Xboxist

Voice Acting in Fable: Why it's so Good

Anyone who has played Fable II has likely been impressed with the sheer scope of the game world crafted by Peter Molyneux and his team at Lionhead Studios. From the graphics to the wide array of moral choices presented in the sandbox adventure, Fable II exceeds the scope of any previous entry in the genre by a large margin. However, the developers at Lionhead didn't do it all by themselves. They hired an army of voice actors to help flesh out the story and give each of the characters in the game a lifelike personality.

Partnering with a production company called SIDE, Lionhead cast over 45 actors (aged from 8 to 80) to play almost 200 different speaking characters. Four of Side's voice directors ensured that all performances harmonized perfectly with Fable's unique world and captured the complexities of its inhabitants. The voice recording ran concurrently in two of Side’s studios for over three months, amounting to nearly 370,000 recorded words, or about 38 hours of total dialogue.

Before working with Lionhead to bring voice acting to Fable II, Side worked on games such as Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Tomb Raider Underworld, and Heavenly Sword. Fable II is definitely the largest project that the company has worked on up to this point.

Do you have a passion for gaming and a silky-smooth voice? Then maybe a career in voice acting is in the cards! It is certainly a growing profession, as the technical characteristics of video game consoles allow programmers to include more and more realistic spoken dialogue in their games.

[Source: Press Release]