VOICING MAKE BELIEVE.
” Creating game life – one word at a time. ”
VOICE… DOES IT MATTER?
Imagination filled with beautiful worlds, from Gods of war to rally racing speed freaks that only modern game systems can bring to the world, video games are meticulously created for every type of personality to escape real world stresses.
Whether for enjoyment, physical therapy, or social interactions, games fill a void. But what if we could only enjoy these digital works of art visually or based on music alone? How would we truly connect to these fantastic characters with just subtitles scrolling underneath them like some old school games? The emotions expressed by these characters would fail to reach us. Games like “THE LAST OF US” would fall short and would quickly become less enjoyable with long term play.
So, what makes these games so enjoyable in collaboration with visually pleasing art? Voices…. With the right voice for the character, the scenes in the games can become emotionally filled roller coasters, getting the player to FEEL more involved like they are truly part of the story. However, not just any voice can pull this off.
Behind every gut wrenching, emotion grabbing character, there needs to be a professional voice actor…ACTOR being the key word. Professional voice actors understand you’re not just throwing in a voice and BAM your done. No, a real voice actor knows they are creating the person. They need to be developed, complex and feel real, not just slapped together at the last minute as a second thought (we’ve all played games that have done this).
Voice actors will spend countless hours in a booth to make sure you get the right death sound when slain by a sword or they might pull on sad memories to drop real tears when a character’s daughter dies in a cut scene. They may even be in a session for hours to bring in just that touch of psychopath feel. Remember Vaas from Far Cry 3? Who doesn’t right? That is to the credit of the right actor and the right script. Game characters are reaching new heights today and some are even becoming iconic.
Voice actors portray a variety of roles from a war crying ogre, a cripple, or even a talking rock and must be prepared when the time comes. They have a passion to bring life to these characters and spend countless hours training and practicing. It takes every bit of that dedication to ensure, when the time to collaborate with game creators comes, that they can bring their very best to help bring a game to completion that everyone can enjoy.
Jeremi Tigue – Voice Actor
Photos credited to Pexel.
