Effective Barks.

I made it a bit of a mission to learn about barks/callouts in video games. Here's some cool stuff I learned!

If you don't know, barks are the lines characters say when they enter specific locations, perform certain actions, or fight types of enemies.

The most (in)famous example is Geralt saying "winds howling" every time there's even a hint of a storm in The Witcher 3. Or the well-known "Arrow to the Knee" line guards make in Skyrim; in fact, basically, any line the guards say in Skyrim.

Those examples are fairly repetitive, but the goal of these lines is to increase the immersion of the player in the world or help them understand a character better through ambient storytelling. This becomes doubly important when you're playing a game where that dialogue is the only kind that exists, like League of Legends by Riot Games.

That leads me to this awesome example I found of the new LoL champion's bark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ifi3XpK8c3E

This taught me a ton.

The amount of lines needed to properly fill out a character like this is impressive; there's 8 minutes, and this is just what MADE THE CUT.

You can tell a character's story through these kinds of callouts/barks alone.

Continuity is important, even without the amazing VA work; each line reads as if it was said by the same character.

I'm working on practicing my own set of barks, but I thought this was a cool example to share!