bad.
It's the feel and emotion it is trying to convey to the player that simply doesn't seem to fit a militaristic tone.
And a lot of people seem to feel the same.
If fits a certain kind of militaristic, true, but that's only a niche.
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I'm sorry but it really is bad voice acting.
 
Rafss said:
Fine.
Write down the messages in the three voices.
Ask people who didn't listen the DD if it fits the ethos.
Compare with the thread complaints.
There you go, scientific method profit.
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Problem with that is that it misses the emotions that the voices have tied into it.

And the emotions and tone make a major difference. The way they said it made it come across one way, but saying it tiredly would have it come across completely differently.

"I can't wait to start killing" vs "Why won't this war just end already."
 
Watching Stellaris's development closely over the past two years I've grown quite a bit of respect for you and the work you've done Wiz. Your love and enthusiasm for Stellaris is just so genuine I can't help but become infected with it. I know we have strong differences of opinion on political and social matters (I was ecstatic about Trump's victory, for example), but that's never been an issue since it really has no place here, and everyone here seems quite capable of leaving those things at the door no problem. I still have tremendous respect for you, and eagerly await every word you utter on a nearly daily basis.

But wow, the manner in which you are treating your fans right now is just, I'm completely flabbergasted. Utter loss for words. Completely ignoring fans concerns and instead attacking their comments with a ridiculous strawman attack, all wrapped in a blanket of (perceived) moral superiority, I'm completely shocked. I would never have expected this from you. Good job completely reinforcing every ridiculous internet stereotype of Modern Sweden.
 
I hesitate to get involved in this, oh well, Geronimo!

I think that the Militarist voice, with that specific quote, would fit perfectly for a rally. It's not something you use as orders, but instead for speeches. As we haven't heard any other quotes from that voice actor yet, I'm assuming that some are calm orders and some are vitriol filled speeches.
 
Refragmental said:
The voice acting isn't bad.
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I disagree. Even for a barbarian/horde warrior thing, it's just too over the top. This style is hard to do and even in the best case it straddles a fine line between being believable and laughable. Maybe other lines are better, but this one doesn't even try. It seems like the instruction was too ham it up as much as possible.

Stellaris has a warrior culture civic that arguably fits that style, but even then I wouldn't consider it good.


Shakespeare quoting aliens was done in Star Trek VI by the way (even including the dogs of war line):

Some people like it. Some don't. But for the most part the actor manages to walk that line. Even when he shouts he doesn't growl.
 
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Draconaes said:
I mean, I guess if everyone wants to interpret that as him calling them sexists individually, no one can stop them. I certainly didn't take it as an insult to myself, but then I'm just one person, not a demographic.

Or is the community on this forum really so full of themselves that they think that as a whole and individually on a collective level, we are all of us flawless, perfect, and beyond reproach in any manner? That any criticism to the collective environment that this forum is a subset of is a direct attack on the individual that dares call themselves a member of it in any capacity?
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If it had came from a normal member, it would be seen completely differently. But people in positions of authority and who are connected to the company are expected to be held to a higher standard.

As such, it came across as "disliking this means you are disliking it out of sexism."

Their follow up posts made it worse.
 
The quote is from Theater, from before microphones too, so it has to be over the top and crazy, otherwise people in the back wouldn't be able to read the emotions.
 
khade said:
The quote is from Theater, from before microphones too, so it has to be over the top and crazy, otherwise people in the back wouldn't be able to read the emotions.
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It doesn't matter where it's from or if it's a reference, it just doesn't work with the ethic.
 
khade said:
I hesitate to get involved in this, oh well, Geronimo!

I think that the Militarist voice, with that specific quote, would fit perfectly for a rally. It's not something you use as orders, but instead for speeches. As we haven't heard any other quotes from that voice actor yet, I'm assuming that some are calm orders and some are vitriol filled speeches.
Click to expand...

Agreed, as the rest of the lines for the Militarist could be slightly less "NO MERCY" and more disciplined in tone.
 
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