174: Bark! Bark! Bark!

Wendy Despain

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Jan 14, 2008
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Bark! Bark! Bark!

Think those repetitive bits of throw-away dialogue in videogames are annoying? Imagine how your roommate feels. Wendy Despain analyzes the misguided tradition of the "bark."

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H.R.Shovenstuff

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Sep 19, 2008
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Another reason I love the Half-life series.
You won't find Gordon Freeman blurting out the same old lines,or any hint of dialog for that matter, at the drop of a hat. He's just too cool for such paltry expressions of pain or happiness, unless he gets burnt, obviously.
But the picture of Gears of War was more than apt, those barks annoyed the hell outa me.
 

Gxas

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Sep 4, 2008
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An active reload in Gears gets a bark every time. And I active every time... annoying as hell.
 

paste

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Oct 31, 2008
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I have to slightly disagree with this thread. As a gamer, I am immune to the barks, but I feel they are necessary for an immersing game. Take FF7 Crisis Core for example: I was playing this the other day while my girlfriend was playing a different game. About ten minutes into it, she mockingly repeated the phrases "Activating combat mode!" and "Modulating phase!" when I realized that these phrases were being repeated over and over throughout my game. Now, these were all cues to me, basically sound effects. But sound effects are necessary. If the scene simply changed without warning, the overall effect is diminished and the game feels unpolished. It's like walking through the world on mute. When you're out and about, there are people and things everywhere making noises. In fact, if there weren't any music in video games, the relative amount of sound would be much greater in the real world. The game hovers around the atmosphere of a silent film. For a game to emulate a realistic or, preferrably, believeable world, you'd think there would have to be a quite mutter all the time, a la the first screen of Super Mario All Stars. That, or a huuuuuge database of sound for the characters to pull from.
 

WingedFortress

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Feb 5, 2008
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Halo actually does a spectacular job of "barking". The NPC's running around have huge amounts of dialogue(After about 4 playthrough's of halo 3, I'm still hearing new one liners) that do an awesome job of keeping each round a little different from the last. It help's that the Master Chief keep's shut up for most of the game too.

As for half life, I particularly enjoyed all the different phrases for when an NPC saw you die. I did not enjoy however, being told to reload my gun every five seconds.
 

Brad Venable

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Nov 4, 2008
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I am right there with Wendy. As a voice actor, most of us always wonder "is that all?" when recording soundsets for NPCs and all. I honestly think that there is enough variation in WoW and the original RTS games, but some of these games nowadays are just ridiculous.

Does anyone remember The 7th Guest and The 11th Hour? Robert Hirschboek had so many of those taunts to record...some were repetitive (only because I was losing those minigames), but I wanted to reach into my PC and throttle Henry Stauf. *shakes fist*

My favorite, though, was the last puzzle of the 11th Hour. Stauf beats you in the Othello-type game, and then: "Are you coming...or are you just breathing hard?"

OMG I froze...and then I laughed my butt off.

And then promptly beat him the next time.

I think that it would be great if there were more barks. Just more booth time for me. :)
 

eltonborges

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Apr 25, 2008
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Heheh. This is a very nice thread. And if anyone ever think about how hard is to construct a game dialog in a game, go to Mutants not allowed, a Fallout fan site, and downloadf the Van buren documents,an see by yourself. But in games, at least I think, the problem is that developers normaly never get used to their characters responses, see, just because you could say f*ck you don´t need to repeat at infinitum, and if you see the Dead Space movie, they transform the main character in a true lame copy of a action movie class bcdefg. She try to put that word in every single word, so there is no way to really feel the panic and fear that everyone is fighting trough because you just listen to f*ck. The build of a character is no easy task, but we still getting a lot of stereotypes in this industry. Maybe developers can do just like some movie directors and look to normal people, what we are and what we can. When I listen to the dialogs in GoW 2, Christ, that is by far the most weak point in that game, but was propositional, so what to do? We cannot ignore a game like that, but if they think that is the best way, alot of other developers are going to follow them.
 

L.B. Jeffries

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Nov 29, 2007
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Thunderhorse said:
Halo actually does a spectacular job of "barking". The NPC's running around have huge amounts of dialogue(After about 4 playthrough's of halo 3, I'm still hearing new one liners) that do an awesome job of keeping each round a little different from the last. It help's that the Master Chief keep's shut up for most of the game too.
Really? I do co-op with my buddy all the time and the troops drive me nuts. One of them always says, "Hahaha, we just kicked their asses!" Maybe I wear my serious pants too tightly when I'm playing those games but at least have another marine say, "Please shut up." when that comes out.
 

Arkitext

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Mar 25, 2008
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I had a copy of C&C 3 when I went to stay with my girl a few months ago, and she was driven insane by the way your little dudes are constantly reminding you what they are and what they're doing every single click.

I didn't notice it until she started mocking my Missile spewing *Somethings*, and ever since I've been overly aware of my soldiers bark backs. It started to annoy my face off.
 

Madshaw

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Jun 18, 2008
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they do get very tiresome and repetitive, i mute most games and listen to music
 

CanadianWolverine

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Feb 1, 2008
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I discovered quickly in a small household that the sounds of my pc games will piss off other people to no end. Thus, I invested in a nice set of head phones and have reduced the cost of my systems by not investing in speakers of any kind.

That said, responsive background noise for a game is very important. Poorly placed dialogue that repeats ad nauseum is not, even when it is only text in the older RPGs. Though, I think this article, while trying to be understanding of the developer's plight has failed to understand that harping them about excellent background sounds (aka no longer noticed as "barking") is like harping on King Arthur for not finding the Holy Grail - hell, you could probably make a game almost fully based on sound and it could still come up short just because of the players actions being repetitive.

The only two solutions I see as being satisfactory is lack of dialogue by having the dialogue there is be carefully placed to limited event triggers or so freaking much of it that one saying is almost never heard again by all but the most die hard of repeat playing gamers.
 

Unholykrumpet

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Nov 1, 2007
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I always use a headset when gaming (be it PC or 360), Call of Duty series did a good job of having a ton of quotes to say when you died (which, on veteran...you did a lot), as well as having quite a bit of dialogue that was awesome. I think another good solution to this problem is the Devil May Cry approach, where they just crank the music up during fights. You don't hear that many barks that way :p
 

snrubmanor

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Sep 11, 2008
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Christ on a bike, redundant dialogue is terrible... Thankfully GTAIV seemed to have at least two tracks of dialogue for any mission, and if you failed enough at misions due to stuffing about... then the non-playable character in the back seat would normally just say "meh, I just want to listen to the radio for a while" or "just shut the hell up and drive" instead of repeating their life story - it was nice... because Christ on a bike, redundant dialogue is terrible. The barks had emotion and context, and there was enough variety for me to be happy.

Particular offenders that come to mind... The "whacky" dialogue of any Simpsons game ever made, which consists of nothing BUT this crap... Christ on a bike the redundant dialogue was terrible.
 

Pseudonym2

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Mar 31, 2008
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I don't get why they can't just take the dialog out instead of adding two or three more catchphrases. Having Niko yell "I'm going to cut your fucking head off" for millionth time is annoying especially when there is nobody in earshot or I'm trying to sneak up on someone.
 

MossStone

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Jan 22, 2008
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In Fallout 3 I got really annoyed when I heard the same line a few times, and realised it was being said by different voice actors. If they could afford the voice actor for one more line, why couldn't they afford to write one more line for him?