How does everyone else feel about Nalia's voice being changed in a new mod?

[Eral]

Or perhaps not. We don't want to start a panic. Just imagine, herds of startled posters, running fleeing from the board.

[Aristothenes]

Gee, at the risk of sounding trite:
Why not ask Lady Grey Delisle?

Afterall, I'm sure Bruce Boxleitner enjoyed being in Tron 2.0 as satisfaction is never purely financial (same for the lady playing Ma3A)
David Warner would probably have liked to be there too, but it would not have made sense within the scope of the story.

So just eat the fear, and write a well-worded letter requesting her help, sometimes people do want to see how far their characters can evolve, and do keep strong ties with their history.

The worst thing about failure is probably the part where there was no "try" at all.
Just my 2 cents.

[jcompton]

Gee, at the risk of sounding trite:
Why not ask Lady Grey Delisle?

Afterall, I'm sure Bruce Boxleitner enjoyed being in Tron 2.0 as satisfaction is never purely financial (same for the lady playing Ma3A)

Except... Boxleitner would have been paid.

And in any case, I actually had a brief e-mail correspondence with her before I started modding (this was before Interplay released the voice cast list and we were trying to piece together who had done what... amusingly, DeLisle herself couldn't even properly remember and thought she'd done Aerie as well!), and when this mod started coming around, I tried to reacquire her attention for this very purpose. No such luck.

[irenicus]

as long as its not as anoying as the first !!!!!

[Kyrie]

Hmm... so hypothetically, how would I go about 'auditioning' to do Nalia's voice? 

[Guest]

I assume you'd just have to send a private message to jcompton, but they already have an actress don't they?

[jcompton]

I currently have someone in mind for Nalia, although we the IE modding scene at large are generally always on the lookout for ready, willing, and able voice talent, so if you'd like to send some samples to me, I'd be happy to listen to them. You could work from Nalia's lines, from another character in the game, a character in a book...

Send samples as 128 kbit MP3s or Ogg quality 4 files to jcompton@pocketplane.net.

[Ieldra]

On the original topic, just for the record: as there is to be a lot of new dialogue, I think a completely new voice is the best solution. Provided that the new voice acting is good, of course ("not totally bad" would definitely not be good enough for one of my favorite NPCs  ).     

[Silthe]

I'm all for a whole new voice set if you intend to add that much extra dialogue (otherwise it would just be odd  ).  It will be interesting to hear someone else do all of Nalia's old lines.  I would think the tough part would be going in and finding every instance in the game that she speaks and replacing it.  That's just me, of course.  I've never modded before (though goodness knows I'd love to) so for all I know they're all together in one file.

[jcompton]

Oh, finding the lines is no challenge at all. And yes, quite a bit of dialogue will be added over the course of SOA and TOB. Certainly enough that having it all mute, when I don't really HAVE to have it mute, would be a bad thing.

[Silthe]

That's understandable. 

For curiousity's sake, do you intend to have her say things with about the same tone and inflections as the original voice, or is it going to be completely new, or are you pretty much just leaving that all up to the voice actress?  I don't really think it matters either way, but I was just interested to know what you preferred on that.

[jcompton]

The idea is to preserve the characterization.

[Silthe]

I gotcha.    No more silly questions from me. 

[jcompton]

No, it's okay.

The goal here is that even though you'll in all likelihood know that "the voice is different" you'll feel that it could have been Nalia all along. I've said in the past that if you don't still feel that Nalia's a bit of a dumbass at times, it isn't still Nalia.

[Silthe]

Of course.  I was more or less just asking whether or not you were going to try and emulate the original Nalia's voice down to how she says "I'm ready for anything."  Pitch of voice and all.   

[jcompton]

Ahah. Well, we will do what we can. If a different inflection on a given line ends up being more natural for the actress (in other words, if it sounds better if we CHANGE inflection than try to force KEEPING it), then, yes, could happen. But we'll be aiming to replicate the delivery when possible.

[MythicalChicken]

No, it's okay.

The goal here is that even though you'll in all likelihood know that "the voice is different" you'll feel that it could have been Nalia all along. I've said in the past that if you don't still feel that Nalia's a bit of a dumbass at times, it isn't still Nalia.

Sounds like a great plan.

My question is this though: I noticed, voicing wise, Kelsey tended to be more verbose than most of the Bioware crowd. More often than not, I was always a couple dialouge options ahead by the time he finished speaking; whereas the Bioware NPCs mainly voiced the first phrase or so. Do you plan to shorten the amount of dialouge that's voiced?

Best,
MC

[Silthe]

Ahah. Well, we will do what we can. If a different inflection on a given line ends up being more natural for the actress (in other words, if it sounds better if we CHANGE inflection than try to force KEEPING it), then, yes, could happen. But we'll be aiming to replicate the delivery when possible.

Cool.  LIke I said, I was merely curious.  I'll see when it comes out, anyway, won't I? 

[jcompton]

My question is this though: I noticed, voicing wise, Kelsey tended to be more verbose than most of the Bioware crowd. More often than not, I was always a couple dialouge options ahead by the time he finished speaking; whereas the Bioware NPCs mainly voiced the first phrase or so. Do you plan to shorten the amount of dialouge that's voiced?

For existing Bioware lines, we are unlikely to extend voicing except in maybe a few specific cases.

For new lines, expect my pattern to continue.