SR:TT's Mysterious 8th Voice

"Continuing this week of GDC articles (employees from Voliton were part of more than a dozen talks), we're going to focus on tacos Talk-O, which is our own custom voice editor made from scratch, just for Saints Row: The Third. We're not going to get into the nitty-gritty, but specifically about part of the game that almost made it in, becoming our 8th player voice, instead of the current seven available to all."

"In SR:TT, the final game combines over 82,000 voice lines from the smallest NPC, to fully voiced main characters like Killbane. Ariel Gross, Senior Audio Designer, gave a talk last week about one particular part of the game that had to be cut, which would end up being our 8th player voice."

"Before I spill the beans on what number eight would be, think in your head what could've made sense before being cut. What sort of style would fit in? Luckily, the folks from GiantBomb were in the audience and have covered how it went during Ariel's talk below."

"[The mysterious eight voice? A completely auto-tuned player."

"When Gross said this, the entire audience groaned in disappointment."

"I know," said Gross. "I know."

"Like I said, the whole audience, which was mostly developers, was audibly upset."

"It was a really painful cut, but it was the right decision in terms of scope," he said.

"So there you have it. No auto-tuned voice for the whole game, but we're pretty confident that Zimos was able to carry the torch for auto-tuning throughout the game.]"~Saintsrow.com