Overview
Did you enjoy the dialogue of this game? Did you wish you didn’t have to repeat a mission in the hopes random chance will deliver the high number of variables? Do you perhaps wonder if there is more dialogue within the game that remains unused? If the answers to any/either of those questions are “yes”, then this should allow you to still delight in Battleborn’s dialogue with convenience.
Prelude
After the October 2017 Content Update, one of the two major Audio bank files was presenting an error that prevented the tool used within the guide, Riveal 11.1[www.rshayter.com] from extracting audio from it. While this has no impact on extracting dialogue from any voiced language (Deutsch, English, Español, Français, Italiano), it may well prevent you from completely extracting the unsold music from the game nor locate any desired SFX.
To account for this, I’ve made available for download all of the Battleborn audio I have extracted from the Audio files before the October 2017 Update (May 2017, which accounts for all gameplay updates including PvP modes), as well as the Bink Video files (Which includes one specificly used in the Open Beta) whose audio channels/layers can be explored/extracted with RAD Game Tools[www.radgametools.com].
It can be found here:
Sound Collection: Battleborn
The guide remains nonetheless for those seeking to give it a try for themselves.
Extracting Dialogue Files
I was previously in the process of trying to see what tools can extract such things as the music files (I was told “Ravioli Game Tools[www.scampers.org] & ww2ogg v0.24[github.com]” is the most ideal way by VladlenCry, a fellow who managed retrieved the Open Beta’s music), but due to how similarly the audio files are packaged & arranged to the Borderlands games (It’s still an Unreal Engine game as per most of Gearbox’s developed games utilising the Wwise middleware in an almost identical fashion to Borderlands 2 & onward), it ended up being an almost identical process.
The tool I used was “Riveal 11.1”, a tool by Ron Hayter designed for extraction of video, pictures & audio from such games as Myst, BioShock & Borderlands and incidentally ideal for extracting dialogue from Borderlands 2 & Borderlands: The PreSequel. It can be downloaded from his official website: [link]
Here is the tool as you’ll see it (When running on a Mac OS of course)
The process is very simple, but I’ll give you a quick rundown (This guide assumes you know the location of your game files within your Steam Library, that being “[Storage Drive] > Steam > steamapps > common”):
- Open Riveal 11.1
- Select “Battleborn > PoplarGame > CookedPCConsole > English(US) [French(France), German, Italian or Spain(Spanish) other voiced languages] > Audio_Base.pck” to extract from
- Choose your output location to extract the files to.
- Let it do the hard work and extract all of the OGG files
Additionally, just to make sure you’re getting everything the tool can find:
- Select “Steam > steamapps > common > Battleborn > PoplarGame > CookedPCConsole > English(US) [French(France), German, Italian or Spain(Spanish) other voiced languages] > Audio_Base_Startup.pck” to extract from
- Choose your output location to extract the files to.
- Let it do the hard work and extract all of the OGG files
And this should get you everything the tool can acquire from these archives (more than 21,000 files). Note that are potentially duplicates between these two archives, but you can simply merge the “english” folder, then overwrite any identical files. The “sfx” folder only contains a very small number of files (“Poplar_VO_UI_Lore_MontanaSong.ogg” the one you’ll most likely be looking for).
Here’s an example of what I was able to extract with the tool (No Story Spoilers):
Note that OGG files are not typically playable by Windows Media Player or perhaps Quicktime, but such players as VLC Media Player & editors such as Audacity can playback these files no problem.
Extracting Additional Audio Files
Additionally, this tool can extract the additional audio files that consist of SFX & Music, but none of the files sport any names beyond navigationally-useless numbers. If you want to give it a go, here’s how:
- Open Riveal 11.1
- Select “Battleborn > PoplarGame > CookedPCConsole > Audio_Base.pck” to extract from
- Choose your output location to extract the files to.
- Let it do the hard work and extract all of the OGG files
NOTE: Riveal 11.1 seems to encounter an error that prevents extraction from this particular file after the October 2017 Final Content Update. Older versions pre-dating this have worked without fault however.Additionally, just to make sure you’re getting everything the tool can find:
- Select “Steam > steamapps > common > Battleborn > PoplarGame > CookedPCConsole > Audio_Base_Startup.pck” to extract from
- Choose your output location to extract the files to.
- Let it do the hard work and extract all of the OGG files
The trick is to order the files in size, and typically the largest files will be the music. It may be worth looking into the use of Ravioli Game Tools[www.scampers.org] & possibly ww2ogg v0.24[github.com]” as recommended to me by VladlenCry, if not Dragon UnPACKer with BL2SoundRenamer[crimsonkeep.com] that works well with Borderlands 2 & Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel!, but this is not something necessary for me to explore myself.
Enjoy!