You’ve got to love a voice session where one of your characters gets to open with a line like that!
In a recent post, I detailed the almost First Date-style jitters encountered prior to an ISDN session for a first-time client and a first job through a new agency. And I promised to add more to the story when I could.
As it all turned out, I needn’t have worried. The ISDN connection went smoothly. Steve, the engineer at Pure Audio, assured me the sound quality was fine. And the directors and lead writer of Runic Games’ upcoming computer game release, Torchlight II (John, Matt, and JD), couldn’t have been more gracious. I even got what I consider the highest praise a writer can bestow. The two directors were wondering if I should try one of the characters a different way, and I’m sure I heard JD say, “…no…that was kinda how I heard it when I wrote it.”
While other voice actors spent much of their star-time as combatants, doing what I respectfully call “grunt work” (doing the action vocal sounds of grunting, yelling and dying), I got to play more sedate and mystical characters for the most part. They include: several of the world’s Guardians; Elder Valen; the powerful Grand Regent Eldrayn; another for which engineer Steve said he’d process my voice into some kind of huge dragon-ish character…and the one we all had the most fun with during the session: the smug, condescending, all-powerful djinni: Fazeer Shah…who sends you out to “survive” for his amusement! (A set of released images included the one above, who looks like he could well be Fazeer Shah, but the characters weren’t identified by name.)
In an interview with Games Xtreme…you can read the full story here…head writer JD Wiker describes the new game thusly:
Some of the developers describe the Torchlight setting as “Dragon’s Lair meets The Incredibles.” I think that’s pretty much on the money. Torchlight 2 continues on in that vein, but there’s an element of Terry Pratchett’s Discworld in there, along with a fair amount of, hmmm, maybe not “steampunk,” per se, but perhaps “dieselpunk” or “clockpunk?”
Maybe we need a new term to describe the Torchlight theme and setting? How about “dungeonpunk?”
Since the product’s release won’t happen for a few more months, I asked when it would be safe to tell anyone about my inclusion in the voice cast. To my delight, I was given the OK, provided I didn’t divulge the fate of some of the characters…or the projected release date for the game.
Fair enough. But sometime in the next few months, I’m going to have to corral my thirteen-year-old son, buy him a copy of Torchlight II, and sit behind him while he navigates through the various scenes and levels so I see my voices in action!
— over and out —
