Links:

Transcribing Games: Game Transcripts and Guides Index

Introduction

The concept of audio description, or AD as it's more frequently known, will be likely familiar to most in one form or another. However, you may not even consciously know what it is. It is the practice of having a second audio track, whether live or pre-recorded, during a theatrical performance, television show or movie which describes the non-verbal actions being played out on-screen where required and where it can fit between existing dialogue. The resulting secondary track is overlayed over the existing audio and, depending on the location and application, can sometimes only be heard by the intended audience, whilst in other scenarios it is audible to everyone.

A question I've been asked a fair amount in my role as an accessibility consultant is "will audio description help in videogames?" Until 2022 with the release of The Last Of Us Part I, which featured audio description for its cinematics as shown here, the only answer I could give is that nobody's tried it but it would be most useful for cutscenes and detailing character interactions where they are essential to the game experience.

I got thinking about this after watching a playthrough by Jack SepticEye of God Of War, the 2018 soft reboot/sequel from Sony Santa Monica and wanting to understand as much as I could about the game including the key visual emphasis on characters and their interactions with each other. Using AD, I thought, could work very well given the game's movie-like or cinematic qualities in most instances, including sometimes large gaps between dialogue even during specific cutscenes.

These guides are community projects, with my only real role in this being as a "compiler" of sorts, putting together the contributions of the users who have been kind and generous enough to contribute. Some guides may be text only, others may have video included.

I hope that, regardless of your level of vision, these guides help to demonstrate the fact that providing this information only in a visual format is actually at the detriment of those who cannot access it in the first place.

Transcripts index

The transcripts presented here are listed in the order of publication, not in the order of the games release dates. Any guides that do not have links attached are ideas for later inclusion.

The Characters, Locations, Encounters and Sequences of God Of War
Mortal Kombat: Story Mode Transcript
Mortal Kombat X: Story Mode Transcript
Bioshock: Opening Sequence
Gears Of War franchise
Halo franchise
Titanfall 2
Uncharted 4/possibly the franchise
Tekken 7
Other Guides Go Here

Videos

Over the course of this project, Jennissary and I have had the assistance of the community in various guises to create content. This ranges from scripting on Jennissary's Twitch channel, to narration from community members, to people undertaking quality control duties.

Below are some links to videos that have been put together in such a fashion, these will later be placed into transcript pages as above.

The Uncharted 4 Accessible QTE Case Study

Here's the page detailing how I put together a proof of concept for accessible QTE's using Uncharted 4, with assistance from a generous sighted collaborator.

Want to write for a guide?

Contact the author of the site with "#TranscribingGames Guide:" *insert game name/topic here* in the subject line.

Do you have feedback on the guides currently available on the site, or suggestions for future projects? Are you perhaps someone who want's to assist with capturing footage or mixing/editing video content for future guides, or even lending their voice to an already scripted project? If so, please get in contact using the above form, with #TranscribingGames in the subject line.

This site is a subdomain of www.sightlesskombat.com