Battleborn

Battleborn

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How to Extract the Dialogue & Additional Audio Files of Battleborn
By Bizargh
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.
   
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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: http://www.rshayter.com/riveal/

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):
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QDzZbz-YGYs
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!
17 Comments
BlueThunderFox 9 Apr, 2024 @ 10:34pm 
Thank you for the archive. Made my day to be able to hear these voices again!
Bizargh  [author] 17 Nov, 2020 @ 1:33pm 
@ThePizzaMuncher UE Viewer will not get sound out of Borderlands 2 nor The Pre-Sequel! at all nor ever, as it's a largely identical situation to Battleborn in that it uses audio middleware to handle audio data. Riveal 11.1 is the tool I used with Borderlands 2, The Pre-Sequel! & Battleborn to get at their audio files as while there are other methods (As this guide makes mention of), this one can at least get you Voice Data with file-names effortlessly & sort SFX into folders (Even if unidentifiable & likely to extract duplicates), meanwhile no other tool can get SFX nor Music with any file-names nor folders (Dragon UnPACKer did seem to at least extract SFX from Borderlands 2 in patterns that could be spotted, but that's a lot of manual identification). However, Tales from the Borderlands does have a notable amount of reused SFX from Borderlands 1, 2 & perhaps The Pre-Sequel! that can all be extracted with file-names, so you may find something you're looking for more easily there.
ThePizzaMuncher 17 Nov, 2020 @ 1:19pm 
@Bizargh Does UE viewer do a better job on extracting from bl2 too, or should I just try to find a v1 version so that the stuff that was made before the cleanup is relevant?
Bizargh  [author] 17 Nov, 2020 @ 12:43pm 
@ThePizzaMuncher I think I just got lucky or had good timing (Hopefully my recently error-prone extraction attempts are the fault of my own or my system & not UE Viewer, but perhaps future updates will clear it back-up if it is, and they are very frequent). The real heroes are the folks making the tools that let me get what I got in the first place!

Nevertheless, glad I could be of help.
ThePizzaMuncher 17 Nov, 2020 @ 11:36am 
@Bizargh You're a bloody hero. Thank you profusely.
Bizargh  [author] 16 Nov, 2020 @ 4:58pm 
@ThePizzaMuncher I actually completely missed that. But I found 102 working "Psycho_Bandit_##.ogg" files inside the 'BTLD_Bandit_Captain_WAV' folder that looks like what you're after, so perhaps the 68 files inside the 'BTLD_Bandit_Psycho_01_WAV' folder are just blank files that UE Viewer extracted (PlanetSide 2 did something similar for localisation data that had blank .FSB files for new audio not recorded for other languages that English got).

Looks like it's the same case for the Remastered release too, as I did a new extraction to double-check (Which was far more error-prone for both versions than I remember it being, and this is with the 11th November 2020 version of UE Viewer whereas I last extracted the audio back in July 2016) and the 'BTLD_Bandit_Psycho_01_WAV' folder still contains 68 blank audio files while the 'BTLD_Bandit_Captain_WAV' folder contains the same 102 "Psycho_Bandit_##.ogg" files.
ThePizzaMuncher 16 Nov, 2020 @ 2:06am 
@Bizargh The Borderlands 1 you posted went well, but for some reason even with this one the voices for the Psycho all come out as a soft "boop" rather than any actual voice. Did you have more luck with that?
Bizargh  [author] 14 Nov, 2020 @ 8:04pm 
@Blanc (Next White) Additionally, I have one for Tales from the Borderlands here (Which includes a notable amount of reused SFX files from the prior games that is all named), but that can also be very easily extracted with the Telltale Explorer or Telltale Music & Speech Extractors [quickandeasysoftware.net].
Bizargh  [author] 14 Nov, 2020 @ 8:03pm 
@Blanc (Next White) It doesn't for Borderlands nor Borderlands Remastered , as they're both far easier, only needing https://www.gildor.org/en/projects/umodel to extract the OGG files (All names fully intact too).

But it certainly works identically for Borderlands 2 & Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel! , which is how I figured to do this for Battleborn in the first place. But that also means only VO will be extracted with names, leaving SFX & Music to be identified manually.

I do have a personal collection of all three games available here where I've sorted VO files & provided additional music data, but I'm severely behind on updating Borderlands 2 with the Commander Lilith and the Fight for Sanctuary Expansion (I think I fully sorted the VO, but music just needs some final identification).
Blanc (Next White) 14 Nov, 2020 @ 7:33pm 
Will this same process work for the Borderlands games (The ones that use Unreal Engine 3, obviously it won't for BL3 which uses Unreal Engine 4)?