Al Emmo - Leisure Suit Larry

[pavlorestis]

I have to be honest.  First thought I had playing the demo was... Oook. We have a cross between Leisure Suit Larry and a castrated Woody Allen in a western.  It's true that the first impression you get underestimates the overall quality of the game.  Beautiful artwork and music, fun story (so far) and classic adventure puzzle-play.  

Bottom line: I like it, but....I don't understand (obviously I'm not alone) why in hell you would make the main character sound so excruciatingly nauseating! It just makes sense, being your first commercial effort, that you'd make him a little easier on the ears.. I really think it would've elevated the whole game SOO much more.  I understand you were going for the whole Larry Laffer loser-type voice but it's so over-the-top it (almost) succeeds in scaring you out of the game.  Everybody else sounds fine (so far).  I know you're probably tired of hearing that but trust me.. nowhere near as annoyed as we are of Al's voice.  That's just one more fan's opinion though.

By the way, your KQ remakes are both really great. Good job guys.. and thank you for keeping the classics alive.  :cool:

[GameDevChris]

For every person who doesn't like the voices, there's someone else who either does or who says that they didn't even give them a second thought. It's definitely a 50/50 thing.

Most people who do not approve are just very boisterous about it, which is usually the way things go on the Internet. But we used the voices we thought suited the characters we created. This is how we envisioned them.

Obviously, it's not possible to please everyone all of the time and no matter which voices were used, there would, no doubt, still be some complaints. I've honestly seen all kinds of feedback on the voices, ranging from "awful" to "decent" to "absolutely brilliant". It's a mixed bag. In the end, all we can do is stick to our own vision and hope that players will take the game exactly for what it is - a cartoony, comic style adventure that doesn't take itself too seriously.

Also, this is why we have provided the option to turn the voices on and off at will. If players don't like them, they're not being forced to listen to them. The game has been designed to cater to everyone's tastes, so that they can enjoy the experience regardless of whether they choose play with the voices enabled or disabled.

[pavlorestis]

True, but if you play it text-only you miss out on all the other characters' voices which are very well done.  Again, your hard work shines throughout the game.  My criticism was aimed at the main voice only.  Other than that the game is a classic.

[Angelus3K]

Trust me you get used to the main voice and learn to love it!  

[Tom Lewandowski]

You certainly do -- and Al's voice is performed very professionally throughout the game.  It will become completely natural as you progress.

[eriqchang]

I have been playing the game and the voice has grown on me. I didn't like it in the beginning but as the game progresses you warm up to the character and the voice just... fits. All the voices work really well. My personal favourite? VALERIE THE SHEMALE!!! As my friend Craig pointed out... the REAL highlight is that Chris Warren, who also co-designed the game, did BOTH voices. LOL. Now THAT is range.

[Lambonius]

As one who works in sound production, I'd like to suggest the fact that it's not always necessarily the sounds themselves that makes an experience bad, but rather the way they are produced.  Personally, I don't mind Al's voice too much in particular.  Yes, it was a huge turn-off at first, but he grew on me to the point that I only found it mildly irritating by the end.  The majority of the other voice acting ranges from pretty good to excellent.  The one thing that did bug me though (and I felt the exact same way about the voice acting in the KQ remakes) was the way the voices are mixed.  To put it simply, the voices are absolutely drenched in reverb.  Now in the remakes I could understand that since it was a free game, the recording quality probably wouldn't be optimal, and so reverb can sometimes hide poor mic quality.  But Al Emmo is the company's commercial effort, and as such, I had higher expectations for the voices than I did with the remakes.  The acting quality is great for the most part, but I have to say, I was quite disappointed in the quality of the mixes.  The overabundance of reverb on the voices, combined with subpar recording quality, really serves to tarnish what is an otherwise fine product, especially considering the commercial nature of the game.  All this in my opinion, of course.  Overall, I think the game is quite nice.  Definitely a fine nod back to the good 'ol days of adventure gaming.

[opitzs]

At first Al Emmos voice was disturbing, but in the end I loved him for it.
It is beffitting his personality and as others said, it grows on you...

And it is better for it, because it grows on you as you learn to like the character and so it is better then a voice you like from the get go.

Sven

[GameDevChris]

There's a lot of recorded dialogue in the game -- and I mean a LOT. We did get all of the speech recorded in a professional studio, but in order to get it all to fit onto a single CD it had to be encoded at a set-bitrate (ogg vorbis files). This, no doubt, decreased the audio clarity a little. But I don't think it's anything the casual player will really notice.

Tom, too, would have liked to include the in-game music at a higher bitrate, but such are the trade-offs required when taking the media size into consideration. The music on the soundtrack CD is actually encoded at a much higher bitrate than the in-game music, and that's one advantage of owning the CD soundtrack which music aficionados will probably appreciate.

And thanks for the feedback on the voice, Sven. The idea behind the character development is that Al's supposed to grow on you more as the plot progresses, so it's good to hear that our intended effect worked for you.

[Blomvik]

I liked the voices, especially Al, kevin, the narrator, antonio and the piano guy. Kevins voice was likely the best one, the most dissapointing one was probably Ritas voice, just not what i expected =P

[LenG]

Kevin's voice.  

I agree 100% ... he's very good indeed.
However, a VERY small "but" :-

He is supposed to be Irish or of Irish extraction.  

When my wife heard his voice she immediately said that that's not Irish but Yorkshire. (Since we were both born & bred in England we both have a fairly good ear for regional accents... they are VERY different for different regions of that relatively small country).  

If I am not much mistaken, didn't I read somewhere here that the voice actor playing Kevin is (or was) actually a Liverpudlian?  

[GameDevBrit]

Hey Len,

That is right--the actor was using a Liverpool accent which he said he learned from Ringo Starr himself.  The person who I modelled Kevin after was actually from Liverpool, but sounded Irish--hence, the Irish twist to his accent!

And thanks for the thoughtful comments on the voice acting, Blomvik:)  I'm glad you enjoyed most of them.

[LenG]

Apropos the voice acting in general :-

I thought that ALL  OF  IT  (with maybe one or two very slightexceptions) was absolutely first class.  On my 2 very ordinary computers every word of every diction came through crystal clear! In addition, the lip synching was (unusually) excellent!

I suppose that Al's voice was very slightly over the top, but IIRC I never thought twice about it, or found it irritating...  it fitted his character perfectly.  The narrator was pretty obstreperous & condescending & snide... but again that was EXACTLY the character he was meant to portray!

This was not simply 'voice acting' but 'CHARACTER acting' !!      

I sincerely hope that Al Emmo will be a great commercial success, or at the very least successful enough financially to encourage Himalaya to embark upon a second Quest/Adventure.
My congratulations to, and sincere admiration for, ALL the brilliant people who were involved in its creation !

[LÔPÂN]

The voice acting is great! I also enjoyed John Kane's (the station master) voice.

[pavlorestis]

I must say I spoke too soon. My apologies. My innitial complaint about Al's voice is hereby withdrawn. As other people have stated, it grows on you. Through the course of the story you realize it does its character justice. I never thought any of the other voice acting was bad but now I'm convinced with Al's voice as well.  

To sum it up, as I first said you guys made a classic old-school adventure here that deserves full credit for all the work and love you have obviously put in for every aspect of it. Eventhough my first impression of Al's voice wasn't very good I've come to really enjoy it. Himalaya Studios/AGDI guys, keep up the awesome work for us adventure-lovers! We support you 100% :-)

[navynuke04]

Welcome to the dark side.

[GameDevBrit]

Thanks for the updated feedback, pavlorestis!  I'm glad that you ended up enjoying the game, and we appreciate the positive message

[mikesukat]

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[Erpy]

Welcome to the forums, Mikesukat.

Sorry, but we don't endorse posting downloads of copyrighted software on these forums. (at least not without permission of the copyright holders)

[MusicallyInspired]

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