A: With roughly half a million spoken words in Reckoning, VO was an ENORMOUS undertaking.
We started by taking the 900-odd NPCs in the game, and working with the Designers to determine which were so unique or crucial to the story line that we needed to find actors with very signature voices to perform them. Once we had the list of "Unique Voice Types", we created a character bible, and sent it out for auditions. About a week later, we were drowning in great reads for all our NPCs, and the Creative Director, Audio Director, Lead Narrative Designer and I sat down and selected our top picks for each.
Once the VO Session Director (Douglas Carrigan) confirmed the actors' availability, we created a 10-week schedule to get everything done. If only schedules had the ability to control the chaos that is life…. Mostly, everything went swimmingly, but as family emergencies, baby births, and other jobs came up for our actors, we scheduled sessions around the globe in England, New York, Seattle, Portland, San Diego and LA in order to finish on time.
To prepare the recording scripts, our team in Baltimore locked the text for any given session about 2 weeks before recording, giving us time to make final edits for spelling, continuity, and tone. I'd then take the lines, organize them by voice-type, and create recording scripts for the individual day. More than once, a Designer would run into my office calmly stating "So-and-So was labeled as the wrong NPC in the tool, when do we record?!" about 10 minutes before the actor was to read for said NPC. Let it be known, it is harder to make scripts while pretending to talk to an actor about their commute than one might think.
For each session, I or another producer along with a designer would sit in a room with the script on an LCD screen, dialed in to the recording studio where we could listen and talk to the studio tech (the lovely and talented Jaimie Siedow), the session director (the aforementioned Douglas), and the talent. Doug did an amazing job ingesting the lore of Amalur, as well as the part each character played in the world of Reckoning. We were on hand for the rare occasion someone didn’t read a line with the proper inflection, as well as the frequent occasion where someone didn't know how to pronounce a fantasy word or name we'd made up. Jaimie was a rock star, secretly keeping a list of pronunciations that ended up longer than 1,000 terms!
I won't name-drop every actor we have in Reckoning, as this would be an even longer response than I could write or most would have the stamina to read, so I'll just hit a couple that stand out for me:
Abby Craden voices the sultry and necessarily violent Alyn Shir.
Alan Shearman was an absolute joy to work with, amazing voice and great personality!
Cam Clarke (of Ninja Turtle fame) was a BHG favorite! We never asked him to do Leonardo, but we could hear it in his speaking voice (which would set us to giggling like the geeks we are).
Eliza Jane Schneider is super talented, super funny, and an all-around great gal.
Erin Fitzgerald was great for all the same reasons.
Greg Ellis did an amazing job with every character we could throw at him, including the Wolf-turned-Human (look for him north of Gorhart!).
Jim Cummings, of…well, everything fame, was so great to work with. He just "got" his characters, with almost every read a keeper. We've spoken earlier of his willingness to say "hi" to our kids in Pooh's and Tigger's voices, and he's an absolute joy to work with. Definitely some of our favorite sessions!
Jim Ward (Captain Qwark to some) did a great job jumping in as Fomorus Hugues when our original actor fell ill before finishing the character, as well as nailing every other character he had.
Kair Wahlgren was great and funny and awesome.
Laura Bailey was fantastic! She's also done "Lust" for Full Metal Alchemist and, ironically, is engaged to the voice of Captain Mustang from the same!
Liam O'Brien (known to me as "War" from Darksiders) was also really great to work with and very talented.
Simon Templeman is a personal favorite of mine from his work on the Legacy of Kain series. His work with Michael Bell and the late Tony Jay was A. Maze. Ing. When we had Simon in the booth, I stepped out of my "dispassionate producer" persona to ask if he had risen above receiving compliments for his work. He laughed and invited as much praise as I could throw at him, which I did. That was one of my biggest geek moments working on this project.
Again, there are far more actors in Reckoning than are listed here, and I would (hopefully will) work with all of them again in the future. I hope this bit of behind-the-scenes look at the Voice Acting helps you appreciate it that much more when you have the final game in your hands! – By Sean "notthatseanbean" Bean, Producer
