18.02.2008 | Batons, drawing boards and microphones
In the production of "The Abbey", Alcachofa Soft have taken a very different approach to the usual one of making adventure games.
For example, first of all they drew up a storyboard, so the game was completely visualized before programming even began. Emilio De Paz started work on the soundtrack at the same time, so a lot of the music had already been recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra before the game found a publisher in Crimson Cow. Speaking of which: "The Abbey" will be the first game published worldwide by Crimson Cow. It is currently due for release in the next 4-12 weeks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the Benelux countries, the UK, Russia, the USA, and of course its "homeland" Spain.
After all these years of development, it's nice to see everything coming together and a great idea turning into what we trust will be an excellent game. Over the past weeks there was yet another important "first": The game characters learned to speak! We were in the recording studio for the German version and could finally hear Leonardo, Bruno and Co. And what's more, we taught them to speak. There's an interesting article about that (in German) at Gamecaptain.de.
One of the biggest challenges when you add the voices to a game is that, unlike movie dubbing, normally you work blind, i.e. without any footage for the voice actors to see and synchronize their lines with. This means that the director and the voice actors not only have to know the script very well, they also have use their imagination and creativity to put themselves in the characters' place and make them come to life. Fortunately, "The Abbey" uses the innovative Facial Expression System, so all the game characters have very lifelike facial expressions and gestures, so that helped our voice acting stars to give even better performances than in our previous adventure games.
The game held another challenge for the team: The remote monastery up in the mountains is full of monks - not a single nun to be found. So it was a difficult task to give every single one of the 20 monks not only individual looks, but also individual voices . But here too the game was a big help to us, because from young to old, fat to slim, cowardly to bullying and scheming to naïve, the abbey has a plethora of characters.
Then, at the end of the recording process, comes the moment of truth, when the first dialogues between characters are heard in full before being implemented into the game. And as in the case of Runaway 1 and 2, The Westerner, Clever & Smart, and other games we've made, colleagues stop, close their eyes, listen to the battles of words and then say: "That could just as easily be a movie or a radio play". And the director is happy, because now he knows that his vision, and what he "heard" in his mind has become reality.
Georg Hach
For example, first of all they drew up a storyboard, so the game was completely visualized before programming even began. Emilio De Paz started work on the soundtrack at the same time, so a lot of the music had already been recorded with the City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra before the game found a publisher in Crimson Cow. Speaking of which: "The Abbey" will be the first game published worldwide by Crimson Cow. It is currently due for release in the next 4-12 weeks in Germany, Austria, Switzerland, France, the Benelux countries, the UK, Russia, the USA, and of course its "homeland" Spain.
After all these years of development, it's nice to see everything coming together and a great idea turning into what we trust will be an excellent game. Over the past weeks there was yet another important "first": The game characters learned to speak! We were in the recording studio for the German version and could finally hear Leonardo, Bruno and Co. And what's more, we taught them to speak. There's an interesting article about that (in German) at Gamecaptain.de.
One of the biggest challenges when you add the voices to a game is that, unlike movie dubbing, normally you work blind, i.e. without any footage for the voice actors to see and synchronize their lines with. This means that the director and the voice actors not only have to know the script very well, they also have use their imagination and creativity to put themselves in the characters' place and make them come to life. Fortunately, "The Abbey" uses the innovative Facial Expression System, so all the game characters have very lifelike facial expressions and gestures, so that helped our voice acting stars to give even better performances than in our previous adventure games.
The game held another challenge for the team: The remote monastery up in the mountains is full of monks - not a single nun to be found. So it was a difficult task to give every single one of the 20 monks not only individual looks, but also individual voices . But here too the game was a big help to us, because from young to old, fat to slim, cowardly to bullying and scheming to naïve, the abbey has a plethora of characters.
Then, at the end of the recording process, comes the moment of truth, when the first dialogues between characters are heard in full before being implemented into the game. And as in the case of Runaway 1 and 2, The Westerner, Clever & Smart, and other games we've made, colleagues stop, close their eyes, listen to the battles of words and then say: "That could just as easily be a movie or a radio play". And the director is happy, because now he knows that his vision, and what he "heard" in his mind has become reality.
Georg Hach
Crimson Cow