More Skyrim: Voice Acting

I wasn't planning on writing another Skyrim post so soon, but something grabbed my attention. For anyone who hasn't played through the Dark Brotherhood quests and plans to - minor spoilers ahead. There, my civic duty is done.

My anticipation was so great for this game that I watched every behind-the-scenes video I could get my hands on before it came out. One such video explained that they'd cast around 70 voice actors for the game, a great deal more than there was in Oblivion. I applaud Bethesda for this, and I think the voice acting in Skyrim is a great improvement. But there was one instance of casting that I have to mention.

During one of my nefarious exploits with the Dark Brotherhood I had to kill one of the emperor's personal guard. This had to be done just right, so I had to follow him around for a while to find the right moment. I overheard him talking with his wife or something about how nothing bad was going to happen and he'd be just fine - famous last words. But during that conversation I wasn't paying attention to the words so much as the voice. "Holy Sheogorath!" I thought, "Its Fenris."

Now, Fenris was a character in Dragon Age 2. In my game, he was my tank and also my character's love interest. In that game I ran around mostly with the same party. I called it "Hawke and her boys" - Varric for ranged support, Anders for healing, and for general damage-dealing mayhem... Fenris. So you can imagine I heard his voice a lot. He was played by Gideon Emery, who also played Balthier in Final Fantasy XII. (Side note, I don't know why people gang up on this game, I thought it was awesome. The battle system was one of my favorites of the series.) So, yes, I know the dude's voice. And I was kind of sad to have to backstab this guy who was my friend in another game, but I got over it. Contracts have to be fulfilled after all. So I killed him and framed him for a horrific crime.

But then I got further into the questline and realized that half of the emperor's guard, and also a good portion of the Imperial Legion had the same voice. Its really weird hearing death threats and posturing sounding exactly the same as a someone who I considered to be my DA2 character's dearest friend. Jarring really, since I killed them all. It was like murdering Fenris over and over again. But eventually it was a little funny. Since I'd already identified the source of the voice, I giggled every time I was sneaking through an Imperial outpost listening to one guy having conversations with himself through various avatars. I know there are more examples of this in Skyrim: the game is too damn big to have a single actor for every random NPC. But this one stuck with me because of my pre-existing familiarity.

This is really just an amusing observation, with one suggestion. If you are going to have to use one voice actor for a large number of NPCs in your game, perhaps go with someone who hasn't played a couple of popular characters already. Go by the Bioware forums and you will see that I am not alone in the Fenris love. Also I'm sure there are Skyrim players out there who spent as much time on Final Fantasy XII as I did. I mean, I can tell that most of the Nords in Skyrim are voiced by the same person. But I don't care, because I don't associate that voice with anything else. So I guess my point is that if you have to use one person for several voice NPCs in a game, try to make sure one of us nerds isn't already familiar with them. If it had just been that one guy that I assassinated, it wouldn't have been a problem. I would have had a moment of recognition, but then got on with it. But the constant vocal clones of two of my favorite game characters is just too funny. And it takes away from that thing I love so much - immersion.

That's not to say Gideon Emery needs to stick to those two characters... the man is talented. Just don't relegate him to being Imperial Legion Guard #1, 2, 3, 5, 8, and 13.