voice acting
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Netflix has an all-star cast for 'Green Eggs and Ham' animated series
Netflix would really like for you to try some Green Eggs and Ham. The company has secured the rights to the classic Dr. Seuss tale and is turning it into a star-studded animated series that will be packed with familiar voices. The show, which is being executive produced by Ellen DeGeneres and will join Netflix's growing list of animated originals, will debut on the streaming service this fall.
Mighty No. 9 will feature English voice acting thanks to vote
Mighty No. 9, Comcept's spirtual successor to the Mega Man series, will feature English voice acting according to an update on the game's Kickstarter page. A vote which drew more than 20,000 participants was the deciding factor, and according to the update, the vote was never more than 1,000 votes from going in favor of English or Japanese. Back in July, Comcept updated their crowdfunding efforts and asked for $200,000 to add both English and Japanese voices. However, at the beginning of October, a Kickstarter update explained that funding was insufficient for supporting both languages. "Rather than stick to the revised target of $200K for both English and Japanese voice acting and close it down short of the goal, we've decided to lower the goal back to the original $100K for one language," the update reads. "And, rather than dictate which one voiced language we offer in the game, we want to put it to a vote and let you, our loyal backers decide: English or Japanese!" Now that the votes have been tallied, it appears the former is the winner. Mighty No. 9 is due to release in spring of 2015 for ten mighty systems: PC, Mac, Linux, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS3, PS4, Vita, Wii U and 3DS. [Image: Comcept]
Meet the lovely actors behind Assassin's Creed: Unity
In what is either a knock against Ubisoft's art direction or a compliment to voice actors in general, this trailer introduces the people who provide the voices for Assassin's Creed: Unity, all of whom are better looking than their supposedly idealized in-game counterparts. [Image: Ubisoft]
Lego Batman 3 trailer casts Arrow's Amell, Conan O'Brien
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment issued a new trailer for Lego Batman 3: Beyond Gotham today, which shows a few of the big-name voice actors talking about their involvement in the Lego superhero game. As previously announced, Conan O'Brien will be a playable character in the game, joining the likes of film director Kevin Smith and Arrow's Stephen Amell, the latter reprising his role as Green Arrow. Lego Batman 3 will launch on November 11 for a whole mess of platforms: PS4, PS3, Vita, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PC, Wii U and 3DS. Players will be able to pick up the game's $14.99 season pass that guarantees access to six DLC add-ons. It will also be packed in to its own $270 PS3 bundle at launch. Head past the break to see the game's new trailer and check out the new heroic screens in the gallery below. [Image: WBIE]
Voice acting in Warlords of Draenor
There was a moment in the Warlords of Draenor beta when I realized that I was getting a quest from Frank Welker. Aka Megatron. Aka Nibbler from Futurama. Aka a million other voices. The man has 728 credits as an actor on IMDB, and here he is, doing a voice in the Warlords beta. Specifically, Reshad the storekeeper. See, they recently added a ton of voice acting to the beta - pretty much every character you interact with has significant voice work put into it, and for the most part it's frankly stunning. I'm not trying to exaggerate here, but the difference between this expansion and, as an example, Lady Sindragosa's Betraaaaaaaaays you dialogue is night and day. Heck, just pop over to Frostfire Ridge at level 90, or run through the Tanaan Jungle opening, and you'll hear a variety of voice actors, more so than World of Warcraft has ever boasted.
Firefly Online brings the crew back together (for voices)
Despite the name, Firefly Online isn't really an MMO. But it does feature online interactions, and perhaps more importantly, it does feature the original cast together again. If you were hoping to hear Captain Malcolm Reynolds growl at you while you played the game -- and let's face it, odds are almost certain you were -- you can be happy to know that the main cast will be reprising their roles for the first time since the movie. Alan Tudyk will also be voicing multiple roles, and Michael Fairman will be playing Niska, who is apparently hiring if you're none too worried about your conscience bothering you. The game is set to release in 2015 on multiple platforms.
Azure Striker Gunvolt drops English voices, hitting Japan August 20
Inti Creates' Mega Man-inspired side-scroller Azure Striker Gunvolt will not feature English-language voice acting when it hits the 3DS eShop in North America later this year, the game's official Twitter account confirmed this week. Citing a last-minute change in product specifications, Gunvolt's development team revealed that Japanese voice acting will replace a planned English-language dub during battle scenes. The decision was made in order to ensure a quicker worldwide release, as additional localization would result in a delayed launch overseas. Azure Striker Gunvolt will hit the Japanese eShop on August 20. A North American release date has not been announced. [Image: Inti Creates]
The Queue: XP, models, toy box, and voice
Welcome back to The Queue, the daily Q&A column in which the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky (@adamholisky) will be your host today. Hello Queuers! We've got a few good questions today. Then I went and talked about Thrall being emo. JPF asked: how much xp does the wod starter quests give compared to timeless isle dailies? How about TI mobs vs wod mobs?
Mighty No. 9 seeking $100K more to add Japanese voice acting
Comcept revealed additional stretch goals for Mighty No. 9 a few short days ago, giving fans the opportunity to bolster the game's development with funding via PayPal on its official site. The $100,000 stretch goal was introduced to fund English voice acting for the game, which the original game's funding support won't cover. Mighty No. 9's funding page has since changed, however, upping the developer's goal to $200,000 and adding Japanese voice acting to its list of ambitions. Additionally, a Japan-only Makuake crowdfunding project from Comcept popped up with a 10 million yen (roughly $98,296) goal, specifically geared toward providing Japanese voices for Mighty No. 9. We've reached out to Comcept to clarify the two funding avenues and whether the two goals for Japanese voice acting overlap. The game, a project by Mega Man creator Keiji Inafune, earned over $4 million combined from Kickstarter and PayPal in October 2013. It was by far the biggest earner in the crowdfunding space in the past year, which saw a total of $35 million spread across 341 gaming projects. Mighty No. 9 is expected to launch in spring 2015 for many platforms: Xbox One, PS4, Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Mac, Linux, 3DS, Wii U and Vita. [Image: Comcept]
Building the Nexus: The voice of Gazlowe
The official Heroes of the Storm Youtube account highlighted a familiar voice earlier this week in its Building the Nexus segments. Travis Willingham is a man of many voices, having lent his pipes to an incredibly diverse list of characters in anime, animation, and video games alike. In Heroes of the Storm, he takes a different direction from the usual heroic-voiced roles and takes on Gazlowe, a goblin that WoW players should be plenty familiar with. The NPC was the Chief Engineer of the Horde back when Orgrimmar was being built after the Third War, but later moved to Ratchet, where he stays today. Affiliated with the Steamwheedle Cartel, Gazlowe now hands out quests to Alliance and Horde alike. He's also one of the few goblin NPCs in the game with unique voice files. In Heroes of the Storm, Gazlowe charges into battle armed with a load of mechanics and explosives strapped to his back, and a volley of well-placed quips to hurl at opponents. The latest edition of Building the Nexus features Community Manager Josh "Rokcet" Rester-Zodrow having a chat with Willingham about the game and the unique challenges of bringing a character like Gazlowe to life. We don't usually see a lot of voice actor highlights, so this is a pretty cool behind the scenes -- I'd love to see some of these done for Warcraft as well. Take a look at the video above, and if you like it, be sure to check out the rest of what the Heroes Youtube channel has to offer.
Tara Strong on Guild Wars 2's 'British Harley Quinn'
Chances are that you've encountered a character played by Tara Strong, since the prolific voice actress sports a resume that reads like a gaming greatest hits list. It includes MMOs and sort-of MMOs like Star Wars: The Old Republic, Marvel Heroes, Infinite Crisis, and Guild Wars 2. Strong's GW2 work goes under the microscope in ArenaNet's latest video release. It's basically a three-minute behind-the-scenes/interview mashup featuring Living World villainess Scarlet Briar, whom Strong describes as a "British Harley [Quinn]." Click past the cut to have a look.
Last Life's first episode, voice acting funded on Kickstarter
Now that sci-fi noir adventure Last Life is funded on Kickstarter, players will be able to investigate the murder of protagonist Jack Parker on PC, Mac and Linux sometime next year. Yes, Jack is still the protagonist despite being murdered - using a freshly 3D-printed body initially made for an annual Dead Man's Party, he'll slink through the streets of MarsTopia in a point-and-click-style search for his killer. Thanks to backers helping developer Rocket Science clear one of Last Life's stretch goals, players also won't have to imagine what Jack would sound like - voice acting for "all speaking characters" will be added, along with interactive flashbacks to when Earth was still inhabitable. Did we mention that, in Last Life's universe, all life on Earth was ended 11 years ago? It's worth noting that the $103,058 gathered on Kickstarter will only fund the development of Last Life's first episode, with Rocket Science planning on three episodes total. Anyone that chipped in $15 or more will receive a DRM-free digital copy of the first episode, though they'll also have the option of swapping it for a Steam key. [Image: Rocket Science]
How much should an expansion cost?
We've talked about this briefly in a recent Breakfast Topic, but that's not the same as actually standing up and taking a position on an issue, and I (specifically, I, Matthew Rossi, not all of WoW Insider) do have a position on this one - namely, that this expansion will likely contain as much if not more gameplay, art assets, and overall design work as any game coming out, and that frankly the last couple of expansions have been under what they should have cost. I didn't come to this decision in a vacuum, either - I come to it as someone who does not want to pay the price as established. I'm extremely penurious. almost outright parsimonious when it comes to money. I don't like spending it. So when I heard how much the expansion was going to cost (the day the pre-orders became available) I immediately balked at it. It's only ten bucks more to buy Titanfall, I said to myself, and that's a completely new game. And then I read this post by Kim Acuff (who often comments here at WoW Insider as Ember Dione) a developer on Skylanders, and I started to rethink my position on the relative cost of the expansion, how much it should cost, and the validity of the whole "as expensive as a new game" discussion. Because here's the fact - each WoW expansion has effectively been a new game.
WoW's voice actors alongside their characters
As much time as we spend inside World of Warcraft listening to character dialog, we don't always stop to think about the actors who are lending their voices to the pixels. It takes a lot of actors -- no, not just Chris Metzen -- to bring the world of Azeroth to life, and some of them may surprise you. Did you realize that the voice of Lorewalker Cho was also the voice of Winnie the Pooh? Or that a certain fictional president voiced Nozdormu in Cataclysm? The voice actors behind some of our favorite characters are full of surprises... even though, yes, a surprising number of characters are still voiced by Chris Metzen. To get an idea of who's playing what, check out this series of videos from TeddyKGaming, which pairs images of the actors with the characters they voice -- and has a ton of WoW's most memorable lines, to boot.
A legendary chat with Wrathion VA Aaron Phillips
One of the more intriguing new characters to come out of Cataclysm was Wrathion, who took a curious journey through the Badlands as an egg and emerged with dubious intentions during the rogue legendary quest chain. Since then, Wrathion has led many a player of every class on a merry chase across the wilds of Pandaria in a legendary quest meant not just for rogues, but for all. Wrathion's motives have always been a little unclear, and whether he's working on the side of good, or with slightly more evil intentions, has been up for debate since his first appearance. But Wrathion simply wouldn't be Wrathion without the voice that brought him to life as a sometimes petulant, sometimes angry, and sometimes touchingly desperate whelp with an apparent plan to save the world. Whether casually ordering Fahrad to break a pair of legs, pleading with Chi-Ji, or throwing the temper tantrum to end all temper tantrums in his temporary home, the voice of Wrathion has been just as distinctive as the character itself. So how does one bring life to such a strange character? We were lucky enough to have the opportunity to ask Wrathion's voice actor himself. Aaron Phillips may be immediately recognizable for Wrathion, but his works far exceed the vocal stylings of one angsty dragon -- and you may be surprised to note that you've likely heard him in a variety of places.
Voiceover actor Matt Mercer on working in games and comics, plus the "Vezax voice"
Halion the Twilight Destroyer. General Vezax. Ka'roz the Locust. You know Matt Mercer already -- he's the voice booming in your head in Ulduar, during the Siege Orgrimmar, in the nooks and crannies of Azeroth. The phenomenally popular video game and anime voiceover actor is known for -- well, let me just slide you a link to his Wikipedia page and let you delight in discovering his stamp on one of your own favorite comics, anime or video games from Sinbad to Resident Evil 6. Behind that panoply of voices is a WoW player and fan whose GM, actress Michele Morrow, describes as a wonderfully down-to-earth and nice guy. "Every now and then, we'll have his boss [that he voiced in game] come along, and so we yell at him ... to do the voices," she recounted last week here at WoW Insider. "He's fantastic; you'll love him."
Troy Baker kills it with Joker monologue from The Killing Joke
Troy Baker, amateur opera singer and voice of the Joker in the upcoming Batman: Arkham Origins, gave a live demonstration of his vocal talents to New York Comic-Con attendees, and the results are ... well, skip to 2:12 in the above video and see for yourself. The speech Baker reads in the video is from a one-shot Batman comic called "The Killing Joke," written by Alan Moore. In the comic, the monologue begins while Joker tortures Commissioner Gordon by chaining him to a carnival ride and forcing him to view pictures of his daughter Barbara Gordon (who at the time was also Batgirl), naked and paralyzed from a gunshot wound Joker inflicted on her. So yeah, it's kind of dark material. If you watch before Baker gives his performance, you'll also see him describe the audition process. Apparently, Baker didn't even know who he was auditioning for until part-way through. "I remember that, walking into an audition and I think that, actually, it wasn't even Joker, it was a character whose name was just 'Jack,'" Baker said. It wasn't too long before Baker realized what he was reading, as well as the pressure he was under. Baker also sings a little jingle at the end of the video, which we'll recite for you now: "Some say I am good. Some say I am evil, even more so than the Sith. But I suppose you'll all find out on October 25th."
Samuel L. Jackson voices the objectively best announcer pack for Heroes of Newerth
You're going to play Heroes of Newerth now. It's the best game of its type, and that's simple fact. No, stop going on about balance or game mechanics or anything else in the world. Heroes of Newerth has an announcer pack in which all of the clips are voiced by Samuel L. Jackson, and if you think there's any other reason to play or not play a game, it's time for you to step back and re-evaluate your life choices to date. Jackson's announcements are... well, pretty much exactly what you'd expect from the terms "Samuel L. Jackson announcer pack." You can check them out past the break, although we should warn you that if your workplace or home has an issue with shouted profanity, you might want to turn down the volume. For everyone else, click past the break and enjoy the new pack.
Jukebox Heroes: Tracy W. Bush opens up about WoW, Dungeon Runners, and DCUO
Odds are that even if you don't know who Tracy W. Bush is, you've allowed him to pipe music from his mind directly into your ears at one point or another during your MMO gameplay. Bush has contributed to tons of MMO soundtracks over the past decade-plus, including World of Warcraft, Tabula Rasa, Dungeon Runners, Auto Assault, and DC Universe Online. It was actually this column's discussion of the Tabula Rasa soundtrack that prompted Bush to write in (fun fact: Blue Turns to Grey was the first track he wrote for the game, but the team held off putting it in until the very end), and I asked him if he'd be open to chatting about his collective work here. That didn't take much arm-twisting, no sirree. So with that, I'm going to turn the mike over to Tracy Bush and let him share with you what it's like to create soundscapes that echo so powerfully in your memories.
Bastion narrator lending his voice to Codename Cygnus radio drama
Logan Cunningham, known as the voice behind Bastion narrator Rucks, is lending his pipes to an interactive radio drama for iOS, Codename Cygnus. Developed by Reactive Studios, the project is seeking $11,000 on Kickstarter by August 11 to fund more episodes in its story arc. Cunningham's role in the story is that of the "first spy nemesis," and will deliver a "villainous speech" in the first episode, slated to launch this month. Each episode is expected to run between 15 and 20 minutes, "although the total playable content will be a lot more," the project page notes. Sarah Elmaleh (Skulls of the Shogun, Gone Home, Resonance) and Chris Ciulla (Fallout: New Vegas) are two of the 25+ voice actors that are also involved in the project. Codename Cygnus offers a simple UI and voice recognition for listeners to audibly direct how each episode plays out. The project is currently sitting at $7,388 in funding with nine days left in the campaign.
