Dear Reader:
Yooka's vocals in Yooka-Laylee were recorded by stuffing a sock in the mouth of Playtonic's co-founder
Playtonic is made up of numerous RARE devs, which lead to the two companies sharing a lot of similar traits. One of those traits are the grunts and groans characters make when talking. It was something on display in Yooka-Laylee, and while you might think recording that "dialog" would be fun and simply, it turns out that's not the case.
In an interview with Nintendo Life, Playtonic's Dan Murdoch reveals just how they captured the sound of Yooka...and it wasn't pleasant.
Ah, yes. So we had to re-record Yooka. Relatively late on, they decided that we wanted to change the way in which he holds items… you know how he licks items and they spring back into his mouth? Every single Yooka emote action and vocal element in the game had to get re-recorded with Chris Sutherland [Playtonic Project Director and co-founder] with a sock in his mouth, so that we could have a different ‘ooh’ sound for every jump and turn.