New Vegas senior producer Jason Bergman gives us a tour of New Vegas' voice-cast.<blockquote>Matthew Perry as Benny
Matt first got on our radar because he went on talk shows — the first being Ellen — and one of his anecdotes was that he played so much Fallout 3 that he had to get surgery on his wrist. In fact, he even gave an Xbox 360 and a copy of Fallout 3 to Ellen, I believe. So we contacted him to see if he would be interested, as we had a role that we thought would be a really good fit for him.
After reaching out we had a meeting with Matt where it was me, him, a couple people from Obsidian, and people from the talent agency. The conversation basically just descended into nerdiness. He just wanted talk about Fallout 3, and gaming in general. That guy is not faking it – he is really that into Fallout 3 and games in general. It was cool; you can tell when someone is genuinely enthusiastic.
Voice-wise and attitude-wise, think of Benny as the lost Rat Pack character. He’s the head of the Chairmen, who run the Tops casino. His character has his own agenda. Matthew Perry really dove head-first into his role, and that was not easy; there’s some Rat Pack slang in there.
Michael Dorn as Marcus
We did bring back Michael Dorn, who is voicing the character Marcus, originally from Fallout 2. Michael’s voice has changed, but that’s what we had hoped for because Marcus has aged as well.
Michael Dorn has done lots of VO work, lots of cartoon work, lots of video games, lots of Klingon work. I should confess, I am a very big Star Trek fan. If it were up to me, this entire cast would be comprised of not just Star Trek, but Deep Space Nine characters. Of the actors we’ve announced, we have three, but that’s not even the whole number – if you look at the entire cast, we’re up to double digits.
Here’s the thing though, casting all those actors wasn’t intentional; I discovered through the process of casting that Star Trek is to Los Angeles what Law and Order is to New York. If you’re in New York and you go to a Broadway show and open the playbill every actor in there has appeared on Law and Order, and it’s because there’s such a need for actors on those shows. At its peak, most of those actors in LA appeared on Star Trek. The King, our Elvis impersonator in the game, was a Jem’Hadar on Deep Space Nine — James Horan, phenomenal actor.
The VATS Pack
We do have a very large cast simply because we had 65,000 lines of voiceover dialogue, which is significantly more than Fallout 3. We have a lot of alternate versions of the same lines because the player can align themselves with any one of three main factions, and their decisions completely change the storyline. If the player is male, if the player is female — there are a million variations on every line.
We did all of our voiceover recording in LA, so we had access to a pool of very experienced voiceover talent, which was great. I have nothing but respect for voiceover actors. It is hard work, and especially tough for a game like this. We had one role where we had 1800 pages of dialogue. Not lines – 1800 pages.
One person who we worked with is Yuri Lowenthal, who literally wrote the book on video game VO – he actually wrote a book on voice acting for video games. Another session I got a kick out of was Jason Spisak. He plays Vulpes Inculta, one of the members of Caesar’s Legion. Vulpes is a very dark character; a very dark character. He’s talking about horrible things he’s doing to people, like burning people alive – and inbetween takes, Jason Spisak is doing shtick, because he’s a really funny guy. But the results are just great, because he read his lines in this evil, flat tone.
We worked with the great Fred Tatasciore, who is revered among VO actors. He’s done the voice of The Hulk like ten times. In New Vegas he voices Tabitha, the cross-dressing super mutant, as well as Rhonda, Tabitha’s other personality. He’s one of those guys that you can tell to change the tone of a voice by 3%, and he can do it. It’s like a workout for this guy — he was drenched in sweat afterwards, he really got into it. He’s just amazing. Great to work with.
Another actress we worked with was Andrea Thompson. She was on Babylon 5 and NYPD Blue, but more relevant to us, she was a CNN Headline News anchor. What was great about her is that she has the ability to read anything cold, because she did headline news. I was talking with her, and she told me it’s just a skill you develop when you’re doing eight hours of live television a day. You could hand her a phonebook and she would read it, and it would sound like the most natural thing in the world. It was really fun to work with somebody who was that good.</blockquote>
Matt first got on our radar because he went on talk shows — the first being Ellen — and one of his anecdotes was that he played so much Fallout 3 that he had to get surgery on his wrist. In fact, he even gave an Xbox 360 and a copy of Fallout 3 to Ellen, I believe. So we contacted him to see if he would be interested, as we had a role that we thought would be a really good fit for him.
After reaching out we had a meeting with Matt where it was me, him, a couple people from Obsidian, and people from the talent agency. The conversation basically just descended into nerdiness. He just wanted talk about Fallout 3, and gaming in general. That guy is not faking it – he is really that into Fallout 3 and games in general. It was cool; you can tell when someone is genuinely enthusiastic.
Voice-wise and attitude-wise, think of Benny as the lost Rat Pack character. He’s the head of the Chairmen, who run the Tops casino. His character has his own agenda. Matthew Perry really dove head-first into his role, and that was not easy; there’s some Rat Pack slang in there.
Michael Dorn as Marcus
We did bring back Michael Dorn, who is voicing the character Marcus, originally from Fallout 2. Michael’s voice has changed, but that’s what we had hoped for because Marcus has aged as well.
Michael Dorn has done lots of VO work, lots of cartoon work, lots of video games, lots of Klingon work. I should confess, I am a very big Star Trek fan. If it were up to me, this entire cast would be comprised of not just Star Trek, but Deep Space Nine characters. Of the actors we’ve announced, we have three, but that’s not even the whole number – if you look at the entire cast, we’re up to double digits.
Here’s the thing though, casting all those actors wasn’t intentional; I discovered through the process of casting that Star Trek is to Los Angeles what Law and Order is to New York. If you’re in New York and you go to a Broadway show and open the playbill every actor in there has appeared on Law and Order, and it’s because there’s such a need for actors on those shows. At its peak, most of those actors in LA appeared on Star Trek. The King, our Elvis impersonator in the game, was a Jem’Hadar on Deep Space Nine — James Horan, phenomenal actor.
The VATS Pack
We do have a very large cast simply because we had 65,000 lines of voiceover dialogue, which is significantly more than Fallout 3. We have a lot of alternate versions of the same lines because the player can align themselves with any one of three main factions, and their decisions completely change the storyline. If the player is male, if the player is female — there are a million variations on every line.
We did all of our voiceover recording in LA, so we had access to a pool of very experienced voiceover talent, which was great. I have nothing but respect for voiceover actors. It is hard work, and especially tough for a game like this. We had one role where we had 1800 pages of dialogue. Not lines – 1800 pages.
One person who we worked with is Yuri Lowenthal, who literally wrote the book on video game VO – he actually wrote a book on voice acting for video games. Another session I got a kick out of was Jason Spisak. He plays Vulpes Inculta, one of the members of Caesar’s Legion. Vulpes is a very dark character; a very dark character. He’s talking about horrible things he’s doing to people, like burning people alive – and inbetween takes, Jason Spisak is doing shtick, because he’s a really funny guy. But the results are just great, because he read his lines in this evil, flat tone.
We worked with the great Fred Tatasciore, who is revered among VO actors. He’s done the voice of The Hulk like ten times. In New Vegas he voices Tabitha, the cross-dressing super mutant, as well as Rhonda, Tabitha’s other personality. He’s one of those guys that you can tell to change the tone of a voice by 3%, and he can do it. It’s like a workout for this guy — he was drenched in sweat afterwards, he really got into it. He’s just amazing. Great to work with.
Another actress we worked with was Andrea Thompson. She was on Babylon 5 and NYPD Blue, but more relevant to us, she was a CNN Headline News anchor. What was great about her is that she has the ability to read anything cold, because she did headline news. I was talking with her, and she told me it’s just a skill you develop when you’re doing eight hours of live television a day. You could hand her a phonebook and she would read it, and it would sound like the most natural thing in the world. It was really fun to work with somebody who was that good.</blockquote>
