Recently, while playing, I thought of something. All of us play a character, and all of us tried to paint a picture of said individual. Many tried to do so using a backstory, some more detailed than others; many have tried to visualize their character using art, some other tried to increase believability or originality by adopting a particular outfit in game, some have even gone to the length of adopting a specific speech pattern (like a lisp, that really blew my mind when first i saw it). All these lengths to transform a bunch of pixels on a screen into an approximation of a human being.
But due to the constraint of the game, i feel that some facets of our characters cant be properly explored. One of them is the voice. The pitch, the intonation. We can approximate an accent, thats true, but the FEEL of a voice can tell more than the spoken words, sometimes.
For my character, Blake, i think a fitting voice would be a warm, medium-to-high pitched voice, maybe some voice cracks here and there. Generally not a very manly nor a pleasant voice, but full of character. Maybe a pinch of a Rhode Island accent?
One example of such a voice could be the lead singer of the band “The Flat Stanleys”. Thats the best voice fit for Blake, in my opinion. As an example listen to the few minutes of the unreleased track “letters to my friends” (if you can bear it, that is. Midwest emo is not easy to listen to if you are not into it) (https://youtu.be/B0cRfJqZ1d8?si=ImFjIIc9qd6MZtJT)
So i ask, what’s, in your opinion, the voice of your character(s)? For non human characters it may be harder to find an example, but i want to hear your take on that too!
As for pAI GRUN. Did you know crows can learn and speak words like parrots? Well fitting with his chosen form pAI GRUN speaks exclusively with other’s voices the catch is he finds it most amusing when the original owner of the voice is dead.
Me hearing my father’s voice after years
run down hallway
GRUN is using my deceased father’s voice to compliment a chef
mop hallway crying rest of shift
I like to imagine my character Arnold Prime as a sniveling, constantly sniffing and coughing lightly, slight wheeze maybe, high pitched voice very complaining, with a tendency to elongate the last syllable of any sentence-uhhh. He’s supposed to be whiny, i picked everything i could go get the trait across.
Odette’s voice is somewhere in the middle-to-higher pitch range, usually pretty soft when she’s not freaking out over things but with a background slowness to it like she’s trying to sound more proper and hide an accent that still comes out from time to time. Also, never going into that ear-splitting tone that’s horrible to the ear even when she is freaking out.
God, his voice was so clear… Its so fitting for that specific type of characters.
Damn, that took me back. Time to rewatch the star wars animated series!
Also, thats the kind of stuff i was talkin about when i said the tone of a voice can bring out the LIFE of a character. It says so much without a single word. Shame we wont be able to experience that in game…
Honestly, i have never even heard Odette scream on radio, even with nukies or when confronted with a threat directly. She is the type of person that tries to sound professional even under duress, i would have never imagined that!
Perseus Wright’s voice is what you imagine when you see this emoji:
Rudolph Delacourt is literally the chad Ciaphas Kane voice from TTS.
Chell Flywright is Alyx from Half Life 2.
I am always amazed by the ability of the French to speak their own language without getting their tongue caught in their teeth… Also, all the French-speaking characters in here do a damn good job at conveying a different way of speaking without being too difficoult to understand, congrats!
Crazy that this has never struck my mind, i don’t think I have a voice for any of my characters, except maybe Cigarette, who you probably can guess has a kinda smokers and whiskey voice, but nothing pinned down. I don’t really have a voice for anyone, maybe because when I read what other people say I just possess the words without hearing the word itself in my head. Though there are some exceptions, Matthew fiddler always sound a bit nerdy to me, like the " " emoji, though I don’t hear a voice still just the characteristics of someone speaking like a nerd. Then there’s Aaron Martin and Markus Larsson, who I have heard speak in VC so I actually hear thier voice.
From day one in ss13 I’ve been trying to perfect being able to put forth the sound and feeling of my characters voice.
For Yoshi Moto, of course it is the classic stereotypical pigeon english voice base (I personally love the accent with all my heart), as for the tone, lots of ups and downs in pitch, and always a subtle second meaning behind words, and always spoken behind a grin.
As for Arfus, its a kind of trill-esque flutter and medium pitched, mostly spoken infront of their face with no second meaning or any hinting.
A.R.F-850, a medium-high pitched smooth artificial voice, spoken behind a fear of showing emotion.
Douglas Hartnell’s voice is very much an eccentric old man voice, with the stern speech spoken with a (not disrespectful) condescending intention.
Charles Heiglot, this one has a very interesting voice pattern, Its a very self indulged and unware of others type of speech, hence the usual bursts of pious ramblings, a very direct, booming and character filled tone which I try to give the intention of speaking directly through the person I talk to.
The most hardest voice to keep consistent through a round.
Those are the only ones I have currently given an actual characteristic voice to out of my characters.
I love doing accents, so I try to practice, with my own voice, the voice I give them.
Kree-Veck’s voice is very vivid in my head, at least: rough and screechy, always louder than is appropriate. unpleasant for anyone with ears. when he’s speaking common, he talks very slowly and frequently stumbles over his words. in draconic, he speaks normally… still screechy, though. can’t think of any examples right now but i’ll edit the post if i do.
Drowns is less specific to me, though. i like to imagine very deep and serious… until he gets into an even slightly stressful sitation, at which point it gets shaky and jumps up a few octaves.
L.I.V. the cyborg sounds like the turrets from portal. yeah.
i have other characters but i don’t think anybody remembers them
Sparky has a couple different voices. When they just CAN NOT be bothered, their default is basically Microsoft SAM. The most common thing they say in this voice is “What the fuck do you want?” before transitioning into their more realistic voice.
They have a more realistic voice most of the time. Slightly british, slightly feminine, distinctly AI generated.
Since they a speaker, they’re technically capable of copying people, but they’re not very good at it. They can’t generate voices other than their own, so they need to sentence-mix from things they’ve heard, and it generally results in a choppy output that’s not gonna fool anyone. They mostly use it for mocking things, but they’re generally more high-brow than that. If they’re using this, you’ve backed them into a corner.
