About the game
Total War: Pharaoh is a turn-based strategy real-time tactics AAA game created by Creative Assembly and published by Sega.
It was released in October 2023 with a DLC update that added a new faction to the game.
Part of the Total War series, Pharaoh is set in the New Kingdom of Egypt and its surrounding areas before the Late Bronze Age collapse.
Total War: Pharaoh VO Implementation Showcase
Group Recordings
Recording and completing editorial for the group vocalizations of Pharaoh's Hittite faction.
Dialogue Edit Review & Mix
Reviewing dialogue edits to correct for any clicks and pops and final level checks.
Audio Implementation
Implementing all the variations and localized VO for all the game's factions, units and epic heroes alike.
My Role
Dialogue & Combat Shouts
As a Technical Dialogue Designer, my role was a collaboration directly between the Dialogue Designers, Audio Programmers & QA to implement the recorded actors and groups across the game.
Over the period of one year, up until the game launch, I worked with the large team at Creative Assembly to implement a wide range of character dialogue that required me to mix it for implementation, for a total of around 48 thousand lines of vo!
This was both across instructional menus and combat shouts for the huge number of battles across factions encountered in Pharaoh's campaign.
Combat Shouts
There was a focus on integrating a large number of vocalizations for war and battle cries across many of the game's different units and factions, and testing this content in our animation editor tool.
Campaign Dialogue
There were a number of areas across the game's campaign that needed dialogue implemented in particular fashion, these included the Campaign Map, Frontend, Court, Diplomacy and Local Deities Panels.
Audio Mixing & Implementation
There was a good amount of time spent ensuring all VO was balanced and optimized across the game, for example ensuring the group vocalizations are sat nicely in the game mix amongst combat SFX and the music score.
Work Process
I was tasked with implementing the lion’s share of English and localized VO files once they were returned from dialogue editors, ensuring that files were mastered to professional standards and matching the returned file against the English script to flag any anomalies before implementing them in Wwise.
I was also tasked creatively with defining the implementation for them that matched Pharaoh’s predecessor Troy and developing new pipelines for VO in the case of new features, such as the court system where different faction leaders conspire plots against each other and vye for the throne of the supreme court.
At the last phase of the process, I worked with the Audio QA team to address bugs in the game related to the VO to make sure they were passable for launch.
High Tide DLC
With the 'Sea Peoples Peleset' faction for the High Tide DLC expansion I assisted the team with the implementation of the English VO. With additional voice lines and audio mixing required.
01
Dialogue Engineer Liaison & Edit Review Process
In the planning and coordination phases of the project, it was helpful to work directly alongside the dialogue engineer team on Pharaoh who were proofing the game scripts to get a sense of how the script and nature of the dialogue cues would work in-game, as well as an indication of what were the pressing things to work on.
After the balanced and edited VO files were returned to us from our external editors, a process of matching the delivered VO against the relevant character script in Excel and observing files for any clicks or pops is undertaken before the next phase of implementation. This process included the localization for German and Mandarin content respectively as well.
02