Grunts
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| The card's front face | The card's back face |
Synopsis
| Utterances associated to physical actions or conditions. |
Relationships
Many contexts, including:
Character Soundprint 
, Awareness 
, Ouch! 
, Shout and Yell 
, Emotional Script 
, Narrative 
, Signature 
, ....
May Relate to:
Breath 
, Footsteps 
.
Compromises with:
Stealth 
.
Makes use of:
Foley 
, Dialogue 
.
Description
Grunts are the second most commonly used ingredient in of the Character Soundprint, following Footsteps.
Grunts effectively convey a wide range of messages, including: evidencing effort, attesting that a certain type of action is potentially damaging, notifying actual damage (see Ouch! for that particular exploration), conferring liveness to the character (that otherwise may be mute during all the game), conveying short messages (e.g. 'Uh? Hmm...'), accompanying the Engagement in a fighting (as used in real-life martial arts), etc.
In all cases, Grunts permit to express the Emotional Script in a diegetic way, and they may effectively substitute more complex Dialogue.
Examples
Lara Croft's Grunts in Tomb Raider, illustrating her efforts, are one of the Signatures of the game. That is also de case in Ace Age 3 where Grunts consistently reveal the variations in the emotional state of Scratch.
| g="Shadow of the Colossus" Despite the distance to the character and all the other sounds that, objectively, would conceal the character's Grunts, they are still heard, augmenting considerably the perception of the movements and explaining the difficulty in maneuvering. |
External Resources
The relation between grunting and physical performance has been discussed in other domains. One notorious case is professional tennis. [pending: ref]. Kiay in martal arts.
