Skyrim - Star Voice Cast Announced

Dhruin

Dhruin

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Bethsoft sent us this press release announcing the star-studded voice cast for Skyrim:
BETHESDA SOFTWORKS ANNOUNCES RENOWNED
VOICE OVER CAST FOR THE ELDER SCROLLS® V: SKYRIM™


Academy Award Nominees Christopher Plummer, Max Von Sydow

and Joan Allen Come Together for the Year’s Most Anticipated Game


September 27, 2011 (Rockville, MD) – Bethesda Softworks®, a ZeniMax® Media company, today revealed the stage and screen legends lending their talents to The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, the next installment in the award-winning Elder Scrolls series. Skyrim will feature an ensemble cast of Academy Award nominees, including Christopher Plummer (“The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo,” “The Insider”), Max Von Sydow (“The Exorcist,” “Minority Report”), and Joan Allen (“The Contender,” “The Bourne Ultimatum”).
Christopher Plummer, a two-time Emmy Award winner, two-time Tony Award winner and Academy Award nominee, takes on the role of Arngeir, a powerful Greybeard elder. An order of philosopher monks who are masters of the Way of the Voice, the Greybeards live in silent isolation atop Skyrim’s largest mountain.
Academy Award nominee, Max Von Sydow, stars as Esbern, a chronicler and agent of the Blades who has survived in hiding. Long obsessed with the foretold return of the dragon Alduin, the World Eater, Esbern will teach you how to confront this epic evil.
Tony Award winner and three-time Academy Award nominee, Joan Allen, will be making her videogame debut as Delphine, one of the last remaining members of the Blades – an ancient warrior society once sworn to protect the Emperor. Like you, Delphine is trying to unravel the mystery of the dragons’ return.
In addition, iconic actress and singer, Lynda Carter (“Wonder Woman”), voices Gormlaith Golden-Hilt, one of the Nord heroes who overthrew the dragons in ancient times.
“It’s been incredible to have all these actors together,” said Todd Howard, Game Director. “When you start a project, you always make your wish-list of actors, and to actually hear them in the game, it’s amazing. We can’t wait for everyone to experience it.”

Skyrim’s cast also includes
<ul> · Michael Hogan (“Battlestar Galactica”), who plays Imperial General Tullius, in charge of crushing the Stormcloak rebellion.
· Vladimir Kulich (“The 13th Warrior,” “Smoking Aces”) portrays Hogan’s nemesis Ulfric Stormcloak, Jarl of Windhelm and charismatic leader of the Stormcloaks, who aims to make Skyrim independent of the Empire.
· Claudia Christian (“Babylon 5”) joins the cast as Legate Rikke, General Tullius’...More information.
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Ah my inner nerd is quite happy to see Claudia Christian. Hopefully they let her come up with some of the character's idle musings - she's actually quite good at improv comedy though her jokes tend to go a bit blue.
 
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A pretty amazing voice cast, although I have some mixed feelings about this.

Patrick Stewart delivering the lines, "Men are but flesh and blood.
They know their doom,but not the hour." sent chills down the spine of any fan in Oblivion.

However, I was always left wondering how many other voice actors might have been hired for the same coin. Another ten actors of reasonable quality would have gone a long way to alleviate one of the major criticisms of the game, that it often seemed there were only about 4 voices for all the characters.

On the other hand, as a product of my generation, I have to buy this game eventually just because it has Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter in it. </drool>
 
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It's something like 70 voice actors in Skyrim; wasn't it closer to 30 (40 with expansions) in Oblivion? I've heard sites that stated it was as low as 20 but that seems bit small even for how recycled the voices were.
 
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DArtagnan said:
Yeah, I meant games… It takes me out of the game more than it immerses me.
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I thought it would for me too.

I knew Matthew Perry voiced a character in New Vegas. I thought he was Yes-Man, but when I read the credits he turned out to be Benny. I also never really noticed Zachary Levy as Arcade.

It doesn't take me out of the game anymore, I watch alot of American tv and sometimes it seems they only have a pool of 50 actors because they keep appearing in different TV Shows. I even notice when some shows are 'Canadian' because they seem to have a different pool of actors. Point is I'm not 'taken' out of the tv show when suddenly 'John Locke from lost' makes an appearance in Hawaii Five-0 joining 'Jin from Lost'. I do acknowledge I know the actor from a previous show, but the show isn't ruined for me just because I know the actor.

In fact, doing voice work gives them an opportunity to show they really can act: by using their voice they can 'act' a character they would never be casted for in life-action because they don't 'look' the part.
 
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jhwisner said:
Ah my inner nerd is quite happy to see Claudia Christian. Hopefully they let her come up with some of the character's idle musings - she's actually quite good at improv comedy though her jokes tend to go a bit blue.
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Ah, the Ivanova dance....
 
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"In addition, iconic actress and singer, Lynda Carter (“Wonder Woman”),"

Noooooo! Nepotisms all well and good, but, no offence Kathode, I find her accent incredibly annoying.
 
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kalniel said:
"In addition, iconic actress and singer, Lynda Carter (“Wonder Woman”),"

Noooooo! Nepotisms all well and good, but, no offence Kathode, I find her accent incredibly annoying.
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Umm, she grew up in the American southwest so she has a fairly standard American accent. Maybe it's her voice you don't like?

As for the names vs no names, it depends. If they have a very recognizable voice to the point where I'm like 'oh hai Picard, hai Janeway, hai Tuvok' then yeah it kind of takes me out of the game. On the other hand, some actors don't have such immediately distinctive voices and/or can do different character voices.

If it's a choice between recognizable voices who can act or unknowns who can't, I'm afraid I will have to go with the names. The Euro-RPG developers seem to have real issues with getting decent voice acting in English and I can only hope the voice acting in their native language version was better than some of what passes for English voice acting. :p
 
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jhwisner said:
It's something like 70 voice actors in Skyrim; wasn't it closer to 30 (40 with expansions) in Oblivion? I've heard sites that stated it was as low as 20 but that seems bit small even for how recycled the voices were.
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Less than that, it wasn't even one voice per race - the majority of the characters in Oblivion were voiced by just 10 people, along with Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and Terence Stamp.
 
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DPB said:
Less than that, it wasn't even one voice per race - the majority of the characters in Oblivion were voiced by just 10 people, along with Patrick Stewart, Sean Bean and Terence Stamp.
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IMDB lists 17.

That's including the three 'names' who only voiced one character with limited lines and four voice actors exclusive to the Shivering Isles. So yeah, basically 10.

Maybe I am cynical, but I still can't help feeling this 70 number is some sort of statistical trickery that while technically true is not giving an accurate impression, but even if the number that have significant lines of dialog is half that it's still a huge improvement over Oblivion.
 
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@Bethsoft / Zenimax :

… And ? Europe ? What's the voice cast for Europe ?
 
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