Babel gets rave reviews for audio
Babel's audio department has recently completed dialogue production for two of 2006's most interesting and critically acclaimed titles, with localised audio for Majesco's award winning Psychonauts, and English dialogue for SCEI's new survival horror Rule of Rose.
For Psychonauts, Babel provided fully localised French and German versions, with special attention paid to the style and feel of the game and the sheer depth of each character. More than 50 actors were cast for the project, including Sandra Schwittau the German voice of Bart Simpson, to ensure that the award winning English dialogue lost nothing in its localisation.
Babel was contracted by Frognation to provide English casting, direction and recording services for SCEI's "Rule of Rose", because of it's specialisation in game dialogue as well as being an ideally suited partner as the title's storyline revolves around an English orphanage in the 1930's. As part of the service Babel also hosted teams from Japan and the UK, in the apartments at Babel's partner studio Goldcrest in Central London during production.
Some of the very best adult and child actors were cast, bringing the games beautifully developed and slightly disturbing characters to life. A permanent facial capture camera in the vocal booth was used to help the animation team capture the actors' lip movements and expressions to aid with the breath taking animation that is present throughout the game.
Notes to Editor
Babel is the leader in specialist outsourced services for the games and interactive entertainment industry. The company has offices in Brighton, Montréal, New Delhi and Los Angeles, providing cross-platform localisation, QA, certification, audio, print and marketing services.
Clients include Sony, Nintendo, SEGA, Atari, Microsoft, Eidos, 2K Games, Capcom, THQ, Disney, Namco, Bandai, Majesco, NovaLogic.
Psychonauts reviews
FRENCH REVIEWS
http://www.xbox-gamer.net/test-xbox-Psychonauts_283.html
"The humour strikes every time thanks to some great comical expressions and to French dubbing that is with no doubt the very best. Composed of childlike naïve lines, subtle irony, derision and with some more mature references, Psychonauts manages to make players of all ages smile, which is in itself an achievement." "It is also the case with the audio with, as I mentioned earlier, French dubbing of very high quality, lines that make you smile and music which, without being transcendent, are of great fit to the tone."
GERMAN REVIEWS
www.yiya.de
"The voice casting is unique and even the pitches (timbre) of the voices refer perfectly to their originals. No exaggerated articulation, but well dosed and coherent, like the original. Even smaller, but very important roles, were realised with love for the details and that's why Sheegor sounds just as pitched as in the original. Also the translation tried to realise all gags, what is not very easy. But the advantage of the original version is here very minimal. Now there is no more reason for speech grumps to ignore this pearl of games. Psychonauts is my game of the year".
Rule of Rose reviews
http://ps2.gamespy.com/playstation-2/rule-of-rose/683139p1.html
"The voice acting -- which is superb, by the way -- is in full English...you'll be haunted by the sound of children laughing and crying in the background..."