Incline Strangeland - new adventure game from Wormwood Studios

[agris]

Are there any return VAs from Primordia?

I assume this means that the Norse-themed game will not be WEG published.

 

[MRY]

Are there any return VAs from Primordia?

Yes. And to the follow-up: not gonna share yet.

I assume this means that the Norse-themed game will not be WEG published.

I wouldn't publish it with WEG. It would make no sense -- no branding benefit, and I've already arranged the VO on my own. I also don't know if WEG would be interested, for essentially the same reasons.

Some developers seek out publishers early in the process, which I learned with SL is actually what publisher prefer. But since the only thing keeping me at all interested in game development is expressing my own vision in my own way, I can't imagine I'd ever want a publisher involved early enough to actually materially affect the project. With FG, it's not far enough along for me to talk to publishers. When it gets far enough along, I'll have to figure out who to discuss things with; I assume it will be too far along for most of them.

FG and SL are a bit different economically. Game development doesn't really matter to me financially any more (I'd rather not lose money on it, because then it would become a vanity project, but unlike when I was a student or a government employee, it no longer supplies a meaningful percentage of my income). For FG, I've paid everyone up front. Not much, but something. No one has back-end interests other than me (100%). If the game flops, that doesn't hurt anything but my pride. But on SL, Vic, James, and I share the royalties (and obviously now WEG gets a cut). I need the game to succeed for Vic and James's sake because game development does matter to them financially. A publisher can help make that happen (notwithstanding taking a cut). For FG, if at the end of the day I have to just release it myself to no fanfare, that's fine.

I should say, obviously I'd rather FG and SL do amazingly well; but not, primarily, for financial reasons. The pleasure of knowing that my game has added some value to the lives others matters more than the 73 cents or whatever I get when they buy a copy.

 

[Infinitron]

This probably comes as no surprise to the sleuths in this thread, but Wadjet Eye Games will be publishing Strangeland. I think it's a very advantageous arrangement for both sides -- WEG's brand helped Primordia get through Greenlight and win immediate player recognition, anhd Primordia in turn helped elevate Wadjet Eye Games's brand and reputation. We are confident that Strangeland will see a similar reciprocity, with WEG helping provide initial impetus at the game's launch, and Strangeland adding momentum to WEG's already stratospheric (or at least tropospheric) rise. Moreover, WEG will be handling the VO, something that Dave and his friends are extremely good at. I think Strangeland will be a last hurrah in the pixels-n-puzzles era for WEG (since its other forthcoming games are 3D (Technobabylon 2), hi-res (Old Skies), or puzzle-free (Nighthawks)).

http://www.wormwoodstudios.com/2020/09/wadjet-eye-games-publishing-strangeland.html

Wadjet Eye Games Publishing Strangeland

We are delighted to announce that Wadjet Eye Games is publishing Strangeland. Many years in the making, Strangeland is a “cabinet of curiosities” comprising the striking memories and bizarre visions that Victor Pflug (artist) and I (Mark Yohalem, writer/designer) have gathered over our lives. That cabinet has been built with thousands of hours of care by Dimitrios Thanasias-Spanos (coder).

Put otherwise, and as our last update probably indicated, Strangeland is as personal a game as I can imagine making. I spent the last weeks annotating its more obscure references, and realized it really is a map from my childhood wonders and fears to adulthood’s responsibility, regret, and recognition. I know Vic drew deeply from the well of his own personal experiences. Further, Dimitrios has achieved things with the engine (Adventure Game Studio) that no one has ever done before, allowing Vic’s surreal imagery to come to life in smooth and seamless way, and he has done through by throwing all of himself into the game’s development.

Given all the toil and anguish that went into making it, there’s no one we’d be more comfortable entrusting the game’s publication to than WEG. Our collaboration on Primordia was not just a business relationship, but a friendship and creative partnership. Dave Gilbert is second to none in directing voice acting, and WEG has earned a well-deserved reputation for releasing thoughtful games that hearken back to the classics while presenting innovations in setting, design, and narrative. We are proud that Primordia is a part of that legacy, and we are excited that Strangeland will be part of it, too.

 

[MRY]

Did a Spanish interview re: Strangeland, Primordia, and my development philosophy more generally: https://errekgamer.com/2020/09/27/entrevista-a-mark-yohalen

Despite their misspelling my last name, I thought it was a good interview!

 

[MRY]

In fairness, I did call Cloudscape “Cloudlands,” so who am I to criticize?

 

[jfrisby]

Vic and James want to try making Cloudlands , the adventure game we started and left after Primordia . It's hard to imagine going back to it, it would be like putting your sweaty clothes back on after it gets cold… But maybe.

I'd been curious after seeing Vic post some art last year.

 

[MRY]

It should say "Cloudscape"; had FG on my mind.

 

[baud]

Did a Spanish interview re: Strangeland, Primordia, and my development philosophy more generally: https://errekgamer.com/2020/09/27/entrevista-a-mark-yohalen

Despite their misspelling my last name, I thought it was a good interview!

Courtesy of Google translate + some corrections (lost the formatting along the way):

Interview with Mark Yohalen: developer of Primordia

With this interview we begin a new section through which various people from the world of indie videogames will pass. We hope you enjoy the section and we will bring you a new interview soon.

Today we interview Mark Yohalem, co-founder and designer of Wormwood Studios.

As a game design hobbyist, Mark has worked both on his own projects and as an external senior or principal writer for BioWare, inXile Entertainment, TimeGate Studios, S2 Games, Nikitova Games, and Affinix Software. As the co-founder of Wormwood Studios with two friends (artist Victor Pflug and programmer James Spanos) in 2010, he developed Primordia, a classic Point & Click graphic adventure that has sold over a quarter of a million copies and was, for years, the Top rated graphic adventure game on Steam. The same trio are currently working on Strangeland, another adventure game. Mark is also developing Fallen Gods, an RPG inspired by Icelandic sagas and folklore, the Barbarian Prince board game, and game books like Lone Wolf. By profession, Mark is a lawyer. In 2018, he was recognized in the Daily Journal as one of the top 40 lawyers under 40 in California.

-Hi Mark, thank you for granting us this interview. Before a video game designer Mark there had to be a young video game player Mark. What genres and what games marked you the most as a child? What was the game that made you think "I want to do this, I want to design games"?

This may come as a surprise, but the first game of its kind was Megaman 2. My best friend in fourth grade was an excellent artist and Megaman fan, and he and I designed a theoretical Megaman 3. Among other things, we anticipated Magnet Man!

Yet at the same time, I developed a kind of social role-playing game without dice, rules, or paper, which we call the "storytelling game." (I was the "narrator"). When my grandfather taught me how to stop the Apple II / c boot cycle he had given us and how to program in BASIC, I became obsessed with the idea that I could make a "storytelling game" using BASIC. In fact, he hadn't played any text adventures up to that point, but that was what he was imagining, more or less.

Over the years, I had a creativity forum to make Nintendo-style games, which eventually settled on JRPGs, and another forum to make adventure games, which ultimately drew on Lucas Arts-style adventures. In college, I was hired to write a Gameboy JRPG story, and a decade later, I was able to release Primordia. It is nice to achieve childhood dreams, even if it is late!

-In 2010 you founded the small indie studio Wormwood Studios with Victor Pflug and later James Spanos joined. Tell us, how did an American, an Australian and a Greek agree to found a studio ten years ago and still be active?

The truth is, for online collaboration, it doesn't make a big difference where people are, especially when they have unusual sleeping habits. All my collaborations on the Internet over the years have been international. It is one of the great gifts of this type of connectivity.

It helps that we all have a great love for games. Making games is generally unpleasant. For every exciting moment of imagination there are a thousand moments of hard work. And nothing goes right. It can only be achieved by loving games, loving your fellow developers, and most of all, loving the people who will play your games. We are fortunate to have had very warm support from our fans. Without that support, we would have thrown in the towel… even if we had lived in the same apartment block rather than on three different continents.

-Apart from working on your own games, you have a long history working for other developers such as Bioware, InXile or TimeGates Studios, among others. What is it like to work for these large companies and what are the main differences that you have found when making your own video games?

I have learned so much from the team members and the leaders of the studios where I worked for so many years. I found my colleagues generous and kind in their advice and wise in the lessons they taught. I have many long-lasting friendships, particularly from my most recent work with InXile Studios, but also from older projects. On top of that, the period during which I worked to pay for my studies (during university until the time I worked for the government after law school), the salary I earned made a real difference in my quality of life without a doubt.


But ultimately, it's not the right kind of job for me. Now I have so little time for game development, and I earn enough money from my day job, that I don't want to trade any of that time for pay. What I want is the opportunity to create my own worlds in my own way. Even if they are bad, they will still be mine. With a great game like Torment: Tides of Numenera or Dragon Age: Origins, the little I was able to contribute made no real difference, good or bad. It's arrogant, but I prefer to have a game that truly reflects my contributions to it.

-Well, it is inevitable to ask yourself and you know it ... Can you tell us any curious and juicy anecdote in your relationship with Bioware or InXile?

When I went to the first team meeting with the InXile, about 15 of us, including Brian Fargo, went out to lunch at a local restaurant. I was the last to order and the guy behind the counter asked who we were. I explained that we were from a video game company and that Brian Fargo was responsible for games like Fallout.

The guy fell into ecstasy and started talking about how Fallout is the best game of all time. For the next five minutes, he talked non-stop, all the while about Fallout 3; and made it clear that he had never played the best, oldest Fallouts, and in fact the only thing he liked about Fallout 3 is the features added by Bethesda when he bought the franchise. The whole thing made me laugh a lot, really. The only thing worse than being overlooked for your contributions in a game is being adored for someone else's.

Spoiler

Primordia


Regarding Bioware, I took an outside writing test and they liked my work so much that they quickly put me on a plane to meet them and sign a contract as a full-time senior writer. But this was in winter, and I was flying from Boston (horrible weather) to Edmonton (horrible weather) via Minnesota (horrible weather). At the time I was a student at Harvard Law School and I had the idea that I would wear a business suit and show them how "Serious and Professional" I was.

But my flights were so delayed by blizzards and bad weather that instead of arriving the day before my interview, I arrived at 5:00 in the morning of the interview and on top of that all my luggage was lost on the way, leaving me with nothing more than the sweatshirt I'd been wearing for the 36+ hours that the entire trip lasted. So I turned up half delirious, unable to sleep at all on the plane, and looking like a homeless man. The interviews went well, but then in the evening I had to take a writing test on the spot, and by then "half delusional" had become "completely delusional."

When I got home, I received an email from James Ohlen saying that the test, apart from my staging, was one of the best he had seen, the interviews were incredible, but that my staging was undoubtedly somewhat "incoherent". Fortunately, they did not take that into account and hired me anyway!

-In 2012 your first game, Primordia, finally appears. An indie sci-fi adventure game that soon became a Steam critical success and bestseller. Why a graphic adventure as the first game and why that old school style?

What just happened was that it was a game that he had been dreaming of since he was 12 years old. At the time the dream started, the style was not old school, but rather edgy. I am a man who does not change his loves, I am married to my girlfriend from school, I go to the same Vietnamese restaurant since I studied high school, and the music I love is the music of my childhood. Fortunately for me, James and Vic had the same dreams and that's how it all started.

-As a veteran player Primordia I really liked it and it made me nostalgic for the classic adventures from before. I was also able to appreciate it as an author's adventure with a clear background message. What were your main influences and inspirations when making Primordia?

Really, too many to name. From the games, Planescape: Torment provided the inspiration for the relationship between Horatio (The Nameless One) and Crispin (Morte), and Clarity took some inspiration from Vhailor, though it was also inspired by a tireless, brilliant, strict, and beautiful judge with who I worked after law school. Fallout helped inspire the setting, as did Full Throttle. The idea for a song on the phonograph came from Full Throttle, for example. Loom was also a great inspiration for his way of building the world; Loom has a very small world, but it successfully hints at a much larger world, with a rich lore and setting. Beneath a Steel Sky was a huge inspiration for Vic, but maybe a little less for me.

But many of the inspirations were also born from books, such as "Canticle to Saint Lebowitz" by Miller, "Ciberiada" by Lem, "City" by Simak, or "The Road» by Cormac McCarthy ... and even various poems. My great-aunt Virginia's poem "The Heirs" was really my main starting point. Unfortunately, although it was translated into Spanish during his lifetime, I do not keep a copy of the Spanish translation.

-As an independent studio I imagine that you always have a very tight budget and you cannot translate the games into all the languages that you would like. The Spanish and Hispanic fan community is very active in translating games for free. What do you think of amateur amateur translations, do you appreciate them as a support to your works or as an intrusion? Is it so expensive to translate a game officially?

It's hard to express how grateful I am to the fans who translate the games. In fact, the word "grateful" doesn't do justice to how I really feel about them.

But first of all a small note. The first major fan translation I met is the Japanese to English translation of Final Fantasy V. A key translator on that team was Katsuyuki Omuro. His younger brother, Hideaki Omuro, was the main programmer for Infinity, the gameboy RPG that was my first paid job in the video game industry. In other words, it is fair to say that the beginning of my professional path within the industry is indirectly due to fan translations.

That nice coincidence aside, translation work is bridge-building work. It is the essence of humanism, not the religion of robots in Primordia, but that beautiful creed that has enriched our world so much, that is, finding the common ground between two different cultures so that they can fully communicate with each other. In my experience, all good translators and all fans who translate are motivated by love and generosity.

Primordia

When I think about the thousands of hours fans spent translating Primordia, making sure their weird idioms, obscure references, different speech patterns, silly rhymes, puns, and jokes all fit together somehow in Spanish, French, German and Russian… It overwhelms me. Working with those translators was one of the greatest joys of doing Primordia, and seeing the excitement of players who otherwise would never have experienced Primordia just makes me very happy and grateful.

In addition to that, of course, I have been the recipient of translated texts all my life. Primordia is based on the stories of Borges, I think for example, in Memorioso, Unamuno, Márquez, Levi, Calvino, Lem, Dostoevsky, etc., etc. And of course all those Japanese games that were part of my childhood. Primordia could not have existed without the translators who brought all that together. I could not exist without translators. A version of Mark Yohalem without them would be a very haggard version compared to the version of the one that reveled in the works of everyone.

Regarding the economy, I think the reality is that it is not profitable to pay professional fees to translate small freelance games, and cheap professional translators lack the same care and commitment as volunteers. However, I always try to give some attention to my translators. I sent a stuffed Crispin to the brilliant Colombian who translated it Primordia into Spanish.

-It is considered that as an indie game Primordia was a success. Can you live today from indie games? How is the relationship of an indie studio with Steam? And with GOG?

I am a lawyer by profession and game development no longer represents a significant part of my income. I think it would be difficult, but not impossible, to live making independent adventure games. But the pressure to earn enough to survive would take away the joy of making video games and push me to make concessions in order to sell them. Right now, I am blessed to be able to make the game I want, always with the goal of enriching the players, but not with the desire to enrich myself.

These days it is very easy to get an indie game on Steam or on GOG. Each one takes 30% of the sales. That said, it seems reasonable to me. It has never been easy for an independent developer to bring a game to market, and I think it's wonderful that so many games are being released today. Of course that means that probably fewer people will buy Strangeland compared to those who bought Primordia due to more competition, but "more competition" here means that "other people will be able to fulfill their dreams." As it is clear to me that I would not sacrifice my dreams for someone else's earnings, I would not ask another to sacrifice his dreams for mine. I'm really not one of those indie developers who says, "I wish fewer games were released on Steam." But of course, maybe that's easy for me to say since, as I said, I don't live off game development.

-Mark will not be long before we can enjoy your second game, Strangeland, again a classic graphic adventure. What can you tell us about Strangeland? When can we play it?

I believe it will be launched in the first quarter of 2021. It has taken us so many years to do it that we do not want to rush the last steps. I feel like when we released Primordia we were a bit too hasty, it wasn't until the December 2013 patch that we got the game to go all right. I don't want the same thing to happen to us with Strangeland, and for the most excited and committed fans to encounter the worst version of the game.

Strangeland

What can I say about the game? It is a psychological horror game. Like Primordia, it's about how to face the end of the world. But here, the end of the world is a personal loss. The inspiration for the game was the death of my grandparents, the same grandfather who taught me to code so many years ago and his wife. She had suffered from dementia for years. He, a NASA engineer, worked in vain to find a way to engineer a solution. But the human brain is not a space shuttle, and the mind has no aerodynamics. It was an unsolvable puzzle. Right after she died, he died too. He had been living for her, so when she died, he left his own burden and accompanied her.

Their deaths provide the game with its most important themes. The loss, the pain, the identity, the memory, the love… But, of course, this is a game, not an obituary. So try to unlock riddles and solve puzzles that connect with those themes, and explore a horrible carnival whose symbols represent the pain that the protagonist is trying to understand. I guess if Primordia could be described as a mix between Planescape: Torment and Beneath a Steel Sky, Strangeland would be like mixing Photopia and Sanitarium. Of course, that would oversimplify all the games I just mentioned, but it's a good way to keep it short.

-The works of Goya, Bradbury and Peake have served as inspiration for Strangeland. Can we assume that it is also going to be an "author's adventure game"? Will the player know how to capture the influences?

My hope with these kinds of influences and allusions is that they only "contribute" to the game. A player who does not know them will not have an incomplete experience, but a player who does know them will have a richer and more complete experience.

However, we are adding something new to Strangeland. In addition to the developer feedback we already had in Primordia, there is now an 'annotation mode'. When enabled, notes will appear on the screen when there is an allusion in dialogue, and dialogue will pause for the player to read the note. That way, when a character alludes to a passage from Ecclesiastes, a verse from the Havamal, one of Los caprichos, or a line from the game Kyrandia, the most curious players will be able to know what is happening. But, as I say, this is totally optional and in my opinion unnecessary to enjoy the adventure. It is "enrichment", not something "mandatory."

-Obligatory question. Are you planning to translate Strangeland into Spanish?

I am very sure that we will have a Spanish translation. I'm not sure we will have one at launch. The translator of Primordia is a friend and a man of great principles and has some concern about providing amateur translations for a commercial game when they launch, because it may be unfair for professional translators and perhaps unfair enrichment for publishers. / developers.

Strangeland

We may be able to work out a fix to translate it at launch, but I would only do so if I can be sure that I am not compromising the integrity of the translation or the integrity of the translator. One possibility is that our dear Spanish translators translate it one year after its launch. Another possibility is that to find a way to reasonably solve the equity problems. And another minor possibility is to find another translator, but don't forget that I am the kind of person who cannot change of Vietnamese restaurant ... much less of trusted colleagues.

-And now let's talk a bit about the future of Woorwood Studios. What plans do you have for after Strangeland? Will we see you collaborating with other developers again?

The next project is Fallen Gods, a "rogue-lite" role-playing game inspired by the board game Barbarian Prince, the game books Lone Wolf and Norse mythology. I've been working on it for a long time. I have no idea when it will be ready for release. In 2022, maybe?

Vic and James want to try to make Cloudlands, the adventure game that we started and abandoned after Primordia. It's hard to imagine going back to it, it would be like putting your sweaty clothes back on after they get cold ... But maybe.

-Already on a personal level Mark. What was your best moment as a member of the video game industry? And your worst moment?

The best, as an anecdote when I participated for the first time in a meeting with InXile for the game Torment: Tides of Numenera, and around the table everyone were my heroes: Brian Fargo, George Ziets, Kevin Saunders, Colin McComb and others. And instead of proving to be idols with feet of clay, they were gold from start to finish. The idea of them wanting my thoughts on their game was amazing to me.

More personally, the best was when I received an email from someone who had struggled with depression and suicidal thoughts their entire life. He had just played Primordia and found joy and hope in him. Moving down the dark path of life depends on the light of others, and it seemed like a true blessing to have lit that light for someone else.

The worst was when to save on voice actor costs, TimeGate Studios randomly cut off a third of the words from my script for Kohan II: Kings of War, rendering it largely incoherent. I was able to fix it, somehow, but the total carelessness and randomness of the cuts, from people that I really admire and that I really enjoyed working with, hurt me a lot. It so happened that although people loved the game, they were basically indifferent to my work on it.

-To finish now. Are you still playing adventure games? What games have you played lately?

I play adventures with my daughters, although somewhat less than before, as we now mainly play Nintendo games. We never play recent releases, only classics. My favorite discovery from playing with them was the Pajama Sam series, which I had never played before and which I think is amazing.

I've tried to at least keep up with some of the many amazing recent releases, like Beautiful Desolation, Thimbleweed Park, Whispers of a Machine, Unavowed, etc. Then I complement it by reading or watching Let's Plays but unfortunately, I don't have much time to play alone, I prefer to spend time playing with my children or making games. Let me conclude by saying that I always enjoy having the opportunity to talk about adventure games. I'm surprised anyone cares what I have to say! (They might not, but even pretending is fun.)

Thanks for your time and kindness Mark. We will be awaiting the release of Strangeland and your next projects.

 

[MRY]

The “staging” thing got screwed up in translation. He said off-site test was great, on-site horrible.

 

[Infinitron]

Here's Mike Pollock making me crack up for a full minute while he voices a creepy clown in the upcoming Strangeland, by Wormwood Studios.

 

[Verylittlefishes]

Here's Mike Pollock making me crack up for a full minute while he voices a creepy clown in the upcoming Strangeland, by Wormwood Studios.

I've watched this three times and then proceeded to his appearance on Wonderama

 

[MRY]

He's great! Definitely the easiest casting decision we had.

 

[MRY]

Another great actor!

 

[Infinitron]

 

[Infinitron]

Ten years ago, Dara played a role in Gemini Rue where she was angry and screamed a lot. Here in Strangeland she plays the role of the "Seastar" where... not much has changed.

 

[MRY]

Having listened to all of these, I will say:

(1) Listening to voice acting is very stressful and leads to me being unhappy much more often than to me being happy.
(2) None of it has led to me being unhappy. As to all of it, I can say that it satisfies the pretty high threshold of being respectful to the material, not messing up any of the core themes embodied in the lines, and being delivered in an engaging manner. Some of the voices aren't really the voices I heard in my head, but that's fine. I'm very bad at describing the voices in my head (as I joked to Dave, the only references I ever give him are "Batman from the animated series" and "Mr. Freeze from the animated series," which makes it really had to describe female characters...), so the likelihood of ever getting it right is very low. But often the voices end up better than what was in my head, so there's that upside. Anyway, like I said, these are all good.
(3) Some of the line readings and actors are really amazing.

 

[jfrisby]

 

[MRY]

I'm morbidly curious about reactions to these castings -- not that I would change anything to suit feedback, I think that kind of development by consensus is not the right approach to a narrative game, but I'm still interested. I found it unsettling to hear my old friend Crispin showing up in Strangeland, but I have always thought Abe to have great range as an actor. Miranda was great as Charity, but her work on this has actually effaced Charity for me -- or perhaps the two are thematically close enough that they've merged. And the newcomers are killer.

 

[Infinitron]

Elsie Lovelock plays the part of "The Streammaid" - a miserable sideshow attraction.

 

[MRY]

I should note: all of these contain significant spoilers, so I would probably urge people to avoid them if they want to play the game with fresh eyes.

 

[MF]

I'm morbidly curious about reactions to these castings -- not that I would change anything to suit feedback, I think that kind of development by consensus is not the right approach to a narrative game, but I'm still interested. I found it unsettling to hear my old friend Crispin showing up in Strangeland, but I have always thought Abe to have great range as an actor. Miranda was great as Charity, but her work on this has actually effaced Charity for me -- or perhaps the two are thematically close enough that they've merged. And the newcomers are killer.

I only skimmed through a few because of spoilers, but it sounds great! Put me in the Primordia mood right away. They're going to be our first impressions so our reactions can't be divorced from that. They won't be reactions to your writing itself as much as to these interpretations.

I've done plenty of VO, but TO was my first experience casting and directing my own writing. I learned that I always explicitly audiate my characters when I write them. I would give very detailed cues to the point of sometimes prompting an exact take, which I had to watch out for.

How detailed are the voices in your head while writing? Do you test them out loud? You mentioned it a few posts earlier, but can you expound on how these renditions are different from how you envisioned them? In the case of Abe, did you start writing with his voice in mind, now that you've gotten familiar with it?

 

[MRY]

I don't write with an actor in mind unless the actor is cast. For instance, we cast Abe halfway through Primordia's development (or maybe 2/3 through) when I was still writing lines (I believe... although that seems hard to fathom in retrospect). So I'm pretty sure I started writing Crispin with Abe's voice in mind. [EDIT: "Started" in the sense of, "for the last parts of the script, I began to..." not that I was writing with Abe in mind from the outset.] And on Fallen Gods, I now write with Jamie Campbell's skald narrator in mind. The voice actor becomes a character after he voices the character; but before then, I can't picture it.

I don't have a very audio-oriented brain -- I learn by listening, but I can't hum or whistle a tune, identify a note, or say, "Do a voice like so-and-so's." For that reason, I wouldn't say that I have any articulable voice in mind, though I always read the lines aloud to consider their meter, rhythm, and general euphony. That's true even for things that are not voiced (like when I write a legal brief). But clearly at some level of my brain, there is a voice because once I start hearing auditions, I can immediately say "Yes, no, yes, yes, no, NO!" as to whether an actor is right or wrong. It's just like there is something between my "hear-and-processs" portion of my brain and my "process-and-articulate" portion of my brain, so that it is very hard for me to put into words what I am hearing or what I am expecting to hear. This is, of course, quite unfair for voice actors and directors, but the world is sadly full of such injustices, and why shouldn't I be entitled to add my fair share?

By the way, the reality is, once a character is voiced, it is very hard (IMO) to differentiate the writing from the acting. Or, I should say, the acting almost predominates over the writing. I can't tell you if Raziel and Kain are well written or not; but they certainly seem well written to me because of the VO! Put the exact some dialogue in some amateur's mouth and I bet the lines would seem godawful. This isn't to disclaim responsibility; if you engineer the airplane badly enough, no pilot can keep it from crashing (or even get it off the ground). But I bet if you love the lines, it will be because you love the actors.

 

[MRY]

Sorry, just to clarify -- and Abe was not cast as the Stranger until after the writing was complete. But even if I had thought we would cast him, I wouldn't really have been able to write for him because Abe-as-Stranger and Abe-as-Crispin are two different Abes; that's why he's a great actor.

 

[Daedalos]

So uhm Marky Mark, when can we expect releaz of STRANGElands? <3

 

[Infinitron]