Originally posted by
Takerod
I was talking about the voice acting with my friends just earlier today, saying that while the voice actors absolutely deserve praise, whoever directed them did a fantastic job no less. Happy to be able to thank you directly, you absolutely should be proud of yourself! Voice actors can easily make a character, but I've also seen cases in other games have great VAs but poor direction and/or writing, to the point where the VAs just couldn't salvage what they were given or the results were overall lackluster.
I've found the Cavia really touching, and even though I'm only a couple ranks in, I already found myself running around just to trigger more of the voice lines. It was fascinating to see just how drastically different Neil sounds as Fibonacci, Tagfer's quiet grief, despair and anger you wouldn't want to mess with, and Bird 3 going from struggling to string words together in the most amusing fashion to having a very believable existential crisis. Seriously, the latter had me stop and think for a while - it's very fascinating to try and imagine how much the poor thing has to process, and just how eloquently Bird explains it despite the wording struggles.
Loid the man is someone I'm curious to see develop over time, I generally like the character and in some ways I even found him relatable. He's quite the contrast with the Loid we knew, and honestly I wanted to give the construct counterpart a big hug after it all. I was also very pleasantly surprised to find out Loid the Construct had more to say after the quest, that is a very nice touch!
Thank you so much for your work. Looking forward to seeing more of it!
If a studio doesn't have a director at hand then working actors can find themselves being directed by someone from, I dunno, level design who was just given the job, didn't want it, and is terrified. This is why I tell actors who are just starting out to build a strong, varied toolkit: take improv classes, do theatre, do standup, develop a strong facility for imagery to help inform the performance, develop the party trick of doing a range of impressions to better understand just what you can do with your vocal instrument and how it works and how new vocal patterns can change the way you think and therefore react, develop an ear for music in dialog, develop an instinct for delivering the same line in different ways without losing meaning or impact, really understand the power of *pauses*, of dirtying up the delivery, of making sure we can hear the character *thinking*. Essentially: learn to be your own best director for those times when you're on your own.
That way, at least, you've got the best chance of having work out there that you can be proud of - and that guy from level design will be profoundly grateful that you did.
RE Bird 3, he was designed to have no internal monologue. What he thinks, he says. Given that this time last week he wasn't sentient, didn't have a self, and now he does, he never stops thinking. So his ambient dialogs and barks, unlike any other character we have, is meant to be a constant background hum - so his lines could be unusually long, which meant I could give him a few lengthy "if A means B then C must mean D" verbal cogitations from a completely unbiased just-off-the-potato-truck point-of-view. What I'm saying is, sure, he comes across as childlike and naive but, really, of all of them, he's the only who's really working this all out.
TBH I was hoping a few people would stop and have the same reaction you did.
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