MER Episode 02 – Attack!!!

Zach and Brooks break down the past two weeks of SWTOR news, from the voiceover work outlined in Developer Blog #10 to the UI design shown in Video Documentary #3. All that and more in this week’s episode of Mos Eisley Radio!

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News From the Galactic Republic
Return of the Mandalorians
-Overview of the video
-Mandalorians as a “faction” and how factions would work in SWTOR

Development Blog #10 / Video Documentary #3
-Visual appearance of the SWTOR engine
-Voicing of both NPCs and your player’s character
-All aspects of the scale and level of production going in to the voice over work.
-Brooks’ post about audio from an engineer’s perspective
-SWTOR’s UI and the need for a mod community

Stories from the Outer Rim
PC Gamer UK Interview with Rich Vogel
-PVP, Raids, Economy

Discussion of the Week
Trooper and Bounty Hunter Classes
-What roles Trooper and Bounty Hunter will play within both party and solo settings
-Class abilities
-Possible ability focus based on armor (for Troopers) and weapons (for Bounty Hunters)

Podcast Directories
We’ve uploaded our feed to a few different directories to make sure that whererever you are, you can hear us! Listed below are the links to our pages on various sites.
-PodBean.com (claim-my-podcast-in-podbean{scid-bW9zZWlzbGV5cmFkaW8=-ecid})
-Podfeed.net
-Podcast Alley

Voicing Star Wars The Old Republic

Last week Developer Blog #10 popped up on the official site, going into great detail about the process for the extremely daunting task of recording voice over for The Old Republic. It’s been known for some time that all NPCs and quest-related information will be listened to and not read. In fact, this is one of the core elements of Bioware Austin’s new “story” pillar of MMORPGs. While the concept alone is enough to excite the legions of Knights of Old Republic fans, there is a scale and dedication to their craft present that I’m not sure everyone fully understands.

Let’s look at some of the facts: The Old Republic is the size of at least 10 KOTORs recorded back to back and the voice-over has been recorded in 5 different cities: Los Angeles , London, New York, San Francisco, and Toronto, by hundreds of different actors. First and foremost, if anyone has taken a close look at the audio files for KOTOR, the dialog alone accounts for about 550MB of space. Multiplying that by 10, we get an astonishing 5.5GB of data just for voice. Factoring in music and environmental sounds, and without an elaborate compression scheme, it’s likely that all audio related content for The Old Republic could take upwards of 7-8GB of storage on your machine.

View of Skywalker Sound’s Akira Kurosawa dubbing stage with the Neve DFC console.

What really speaks to Bioware and LucasArt’s dedication to this game is the task of working with so many voice actors at so many locations. The act of recording that much audio alone is astonishing, but when the whole process is considered, it’s no surprise that the team went to Skywalker Sound, one of the heaviest hitters in movie and video game industry. Before even a single line is recorded, scripts are laid out, voice directors are met with, actors have practice groups, and engineers consider all the editing and processing that will need to be done. Once the first track is laid, then comes the grueling task of assuring consistency in volume, pitch, and even pronunciation, as dynamic storylines require each individual line to be played on the fly based on a player’s choices.

As a gamer and an audio engineer, I couldn’t be more excited about what this means for both The Old Republic and the gaming industry in general. With this release, the teams at Bioware and LucasArts will set the bar for video game audio, and a very high one at that.

How do you feel about all quest and NPC-related content being spoken and not read?