BTVA Team

The newly-released Marvel VS Capcom 3 has an impressive roster of voice actors, many of which have reprised their roles from recent media. Todd Ciolek of AnimeNewsNetwork got the chance to interview Jonathan Klein, vice president at New Generation Pictures, the studio where MVC3 was recorded.Jonathan: The process of recording was essentially the same as how we did Street Fighter IV. Each actor came in separately to record their lines. However, since we were dealing with Marvel Comics characters, we had to be extra careful to make sure the tone and dialogue from the Marvel characters were true to their personas, as well as having the CAPCOM characters sound like they should in their own respective games. Plus, we had to be sure that each person's taunts between the Marvel and CAPCOM characters would sound like they were really taunting each other directly and not just some general shout-out. The script dialogue that Marvel writer Frank Tieri had given us to work with was excellent, so that made it easy to do. It was incredibly fun to record. And it helped a lot that many of the Marvel actors had already played these characters in the different animated TV series or movies, so they knew their roles well.But since voice director Taliesin Jaffe and I are huge comic book geeks, we really wanted to put our own little touch in there as well. We did get our chance to contribute some script lines for the recording. One of the things I think I'm most proud of is that we got to re-write some of tag-ins for the characters. Tag-ins are when the player switches between different characters during the battle; the character shouts out the name of the other character they want to replace them in battle.Originally, characters like Hulk and Spider-Man simply called out everybody's proper name. But I had talked with Chris Baker at Marvel and we both agreed that the Hulk has a hard time even remembering the proper names of heroes in the Marvel Universe - when Bruce Banner is not in control of the Hulk's mind, that is - let alone the names of a whole bunch of new characters from the CAPCOM universe. So I asked if we could start having some of the Hulk's tag-ins use "Hulk speak." Chris happily agreed. So I went through my quite large Incredible Hulk comic book collection to research what names the Hulk would use for the Marvel heroes. The Hulk has called Iron Man "Metal Man" frequently, Wolverine "Puny Man" on several occasions, and he even called Thor "Goldilocks" in old issues of the comic book, so we used that in the game. Then we tried to think of what the Hulk would call certain CAPCOM characters. The Hulk usually gives people's names based on their appearance, so it was a lot of fun coming up with those. Who wouldn't want to call Viewtiful Joe “Funny Helmet Man”?Spider Man was another case where we did some tag-in line changes, because Spider-Man uses his mouth as a weapon almost as much as his super powers. He uses verbal barbs to annoy those he's fighting against and even those he's allied with. I loved that we got him to call Wesker by his first name. Nobody but Spider-Man could do that. We wrote a bunch of great tag-ins for Spidey, even a couple of pre-battle taunts. I'm not sure which ones they used, other than "Albert" (Wesker), but hopefully some of them will show up in the final game.J: Marvel sent us the entire cast list of actors they wanted for all of their character voices. Most of them were the actors who were voicing, or had voiced, the characters in the current and recent cartoons and video games. It was our job to contact their agents and get them on board with the project. But it was a bit difficult for us because we weren't allowed to tell the agents and the actors what role or game they were going to be doing before they agreed to work on the project. This all was due to the secrecy CAPCOM wanted to prevent people from knowing about the game or having the game's roster of characters getting out. I would be calling agents saying, “We are interested in using [actor name] for a video game project.” And the agent would say “What's the project?” and I would have to tell them “I can't say because I'm under a non-disclosure agreement”, then they'd ask “What's the role?” and I'd have to repeat the same thing. So the agents would start asking me questions like “Is it a pornographic game?” or “Would my client do something they would consider offensive in the game?” or “How much screaming is involved in the game?”It eventually became a game of 20 Questions with the agents, because I couldn't tell them what it is, but I was allowed to say what it isn't. Somehow we were still able to get everybody that was on Marvel's list. When the actors came in to work on the game, we finally were able to tell them what they were doing at that point. Many were surprised, but very happy about it, since a lot of them were MvC2 game players or very attached to the roles they played for Marvel. I do know some form of the roster eventually leaked, but it was way after we finished recording.J: Well, it was an audition process. We auditioned actors from all over the US, and even Canada. Of course Taliesin and I had some actors in mind for certain characters when we first auditioned them. We presented several of the best candidates for each of the characters, but the final casting choice was made by Mr. Niitsuma and the CAPCOM game development team.J: I am happy with all the characters that CAPCOM and Marvel included in the game. Taliesin and I already have a long history with all the Street Fighter characters, having worked on Street Fighter IV and Super Street Fighter IV . So it was great to re-introduce Mike Haggar back into the modern world of fighting games. I've been a fan of the Darkstalkers games, so it was great to see them represented. It might have been interesting to see somebody from the Ace Attorney series in the game, although I wouldn't know what their move set would be or what kind of special attack they would use, so it seems difficult to incorporate.On the Marvel side, I can't say I was disappointed by any of the characters they selected. I've been reading comic books for more than 30 years, so I know all the characters they included quite well. They created a nice balance between bringing back many of the classic characters from MvC2, and the earlier games, while introducing a bunch of new characters that are certainly relevant to the Marvel storylines in recent years. While people who aren't avid comic book readers may not recognize some of the new characters, they create a lot of diversity and unique play-style opportunities.But if I had to nit-pick, I'd would have love to have seen Doctor Strange in the roster simply because you've got two of his mystical arch-enemies, Dormammu and Shuma Gorath, in the cast. And we should not forget that Doctor Doom is in the game, who is a powerful mage as well as a brilliant scientist. So with three Marvel magic-using bad guys, you need at least one Marvel magic using good guy. So either Doctor Strange, or maybe Aunt May...because I believe she was the herald of Galactus in one issue of Marvel Team Up during the '80s, so she'd perfectly fit in the game, since Galactus is the final boss.I'm kidding about Aunt May, but I think I'd like having Squirrel Girl in the roster because she could be taken as both a joke character and an awesome threat. Unfortunately she's a very divisive character among players. Every hardcore player who wants her would demand her to be god-tier, since she's defeated such heavies as Thanos, Fing Fang Foom (sic), and Doctor Doom in the comic books. But every hardcore player who hates her would complain that she's either a "cheap boss" or just "broken.” But that's the problem with choosing a limited number of characters from two companies who have a huge stable of characters; whoever they choose, somebody is not going to be happy about it.J: An RPG title for the Xbox 360 or PS3 could take between two to four months, depending on the amount and complexity of the dialogue. Fighting games usually take a lot less time simply because there is a lot less dialogue for each actor. This project took about four weeks to completely record.J: It's hard to say which kind of company is easier. It's definitely like comparing apples and oranges, as their methodologies differ greatly. The main difference is that Japanese videogame companies, even American videogame companies, are a lot more "hands-on" during the entire casting and recording process. Anime companies, or at least the ones I worked with, tend to let you do your thing without them being directly involved. Anime companies provide all the source materials, tell you the guidelines and mostly leave you alone during the production process. Then the anime company will look at the final product for approval.There are advantages and disadvantages to working both ways. Anime companies give you greater creative control in casting, script editing, and direction, but you have much more responsibility for the final product. Any mistakes or creative decisions the client doesn't like are your fault and your financial responsibility to correct, and that can be costly if it's already far into production. With videogame companies you're just a cog in a greater machine that's putting together the best product possible. You have less creative control, which doesn't mean you have no creative input, but the burden of responsibility is much less on yourself, since the client is usually approving what you do, as you do it. It becomes less of a guessing game about “am I doing it the way the client will be satisfied with?” That can be a tremendous weight lifted off your shoulders during the production process.I do find that Japanese game companies can be much more stringent on how to pronounce Japanese in their games than anime companies. With anime companies, they care about consistency more than accuracy of the pronunciation. In anime, if you're going to pronounce something in Japanese, it doesn't have to be dead-on, though it should be if you can do it. But everybody should be consistent in the way they say it. In videogames, when you have a Japanese term they want you to use in the game, they want you to say it exactly like the Japanese. This is very true if it's a game series like Street Fighter, where it has only been said in Japanese for a long time. Even with MvC3, for Ryu, Chun-Li and Akuma, we had to be sure that their attacks were said properly and were consistent with the Japanese counterparts. It can be a daunting task. Fortunately the client was there with us to make sure the actors were saying it the way they wanted them to say it in Japanese.J: They didn't have the game anywhere near ready when we started recording voices. I think we saw one video of an extremely early rough build of the game. There were only six characters designed at that time that were shown in the video. So we used that for our reference before we started recording voices. But there was no playable version to work with. Taliesin and I played a lot of MvC2 for our understanding of the mechanics of the game.For most fighting games in general I am decent against the CPU, but against an average player, boy do I suck. I'm much better at first- and third- person shooters and racing games. In fighting games I am a step above button-mashing. I know the moves and attacks for the characters, but I don't know the strategies well enough to utilize the moves and special attacks in the best manner. I'd love to have some pro come to my home and teach me how to not suck at fighting games, since I work on so many of them. Sadly, I don't think somebody like Seth Killian, Justin Wong or Daigo Umehara [note: these are professional fighting game players] would have the time or inclination to help me. Well, maybe if I offered them the chance to voice a character in some future fighting game in exchange for their help... who knows?