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Hi, I'm Alexa Ray Correa, and this is the Game Maker's Notebook podcast.
Today, I got the absolute pleasure to speak with Alex Jordan, voice actor extraordinaire, but you might know him as one of the rooks in Dragon Age the Veilguard, and most recently, Yandolski in the Altars.
This is a really interesting conversation.
If you haven't played the alters yet, you should go play it and then come back.
Alex plays all 12 versions of the same character, but they're not quite the same character.
And we dug into the craft of keeping that in your head.
How do you prepare? He actually really went into craft and background and a lot of interesting stuff in this conversation.
And of course, he's an absolute sweetheart.
So please check it out. Welcome to The Game Maker's Notebook, a podcast featuring a series of in-depth one-on-one conversations between game makers, providing a thoughtful, intimate perspective on the business and craft of interactive entertainment.
The Game Maker's Notebook is presented by the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, a member-driven organization dedicated to the recognition and advancement of interactive entertainment.
How did you get here? How did you get here?
What is your journey? Your professional journey?
What's your background? My goodness. I joined a youth theatre.
I think I was about 10. I joined this youth theatre, but I was very lucky because the youth theatre in my area... happened to be the youth theatre of arguably the best theatre outside of London in the UK.
It's an amazing theatre where I grew up with this theater right next to me in a little town called Chichester, which is technically a city cause it's got a cathedral, but it's a town.
Um, and, uh, like literally, uh, I would have like Patrick Stewart, Ian McKellen, Judi Dench, like literally like insane people at this theater and i would do youth theater shows there and then every christmas we would do the christmas show and like it was the youth theater doing the christmas show but like we had Budgets for the set, there were like tens of thousands.
It was insane. And it was just pure luck with where I was born.
So I joined this youth theater. I was extremely lucky and I kind of, knew immediately that this was what I wanted to do forever.
It was basically, there was never anything else that ever really, you know... challenged it.
There was a brief window where I thought maybe I might want to join the RAF.
And then I was like, who am I kidding? Like I used to be in the air cadets and I, did like glider license stuff when I was like 15, 16.
But then I was like, that's fun, but this is what I want to do.
Um, So I, I went to, to drama school. I trained, I did three years BA honors. classical training as it's referred to.
But just before that, I was signed to a voice agent.
I think it was about 2008, 2009, because in 2006, I started uploading impressions to YouTube.
Uh, so like right at the early days of YouTube.
And I managed to build up around 2008, 2009, I think I had about 70, 80,000 subscribers, which like at that time of YouTube was like, you know, Pretty damn good.
So a voice agent found me and was like, hey, we think you could be pretty good at this.
Do you want to do it? And I was like, well, I hadn't really considered it because in my mind I was like, yeah, acting. theater and TV.
The only thing that I'd really caught my attention and gone, oh, acting in video games might be a thing, was...
Warhammer, what do you call it, Dawn of War.
Okay, yeah. And these sort of amazing characters with Gabrielle Angelos, liking these amazing voices in there.
I was like, oh, that's cool. So I was like, yeah, cool.
Signed with them, went to drama school. kind of couldn't do anything while I was at drama school because I was full-time training for three years and at drama school it's not like you know kind of more traditional university stuff in the UK it you go in from like 8am till 6pm and then you go home and you're back in at 8am till 6pm and you've got classes the whole time, you know?
So it's, There wasn't really a lot of time to do anything.
Um, I left, I graduated and not long after I got telltale game of Thrones.
And it all just kind of went from there really.
Yeah, I peeped your IMDB before this. You've got like 88, 90?
Yeah. That's a lot of work. Yeah, a lot of stuff.
And what's interesting is that games are my most common thing.
But like, not all of my games are on there, I would say.
About half my games are on there because it's only more recently that studios have been uploading their stuff to IMDb.
Right. A lot of the early stuff around like the only stuff in my career round, like sort of 2014, 15, 16.
17 sort of there. Loads of them were just like, no, we're games.
Why do we upload to IMDb? That's movies.
It's only more recently that games have been going, oh, no, we are in our form.
We're in entertainment form. We should upload our stuff to IMDb.
So yeah, I think based on my calculations, I'm around 90 video games now, something like that.
Yeah. I have to ask. 70,000 to 80,000 subscribers on YouTube doing impressions.
Doing impressions of what? So it all started. with Captain Jack Sparrow.
Oh, that's a good one. Yeah, people really loved that.
And then that kind of took off. And so I started then.
I learned a bit of seem like, I don't know, seem...
You're a seamstress, but what's the word?
Seamstressing? Maybe? Maybe? Taylor? You know what I mean?
I do. I learned how to sew and made Jack Sparrow costumes.
Cosplay. kind of like, yeah, like early cosplay, but like upgrading them.
And then this was when I was yeah, 16 going to my local cinema. in the cosplay and basically for them, before the release of, before the screenings, I would be walking around talking to everyone as they came in and just sort of entertaining them.
Um, and they gave me like three tickets for life, which obviously now I've left a long time ago, but basically they just gave me unlimited amounts of these stubs. which meant I could just go to as many films as I wanted for free.
So then I, you know, just kind of started doing that. then I started doing sort of like some Brad Peters, Aldo ring.
We had like, um, we got adam ruckman and are doing the hurl uh sort of alan's voice and then like um No, Sir Patrick Stewart is another one who I really enjoy doing.
You know, all these different voices. Yeah, so...
It was interesting because I went to drama school and I was really, really discouraged from doing this.
Hi. Because they were just like, this isn't what an actor does.
Now, if you were to ask any drama school right now, an actor going in having an established audience and 70 to 80,000 would probably be comparable today to something like 300,000, you know, 400,000, um,
They would be like, use that. Absolutely use that.
The way the industry has gone, anyway. So I'm a bit gutted about that.
But what it did teach me to do in leaving that behind and what was very important was to establish myself as a character actor rather than an impressionist.
So being able to take on roles and voices and change my personality, change my appearance, change all that stuff, change my voice, um, and using the skills that I had learned. to sort of become that kind of performer rather than just being Alex, the impressionist.
Yeah. That's really cool. If anyone from Disney is listening, casting for Kingdom Hearts 4, we found your Jack Sparrow.
He's right here. That's a really good Jack Sparrow.
Genuinely, I've always wanted to – yeah, I have always, always, always wanted to – take on that role in at some time in some place in some way i am desperate to It would probably end up, it'd be probably kingdom hearts.
That's where, that's where we see him. Um, so in part, so you formal education impressions, um, You do TV.
You've done TV as well. You were just in Andor.
Yes, yeah, I was in season two, episodes two and three of Andor, which, I mean...
I adored season one. And then, so to kind of get to step into that world as well.
And Star Wars has always been, for me, like the... you know, the fictional universe.
I love Lord of the Rings. Harry Potter, like growing up, I was like, you know, but for some reason, like Star Wars was the one, like I, I have never. left Battlefront 2.
Like, people going, oh, yeah, Battlefront 2, the resurgence.
And I would be in a lobby going, brilliant. loads of new players and like i took all these photos i got all these like screenshots of like the leaderboard at the end when it's like place the person who came like um like fourth had like 19,000.
Third had 21,000. Second had 23,000. And then me and first were like, 38,000.
I mean, like, yeah, I was just like, I never left this game.
So to then get to kind of step into the world really cool, really cool.
Like it's, it's, I was very, very, I've been on the hunt for a very long time.
I recently did an interview. with Anjali Bhimani, where we were for Future Game Show, where we sort of interview one another.
And I had been hunting forever for this specific game from when I was like seven.
And I knew how to describe it, but I didn't know what it was.
And they found it. It's a game called Star Wars Bloodlines.
And it was literally from 1996, 1997, something like that.
And I downloaded it. I found somewhere that you could still get it online.
I downloaded it yesterday and I was playing it like, oh, I love that universe so much.
It is. It is one of the big ones. It is definitely I think that and then like I've done Marvel work before, but Star Wars is the white whale.
It's the white whale. It's the reason we have comms.
Do you know what I mean? Yeah. It's like the thing that conventions, as we know them today... would exist.
They exist, but as we know them now, Star Wars was really the one that you go to any convention right now Of the cosplay, you'd say 15 to 20% of anyone there is in Star Wars cosplay.
Like that's, considering how many IPs there are, that is wild.
Yeah. Yeah. Did you do any Star Wars impressions for your YouTube channel?
Any of those characters? Do you know what?
I never really did. Maybe it was I kind of almost thought they were a bit too sacred.
Like, I think, yeah, like almost as though, like if I attempted it, it would be like, there'll be sacrilege and I would never do it justice.
Yeah, I guess that's probably like, yeah, where that would come from.
It's an idea. We're going to get off this call and you're going to immediately go record all of them.
How do you juggle doing, or what is the difference in preparing for a live action role versus preparing for... a voice role.
For you, is there a difference? Is there not a difference?
How do you approach? What's really interesting is 95% of the time with anything to do with like video game work, you don't get the script in advance.
Like you are just reading the words for the first time there and then.
So in terms of prep work, you can do stuff like you send the, a lot of the time you send in the audition.
If it's a bigger role, you'll go back in and you'll, you know, do a recall.
You kind of fine tune the voice with them, but then it's very much like You go in for your first session and.
You're kind of going, right, let's, let's touch base on what we had for the voice and what you liked, and then maybe some do some tweaking.
And a lot of it happens in the first 15 minutes of every session.
Unless like all the first 15 minutes of every like week, you know, you kind of touch back and if you're recording over and over and over, I don't know about other people, but for me, it just kind of stays there and it's easy just to go back in.
And I also... I would say I've got a brain that doesn't forget the voices that I've done.
Like I can go in something that I worked on two years ago and they go do you need a refresher and I'll be like no it's cool I remember the voice sounded like this and do it like that's just the way my brain works it's like I wrote my dissertation about why people's brains have certain sort of... why someone it couldn't has you know that sort of ability with sort of sounds and everything compared to people who struggle with like replicating accents and things like that um But like, that's just the way my brain is.
Um, so for me, it's a lot of, it's a lot more prep for screen because you're learning lines. you're learning, you're specifically learning the lines, you're learning then the blocking when you're there you're piecing it all together, but then you're going, okay, now that we've done this,
Now we start applying all the situational stuff and going, all right, well, surely if this would be happening, then I wouldn't be doing that.
So maybe I need to walk in from this place.
Surely, you know, so then a lot of that stuff also happens in the moment.
But it's more a lack of an opportunity to prepare, I guess, for the video game stuff.
It's not that you don't want to prepare or that you don't do it.
It's just you don't have the opportunity to.
Um, it's, which also I think lends itself to some really cool acting because a lot of it is just instinctual in the moment in the booth. doing it rather than overanalyzing it and overthinking it and overpreparing it, which actually I have come to prefer.
I really enjoy that. It's improvisational in a way.
You can go back and go, cool, we've had that take.
Let's try and do this now. Let's try and do that.
And you can tune it. But it's fundamentally quite improvisational, which I really, really enjoy.
Listening to you talk about that makes me feel slightly guilty because as a writer, I'm definitely guilty of, oh, I handed in the script the night before the VO session is tomorrow.
Have fun, guys. Did you... For Dragon Age, for example, have you gotten an opportunity to collaborate with writers or see stuff early in process?
What is your experience with that? Dragon Age was one of the ones where actually we were provided.
I would say I was provided the script with a little bit of notice. because myself and Bryony, the two British options for Rook, were brought in late in the process. the game was pretty much almost done.
Like Jeff, who was the very first person to be cast as Rook, who did all the motion and performance capture as well, and then Erica, Jeff had been working on it for like four years.
Eric had been working on it for like three and a half to four years.
Brian and I came in and did like a six month chunk in one go.
So we condensed all of the hours that they had done over four years into six months.
Oh shit. And then basically the game came out, I would say like four months after our recording.
Yeah. So it was, it was interesting because it meant that Brian and I were afforded the opportunity of basically the game already being laid out and then being able to go, yeah, we've got all the script for you because... a lot of, with all the hard time stuff, with all the stuff that was being done to cut scenes, Bryony and I
Yeah. So... That was a real challenge because we had to give our own performance that felt right for the version of the character that we were doing but totally to Jeff's rhythm and beat.
And a British accent and an American accent talk with different rhythms.
So we had to end up doing loads of like vocal gymnastics to figure out right, how do I match that?
And my words happen at the same time as the mouth movements for the character, but still make it sound like it's right. for a British accent.
So that was a challenge. That was probably one of the hardest technical things I've ever done in the booth.
But on the other hand, we were able to sort of know the script in advance and see it and get a little bit more intimate with it before we were in there, which helped.
Can can you can you give an example of what the vocal gymnastics that you had to do?
Like, what was the what's that? What does that look like?
So I mean, so we had, I guess it's kind of, it's vocal, but it's also there was a little bit of visual work.
Basically, we would have Jeff would, I would have Jeff would play, we would see Jeff's, uh, waveform audio of his audio at the bottom.
Um, And then I would listen to Jeff once, and then I would listen to Jeff a second time and start to repeat over it, listen to it a third time, and then be hitting the rhythm more.
And then on the fourth time, Jeff would be gone and it would just be me.
So it'd be like, listen, listen and start to repeat.
Listen and start to repeat. Listen and start to repeat.
Do you know what I mean? So it'll be that.
It'll be like first time, second time. Jeff has literally just texted me.
That's the weirdest thing. I literally just looked down at my phone and Jeff, as I looked down at my phone, I went, Jeff Berg.
That's wild. Hi, Jeff. Hi, Jeff. Yeah, so it was so interesting just sort of Listen without saying anything, begin to repeat, hit the exact rhythm, then deliver my performance. but also like being, being able to see the waveform was very helpful.
Um, but yeah, like it was, it was, it was hard.
And I mean, After several hours of that, your brain is kind of fried because you're trying to, again, still deliver something original and unique. and natural and believable, but you're trying to follow a specific formula and pattern.
So that was, yeah. challenging but fun cool i've never done anything that way before so yeah yeah that's very that's very technical so then the casting process for Dragon Age, obviously they were looking for someone who could come in and I guess do it, do it quickly, match it quickly and record in this short amount of time. what was that like did you have a casting process for that or did they reach out to you like how did you end up there Yeah, so Side, who are an outsource company that originally started in London.
And then they open a studio in LA. And then from there, they've just gone boom, boom, boom.
And now they're on multiple continents. They're all over the world.
But I do quite a bit of work with them here in London.
And they were doing the audition process.
I went in. I did this audition with a wonderful director called Mark Healy.
Mark was like, here's the thing. This game, it's kind of, fantasy, but it's kind of the wording is grounded in sort of reality and blah, blah, blah.
And I was looking at him and he was kind of going.
And then he went, it's Dragon Age. So it's Dragon Age.
And like, you could tell him to be like, I kind of shouldn't, but it will help you.
So then he said it. Um, so I, I kind of had a 10 minute, five, 10 minute audition where we went through some of the stuff and, you know, I got to kind of give what I thought the character should be.
And then I got a recall, went back to side.
It was a winter evening. I think it was November.
Uh, yeah, it was like end of November, which in the UK is pretty cold.
Uh, so I went into the audition and it was a half hour audition.
Oh, and in the first, the first 10 minutes I do 10 minutes worth and 10 minutes in fire alarm goes in the building.
So we all have to leave and go outside. So I'm there going, Oh my God, I really want this.
This is dragon age. We have a hard half hour time limit.
And every second I'm looking down, I'm just like, this is timing into my audition.
This is timing into my audition. Um, we're outside until about 25 past. go back into the booth.
The client from Bioware left the call because the engineer had left the mic open. at the talk back open and basically they were just going like coming through the line.
So they were like, can't do this anymore, left.
So then we had to reconnect with them. They jumped back on.
I had like four people four minutes, five minutes left, just smashed out like a little bit.
And then they're like, okay, cool. Thank you so much.
And I was thinking, Oh my God, I just got like half the time of anyone else coming into audition.
Damn. And then I got availability check for it.
I was like, what? And she was like, yeah, you've been availability checked.
And I was sat in the pub and uh waiting for a friend to arrive and uh my agent was like yeah so What they want you to do is they want you to come in and you're going to do a week.
And if they're happy with the end of the week, Good.
We're going to go with it. And they'll move forward.
And I was like, cool. So I went in and I did the week.
And I'll be honest with you, I basically just approached it assuming that I'd already got it.
Because I was like, if I don't do that, then...
In my mind, I'm not going to have it. Do you know what I mean?
I've got to go in and be like, yep, cool.
I'm the person you trusted with this. And you gave me this.
This was the reason you trusted me because I know what I'm doing.
This is mine. I've got this. You kind of have to be, even if you don't necessarily have that absolute belief, you have to go in with that confidence at all times.
Otherwise, why are you there? You've got to believe that you're the right person.
Um, and then at the end of the week, I was like, do we want to go for a drink to celebrate?
And they were like, sure. Yeah. So we all just went for a drink.
This is before they had actually formally offered it to me.
But I was like, again, I'm just going to be like, yeah, these are the people I'm working with for the next few months.
And Got to get to know them. So we went for a drink and then, yeah, it was like a, literally like a couple of days later on the other side of the weekend, they were like, congrats.
Yeah. We want to move forward. I love it when it all works out.
So you also going in, that's actually really great advice, going in like you already booked it, just being like, yep, it's mine.
I'm knowing that Dragon Age has such a. I'll say committed fan base.
They have a very their fan base is very strong.
They know what they like. They know what they want. how did you, how, what was your preparation like or what were you thinking about when you built this version of Rook?
Because not only is it character in a beloved franchise, it is the playable character.
It's typically the character that players Sometimes they self-insert.
They tend to model after themselves. They tend to make choices that are aligned with their own morals and values.
So how did you go into that? What was interesting with this was I was given a sense of what Jeff had done for his version of Rook.
So I was then going, okay, I know what I need to fill in.
I know what he's done, so therefore I've got to do something that's not that so that the player feels like they've had something different you know that was they were very keen from the start to be like you do your version of this character and And Jeff's was sort of like this laid back, chill dude who could obviously go to those places of aggression, but it was sort of had that kind of smile and that charm to it.
Um, and then, so I knew that the rook that I was going to do was going to be a bit more like sort of down in the grit and kind of a bit more sort of heavy and not dour, but like, you know, just that sort of like a bit more kind of traditional standard sort of, yeah, I'm going to be. the serious guy that's leading the group.
So I was very aware via him already doing his thing i was very aware what i either needs to do uh in terms of like preparing for it as well i watched so much Dragon Age lore.
I was familiar with Dragon Age. I knew Dragon Age.
I had watched plenty of playthroughs of Dragon Age.
I had played a little bit myself, but I had never really truly got stuck into it.
But I watched... A lot of, I watched a guy called Jack door, um, uh, color, Elizabeth art, um, Gilderthalen, like I watched all these amazing sort of like lore channels, people in the fan base. and just kind of watched as well to get a sense of what they, when they were theorizing about the game. what they were theorizing about and then I watched like because Rook was kind of announced that they can have the hero it's gonna be called Rook and they announced it through you know some little pictures and some graphics and stuff and And then kind of hearing them theorize what would it be like, I kind of got to get a sense of going, okay, so there's a little bit of hope of that, a little bit of hope of that in some of this.
Cool, okay. but then sort of weaving that in without being led by it was, I think the key thing it's, if you just kind of go like, oh, I'll just do what will make them happy, then you're never going to necessarily create a good character because you're just trying to tick people's boxes.
Right. That's a little bit like you describing, seeing how the fan base is talking about the game reminds me a little bit of like us as writers, when we, like, we try not to go read fan fiction of the properties that we're working on because it's kind of, it puts you in that head space, but that's really interesting. my um dnd um channel that i have are natural six yeah rdm harry was like we had some stuff happen recently some law stuff and He basically was like, he started talking about how he would find it interesting to go and read the lore channels on our discord and be like, yeah, like some of the stuff I was reading, I was like going.
Wow, that's an amazing theory. I'm not going to do it because now you've thought about, you know, all that sort of stuff or like, or going, maybe I should take some of that.
It's yeah. I can see how it's sort of like could become a slippery slope.
Very, very slippery slope. And speaking of games with really fervent fan bases, I have to ask, about the Baldur's Gate 3 sex noises, but not Until I hear more about this beautiful dog that you just brought.
Sorry, yeah, my dog just got up and was just sat looking at me in a very much a way of going, are you going to pick me up?
This is Gatsby. Hi, Gatsby. Gatsby is a rescue street dog from Cyprus.
If you're listening to this podcast and not watching it on YouTube, go to YouTube right now.
And with that, he lies down off camera on my lap.
No. Um... Wait, what were we just? Oh. Baldur's Gate 3 sex noises.
Yes. You did all the male sex noises for Baldur's Gate 3.
How even? How does? How do you get how do you how do you get that job?
So I I'm friends with a producer that I'd worked with quite a lot on other video games.
And she had recently moved to a new studio recording studio in London. as in new job for her, not new place, called Molinere, which traditionally has done a lot of TV and film. but more recently has expanded into video game recording.
So... like this producer and I had done a lot of work together and she basically sent me a text, sent me a message on WhatsApp. which is like, do you want to be in Baldur's Gate 3?
And I was saying, hell yeah. Like, yeah, this is the course.
Baldur's Gate 3 I've been watching the you know people playing the open testing like you know cool sounds great I've super into like you know the D&D stuff I hadn't really played at that point I'd watched so many actual plays of D&D and I was like this is cool man yeah um And then a few days later she sent me, I was coming out of a session and I looked down, she sent me a message that went.
Sorry, that was an ice cream truck. There's an ice cream truck right outside my house right now.
And I feel like you can only hear it every time I talk.
Yes. So I was coming out of this session and she sent me a message.
And the message just said like, oh my God, I'm so sorry.
I'm so sorry. And I was like, what? And then I opened my email. and saw as like the attachment, what needs a recording.
And it was like, male pleasure moan one, male pleasure moan two, male pleasure moan three, open mouth, you know, pleasure moan one, like that kind of thing, right?
So I just replied going, oh, my God. And she just replied with, I thought this would be normal.
And to be fair. The recording was all basically all done at a studio called Pit Stop.
And Molinere, a lot of the time when a studio is at max capacity, if they have supplementary stuff that needs recording, then they will go to what's called an overflow studio.
Um, and they'll just employ another studio, the contract, another studio, and that studio will take on the stuff that, you know, isn't able to be taken on at the main studio the game was being recorded so the game was recorded at pit stop and Molinere was being used for overflow stuff and I was like This makes sense.
I mean, the game is coming out in like a couple of months time and I know it's being recorded at Pit Stop.
So I was like, yeah, this makes sense. Why did I think I was going to get to play some sort of, you know, big character or like get to do something?
I was like, yeah. But what was funny was when I posted my first video basically saying what I did in the game.
Again, I've done, at that point, 80 to 90 games.
And... I posted the video before the game had really taken off.
So when I posted it, I was like, cool. Maybe this will get a couple of hundred views or something.
And it got like 1.3 million. It's kind of gone on to define like a lot of the stuff when I was announced as Rook.
It was like the headline of Euro gamer was Baldur's gate three sex noise specialist leads the way for dragon age or something like that.
You know, like. And to be honest, I kind of like, I find it funny.
It's become a meme at this point of any time I'm announced in a game, in the comments underneath it's, boulders gate three sex noise guy boulders gate three sex noise guy specialist yes specialist um So it's become a meme at this point.
And I like, I find it funny. I find it funny.
I think it like, I would never have guessed that it would go on to have articles written about it by different outlets and for it to get that many views.
And then like, here's the thing as well.
I worry a little bit that because I know my role in all this is so tiny and ridiculous and silly.
That's what's funny about it. And I worry sometimes that the, the actual cast think like, what's this going about like he basically did nothing in the game and he's kind of but the times now like I only really talk about it when I'm asked about it And those moments, just end up like, there's a streamer called Luality, who's a wonderful person and did lots of Baldur's Gate 3, like blew up with Baldur's Gate as well.
Was already doing well, but really blew up with Baldur's Gate.
And she came out to a hands-on event for the altars in Warsaw.
And as we did a live stream with her, she asked me, she was like, so tell me about, you know, what was all this I hear about Baldur's Gate?
And I then, you know, said like what I did.
I think that's now like 2.2 million views on her TikTok.
So I worry a bit. The guys are like, you won't stop talking.
I haven't even put it on my IMDb because I'm like, It's a ridiculous little thing that I did.
I'm not even going to put it on my credits, but I will enjoy it for the meme that it is.
But it's such a, it's a seminal part of your work now.
I mean, I was very well experienced and ready for it because I had years before done all of the player effort sounds for male sounds for Demon's Souls, the remake. which was the PS5 launch.
That was the launch title. And I'd done a lot of crazy sounds for that, like a lot of crazy sounds. um things like being impaled by a mind flayer like with their tentacle like in an almost spear-like fashion as they then electrocute you and you're gurgling on your own blood as you're electrocuted and like all this crazy stuff.
Yeah, so specific. So then when they were like, you just make a bit of a sexy noise and i'm going sure yeah i'm fine i know i i'm this is yeah easy Amazing.
And this all brings you to your, I mean, you basically are the alters.
That's you. The whole game is you. So let's talk about the alters.
Casting process. How did you find yourself on this project?
So I... was asked to audition for this game.
And the reason I was asked to audition for this game, the studio that we were recording with, PRL, who are now called Shaka Sonic, Um, PRL had, uh, like I had maybe a year or year and a half before. done an audiobook with them.
And this audiobook, they gave us no time at all to prepare for it.
They basically went hey, here's the book three days before you're recording.
So I was having to read as much as I could, skim read, like real skim read the night before.
Um, and then basically the next day just do the best I could, but within this book, It was all about the world of banking.
And the world of banking is global. you constantly interact with people from other countries and so in this game in this audiobook It was like, here's a character from Norway, Sweden.
Here's a character from America, but a specific part of America, a specific part of like Ireland and Scotland and blah, blah, blah.
And so I had to do all these different characters and all these different accents.
The book itself. was interesting. There was a dog in the book. that was female.
And then the dog died. And after the dog died, every time the dog was referred to in the past tense, it was referred to as male.
Like it was like, The dog, yeah, she, this, she, that, and then he doesn't.
There's like he, him. And so you're kind of going like, What's happened here?
So we had to make a call and be like, hey guys, we're just going to stick with the dog.
What do you want to do? Do we have to go back and retroactively do it so the dog is male all the time?
Going forward, can we just make the dog female?
And they're like, yeah, just do that. But then at the very end of the recording, there was a character that we had throughout the book.
That sort of made in this very sort of Slightly sort of posh kind of man in his 40s, maybe 50s.
Very kind of. And at the very end. It said, his last line was like, I'll see you around Al, said Carmen the character's name in his unmistakable Essex accent.
Now Essex. He's like, you all right, mate?
Yeah, how's it going? You all right? It's not too bad, right?
So we're going, that's not the accent I've done at all throughout this book.
So we said to them, is it all right if we just take out... Also, it was only digitally published.
There was no... print so we were like is it alright if we just take out the fact that he's that very last line where he's from Essex and everything we can keep everything as it is and they went We'll ask the author went to, and the author was like, no, it's got to stay in.
So we had to go back through. And in a book, it's very different to like going through and just finding a character's lines in a script or whatever.
It's so hard to find the phrases they said and the sentences that these characters said in the book.
So basically I did this and it was crazy and a lot of work and hard and a lot of gymnastics.
And I think the guys basically went. He might be quite good at playing all the different characters in this game.
So I was brought into audition. I did a sort of 20 minute audition on Zoom with a voice director called Kate Saxon who's done a lot of video games and Tomek, the game director, and a couple of the other sort of the producers.
And then I went away on holiday. And while I was on holiday, I got a call from my agent.
They were like, they would love you to go and do a recall.
But the recall... is going to be a four hour long workshop.
And it's like, you're going to sit down and you're going to go through six of the altars.
And you're going to just, they want to just see how you go through the process and come up with the voices and what it might be like to go through that process with you in the booth.
So I went and for four hours with Kate, with Tomek, the game director, and with Bartek, the producer.
We worked through, we started with Yarn's voice and then we went to the technician, then we went to the scientist, we went to the miner, we went to the botanist and we kind of found these voices.
I think it was five. I think it was five.
It was Yarn and Four Altars. And I... It's very, very rare that you kind of leave an audition feeling totally comfortable.
But I left that audition and it wasn't like I was just going, huh, I nailed that.
I just felt calm and like I was going, yeah.
That was good. I feel really good about it.
Cool. I feel positive. I think I really could be in with a chance of getting that. um and i walked home in the sunshine and listened to outro by m83 over and over and over um And that song ends up becoming like the soundtrack to my recording of the whole game.
But yeah, like it was a really cool thing.
They, they, very, very early on in the process just went, here's the game Bible.
Here is need to know about the game because they knew that if they were gonna have an actor do the job correctly, the actor would need to know everything.
Um, it was like vital more so than any other, you know, cause it's the first game I've ever done.
I've been saying like, it's the first game I've ever done where my performance has felt actually like a game mechanic rather than extra flavor to the game.
It's a genuine mechanic in the game. Which is a really cool feeling, but a lot of pressure.
I mean, it's 12 characters. And they're all different, but... different but the same person.
I read a couple interviews you have done for this game, and you said that you spent hundreds of hours in the booth.
Do you know how... I think when you say hundreds, like, yeah, this is a good number for the Internet. uh it's about 420 it's 420 hours um genuinely though like that's yeah it's about 420 hours yeah Jeez, that's a lot of time.
Yeah, I'd never heard of an actor doing...
The only other person that I knew who had done that sort of time in the booth on something was Ben.
It was Ben Starr who had done about 400 Final Fantasy.
But yes, I think Ben did about 400 hours over four years.
And then I think, so I did about 400 hours in two years.
Recording Dragon Age alongside it meant that for a six month window, I was actually recording five games at the same time.
But for a six month window, I was in the booth eight hours a day, five days a week for six months.
Just like four hours in one booth. cycle for 40 minutes across London to the other booth, eat for 10 minutes, digest, get in the booth and start and do four more hours and then cycle home.
So you won is what you're saying. No. I won, Ben.
Yeah, but Ben has a golden joystick. So Ben's the real winner.
For now. Quite literally. right now that's 420 hours is a lot so I'm trying to do the math in my head if you were to do that consecutively that's like a long time i'm really i i'm a i failed math that's why i'm a writer let's see the whole thing i've never actually tested this yeah because let's say it's eight hours a day, that would be about 52 to 53 days back to back to back talking eight hours a day.
That's a lot. That's like two months. That's like two months.
Yeah. If you're doing every day, I don't know if you count business days.
When people are like, I try to help people understand.
A lot of the time people are like, yeah, eight hours a day is a normal job.
And I'm like, okay, yes. It's like, yeah, sure.
But I'm like, imagine if you have to stand up at work, if you've ever had to stand up and give a presentation.
Now imagine the presentation is eight hours long, And it's every day for 52 days back to back.
You have to stand up in front of that room of people.
And you have to talk for eight hours. There's no break.
There's no drop time. It's like you're talking for eight hours in front of the room of people. every day for 52 days back to back.
And then I think people kind of go like, Oh, yeah, that's a lot of talking.
I don't actually think I want to talk that much.
And you go, that's Yeah, that's the yeah and also you're not like you're not just standing up and talking as alex you're manipulating manipulating your voice like that takes a certain amount of like work and muscle memory and like holding so it's it's physical it's very physical yeah There's a cartoon that I'm doing at the moment where we were doing four-hour sessions and I had to say, guys, I'm going to have to reduce it to two-hour sessions because my... my but the the sort of the muscles here the one on my jaw were unable to support what I needed to do for the character by around the fourth hour.
I was just like, it's... it's like imagine you go to the you're going to the gym and you're lifting something like you're going that bicep curl that after a certain amount of time your muscle is going okay, I can't do this anymore, I'm fatigued.
It's a lot of the same stuff with your voice.
You reach a certain point when you're doing technical stuff You reach a certain point where you go, my muscle is totally fatigued now and it's like, it has to rest.
Yeah. So for the alters, you did this for 12 characters because all of them have different dialects, different ways of speaking.
When... I mean, this is such a large question, but how did you find 12 distinct characterizations built off the same character, but not quite.
Because the thing about the alters is every character is... what a different life path would have done to affect Yan.
So how did you even begin to approach that?
To use the analogy from the game, or the terminology which is branching, I think the best way to describe and explain it is that yarn is the trunk of the tree. and you have the trunk already exists, you know the shape of the trunk, you know what the bark looks like, you kind of have a sense of the leaves.
So you just kind of build off from there.
And you kind of shape the branch and then you shape the next one.
And what you have to do is basically build a tree where each branch looks individual.
But when you take a step back and look at it, you believe that it's a whole tree.
You don't just suddenly go, what the hell are the leaves like? over there looking like that.
So it helped to have that core that we would branch off and build off.
This is, I've said like, I got some flack for this on one podcast where people were like, huh, I said, AI can never replace human creativity.
People are like, it's going to come and replace you, blah, blah, blah.
No, what I'm trying to say is AI can replicate some of the stuff, but the creativity itself, it can't be creative itself.
And in moments like that, doing that sort of thing with finding the voice of these characters.
I'm like, this is something AI can't do, right?
Because you can't say to AI, you can give AI a voice and say, please make this voice say this, but you can't say to it, take this voice.
Now imagine it's the same person, but instead they've spent the last 20 years in a lab, not really honing their social skills and kind of secluding themselves away and sort of separating themselves from their emotion and kind of going purely intellectual in the way they approach life.
And then another one where you go, okay now have this guy and he's done a lot this the same voice take the voice but he's done a lot more manual labor And he has decided to, you know, put humans first over, you know, over sort of logic.
And then how does he sound? AI can't do that stuff.
No. Nope. That's the thing that is inherently human, and that's the creative element.
So humans... AI can't replace that. So I love the process of essentially getting to kind of do a study on people and humans and like, What would this person sound like if they went off an X, Y, Z?
But also, it's already a stylistic choice. fundamentally they would sound very similar.
So in branching off their voices, we're giving ourselves a little bit of freedom to explore and have some fun with it.
So accent wise, getting to step in and do the accents was already a little bit of a free pass.
Because realistically, if you go somewhere, you might slightly change your accent, slightly adopt something.
But, you know, the doctor in his sort of very deep sort of southern drawl, like he's not going to probably have that, you know, if he's kind of gone off and he's not going to speak like he's lived there his whole life.
Um, but what these accents do is they give you a shortcut to a sense of this person because the game is all about time slipping away and you not having time.
And if the player has to spend 10 hours trying to figure out who these people are, then...
You're losing time when they should be able to in an hour go, okay, now I've got a sense of this person and who they are and what makes them tick. because you've got to keep the crew happy.
It's a huge part of like the functioning of the game and how your playthrough is going to go.
So. With these characters waking up, if they have a specific accent, In the first few sentences, you can go, okay, cool.
This guy's really chill and laid back in a slightly himbo way.
Or this guy is really chill and laid back in a slightly world-weary way.
Oh, okay, this guy's a little bit uptight neurotic in quite a guarded way.
This guy's a bit uptight neurotic in quite a condescending way.
This guy is a bit uptight because he's worried.
This guy is a bit... stressed because he is super altruistic and is just like, I need to help everyone.
You get a sense of that from their voices immediately and accents can help shortcut that.
So it was really cool to kind of do this little study of people and be like, what does this accent say to me?
What does this accent say to me? If I hear that accent, what do I think? um what's the what's the word beginning with p that's like a study of humans It's not paleontology.
No, it's not. No. I know what you're talking about, though.
Do you know what's ridiculous? The thing that's coming to me right now is I'm imagining Betty White in Community because she's the teacher. anthropology anthropology anthropology hey yeah but there's a p in there there we go um Yeah, it's sort of almost like it was a study of people and sort of language and accents, yeah.
That's it. And with 12, it's a lot. And obviously, the American dialect is not your... native dialect, how, how, like, what do you have to do?
How hard is it to do an American accent?
I think something that I try to avoid when doing an American accent is, Like a lot of British people feel they really have to enunciate and they really have to, you know, I'm going to say my words.
But really, if you're talking, you know, you're just going to kind of let things kind of slip and it's going to move around and it's, you know, you can just kind of drop Letters here, the end of words and stuff and kind of habit be a bit messy.
Because I think I, I, when I watched some British apps, I'm like going, okay, you're thinking too much about. making sure that what you're saying is heard so you're over enunciating in a way that doesn't feel natural you know so i really wanted to just like make sure it would just kind of you know every now and then there's maybe like a thing where I would say it and they'd go like, you kind of missed that bit in the middle of it, but I would go, yeah, but that's kind of what would happen.
Um, So I wanted to make sure there was that.
And then when it came to the accent stuff, it's really, really interesting.
Like it's, it was, it's a like, It's a challenge to make sure that you feel like you're doing it in a way that someone who is generally from the area would kind of go, okay, I buy it.
Um, but it's another thing to do it when you are jumping around from character to character, every scene or two, like we would do like 15, 20 minutes working on one character, then we'd do five minutes on another.
Then we'd do 10 minutes on another. Do you know what I mean?
We would be jumping all over. so i would be going from like the refiner to um like the god you know who's northeast Like, we would be jumping around all over the place.
So that... was a challenge particularly when it came to the pickups at the very end of recording because when it came to that bit we would literally do like three lines of the botanist two lines of the technician four lines of the scientist, 10 lines of the refiner.
Like, It was hard. It was mentally draining.
And I had to, towards the end of recording, early on in the process, I would be on the camera the whole time.
We would have a camera in the booth and I'd be on camera as we got further and further on with the recording process.
I was like, I would sit off screen and then I would stand up to do the stuff because a lot of the time I would be sitting there and my face would just be sorry.
So when I was listening and not watching, my face would just be going.
And I'm like, I don't want the writers, the directors and everything to be worried that I'm like, doing that to what they're saying or that I'm, you know, sort of like, it looks like I'm not enjoying it, whatever. because instead what i'd be doing is i'd be listening back i would then play back in my mind almost like literally saying it sitting down and then going doing like back to the beginning and then just playing exactly what I just said in my mind.
And every now and then I'd be like, they'd be moving on and I'd go, I'd stand up and go, really sorry guys, I want to go back and do that one again.
But I knew that visually, facially, I wouldn't be able to hide me assessing what I'd just done, or also sometimes just sitting there and trying to clear my brain as we were moving on to the next one.
Um, Yeah, it was – I'm not going to lie.
It was hard. It was mentally draining. There would be days when I would come home and I'd just be like, I don't want to talk to anyone.
I want to sit. Yeah. I want to just sit.
And again, especially while I was doing Dragon Age and at the same time I was doing Ben and I we were brought in they redid the audio the performances for a game called Atlas Fallen and Ben and I were brought in to play the gauntlet bearer and I was the character of the gauntlet um so i was doing like all these things you know and you get back and just be like i just i just need to sit down and not talk to anyone um And I found that I, I stream on Twitch, but I haven't really had a consistent streaming schedule for a little while.
And I haven't actually gone live on Twitch for a few months because I'm just like, My evening time is so valuable now.
And one of the last things I want to do when I've been recording in a booth all day is come home And sit in front of a microphone and put headphones on again.
I'm like, I want to take my headphones off.
I want to take my dog for a walk. I want to hear the sounds around me.
And here are the people talking that sort of stuff.
Yeah. Yeah. As, as a writer, I can very deeply empathize with the need for nonverbal time. when you have spent the entire day kind of in a different world, like different voices in your head, interacting with people all day.
Like this is a very... This is a very social profession, I think, for both of us.
So you're just constantly interacting, constantly talking, constantly working.
So nonverbal time. What's interesting, though, is that I find that it's a social profession that can feel very lonely.
Yes. Because you are constantly stepping into other people's orbits for a period of time.
And then you are on to something else, right?
There are times I'd be in and I'd do like, I'll do 12 hours on a game, but I'd be in for like two hours here and an hour then.
And then I'd kind of like go into a studio and be like, hi people.
And then I go on and. I'm somewhere else and they continue to have this old social, this, this, this, um, sort of little social ecosystem that they have over there.
And I get to kind of step into that every now and then.
And until recently, it felt quite lonely. you were being extremely social and you were having to put out a lot of effort and energy, but then you never got to be part of the larger sort of environment of that space.
Um, until BAFTA started doing, uh, games, uh, monthly games socials for people who work in video games.
Um, and now every month they have these socials and you go along and I have started to get to know voice actors and directors and writers and engineers, everyone so much better because I'm like, yeah, this is great.
We're all here in a space together, socializing and having a drink.
And it's been amazing and I've loved it.
I've absolutely loved having the opportunity because yeah, it's weird like how social it is to then how lonely it can be.
Yeah. especially now in this brave new world of remote work and a lot of people working from home.
I know that's kind of changing here in the United States.
But for writers, a lot of us get hired remote.
So I'm not with my team every day. when we're designing stuff.
So I empathize with, and then, you know, we go to an event or go to the studio once every, couple months like you don't really get you don't really get that touch point we kind of have to organize our own, our own gatherings to really kind of connect with each other.
Yeah. Um, yeah, so in terms of, in terms of actually collaborating with collaborating with developers and working on these 12 personalities, you mentioned in your audition, you got to sit down and kind of workshop a couple of these characters and how you would approach them.
Did that continue into when you were on board?
How did you collaborate with the team in developing all of these versions of the app?
What's interesting is that actually basically what we had for those four altars was essentially what was in the game in the end.
They were like, yeah, we're happy. These feel like the right characters.
This is what we're after. There was obviously some slight fine tuning and stuff, but it was basically what we had in the end.
What I would say is interesting is that, so Kate Saxon, who was in the audition process, the voice director in the audition process, Kate was... originally going to voice direct the game and then had a screen engagement that basically was overrunning.
And so Kate was like, okay, I'm not going to do the first X number of months. this amazing other voice director called Damien Goodwin.
Damien's going to come in and Damien is going to do the first X number of months on the game.
And then I'll come back and I'll take over.
And then as we got more and more into it, we were like, that doesn't really make sense.
Why would you then... You've had someone getting to know the ship.
It's not just about like steering the ship.
You have to get to know the ship. So then if that's going to happen, then Kate's going to have to learn the ship when Damien goes, so basically Kate was like, this doesn't make any sense.
I was like, this doesn't make any sense.
The studio, everyone was like, this doesn't make any sense.
Damien should just direct the game, voice direct the game.
So Damien directed my performance. Kate then directed the sort of some of the other like like Lena And, uh, Maxwell Lucas, you know, some of the sort of other characters that pop up in the game.
Um, so it was interesting to create these characters with Kate in the room and then go in and then have to kind of go do that process again and kind of almost show Damien, well, here's what we've come up with.
And here's kind of how we did it. Are you cool with this?
And Damien being like, yeah, yeah, this works for me.
This is cool. And then having to kind of find out what, what Damien's shorthand is, what Damien's like as a director.
What does Damien need from me? What do I need from Damien?
You kind of just have... There was a little bit of relearning that at the beginning.
But I mean, when you're doing hundreds of hours, you get... you get to a very comfortable place very quickly.
And I just felt like Damien and I really just began to understand what makes each other tick when we're in the booth and how we work.
Um, so the process was ended up being like super, super smooth at no point.
Was there ever really a time? where we disagreed on what we thought the character should sound like.
You know, a lot of the time I come up with a voice and you go, okay, cool.
Yeah. What about like this? And then tweak that.
And it would always be rooted in an idea that I had had. and then we would kind of fine-tune it.
We'd refine it from... Refine? Good use of... Brand synergy.
We would refine it from there. So it was very collaborative, but the impetus for each voice always came from myself.
Were you ever... worried about what conversations would sound like when you're essentially talking to yourself for 95% of the game.
It felt very... As I was playing, I couldn't help but think of Clone Wars.
And like the Bad Batch and like all the clones.
Yeah. And so to me, I was like, wow, like when you're listening to to use Bad Batch specifically, um, For anyone listening who doesn't know what we're talking about, it's an amazing Star Wars animated show.
Please go watch it. They are, when you watch them talk to each other, you don't think this is the same person as all these characters.
You're like, yeah, these characters are all their own person.
And playing the alters... I very much felt that way as well as you roll on.
So how did you... How did you approach that?
Were you worried about that? What was that like?
It's so cool that you said that because this is the one... thing that I have cited as being comparable.
Because it felt like I was treading new ground in games, but I was like, but this has been done over here by Dee Bradley Baker.
So it was really, really cool to be able to see that.
But it was also one thing I had to do was kind of put kind of put what he did from my mind.
Because I was like, if I think about that too much and how did he do this and how did he do that?
Um, then I would be, I would be walking. in someone else's footsteps in a way that wouldn't have felt right and would have hindered the process that we were on ourselves.
Um, God, I've forgotten the question because I was thinking about Dee Bradley Baker and how good he is. um making sure that like basically this con i was asking about you've talked essentially talking to yourself for yes eight hours yeah um what's interesting is that we would always start with the altar side of the conversation and then go to Yarn because OG, bass, proto, however you want to call him, Yarn, is the most similar to me.
He's basically like me, but talking with American accent.
So he's kind of, vocally he's the most similar To me.
But... So that one was always like, that's fine.
We can do that. That's fine. So we would always start with the... altar go through like a scene or two as the altar and then go back and reply to his yarn so it was never like we would record one side and then at some point we would do it and it would we would always see a scene through from start to end.
So Damien would read opposite me. And because it was, he was reading in every time he was reading in yarn, it would be very easy for me to kind of hear in my head what it would be sounding like coming from yarn side.
And then afterwards I would be replying as Jan to what we had just recorded.
So it was never like, you know, I was, every time I was just talking to Damien, Damien would speak the first time and then whenever I came back to talk as Jan, I would be hearing what I had just recorded and the selected takes that we had just done. so it was really really easy to kind of keep track and go like this is what it's going to sound like because we were kind of doing it in the moment and the very last kind of run through of each scene was pretty much like, you know, going, well, this is what it's going to sound like in the, in the moment in the booth.
I think the hardest thing is really is when you have branching narratives. is, you know, having moments where you go, great.
Okay. So this kind of ties into the altar being really, really sad and down. but it could happen at a time when they're generally fine as well.
So how do you deliver a performance that feels like you're allowing the emotional weight of that scene.
But then when Jan talks to them immediately after with another dialogue option, it's not like going, whoa, hold on, emotional...
What was that? Like you were just basically crying there and then now you're just talking totally normally or like almost happy.
That's the biggest challenge, I think. Yeah.
And I think a lot of people sometimes don't necessarily consider that when they're thinking about a performer's or an actor's performance in a video game with lots of choices.
And if you're playing a straight narrative game, It's much easier to give a consistent phenomenal performance because You're seeing the story through.
It's a linear narrative game. But yeah, when your, when your character is having to jump around and you're going, I want to give this.
Like, I want to be crying in this scene.
And they're going, we can't do anything like that.
Can't do anything like that because you could have the dialogue option that comes up immediately after where you're happy.
So you've got to make this scene sound like it has the weight of you being really upset, but not so upset that you couldn't then be really happy.
Which in itself... is a whole other performing challenge.
Because it's like, it's a real challenge to go to those heavy emotional places. and do it authentically.
But it's also a challenge to find that 75, 80% spot that can still link in to the other line that comes after.
Yeah, branching is, and you had to do this a little bit with Dragon Age too, because everything is very, very branching for that.
You've mentioned in some interviews and we've talked about it.
Obviously this game has your heart. You feel very attached to it.
Is it like, Is it the messaging? What resonated with you about this project?
This game has your heart. Why? This game absolutely has my heart because of the people making it.
The... the game director Tomek, it became very, very apparent to me very early on. that I was working with someone very special.
I think Tomek should His name should be in the same breath as Sam Lake, you know, as Joseph Perez. as these people who like have real clear visions that sometimes other people might be going like, like, a studio might more traditionally typically be like, Oh, that's a bit of a bold choice.
And Tom makes like, no, no, I know my vision.
I don't want to see my vision through. but he does it in a way that feels collaborative with the people that he's working with.
Like it's never... It's never sort of totalitarian, you know, my way or the highway it's this, and this is it only he does a very good job of ensuring that the vision that he has. sort of is seen to completion where everyone feels like they've had an input on it, which is amazing. he has said in the past that I'm not concerned about making you a better player.
I want to make you a better person. Like, When someone approaches game making in that way, that feels really cool and unique.
And it feels really cool. to be going through the creative process with that person.
The question And I've already, do you know what?
I've already seen this. I had people who have made videos being like crying as they're doing the video being like, This game hit me hard.
Like, you know, it made me question so many things in my life or it made me think about specific moments in my life.
X, Y, Z, whatever it is, it's had a real impact on those who have played it.
And I just felt from the very beginning that I was working on something really, really cool.
I'm going to be special with really cool and special people.
And then as it went on and I started to see, you know, the philosophical, the moral questions, the challenges that would be posed to the player, the things that would make you think about your own life.
I was like, yeah. It just became even more and more apparent to me.
I really am desperate for more people to play this game, not like, obviously there's the sense of being like, I want people to play it because I'm in it and that's cool.
But I want people to play it, first of all, for the devs at 11-bit who put so much love and soul into it. but also for their own sake, for the players sake, because I'm like, there's something really cool in this game, which when you finish, when those credits roll,
You feel like you've gone on a huge journey.
It's a 25-hour long game. It's not one of these games like Red Dead where you can sing hundreds of hours, you know, and do every side quest and blah, blah, blah.
But at the end of it, because of how packed it is with emotional moments and philosophical moments and moments where you might have to put the controller down and pause and go, okay, hold on.
You know, again, I read one guy's review where like, He said that he literally put the controller down for like 20 minutes and just kind of sat there and was like, huh?
Okay. I need to take a step away before I continue with this.
And that's amazing. That's really cool, you know?
The gameplay of it is amazing and really cool.
And it's very much like, okay, just one more day.
I'll do one more in-game day. One more in-game day.
I'll just do one more in-game day. But if the game can also then make you put the controller down because of what the story is doing, that's also cool.
So I imagine whatever project you take next has a high bar to clear after doing something like this.
Has a very high bar. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you go from, you basically are the game and you resonate very deeply with the material.
And I think, you know, In an industry where we don't often get to work on something that really resonates with us, getting the chance to is really special.
Yeah, 100%. And it's why I came out of that audition and that feeling of calmness I think came from the feeling of resonating with the project itself, with the game itself, you know?
Yeah. Well, thank you for being so candid and open and honest with me today.
I've really enjoyed hearing about where you come from and the sex noises and the alters is really great.
Yeah, I am looking forward to seeing what you do next.
I'm working on something really cool at the moment, which is so, so unbelievably NDA'd.
But I'm working on this and it's like, it's the kind of thing where when it eventually gets announced.
People will be like, oh, that was the thing that you were.
Okay. Oh, now I'm excited. That was the thing.
Yeah. Well, I look forward to it. Yeah. It's gonna be good.
It's gonna be very cool. Thank you. Thank you very much.
I've enjoyed this a lot. Thank you for joining us for The Game Maker's Notebook.
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