Appreciation of the whole BG3 cast

[Antimatter]

I know we have another thread about VO actors, but needed to get it off my chest, I've wanted to say this for some time.

What needs to be recognized on a bigger scale in the whole industry (IMHO) right now is this amazing event that has been going on for a while with the BG3 cast! Reaction videos, interviews, actors reading your horny tweets...

And now, also streaming Baldur's Gate 3 as an actor and putting your mark on everything. On top of that, with Devora Wilde (Lae'zel) for example, it's showing how the game succeeds in introducing DnD mechanics in a fun way for people who don't usually play videogames.

And each of them is fun! The actors are all just winning it. Neil Newbon romancing Astarion, Jennifer English romancing Lae'zel, Samantha Beart starting a Karlach playthrough, Tamaryn Payne (Mizora) planning to stream the game after years of not playing games.

An honorable mention for the Violet and Lulu stream by Amelia Tyler (the Narrator). How about a playthrough from the Narrator of the whole game with her using a totally different personality and voice... We, as fans, can't be luckier than that.

And ofc, we can't forget the cast's D&D session. Talk about superbly bringing fans' favorite characters to life! That funny friction between Shadowheart Lae'zel about Bing Bong the baby imp... This is what leading by example is. The BG3 cast is leading by a mile!

Some links for you:









Karlach playing as Karlach (age-restricted for some reason, compared to others)

And here is some wisdom from Samantha Beart herself:



IGN videos with horny tweets read by the BG3 cast:

Here, here, and here.

 

[Cahir]

It's very rare for me to play a game where the quality of voice acting is top tier for 99.9% of the game, even for the minor characters. It's usually a couple of characters that stand out, and the rest of the cast is either OK or not so OK.

BG3 is totally not the case. Every single one of your companion is amazingly voiced, some simply reached GRAMMY level of acting.

But not only that, it's the whole acting, as Samantha kindly reminded. The motion capture is equally stellar, with character's emotions just pouring from the screen. There is no other game when I wanted to hug my companions so often.

And it really shows the whole crew enjoyed working on the game, and enjoy each other company. This is so inspiring to watch.

And yep, I'm team Dev'zel

 

[Black Elk]

I honestly can't remember ever having seen this happen before, where the whole troupe just nailed it to such an extent! Like as entire ensemble. It's a trip! The Bit Players are so glorious in this one. Hopefully if they make an expansion or sequel they'll keep the cast together, cause it already has that sorta angle, like you know, if you watch a Christopher Guest flick or something and catch the regulars. Or any of the great filmmakers or showrunners who tap into that kind of broader synergy with all the players in the play. I really love how BG3 included pretty much every hair style from the Princess Bride lol. Such a winning plan! BG3 hair and makeup is solid. I think it could use a bit more wardrobe, and more headshots and reels and gestural animations for the custom Tavs, but the NPCs are definitely all red hot.

I love how Karlach totally smoked Zhalk with flare, and jacked him for his Everyburning blade! heheh Classic! Shadowbae and the whole Mocap magic dynamic duo with Bing Bong lol. The Narrator doing the Durge! NoBigNeil twice bitten hehe! Dev'zel just crushing it at all times! Clearly, they're all so great! Like roll out the red carpet there, for sure!

ps. Oh oh and in the Bow'ee stream when they prepare the Command spell! Basically the actors ended up making a pretty kickass prologue Tutorial for this game on the fly!

If you watch how they each approached the first part of the game, you see a different angle each time, and learn a bunch of stuff about the UI/basic mechanics just from checking out that stuff. Also the response in Character creation is always such a highlight! Spectacular

But yeah dude, grab that sword!!! So great!
hehehe

 

[Cahir]

I honestly can't remember ever having seen this happen before, where the whole troupe just nailed it to such an extent! Like as entire ensemble. It's a trip! The Bit Players are so glorious in this one. Hopefully if they make an expansion or sequel they'll keep the cast together, cause it already has that sorta angle, like you know, if you watch a Christopher Guest flick or something and catch the regulars. Or any of the great filmmakers or showrunners who tap into that kind of broader synergy with all the players in the play. I really love how BG3 included pretty much every hair style from the Princess Bride lol. Such a winning plan! BG3 hair and makeup is solid. I think it could use a bit more wardrobe, and more headshots and reels and gestural animations for the custom Tavs, but the NPCs are definitely all red hot.

I love how Karlach totally smoked Zhalk with flare, and jacked him for his Everyburning blade! heheh Classic! Shadowbae and the whole Mocap magic dynamic duo with Bing Bong lol. The Narrator doing the Durge! NoBigNeil twice bitten hehe! Dev'zel just crushing it at all times! Clearly, they're all so great! Like roll out the red carpet there, for sure!

ps. Oh oh and in the Bow'ee stream when they prepare the Command spell! Basically the actors ended up making a pretty kickass prologue Tutorial for this game on the fly!

If you watch how they each approached the first part of the game, you see a different angle each time, and learn a bunch of stuff about the UI/basic mechanics just from checking out that stuff. Also the response in Character creation is always such a highlight! Spectacular

But yeah dude, grab that sword!!! So great!
hehehe

Yeah, this is the next level of involvement in post-release activities by all the cast. I can't recall this coordinated game support from actors involved in recordings. Even if at the beginning this may have seen as Larian's marketing strategy, now it genuinely looks like it had grown on its own. It's wonderful to see this, and I very much hope Larian will leverage their activity to deliver some additional content, be it a DLC, Definitive Edition or simply bringing back the cut content.

 

[Black Elk]

Yeah, it's a big part of the enthusiasm surrounding the full release for me, just seeing some of that after-action in action hehe.

Like part of what sold me on this thing I'd already bought was witnessing that kind of enthusiasm and labor of love from the people who made it. I'd love to get a full on Industrial Light and Magic style documentary that goes behind all the scenes in bringing something like this to life, or like the multi-volume art book that goes into all the deets there.

Also, I still think the wildest thing of all is how this all came together during the plague times, which lends it a weight and deliberative quality, that makes it all the more impressive. Like what we got was a real triumph of spirit against that sort of backdrop.

These are the game credits for the Early Access... (reprinted at moby)

Baldur's Gate III credits (Windows, 2020) - MobyGames

The official game credits for Baldur's Gate III released on Windows in 2020. The credits include 2,943 people.

www.mobygames.com

If we scan down the credits we see it's hundreds and hundreds of people, and I'd love to hear more about every single one of them hehe. The best though is the big block "Words from the Staff" at the end. That might be the best wall of text ever read! And the remembrances will just break your heart before you start. It's really endearing.

Oh and watching those Bow'ee streams, with the weekly special guests, you can tell that Neil totally did everyone a solid by ice breaking it like that. Like they did it on a lark, but warbled their way into something pretty special as everyone flew in to check out the tune and followed those cues. Astarion did some real heavy lifting and I'm sure made it a lot easier for others to dive in once they had a taste heheh.

It's fucking rad! Makes me happy to see this stuff

 

[Antimatter]

What a bunch of lovely people (from here)! Can't wait to see them at the Game Awards in December!

 

[Antimatter]

 

[Black Elk]

This was pretty legit! Catching the spirit! haha

I dig it!

The Blade rides at last

 

[Antimatter]

Alexa Ray Corriea chatted with Neil Newbon (Astarion) about his life, work, BG3, and other topics before the BAFTA Game Awards on Thursday, which he (and Karlach's actor Samantha Beart) are nominated for.

 

[Antimatter]

YEEEEEAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Performer in a Supporting Role​

• Andrew Wincott as Raphael in Baldur's Gate 3 – WINNER

BAFTA Games Awards 2024: Full winners list as Baldur's Gate 3 wins big

This year's gaming winners have been revealed by BAFTA. Did your favourite make the cut?

www.radiotimes.com

Those who haven't played BG3 until Act 3 are missing certain something that was one of the biggest highlights of the game for me.

Here is a pic of the whole Larian crew at BAFTA:

 

[Antimatter]

And here he is, Andrew Wincott at the Game Music Festival in London.



An alternative recording of the same song (with better sound):



Btw, a fun fact about the whole song (and a lot of facts about Lawrence Schick):

 

[Black Elk]

Wait what!???

Isobel is playing BG 1, 2 and 3 - in order...?!!!



Love it!!!

She also played my favorite BG3 bit character, Lens the Journalist! hehe

Of all the BG3 performers who played in the game and then played the game, I think Mia Foo is the first to rock BG 1 and BG 2 on a twitch stream. She's legit! It's supposed to crack off in like 10 minutes, if the tech works. For all the BG glory! heheh

So cool!!!

 

[Black Elk]

Well that was resplendent!

I've actually never even seen the BG1 EE Tutorial in action before today hehe. This was the real test for sure!

I think that Tutorial just earned it's keep and met the moment, cause going in cold and handling BG1 like 20 years on, that's no small feat! She fully settled right in. So great to see.

Mia Foo narrating the BG1 item descriptions and random tool tip lore is my new favorite thing!

VoD starts at like the 45 minute point (after the tech gets sorted) with Portrait selection and Char creation!!!

Catch that BG1 dream stream!!!

At 00:44:00... Those rolls! Right out the gate!!! hehe



I'm pretty excited for the Xenabel saga campaign!!! So well done

https://www.artstation.com/artwork/g03oE8

 

[Antimatter]

One Year Later, Larian Reflects On Baldur's Gate 3's Success, Future Plans, And Canceling DLC: "Ever Since, We've Felt Better" - IGN

A year after the release of Baldur's Gate 3, Larian Studios shares its thoughts on success, canceling its DLC, and working on its next game.

www.ign.com

Popular games are released all the time, but it's not common for the actors behind video game characters to be thrust into the spotlight. While it wasn't Larian's suggestion that the cast begin engaging with memes on social media, Wilde says that Larian's encouragement of the situation has a lot to do with their ultimate success.

"Larian [was] just gracious enough and fun-loving enough to be like, 'You know what? We're just gonna let them run with it.'" Wilde says. "Many other companies don't allow actors to do that actually, and I think that [Larian] really embrace the spirit of 'let the actors just kind of get on with it.'"

In addition to the influx of followers, English says the online community's response to Shadowheart has made her more fond of the role. Despite initially not liking the character, she says, "The stuff that [players] like in Shadowheart is kind of the stuff I like about myself," and that fans have latched on to parts of the character that she hadn't even consciously portrayed. Meanwhile, Wilde was surprised Lae'zel was "so polarizing" at first, with many fans being turned away by her stand-offish attitude, though that attitude eventually softened. She says, "I was getting a lot of delayed responses, even now, where people are like, 'Oh, you know what? On my third playthrough, I gave her a chance and now I love her."

Scheduling dilemmas mean my interviews with Wilde and English happen at different times, but I chose to speak with the two of them specifically because of their relationships with each other and the online community. Alongside Aliona Baranova, one of Baldur's Gate 3's motion capture directors and English's girlfriend, the actors have cultivated a following that has become separate from the game altogether. This includes a line of merch, with t-shirts referencing Wilde's love of ranch dressing and inside jokes suggesting the three of them are "God's Favorite Throuple."

The latter shirt references a meme of Shadowheart calling herself "God's favorite princess," which English recreated per her girlfriend's suggestion. In fact, English credits her "chronically online girlfriend" Baranova for her social media successes, as English says it's "never been something I've really partaken in." Right on queue, Baranova peeks her head into the frame – she had been providing commentary from the other side of the Zoom camera the whole time – to say, "I just wanted to add that your Instagram was private. Do you remember?"

Between her personal life, her professional life, and her self-image, Baldur's Gate 3 has had a profound impact on English. After Baranova leaves to grab dinner, English reflects on the anniversary and says, "It does not feel like a year. And yet, life has completely changed."

 

[Antimatter]

Another W!

 

[OrlonKronsteen]

It looks like the cast have really made the most of this and it's great to see. The voice acting in the game is phenomenal.