Star Wars: The Old Republic has taken on the massive endeavor of creating a world that comes alive with voices, done more extensively than any other MMOG has done before. How does a such a huge job get done? Shauna Perry, Director of Audio and Localization, shares the process of voicing thousands of characters in game.

It all starts with the writing. The story is written by a team of writers and signed off by the Principal Lead Writer. Then it is handed off to the dialogue editor where it receives a pass for ‘voice’. This ensures consistency and also that the writing is the tightest it can be to be delivered by voice actors.

Once the editing passes are complete, the conversations are formatted into scripts for the actors. Like all BioWare games, dialogue in The Old Republic is nonlinear. As a player, you can select from a number of different conversation lines which, in turn, lead to multiple options for NPC responses. This creates highly complex scripts (unlike a movie or television scripts which are linear). In studio, all the various permutations of the story must be recorded - and often in a variety of orders. Because the scripts are nonlinear, we have to provide enough context for the actors to understand what is going on. We need to set the scene for them.

Read the details of the full process on the official SWTOR website!