Fighter. Blue. Light music. Most of us will be surprised or take a closer look when we see such a list ... but not Overwatch sound designer Jeff Garnett: for him, these points describe more than 750 lines and sounds created for Echo , the new hero of the game.
“At first, we just picked keywords and phrases that would serve as a reference point for me,” explained Jeff, explaining how the work on voice acting for Echo began. - I was told that she should be associated with a fighter; She is an adaptive robot, the latest technology in the Overwatch world. Looking at her model, I did not notice the abundance of servos. "
The servos mentioned are electronic-mechanical motor systems that are often found in vehicles and assembly robots. They do not fit into the stylish and ultra-modern design of Echo.
“Her limbs seem to float,” Garnett continued, “which means she won't have the kind of bzz-bzz-bzz in her movements that are typical of servos. Echo had flashed in cutscenes before and was supposed to appear in the Overwatch 2 announcement video, which was cool and unusual as the two teams had to join forces to decide how Echo would sound in The Starting Point , the development team and the team behind creation of videos ”.
When the teams realized what Echo should be in a short film, they had to solve the following problem: figure out how to turn this elusive image into sound effects in the game. How to create "floating steps" by which you can understand about the approach of Echo? How will Bastion's superpower replica sound in another robot's speech? These questions were tricky to answer, but Garnett was not going to back down.
“I started off by putting together a huge and weird library of sounds,” he said. “Echo doesn’t have any mechanical components, she’s an energy machine. Therefore, I studied the sounds of synthesizers and other existing objects, which were saturated with energy and seemed to me blue . This is how bell ringing, tuning forks and other soothing sounds got into my collection. Gradually, I leaned more towards synthesizers and the like and tried to find unobtrusive sounds that I thought would appear in the game all the time. I think I associated Echo with light music. Its sounds should be calm, taking the mind far into the clouds. "
Since there are already more than 30 heroes in the game, some of whom, like Echo, hover or fly above their ground comrades, the team needed to make its sounds unique and easily recognizable.
“From a design point of view, the task was very difficult, as the sounds of the enemy hero are always very different from the sounds you hear when playing as the character yourself,” commented Garnett. - This is largely due to the fact that their own sounds should not interfere with the gameplay, and therefore many of them become more muffled, which is especially noticeable in the case of floating characters like Zenyatta and Sigma. The sound helps to understand that this or that hero is close (I always cite McCree as an example, who is easy to recognize by the rattling of spurs), but what should he be for a flying character? Since Echo is very fast and agile, we needed a sound that immediately draws attention to her. I settled on higher and more piercing notes that are easy to pick up. In Echo's case, these sounds replace the sound of footsteps and signify her physical presence,
Having defined the basic elements of Echo's sound library, Jeff thought about how to implement its scoring. Echo is an adaptive robot capable of copying the looks and skills of other heroes, which meant that her lines could be more varied than anyone else in Overwatch. Scott Lawlor, the sound engineer for Overwatch, even suggested that Echo copy not only looks and abilities, but also lines. The team liked the idea, but it meant that Ginny Bolett, the voice actress for Echo, was faced with a colossal task, because she had to almost double the number of lines in Overwatch.
“This meant that the actress would have to pronounce phrases in different languages,” explained Garnett, “as well as imitate the voices of other characters, male and female, their pitch and timbre. A new question was raised: how many lines of other characters will we duplicate? In the end, we settled on the lines that sound when using superpowers and normal abilities. If Echo is copying Roadhog, she can use his grappling hook and say "Come on!" But for superpowers' cues, her voice is mixed with the voice of the copied hero. We thought it would be great and also informative in terms of gameplay. If Echo itself exclaims "Rain of Vengeance!", It sounds rather strange. "
A robot voice echoing Farrah's famous superpower line would have had a very different effect than the Overwatch team wanted. “However, in combination with the voice of Farrah herself, it becomes clear that this Echo is copying her, using that very superpower and bringing retribution ,” explains Garnett.
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