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That was actually an incomplete video, since it didn’t show the transition between the two vocal states. If you’re swinging during one line, then land as the other person is talking, Peter will switch to his more grounded, relaxed way of speaking for the second line, as shown here:

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It’s a pretty cool little detail, and the Tweet got shared around enough that some of the developers from Insomniac showed up in my mentions and elsewhere to explain more about how they made it work. “So for those of you wondering if we recorded #spidermanps4 open-world Spidey dialogue twice—yes, we did,” Tweeted lead writer Jon Paquette. “One ‘resting’ take, one ‘exerted’ take. Programmers exposed a variable to Wwise allowing the game to switch between dialogue assets, depending on the player state.” (Wwise is a development tool used for game audio.)

“It can happen mid-conversation on a per line basis, but not in the middle of lines,” further elaborated Insomniac audio designer Alex Previty. “We tried to set that up, but it would have been a lot of work to get it to sound natural” 

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“I can’t take credit for this system at all!” Previty continued, saying that he’d instead give credit to Paquette, director Bryan Intihar, and voice-actor Yuri Lowenthal, “as well as the talented dialogue folks at Insomniac and Sony to make the magic happen ... and our insanely talented programmers to get it all working properly.”

“It’s been a group effort of the highest level,” chimed in voice-actor Lowenthal.

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The voice-switching trick strikes me as the kind of thing that isn’t exactly rocket science on a technical level, despite how cool it seems when you notice it and point it out. By highlighting it, I’m not suggesting that Spider-Man is doing something completely revolutionary, but Insomniac’s approach does strike me as unusually slick and far-reaching, especially for an action-adventure game like this.

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The switching of vocal tracks works particularly well when combined with some of the other smart dialogue tricks Spider-Man uses. One of those includes the way Peter realistically resumes conversations or dropped calls after they are interrupted by the player, similar to systems seen in Grand Theft Auto V or this year’s God of War. If you pause or otherwise interrupt a conversation, he’ll take the next opportunity to call the person back and resume the conversation with something along the lines of “Okay, so as I was saying…” These are just a couple of the many small, carefully crafted details that make Insomniac’s superhero simulation a bit more believable, and a lot more impressive.