Most players never notice the good ones. A clean “oof” when a sword connects, a strained breath on a heavy swing, the specific pitch of a death cry that cuts through the chaos—those non-verbal vocalizations do more heavy lifting in combat than half the scripted lines. Get them wrong and the fight feels flat or, worse, the audio clips and the immersion collapses. Get them right and the character suddenly has weight, pain, and urgency.
The problem is that these sounds—called efforts, exerts, onos, or battle grunts depending on the studio—are some of the hardest material for a voice actor to produce safely and consistently. A 2025 survey of video-game voice actors found that more than 80 percent were regularly required to yell, grunt, scream, or produce loud effort sounds. Nearly 89 percent reported voice symptoms from the work itself. Recovery after an intense session often takes two or more days. Permanent damage is not unheard of.
J.B. Blanc, the veteran who voiced Rost in Horizon Zero Dawn and countless other roles, has described the typical effort list an actor receives: fifteen punches to the face, fifteen to the stomach, ten kicks to the ribs, five screams as if on fire, five as if falling off a cliff. These are not optional color. They are scripted assets that must be performed with the same precision as dialogue, often in the same session. When the session is four hours long and the loud material is front-loaded, the voice pays the price.
What Actually Damages the Instrument
The risk comes from explosive vibration and force. Vocal folds are not designed for repeated, high-pressure impact the way a stunt performer’s body is. Actors describe the work as “vocal stunt work.” David Menkin, who has performed in titles including Final Fantasy XVI, has spoken about being left speechless for three days after one poorly managed session. Others have reported hemorrhaged cords. Union guidelines from SAG-AFTRA, Equity, and ACTRA now treat extreme vocalization as a distinct category of risk. Equity recommends limiting vocally stressful game sessions to two hours. ACTRA advises at least a ten-minute break every hour of this work and no sessions less than 48 hours apart.
Technique matters more than volume. Power that starts in the throat instead of the diaphragm is the fastest route to injury. Open vowel shapes—“ah,” “oh,” “uh”—create usable grunts without slamming the folds together. Visualizing the exact location of an impact (ribs versus gut versus head) produces more natural variety and less forced tension. Many experienced performers pair light physical movement—push-ups, a quick march in place—with the vocalization so the breath and body are already engaged the way they would be in an actual fight.
Practical Session Structure That Protects Both Voice and Audio Quality
Directors who care about longevity put the hardest material last. Dialogue and lighter barks first, then mid-level efforts, then the full-throated death cries and extreme reactions. This is not just kindness; it is efficiency. Once the voice is shredded, the remaining dialogue suffers. Hydration before and during the session, avoidance of dairy and caffeine, and short recovery breaks are non-negotiable. Some studios now bring in a vocal coach for actors who have limited experience with combat work—exactly the kind of preparation ACTRA has recommended for years.
On the technical side, clipping is the other constant complaint. Recording at healthy levels with deliberate headroom prevents the digital distortion that later compression cannot fully erase. Aim for peaks between roughly –12 dB and –6 dB on the loudest efforts. Dynamic microphones handle sudden volume spikes more gracefully than highly sensitive condensers. Keep consistent mic distance and angle so plosives and proximity effect do not compound the problem. Post-session, loudness targets commonly sit in the –18 to –23 LUFS range depending on the project’s middleware and platform requirements. Clean, dynamic takes give the sound team far more flexibility than already-crushed or clipped files.
Variety is equally important. A single death cry repeated across hundreds of kills becomes comic. Building libraries with shifts in pitch, length, and intensity, then randomizing from that pool at runtime, keeps the combat fresh. Games like Warhammer 40,000: Darktide organize efforts into roughly fifteen distinct categories so the same underlying sound can serve multiple contexts without feeling recycled.
Why Standards Still Feel Scattered
There is still no universal industrial template. One project demands hyper-realistic, high-energy performances that push every take toward clipping. Another accepts flatter deliveries that disappear under the music and SFX. The result is either listener fatigue or assets that fail to cut through the mix. Detailed briefs, shared reference libraries of approved efforts, and clear loudness and naming conventions close much of that gap. Treating efforts as first-class scripted material rather than an afterthought changes the quality of the entire combat layer.
When the non-verbal layer is handled with the same care as the dialogue, players feel the weight of every hit. When it is rushed or recorded without regard for the performer’s instrument, the cost appears later—in damaged voices, unusable takes, and combat that never quite lands.
Artlangs Translation has spent more than twenty years refining exactly these kinds of specialized audio pipelines. With expertise across more than 230 languages, a network of over 20,000 professional collaborators, and extensive experience in game localization, video localization, short-drama subtitle work, multilingual dubbing for games and audiobooks, plus large-scale data annotation and transcription, the team routinely manages the full chain from effort recording guidelines through final implementation. That depth of practical knowledge is what turns scattered vocalizations into combat audio that holds up under the demands of modern players.
