It's always funny to me how SWTOR seems to kind of follow me around even when I'm not playing it. I was PC-less for the past few days, visiting relatives on the other side of the country, so my internet usage was limited to browsing some websites and watching a few things on my phone. One thing I watched was the 2002 Disney movie Lilo & Stitch - a film I know I saw when it first came out but could remember very little about. (It holds up surprisingly well by the way!)
There was this side character who's an alien that basically looks like a giant shark and whose voice sounded familiar, so I looked up the voice actor afterwards, and what do you know - it's Kevin Michael Richardson, who also voiced Jace Malcom in SWTOR. Seems like gruff military types that push boundaries are his "type".
A few weeks ago Mr Commando and I were also questing our way through World of Warcraft's newest expansion, and in the Ohn'ahran Plains we ran into both Senya (voicing the centaur Ohn Seshteng) and the female trooper/Master Satele (voicing the green dragon Merithra). I also wouldn't be surprised if there were even more overlapping voice actors doing minor characters that I just didn't recognise instantly the way I recognise the major players.
I can't quite decide whether that's a good or bad thing. On the one hand, it's kind of bad for immersion when an ancient dragon starts speaking and I go "ooh, it's my trooper". On the other hand though, I just think it's kind of neat that SWTOR has had so many noteworthy voice actors contribute to the game over the years, and identifying their voices in different contexts makes for a fun little game of its own.
The thing that I always find interesting is when I see voice actors on TV. Athena Karkanis looks nothing like my Consular, and it took me a while to get used to hearing "my" character's voice coming out of real person. Likewise Bertie Carvel played a very different character than the Agent in Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell. I remember Tharan Cedrax's actor showed up on an episode of House and it drove me crazy because I was certain I'd "seen" him before but could not recognize his face!
ReplyDeleteOh yeah, that just hasn't happened to me that often because I don't watch a lot of TV, and (I'm guessing) many prolific voice actors don't necessarily do an equal amount of in-person acting... I just remember visiting somewhere and the 2017 Woody Woodpecker movie was on - and I remember nothing else about the occasion other than me going: "Wait what, that's Aric Jorgan>!?"
DeleteI sometimes wonder whether there's an A Team list of voice actors that are constantly recycled, rather than new voices being utilized. I originally never thought about it much until I heard a podcast talking about the life of June Foray (most well known for Rocky the Squirrel from Rocky and Bullwinkle) and how later in life she expressed disdain for production companies using established celebrities for voice acting rather than actual voice actors, for whom that's their livelihood.
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