Peer into the bowels of SWTOR's voice production

by Kyle Horner Jul 10th 2009 at 4:00PM

Filed under: Sci-fi, New titles, News items, Star Wars: The Old Republic

So you've heard that Star Wars: The Old Republic is going to be completely voice acted. All player characters and non-player characters will have a professional voiced track for every bit of dialog. We're certain that you, much like ourselves, have imagined this project to be a huge undertaking. BioWare's pretty sure most of us are underestimating this, and their latest developer diary makes sure we truly understand the depth and range of the project.

Like, for instance, did you know that the complete script for Star Wars: The Old Republic is larger than 40+ novels? We bet you also didn't know that, so far, five cities ( Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto ) are currently playing host to voice recording sessions. There's plenty more information in the blog itself, so go check it out!

Tags: bioware, ea, electronic-arts, lucasarts, star-wars-the-old-republic, star-wrs, swtor, voice-acting

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)

UltimateQ said on 4:28PM 7-10-2009

That little comic was more funny than Grinders I think. I can't wait to see this game in action. I'm not really a star wars fan, but I can dig a good game. And if this game is any good, you can bet I'll be all over it.

RogueJedi86 said on 4:42PM 7-10-2009

I'd like them to give a VA cast list. I know Steve Blum is the Bounty Hunter player character, and I love his voicework in anime(Spike Spiegel on Cowboy Bebop, to name just one role). Just knowing what VAs we're getting is really helpful in boosting my confidence. It's one of my big pet peeves about WoW, they don't give credits for the VAs, not even in the credits of the game.

devilsei said on 4:52PM 7-10-2009

Heh, one of my two favorite "bounty hunters" doing the voice work for the bounty hunter? Yeah got my vote for that class at least. The other one being Gene from Outlaw Star.

One can hope that if there is a female BH, the voice will either be the VA for Faye or Twilight Suzuka

Havok said on 4:55PM 7-10-2009

That is insane.

royale said on 7:23PM 7-10-2009

If people don't like reading quest text, then why is it going to be any better when we have to listen to some long drawn-out dialog about "go kill rats"?

Seare said on 7:49PM 7-10-2009

Why don't you educate yourself before making stupid comments like that. There are no "go kill rats" missions. This isn't that kind of game.

I read computer text all damn day, I don't want to do it when I'm playing a game and trying to have fun. I go for voice over text anyday.

Wjowski said on 11:40AM 7-11-2009

You're the one that needs an education. It's an MMO. It's almost a certainty that there's going to be many 'Kill 10 X' style quests.

myr said on 8:13PM 7-10-2009

It's too bad that they're spending all that time/money and most players will just skip over it all anyway.

D said on 12:46AM 7-11-2009

I doubt they'll skip over it. Most players skip of quest text because it's...well...text. Think of Mass Effect. Do you really think a majority of the player skipped over the voice work there?

UltimateQ said on 9:25PM 7-10-2009

I agree. On EQ2 I always sat back and listened to the NPCs when they talked. But I never ever took the time to read.

D said on 8:21PM 7-10-2009

That's fantastic. It really is. What concerns me, however, is how long it could take to deliver content patches after the MMO is live.

szsleepy said on 8:45PM 7-10-2009

This is all peaches and cream until you realize that the same 4 voice actors did voices for all 500 NPCs your character will ever meet.

RogueJedi86 said on 8:54PM 7-10-2009

4 voice actors for the 5 regions they're doing VA stuff from? Which VA is commuting between 2 towns to do voices for this game?

D said on 10:23PM 7-11-2009

"By the time the project is finished, we will have worked with hundreds of actors - many on multiple occasions."

4 voice actors?

myr said on 9:00PM 7-10-2009

I dunno. I can't speak for most players, but personally I only listened to each line for as long as it took me to read the subtitle, then skipped to the next line- and I'm the type of person that generally reads his quests (the first time through) in MMOs.

myr said on 9:02PM 7-10-2009

and massively's comment system sucks, that's meant to be in reply to the above thing about Mass Effect.

szsleepy said on 9:03PM 7-10-2009

Probably the Canadian from Toronto.

Jack said on 9:18PM 7-10-2009

Sounds like they gonna blow all there investor money on voice overs. I hope there will be some left or else EA rush this thing to the market before its completed. They god a bad history and with EA last mmo called Warhammer Online they show that they are better in Marketing games them let them live up to it! I still not known of this will become the mmo we all are waiting for so long! Also Bioware working already on tons of other projects how much people are working solo on this game?! It takes a lot of people to make a mmo its like make 25 games at ones!

RogueJedi86 said on 10:25PM 7-12-2009

Each game has its own development team. The TOR team is over 100 people last I heard.

All of TOR's budget isn't going to voicework, they just focused on voicework this week. TOR seems to have a very high budget though. Even the head of Activision Blizzard once said you'd need a ton of money to take down WoW. EA has the money, and it might work.

TOR has employees who've worked on most of the big MMOs in the past 10 years. We have WoW devs, SWG devs, Warhammer devs, etc. They can learn from the mistakes each of those games made. Now that they've failed, they know how not to fail. TOR has a pedigree that should work.

Check out this recent interview GamesRadar had with the TOR developers:
http://www.gamesradar.com/pc/star-wars-the-old-republic/preview/star-wars-the-old-republic-hands-on/a-2009070610215182000/g-20081021163120143024