What started two years ago as a dubbing of cutscenes edited into a movie, ended up being a full-fledged professional dubbing. It’s about the spectacular dubbing project Kingdom Come: Deliverance, which after many months of hard work by dozens of people with huge support from players and developers is slowly coming to an end. The last day of recording took place a week ago, and now it’s “just” post-production. And who knows what will happen with dubbing then. Since we have been closely following the entire endeavor of the creators from the very beginning, I did not miss this festive occasion. That’s why we visited the Prague studio dabéra Richarda Wágnerawhich together with director and veteran Czech game dubbing Ladislav Hrádek he was finishing his last “few” lines, and they recorded the whole process.
Artur Komňacký and Marek Pilger, who are behind the Czech dubbing of Kingdom Come, shared their plans and first results in October 2020. They didn’t have to wait too long for feedback and even received the attention of Dan Vávra himself. Before with the release of the first part of the four-part dubbed film the creators boasted in April 2021 professional acting and dubbing reinforcements, among whom were, for example, Petr Gelnar, Jan Přeučil, Luboš Ondráček or Eva Burešová, which was to raise the quality of the result even higher. Complete dubbing was no longer just an idea, so a transparent account was opened from which further work was to be financed. At that time, Dan Vávra also contributed 100,000 crowns and expressed interest in participating in the project, of course by dubbing essentially himself, i.e. the character of Hanuš from Lipá, who bears his face, he promised to send another 100,000 crowns after the recording was completed, which has now actually happened.
As such, work on dubbing the game began in June 2021, and it’s no wonder it took so long. Many actors took turns in three studios and spoke tens of thousands of lines. After all, as the representative of the main role likes to remind Richard Wagner, he alone had more than 16 thousand lines in his dialogue list. In addition, considerable financial support meant the possibility of involving other professionals in the dubbing of the entire game, and not only from the ranks of actors and dubbers. The creators also approached and invited some of the other veterans of Czech game dubbing, such as Václav Knop (Lucas Bertone in the first Mafia), Svatopluk Schuller (Hawkins in Vietcong, Jakub z Aldesberg in Zaklínač), Jakub Saic (Mafia, Gooka and many others), Jaroslav Horák (WarCraft 3, Mafia and others), but they were also supplemented by Ladislav Županič and a number of others who will be introduced by the creators.
However, wooing such big names and an even bigger game isn’t just that, that’s why he was director and sound engineer Ladislav Hrádek was also approached and invited, which pays for one of the most experienced creators in the field of Czech game dubbing. Since 1997, he has directed more than 100 plays, among which we also find titles Mafia II, Mafia: Definitive EditionAssassin’s Creed, WarCraft 3 or Operation Flashpoint. In addition, he has worked with many actors in the cast before. So we met in his studio for the last lines and finishing the recording.
A little bit about the cast
Newly announced:
Jakub Saic (Sergio Morello – Mafia: Definitive Edition, Gooka – Gooka 2, Engeor – Gates of Skeldal 2: The Fifth Disciple)
Jaroslav Horák (Medivh – WarCraft 3: Reign of Chaos, Billy Barnes – Mafia II, Galio – League of Legends)
Svatopluk Schuller (Hawkins – Vietcong, Grandmaster Jakub of Aldesberg – The Witcher)
Václav Knop (Lucas Bertone – Mafia: The City of Lost Heaven)
Ladislav Županič
Part of the film / announced during production:
Petr Gelnar (Nichols – Operation Flashpoint, Conrad Spooner – Messenger of Death 3)
Karel Zima (Ismael – Damned, Anderson – Quake 4)
Jan Kolařík (Yurij Ivanovič “Burlak” Gorky – Original War)
Zdeněk Junák (Professor Gossduarov – Original War)
Vladimír Hauser (Hugh Stevens – Original War)
Luboš Ondráček
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About 400 replicas were waiting for Richard in several cutscenes. According to him, compared to what he dubbed during the year, it was only a tiny fraction. Although he enjoyed dubbing Jindra, he did not hide his joy at the fact that he would now have peace. It is no wonder that he slowly felt at home in the studio, moreover, after so many hours of listening to the original dubbing performed by Tom McKay, he is able to predict the wording of the lines just by looking at the sound track, which greatly accelerated the whole dubbing process. He vividly described the breaks between individual cutscenes and showed how they proceed during dubbing and how game dubbing differs from regular dubbing. He also recalled the beginnings with Kingdom Come and the dubbing of the Mafia remake, in which he participated shortly before.
I learn that it is precisely because of this that we are sitting where we are, because it was Richard who connected Ladislav Hrádek with Artur and Mark after their previous collaboration. In addition to Mafia, Mr. Hrádek also talked about other older projects and compared both of his latest and biggest projects. Although Kingdom Come is significantly larger than Mafia: Definitive Edition, it was easier in some ways as a result. In this case, he was only responsible for part of the dubbing and several actors, albeit with a large number of replicas, and not the whole as in Mafia. In addition, the Mafia dubbing was preceded by a month of dialogue editing. The truly impressive and extensive collection of games owned by Mr. Hrádek is also worth mentioning. It mainly contains titles in which he participated in dubbing, in most cases in the form of big boxes. I think that some titles would be the envy of more than one collector, but my eyes were mainly focused on the big boxes of Operation Flashpoint, Tales of Mr. Frost, Ivan and Nastěnka, Shit Wars, The Lost Island or In the Shadow of the Raven, or a whole series of adventure games from Cryo, which today are considered unavailable. A joy to behold.
Everyone else who is involved in the dubbing of Kingdom Come and who has put a hand to the work, for example when editing the dialogues, knows about it, the work is indeed extensive and demanding. The same applies to the ongoing post-production at the moment. Although the dubbing is completely shot, it is far from finished. Now all the replicas need to be gone through, taken down, aligned and gradually stored in files, but everything is coming to a successful end, which of course also makes Artur Komňacký happy: “Daniel Vávra kept his promise and sent us the second part of the support, i.e. another 100 thousand. However, if people still want to support us, our transparent account – 4441485013/0800 – is still open, but now purely for the support of creators. We’d like to thank everyone for their undying support and we can’t wait for the dub to be out.”
However, it is not yet known how the dubbing will eventually be “out there”. To frequent questions about possible implementation in the game, when the dubbing would become official, which would also make it to consoles and not only be available as a mod for PC, the creators answer that nothing is certain. Understandably, they are striving for complete follow-up, but the resulting decision is no longer in their power. In any case, of course, we keep our fingers crossed during the post-production itself.
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:quality(50)/cloudfront-us-east-1.images.arcpublishing.com/semana/HT7IOOKAOZGKPMI4IHQGGVPZUM.png?resize=150%2C150&ssl=1 "With demanding training in the mountains, Egan Bernal continues to hope for a possible return")