Your favourite Voice Over Actors and Actresses in games

Antimatter

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Why not have a thread to celebrate amazing video games voices we simp (or at least admire) for? I'll open with an unusual choice - as I've stumbled across this just today.

Tim Curry as Arl Howe in Dragon Age: Origins. Yes, you've heard that right. Timothy James Curry is an English actor and singer, famous for his portrayal of Dr. Frank-N-Furter in the film The Rocky Horror Picture Show.


This role got Tim nominated for the Supporting Performance in a Drama (NAVGTR Award). No wonder I hated Arl Howe so much-- that's the level of his performance!
 

Antimatter

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To celebrate this International Women's Day, let's listen to some of the best female VO in gaming.

Cherami Leigh. I was blown away by the quality of her VO work in Cyberpunk 2077. She definitely made a custom main character sound spectacular like a real person.


Melissanthi Mahut. She made Kassandra in Assassin's Creed Odyssey sound so badass.


Courtney Hope. What can I say other than she absolutely took control (she voiced Jesse Faden in Control)?


Jennifer Hale. FemShep. Dynaheir. This is my favourite VO on the Citadel!


Ashly Burch. Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn, Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2 and Parvati Holcomb in The Outer Worlds. What a talent she has!

 

Antimatter

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Alix Wilton Regan. The Weaver of Time (Divinity: Original Sin 1), Sebille (Divinity: Original Sin 2), female Inquisitor (Dragon Age: Inquisition), Samantha Traynor (Mass Effect series). I LOVE her voice!


Amelia Tyler. Mama Malady, of course! The Narrator in Baldur's Gate 3. And a secret romance option in Pathfinder: Kingmaker!


Ellen Mclane. The voice of GLaDOS from Portal. She's a treasure!


Laura Bailey. Abby from The Last of Us 2. A living legend!


Emily O'Brien. My recent discovery. She voiced Kjamira in The Elder Scrolls Online. Purrrr!

 

Antimatter

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Strangely I didn't like "Mama Malady" right away, she gave me the creeps at first because I didn't trust her at all when I first met her in Divinity: Original Sin 2. And maybe I also didn't want to admit I could find her voice attractive :).
I know, right. She sounds very sexy. To the point that some BG3 players find it too much, lol... https://forums.larian.com/ubbthreads.php?ubb=showflat&Number=757049&page=1 But I LOVE her voice.

Same with Alix Wilton Regan! Just imagine: DA: Inquisition has her as the female Inquisitor and Red Prince's VO actor (Harry Hadden-Paton) as the male Inquisitor. That room where they were recorded should have been really hot.
 

Antimatter

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By the way, that line voiced by male and then female Shepard, about the defining characteristics of organic life, is spot on and the precise reason why I just couldn't
choose Synthesis. Losing EDI and the Geth hurt a lot and made me feel very guilty, but taking away choice, forcing harmony, where's the difference to indoctrination? Aren't EDI and the Geth the best examples that organics and synthetics can learn to live together naturally, and isn't taking away that choice treating everyone like mindless machines? And do I want to trust the judgement of the Catalyst child, an entity that thought creating the Reapers was a great idea to preserve civilizations? I think there are no right answers here, and I can absolutely understand anyone who would choose Synthesis as the perfect solution, because how can you sacrifice your friends? But the free will to think and make their own decisions is what made EDI and Legion people instead of machines in the first place, and I just didn't feel it was right to take that away from them and everyone else.
Right, the endings are "not perfect", no matter what you pick, unfortunately. One of the saddest aspects of the whole franchise. But the video is 🔥!
 

mlnevese

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One of my biggest problems with the endings is that they completely ignore your choices during the game... You can bring harmony through synthesis after betraying the Geth or destroy every synth after being friendly to them the entire game. In a game where all your choices mattered it was quite a blow to see nothing really had any importance in the end. The first time I got close to the end of the game I refused to finish it after learning about the endings.
 

Nimran

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Jamieson Price is one VA that comes to mind. Deep voices seem a little hard to come by these days, and he’s one of the best in my opinion, though he seems to only do work for Japanese games and anime.

Most people would his voice as Sojiro Sakura from Persona 5, but my favorite performance of his was when he voiced Captain Malik in Tales of Graces F. In a game where the story was meh, Malik’s sense of humor in his voice made it just a lot better.
 

BelgarathMTH

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I kept recognizing this guy's voice in Elder Scrolls Online. He plays various random quest NPC's, but I kept hearing Jowan from Dragon Age: Origins. Lo and behold, my ear was right, it was him. I confirmed the post below with Desmond Askew's Imdb and Wikipedia pages.

https://www.reddit.com/r/elderscrollsonline/comments/25xtz8
I have to automatically like any of his ESO characters, because I keep thinking, "C'mon, it's my childhood buddy, Jowan." The effect is even more poignant if he's playing somebody doing something wrong, because Jowan was also a deeply flawed character I wanted to redeem in Dragon Age: Origins.
 

BelgarathMTH

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So I was listening to this guy in ESO, and it was Minsc. I've thought I heard him before, but this time, Jim Cummings was pretty much just doing Minsc again. Who knew Minsc was a Nord?

Now that I know he's in ESO, I'm hearing him all over the place, because he did a bunch of characters. He's the sixth up from the bottom on this cast link:




Screenshot_20220621_172124.jpg
 

Xzarloxara

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I really wish I knew more of the names in this field and more about them. I can only name a few video game voice actors off the top of my head, but I respect the talent it takes to do this very much. I sometimes think I may have a bit of talent for voice acting, myself, but probably nowhere near as good as the pros.

I know he came before video games were a thing, but my favorite voice actor has to be Mel Blanc. He was pretty much the pioneer in this field, as the original voice of almost all the Loony Tunes. From what I understand, even most of the modern voice actors still regard him as the best that ever was.
 

Antimatter

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Now after playing BG3 for a bit, I can definitely say the talent of VO actors and actresses in this game is phenomenal.

Neil Newbon (Astarion) and Devora Wilde (Lae'zel) are now among my most favourite companion voices ever.

And what is more, a lot of them seem to be great and fun people in RL. Jenniffer English (Shadowheart) and Devora Wilde seem to be having a good time on social media, reading some fan takes in their BG3 voices (I can't recommend listening to this enough):




One bonus point for VO actors not shown in that video should go to Andrew Wincott (Raphael).


Just listen to Andrew reciting Sonnet 138 here.
 

Black Elk

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"Devora Wilde is Bae…I mean Lae’zel"

hehe love it!

I think her Voice and Motion capture acting are just incredible here, like totally nailed it. The most iconic Gith ever, from here on out, no contest.

It's a trip to think about voices, cause it's the first thing we think of for sure, but it's really a full performance. Like you can tell they keyed the model off her face, and I'm sure all these dialogue cutscenes were acted out. I remember being all bowled over when I learned about how rotoscope was used in the animated classics I grew up with.

Like take a quick glance at these images...

43ADBDDA-8986-41A9-8DB8-CFA4DEF96879.jpeg

Once you peek through that keyhole, gives a real sense of how much work gets done behind the scenes to bring these characters to life.

Even if they're animated as opposed to live action, it's still live acting at it's heart.

ps. Also seeing some of those other names brought back memories of games that really had an impact, or at least once we started getting voices in games. Some day maybe they'll hand out an academy award in this category. Cause I bet the workload is on par with portraying characters in animated feature films. The budgets for games are now also about on par with releases in the cinema, so I imagine they get the laurels one day too for these titles. I haven't heard anything about the SAG-AFTRA strike as it relates to games, but it's hard for me to imagine a screen that gets more screentime than the game screen hehe. I have some definite hours clocked in BG3, like watching STAR WARS 400 times in a row, and I barely played the EA for like a year and half. So we spend a lot of time with those performances, that's for sure. Easily a season's worth of television caliber. Kinda golden age right now honestly. What's weird is that the whole residuals vs AI scans forever probably would be even more relevant in games, since I'm sure that's like the first thing they'd target if they could just do text-to-voice instead of calling the actor back to record new lines, but I'm happy to pay a bit more for games that are well acted, and where they kicked down some scratch to the actors that made it happen. People lament the cost and consequence of making games so cinematic, and I feel that too, but it's take me out to the movies already, least it's cool to see some of those names get the top billing and a time in the spotlight for turning in ace performances!
 
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