Volume III Book 6 Quest Notes

By: Jeff ‘MadeOfLions’ Libby

Quest Notes!

The time does fly, doesn’t it? It seems like just a few short months ago that we were talking about Epic Book 5: The Prince of Rohan. Yet, it’s time once again for Quest Notes, your source for the latest and greatest information about the Epic Story and related subjects. This time around I’ll be joined by Tim ‘Enosity’ Dwyer, an audio designer at Turbine who has been responsible for getting recorded dialogue into LOTRO since its conversion to Free to Play. But, before we dive into the challenges of recording voice-overs, let’s take a peek at Epic Book 6: Mists of Anduin.

South of Lothlórien, your adventures continue along the shores of the Great River

New Region: The Great River

Every update brings with it exciting new things for us designers to work with, but getting brand new landscapes has to top the list. Update 6 opens up the lands south of Lothlórien along the banks of Anduin, the Great River. This brand new area brings a lot of brand new possibilities. The region has varied terrain, from reed-choked marshlands to rolling hills, with forested terrain in the north and the desolation of the Brown Lands in the south-east.

The reeds that grow in the Rushgore, along the banks of Anduin, may hide dangerous foes

Historically, this region was of immense strategic importance. It contained one of the two major crossings of the river and, five hundred years ago, a force of Easterling raiders used this crossing to strike at the northern provinces of Gondor. During this invasion, the Steward of Gondor sent urgent pleas for help to anyone who would listen. Just when all seemed lost, a mighty force of horsemen rode out of the north and defeated the Easterling raiders. These brave warriors were the ancestors of the Rohirrim, led by Eorl the Young. In gratitude, the Steward of Gondor granted the western province of Calenardhon to them. That area became known by a new name: the Kingdom of Rohan.

The Great River region contains several notable locations for those interested in the culture of Rohan: the mighty statues of the Cuthstan, erected at the location where Eorl the Young met Cirion, the Steward of Gondor; the Field of Celebrant, where the great battle with the Easterlings took place five hundred years ago; and the military outpost of Stangard, where Rohirrim men serve a term of duty imposed upon them by King Théoden for various crimes or disloyalties. They keep watch for any danger to Rohan’s borders, and, after the length of their service is completed, they may return to their lands with their transgressions forgiven. We’ve met a handful of Rohirrim already, such as Prince Théodred, Grimbold of Grimslade, and the commander Elfhelm, but we’ll get to see more of these hot-blooded people throughout the Great River region.

The military outpost of Stangard gives us our first real look at Rohirric architecture

Even more recently, a small group of eight travelers have passed through this region. As you adventure here, you may uncover a few signs of their passing and your actions may help to safeguard both their lives and their quest. But, I have said too much…

But Why? Why Go to the Great River?

You may be wondering by now how exactly your adventures will lead you to the Great River, since Volume III Book 5 of the Epic Story concluded at Grimbold’s Camp in the Gap of Rohan. This new region is all the way on the other side of the Misty Mountains! You may also be wondering why we’re going this way towards Rohan, instead of approaching from the west. After all, we were just at Isengard! Why don’t we just cross into Rohan from the west?

There are a number of reasons, but the primary one concerns the shape of the story we want to tell. All stories have shapes, and by examining the shape of a story you can learn some interesting things. Just check out this entertaining video of a brief lecture on the subject by one of my favorite authors, Kurt Vonnegut.

Are you back? Good. Now, as a fan of The Lord of the Rings, you can probably plot the shape of the section of story at which we’re about to arrive. One thing you’ll see by analyzing The Two Towers is that our heroes have suffered setback after setback, but things slowly begin to get better. Certain evils caused by the villains begin to be reversed, old friends thought lost are returned, and the heroes snatch victory from the jaws of defeat. There’s an upward trend to the slope. When the story dives for the climactic battle of Helm’s Deep, the dip doesn’t last long and, our heroes (ultimately?) triumph.

That’s a very compelling shape for a story. If we approach Rohan from the west, that shape is more difficult to achieve. We would arrive at notable locations well before the events for which they are known, and the satisfyingly upward slope of achievements would happen elsewhere while we waited for the story to arrive at our location. Certainly we would come up with interesting stories had we decided to approach from the west, but brainstorming sessions for that approach felt a bit like we were forcing it. The natural way to progress into Rohan is from east to west, and the shape of the story supports that progression. The Great River region gets us almost to Rohan’s doorstep and allows us to examine notable events and themes relevant to the establishment of that kingdom, in addition to exploring the temperament of its people.

I’ve gone on at length about our use of the “Pause Button” in earlier issues of Quest Notes , and this is another one of those occasions where we will need to make use of it. It’s a long way from Dunland to the Great River, so, in game terms, we’ll just cover the travel time as an accelerated montage and get back to the business of the story when you arrive.

Behind the Curtain: Recording Voice-over for LOTRO

Let’s change gears for a minute. It’s fun to use my Quest Notes soapbox to talk about some of the behind-the-scenes work that goes on during a typical update. This time around, let’s talk about the writing and recording of voice-over lines! There are many spheres of the game that get voice-over, but today I’ll be focusing on voice-over specifically for the Epic Story.

Voice-over planning begins in earnest once the quest arc for the Book is planned and the individual quests are written and connected together. Usually, at this early stage, nothing is yet placed in the world; we’re dealing with quest files only. As happens a lot in game design, it all comes down to a spreadsheet:

That picture of the initial script shows the first two lines we’ll need recorded for Epic Book 6. You can see that Grimbold is the speaker and he’s a Rohirrim Male. The script shows what segment of the quest each line belongs to – in this case it’s the Bestowal and first objective of the first Chapter. Those entries are followed by the requested lines, usually the first sentence of the dialogue in the quest or a paraphrased simplification of it. If there were any unusual words in the requested lines, there would be a subsequent column, generally supplied by Berephon, containing the pronunciation guide for the unusual words.

Once the script is complete and contains all the requested voice-over lines, we pass the script on to the audio designers for the next stage of the process. I asked Tim ‘Enosity’ Dwyer to write a little about what he does to coordinate the voice-over recording for a typical update . So take it away, Enosity:

“Well, it all starts with the script for me. Each update, I patiently wait for the arrival of a digital spreadsheet containing new dialogue to record! It’s kind of like waiting for your favorite band to drop their new album, except I don’t have to buy the spreadsheet and then I have work to do... bad example! Once I get the initial script, I spend time choosing which talent is to play which character and formatting the script for the recording session. There’s plenty of rules about choosing talent for parts. Sometimes it can be tricky. For example, the voice of Galadriel always must be played by the same person. With such an expansive game, it can take a lot of planning and organization when casting. The goals when selecting voice talent are always: consistency, quality, and diversity.

Once the script is looking ready and the talent is cast, I send everything over to our talent coordinator. Our talent coordinator spends time scheduling recording sessions for the voice talent that I’ve picked. He also deals with all the paperwork! Once I hear back from our talent coordinator on recording times, I book meetings for the designers so that we can all be there during the recording sessions.

With the constant content that’s going into LOTRO multiple times of the year, we do all of the voice recording remotely over the internet. The designers and myself provide direction during the recording session. Our talent coordinator also sits in remotely on each session. He provides additional voice direction, which is incredibly helpful. Our voice talent either records in their personal recording studio or in a sound studio with an engineer that’s local to them.

After the recording session for a LOTRO update, our talent coordinator will take the raw files, edit them, and provide the initial mastering based on our guidelines. When the files come back into Turbine HQ, I spend the time to add any audio effects that may be needed. We don’t want voices to sound too processed, so we usually go light on the effects. Most updates, I’m applying effects to monsters, ghosts, and other fantastical creatures. These are always the most enjoyable dialogue lines to deal with anyway. Lucky me! The last step on my end is to convert all the audio into a state that can be easily read by our game. A little bit of scripting, encoding, and renaming is all it takes. Now the audio is in game and ready for our designers to hook up!”

Thanks, Enosity!

Once the files come back in, it’s time for me to create a script that will live on the NPC in question and tell him what sound file to play on what step of the quest. This picture is a portion of the voice-over script for Grimbold:

You see how some of the sound files are labeled a and some are labeled b? This is because during the recording sessions, the talent records multiple takes of each line. When the time comes to hook the files into the script, it’s up to me to select the one that sounds best. Here’s an example of two takes for Grimbold’s bestowal of Book 6, Chapter 1:

Take 1

Take 2

There are a few more steps required in order to get the quest to recognize that Grimbold has voice-over to play, but now we’ve gotten the heaviest lifting out of the way. The next time you double-click on an NPC and he greets you with a voice-over line, you’ll know something of the process that got him to say it. Should Enosity and I have explained this secret process to you? Maybe not. After all, the Old Woman of the Mountain says we should not trust duvodiad…

A Few Teases

How many issues of Quest Notes would be complete without a handful of teasing screenshots presented without context or explanation? None, that’s how many!

Conclusion

And that’s it for this issue of Quest Notes! Many thanks to Enosity for taking the time to help out, and I hope you enjoy Volume III, Book 6: Mists of Anduin!