Most admirers of Quantic Dreams' interactive drama Heavy Rain will readily agree on the game's most glaring fault – the inconsistent voice acting. The visuals are astonishingly atmospheric, the plot (though choppy at times) is compelling, and the lush orchestral score is wonderfully resonant… But… Well, some of the acting performances are wooden to the point of somnambulism.

The thing is, Heavy Rain is far from alone. Although the videogame industry loves to compare itself with the movie business, and clearly has ambitions to become the story-telling medium of the 21st century, poor vocal performances are common, even among Triple A titles. In the last few months Aliens vs Predator, Army of Two: 40th Day and even Final Fantasy XIII have drawn criticism in the areas of scripting and performance. So what's going on?

"Although improving all the time, there is still a lack of focus on story and character in games," says Andy Emery creative director at Side, a leading provider of casting, directing and recording services to the videogame and movie sectors. "This has to be an integral part of the project from start to finish. We see problems with poor scripts all the time. A professional scriptwriter is an essential part of modern game development but still we get 'developer written' scripts with alarming regularity. Even with the best Hollywood actors on board, a poor script can result in poor voice acting."

A sometimes mediocre script certainly contributes to the problems in Heavy Rain, where key snippets of dialogue are so laboured and cliché-ridden, they more or less eject you straight out of the experience. But then, actors work with dodgy scripts all the time, and can still put together a reasonably compelling performance (just ask anyone who's appeared in a romantic comedy in the last decade). Experienced direction helps, too.

Clearly, there are deeper problems, involving the whole process of recording voice performances. And it starts with timetabling.



Traditionally, voice acting has been recorded toward the end of the cycle, when the over-arching structure of the game and its narrative are safely locked down. There are compelling reasons for this. Games tend to evolve enormously over the standard two-year process, with whole missions often culled at a late stage, as playtesting reveals unforeseen fault lines and design issues. Having to recall actors and record chunks of new dialogue to reflect story changes is perceived as an expensive, time-consuming chore – the last thing a hassled studio needs in the generally hellish run up to a major delivery deadline.

But while those justifications made sense in the old days, when voice performances tended to be restricted to skippable cut-scenes there for decoration only, they begin to look less convincing in the modern era. With titles like Heavy Rain and the forthcoming psychological thriller Alan Wake, where cinematic fidelity is a cornerstone of the experience, voice recording can't just be something jammed in at the end ostensibly to cut costs. But more on that later.

There are also fundamental differences between voice acting in a videogame and voice acting in linear artforms such as radio plays and animated movies. Due to the interactive nature of games, actors can't be given a standard film script from which they're able to gauge the throughline of their character and a feel for the dramatic development of the narrative. Instead, lines of dialogue need to be isolated into chunks so they can be accessed and triggered within the game in line with the actions of each individual player. Consequently, the performer will usually be presented with a spreadsheet jammed with hundreds of single lines of dialogue, with little sense of context or interaction.

As Emery argues, there's really not a lot of alternative. "For large complex RPG and MMO games, with dialogue that could add up to over 30hrs of play time, it's simply not practical to give the actors the whole script. You also risk information overload, with the actor struggling to focus on the areas of importance for their character. Star Wars: The Old Republic, the new MMO being developed by Bioware is a great example, as the project contains over 40 novels worth of scripted dialogue. The key is to give the actors the information they need for their scenes and ensure they are well directed by a professional and well-briefed director."

But according to David Sobolov, one of the most experienced videogame voice actors in the world (just check out his website), the significant time pressures mean that close, in-depth direction is not always possible. "Often, there's a need to record a great number of lines, so to keep the session moving, once we've established the tone of the character we're performing, the director will silently direct us using the spreadsheet on the screen by simply moving the cursor down the page to indicate if he/she liked what we did. Or they'll make up a code, like typing an 'x' to ask us to give them another take…" It sounds, in effect, like a sort of acting battery farm, a grinding, dehumanising production line of disembodied phrases, delivered for hours on end. Hardly condusive to Oscar-winning performances.

Indeed, the establishment of a fully-rounded character is a vital element of the acting process. Most western drama schools conform to the model of acting developed by Russian Theatre practitioner Constantin Stanislavsy. His works on the development of character - An Actor Prepares, Building a Character and Creating a Role - remain essential reference texts, even though his methods have been superseded and remixed by dozens of acting luminaries ever since – most notably perhaps, Lee Strasberg at The Actors Studio. Stanislavski placed enormous emphasis on the ability of the actor to understand and inhabit the character's life, not just the two hours of it presented on screen or stage, but everything that took place beforehand. This takes time and imagination – elements seemingly absent from the factory-line schedules of many recording sessions.

It's clear, however, that some studios have grasped this vital element. "The actors always have the opportunity to learn about the character before the session," says Emery of the work undertaken at Side. "For most leading roles the actor would have had a full audition, with a director present to brief them about the character and their motivations. Prior to a session they are sent their script and character bios, and where possible, an overview of the general story arc. This allows them to better understand the character they are to play and how they should be played."

But then there's an added inhibitive element in the videogame voice recording session – actors usually perform in isolation. This is, of course, a necessary evil as in-game dialogue will need to be chopped up, mixed and played in a variety of contexts. But this isn't much consolation to the actor. "I've only worked on one game where that wasn't the case," says Sobolov. "When I played The Arbiter in Halo Wars, they recorded cut scene dialogue with all the principal performers in the same room together much as they do in television animation. Most times we have to silently skip over the other character's lines (if they're shown to us at all) then deliver our dialogue as if we were having a conversation in real time." Again, this runs counter to drama training where the art of reacting to other performers is an intrinsic element.

Little wonder, then, that without a full script, a character chronology to study or other performers to interact with, voice acting can be both stilted and lacking in nuance. It's an intrinsic problem that the key voice over studios are really looking in to. Mark Estdale, director at casting and voice recording agency, Outsource Media, has been working for ten years on a system to provide voice over actors with a quick-n-dirty frame of reference for their characterisations.

"What the actor needs is something at the point of performance that they can react to," he explains. "To provide that, you need to throw away all previous script models. What we've done is build a database that can actually emulate game engine behaviours and recalls for the actor any kind of pertinent information - visuals from the game, audio, other actors' lines – and it's all instant recall. So you get the actor in the studio and when they're in the zone you hit them with this radical system – it's all on screen in front of them, and they're getting all the cues they'd get in the theatre or on a film production, they're not reliant on trying to figure out what the heck's going on."

Added to this, there's a very simple way to improve the quality of acting in most videogames: start early. "To achieve a cinematic level of quality that so many titles demand now, the voice acting can't be left to the end of the development cycle," maintains Emery. "Making character performances an integral part of the pre- and main production stages opens up a whole range of opportunities to improve the final quality." Mark Estdale wholeheartedly concurs. "Actors need to be cast when the developer is starting the design process. I'm working on one production now where we're there really early in development, and the whole cast is involved - they're giving voices to the characters as they're being designed."

Not only does this create a sense of ownership of the character, it also means that the director, writer, cast and game designers get to spark off each other – schlocky lumps of leaden dialogue, implausible character volte-faces and rampant cliché may all be avoided in a truly collaborative and respectful environment. In some ways, what developers need to do it stop drawing all their cinematic reference points from the big CGI-stuffed blockbusters and start looking at the likes of Ken Loach and Mike Leigh who employ improvisation and collaboration to build drama.

Ultimately, Emery pinpoints an evolving role within the game development process; instead of script writers, what is needed now are 'narrative designers', experts in the creation of plot and dialogue for an interactive medium. "Good narrative designers can work with game designers to ensure the story and dialogue becomes a fully integrated element of the game design, rather than a hindrance to pure interactivity. A lot of game players do not like to be stopped while a cut scene delivers story elements and clever Narrative design can ensure the story is delivered in a less obtrusive way.

"As narrative designers become more adept at delivering a compelling story in ways less obtrusive to game play, the distinction between 'Story' dialogue and 'World Filling' dialogue will continue to blur. The challenge will be to ensure ALL acting in games is believable, from in-game greetings, to death cries, to the epic monologue."

And Emery also highlights other vital elements of convincing non-linear narrative. "Good audio implementation ensures that individual files, separated for reasons of interactivity, can sound like fluid, natural, overlapping dialogue once triggered in the game. Using a professional director who is involved in casting, rehearsal and dialogue recordings makes a huge difference. It's essential to have someone who knows the project inside out, has been on board from the start, can talk to actors in their language and translate that into a performance."

The ultimate solution for Emery, however, is the emerging field of full performance capture, in which one actor provides motion and facial capture, as well as the voice. "For full performance capture sessions, it is more like a film shoot with script table reads, rehearsals and further familiarisation with the project all prior to an actual shoot," he says. "On the actual shoot the director will rehearse each scene with the actors together so they can get a feel of what will be going on in each scene and how they will interact and then have multiple live takes to get the required performance.

"On Dead Space: Extraction it was clear from the outset that the team was taking character performances in the game very seriously. They looked for actors to provide not only a vocal and facial performance but also facial likeness to be used in the game. Although the actors needed to have the right voice and the right look, the team were happy to be flexible about accent. The most important thing was to cast a group of distinct, believable characters and I think we really hit the mark, and the gaming press agreed with us."

The weird thing is, this is exactly the avenue Quantic Dream chose. Of the four principle characters in Heavy Rain, three were played by actors who provided the voice, motion and facial capture data. According to Madison Paige's body actor, Jacqui Ainsley, all the actors were given full scripts, and they spent three years on the project – ample time to inhabit their roles. Throughout the process, the game's creator and writer David Cage also provided oodles of background detail regarding the moral choices at the heart of the drama. They did everything right.

And certainly there are moments of profundity in the game, moments when the dialogue and performances click into place with spinetingling effect. It could be that the actors were inexperienced in games, that the audio implementation, with so many branching dialogue elements to cope with, could not always call up exactly the right vocal intonations for the moment.

Perhaps it is down to the ambition of the project, the fact that it has effectively created its own genre, that a few inherent weaknesses are cruelly magnified. The sheer size of the script (apparently 16 movies worth of text) may have contributed, though this scale is becoming more common these days. According to a preview of Rockstar's forthcoming adventure, LA Noire, in this month's Edge, the script weighs in at 22,000 pages. Yet still, the interactive drama, a genre at the forefront of narrative development, is in its infancy.

Most titles, however, sit in well-defined game types, developed by experienced studios. For them, there is no excuse anymore. David Sobolov is predictably passionate on the subject. "We're moving into a time where games are attempting to create an emotional experience rather than simply a visceral one. If developers intend to tell more complex stories they're going to need to hire the best talent they can find to complete that journey.

"A game can't be successful anymore if it's developed as a piece of software. It has to evoke emotional reactions and create a reality a gamer wants to buy into to be successful. In the best titles, good voice acting can be the glue that keeps a gamer immersed in the world that the developer is creating, often subconsciously. The human voice is the one thing in a game that's 100% real…"