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Game News The Germans get to choose Witcher voices

Ausir

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Tags: CD Projekt; Witcher, The

As Atari's choice of voice actors for the German version of <a href=http://www.thewitcher.com>The Witcher</a> sucked, in an unusual move for a developer, <a href=http://www.cdprojekt.com>CD Projekt</a> is re-recording the lines of some of the characters for the Enhanced Edition of the game. Even more unusually, the players get to choose the actors.<blockquote>This mainly refers to the German speaking Witcher community. But if you all wish to raise your voice as well, you are welcomed
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CDPR was so nice and favoured us with samples of the new voice overs for the German Enhanced Edtion. This concerns Zoltan Chivay, Yaevinn, Vesemir, Triss, Siegfried, Shani, Raymond Maarloeve, Kalkstein, Leo, Geralt, King Foltest, Dandelion, Azar Javed und Alvin.
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You <a href=http://www.the-witcher.de/#461>have the chance</a> to decide which voice of the above mentioned chars will please your ears in the forthcoming Enhanced Edtion. We have launched <a href=http://forum.worldofplayers.de/forum/forumdisplay.php?f=502>a special poll forum</a>, each thread contains the samples and of course the poll.
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Take your chance and make your decision</blockquote>The English voices will also be re-recorded, but with the same actors, as the issue in the English version were the chopped dialogues rather than crappy voices.
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Spotted at: <A HREF="http://www.thewitcher.com/forum/index.php?topic=13201.0
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">The Witcher forum</A>
 

Chefe

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There are so many games I wish this would have happened to.

I'm preordering the 360 version as soon as it's announced.
 

Lingwe

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It's really funny hearing about how CD Project Red is going to all this trouble the make their game even better (for free). It is exactly the opposite of what you have come to expect from game developers nowadays.

Kind of like living in bizarro world.
 

Mr. Teatime

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It's bizarre that they're prepared to go to all this effort half a year after its original release - why was the game in such a state when it was released, then?
 

Suchy

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Coz Atari wanted to cash in back then.

Really nice move anyway, I wish some dev studios to take an example from CDPR.
They could do it also for Polish version... Dandelion sounds like someone squished his left testicle. Shani and Triss also sound terrible, kinda like from a pretentional tv soap opera.
 

Shannow

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Mr. Teatime said:
It's bizarre that they're prepared to go to all this effort half a year after its original release - why was the game in such a state when it was released, then?
Atari - And I don't mean the band.

No, seriously. It was their first game. It is quite different from other currently popular aRPGs. They couldn't have had a good idea whether it would sell or not. Now that it sold quite well they had the means to even out the edges, respond to criticism....and did I mention Atari?

And what do you mean with "state"? It was quite well received. They are just polishing it up and I aplaud them for it.
 

Ausir

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Well, the crappy voices in the Polish version are their fault, not Atari's. Although I still prefer the Polish Shani to the English one. But Polish Dandelion sucks.
 

Mr. Teatime

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By 'state', I mean the fact that for a game marketed (to me at least) on its story, dialogue and characters, I found it horribly lacking. The dialogue was fairly laughable, and I gave up midway through Act 2.

I could see the game was trying, with all the discussions on philosophy, the 'beast' made from peoples' hate and whatever and so on, but they really, really needed to polish the writing (or translation) for that sort of stuff to work for me. Though I admit that most games leave me unimpressed these days, so it's possibly me as much as the game.
 

Suchy

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The English dialogues were pretty butchered up (Atari saving on voice acting) to the level some people didn't know wtf is going on. It's supposed to be fixed in EE.
 

Trash

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The translation was horribly butchered. There was however a fanfix that put the original translation of the undertitles back in. That one was pretty good, even though it was strange to hear the character say something completely different from the undertitles.

I sure hope the improved version will be worth waiting for it. It made me quit playing the game in the last chapter.
 

Noceur

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Suchy said:
The English dialogues were pretty butchered up (Atari saving on voice acting) to the level some people didn't know wtf is going on. It's supposed to be fixed in EE.

This is good news, if true. One of the reasons I haven't bothered with the Witcher is because of the butchered english translation.
I also see I missed the demo... hrm, hrm.
 

jagged-jimmy

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Erm, people complain about baaad devs, but this is way too much, its completely unnecessary IMHO. I am playing the german version now and voice acting is actually okey. I wont say its superb, but it never feels wrong and Geralts voice is awesome.
Waste of ressources there.
 

Shannow

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jagged-jimmy said:
Erm, people complain about baaad devs, but this is way too much, its completely unnecessary IMHO. I am playing the german version now and voice acting is actually okey. I wont say its superb, but it never feels wrong and Geralts voice is awesome.
Waste of ressources there.
The butchered translations are also being corrected, so new voice overs were necessary anyway...
 

Oarfish

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all this trouble the make their game even better (for free).

Well, they are shipping to console. So it's still a failure of the free market.
 

jagged-jimmy

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Shannow said:
jagged-jimmy said:
Erm, people complain about baaad devs, but this is way too much, its completely unnecessary IMHO. I am playing the german version now and voice acting is actually okey. I wont say its superb, but it never feels wrong and Geralts voice is awesome.
Waste of ressources there.
The butchered translations are also being corrected, so new voice overs were necessary anyway...

Yea, but changing the voice actors would mean, they cant reuse the older voiceovers. So stil a waste. I would rather record the extra dialogues with the old guys.
 

Texas Red

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You guys are just confused because CD Project, unlike every other company, doesn't act like Scrooge McDuck.
 

Bloodlust

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Actually,I am certain that the cost of the whole procedure of rerecording the dialogue for so many actors and languages is much less than Liam Neelson's salary for his voice in fallout3.
 

Shannow

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jagged-jimmy said:
Shannow said:
jagged-jimmy said:
Erm, people complain about baaad devs, but this is way too much, its completely unnecessary IMHO. I am playing the german version now and voice acting is actually okey. I wont say its superb, but it never feels wrong and Geralts voice is awesome.
Waste of ressources there.
The butchered translations are also being corrected, so new voice overs were necessary anyway...

Yea, but changing the voice actors would mean, they cant reuse the older voiceovers. So stil a waste. I would rather record the extra dialogues with the old guys.

"You, Witcher, kill stuff coz Elves. Farms in danger." (+ fans didn't like the voice)

"Hello, Geralt. I have heard about you and I am in need of a Witcher. We think that elf rebells are raiding our outlying farms. You will be paid well, just make those attacks stop!" (+ fans can choose what voice they find most appropiate for the npc.)

Those are made up examples and I obviously used hyperbole to make my point. But as you see it is not done by recording additional voice overs. The butchered dialogue has to be re-recorded anyway.
 

Mareus

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Hehe, I know this is offtopic a bit but I cannot see anything more weird than watching a movie or playing a game that was synchronized on some other language, IF you understand the original language that is. I just like to hear how it sounded originaly, and just thinking how the Witcher would sound on Croatian makes me puke. This is a question to all those Germans, French, ... who synchronize every goddamn thing: Do you really like it better on your native language or are you like me and search for original sound?

I even read books on english if I can get my hands on them, rather than read Croatian translation. I don't know japanese, but I like to watch anime on japanise with written translation. Whenever there is a synchronization involved i just wanna puke.
 

Suchy

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Same here. Original language+subtitles ftw.
It's not that bad in games, since lip sync goes with sound, but still it has to be good voice acting - a rare thing.
 

Shannow

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Well, most localized games I've played had rather bad VOs. One of the few exeptions I can think of was Minsk whose German voice I liked much better than the English one. I actually only understood all the Minsk hate on the internet after playing BG(2) in English...
Movies are usually much better though. They only have problems with comedies that rely heavily on word play. But some are creative enough to introduce new jokes to substitute the untranslatable ones.
While I usually prefer the English originals there are movies like Last Man Standing where the actors mumble worse than Kurt Kobain in Nirvana songs. Since dialogues in such movies are usually not witty anyway I might as well watch them in German and understand what the hell they are saying.
I've seen some foreign movies that the US americans translated into English and have to say that German localization is a lot more sophisticated...
Books on the other hand are never well translated (at least the fantasy ones) so I always stick with the English originals.
Anyway, more recent games left me a choice of language before installing. Not all development is bad ;)

But, since I don't speak polish the Witcher will either be played in German or English.
 

WhiskeyWolf

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Mareus said:
I don't know japanese, but I like to watch anime on japanise with written translation. Whenever there is a synchronization involved i just wanna puke.
Same here. I prefer my anime with fan-subs.
 

Jasede

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Insert Title Here RPG Wokedex Codex Year of the Donut I'm very into cock and ball torture
Rambo: First Blood is shit without German dubbing; Stallone sounds so fucking stupid. Same for a lot of movies really; German voice-actors are usually stage-actors and tend to be far better at acting than the actual American actor, resulting in excellent dubbings in movies.
 

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