If you’ve ever played the small and obscure indie game Baldur’s Gate 3, you’ll recognize Samantha Béart’s voice as the hotheaded barbarian we all know and love, Karlach. While that is their breakout role, Samantha has a very diverse background on both the stage and screen.
I had the honor and privilege of interviewing the amazingly talented Samantha Béart and asking some questions about their time acting in video games, along with some specifics about their upcoming titles like Fading Echo. They provided me with a wealth of fascinating insights into the industry and some of the challenges they’ve encountered.
Things started off a bit silly since Samantha had a few plushies behind her that drew my attention. I’ll include these because they were incredibly fun interactions that still gave some good information on what to expect from New Tales with Fading Echo.
There’s a whole lot to cover here as we spoke for about 40 minutes or so in total. Samantha was such a joy to interview that eventually things became more like a conversation rather than an interview. So without further ado, here’s the stuff you probably came for!
Interview with Actor Samantha Béart
Q: Oh my gosh, you have Echo’s little plushie [from Fading Echo]? I didn’t know they had plushies already!
They don’t, they don’t. I made them send it to me. I said, “Can I have it for interviews and stuff,” right? So, they were like, “Yeah, sure,” and then we went on holiday, and we shot her on holiday, and they’ve used it in promo. Yeah, it’s been lovely. And they don’t [have more plushies made], and I said, “You should. Everyone’s gonna want one of these, so you should.” We’ve all been bullying New Tales into making plushies of One, so don’t worry.
Q: I’m going to try to cover a whole lot of different aspects of things, but I wanted to start with: What are some of the differences you’ve experienced working on AAA titles versus some indie titles? I know you were in Demon’s Souls, and you’ve obviously done Absolum and Baldur’s Gate 3, which is weird to say as an indie title; it doesn’t feel like one. And then, of course, Fading Echo, and I know you have a lot more projects coming out, so I was just curious about whether you noticed any differences [between the projects].
Yeah, I mean, I think what’s consistent is the quality of the writing. There is no difference. Someone asked me yesterday about the difference in writing. I said, there’s no difference, it’s all excellent, and it is the same people working across all scales and budgets. What is different is that I tend to find the smaller the budget, the more likely I am to see a full script, or be able to chat to devs ahead of time. So we’re not spending time in the studio where you’re paying per minute to start discovering the character when we should be recording it.
That being said, I did a AAA – and Fading Echo has no NDA, by the way. There’s no NDA on Fading Echo. We can say anything we like. And to be honest, a lot of the stuff they’ve told me is public knowledge now. In fact, most of it is public knowledge, so there’s not really anything except spoilers, which I obviously won’t do. But, no, it was the coincidence between sitting down with a AAA and an indie, and being briefed ahead of time, was knowing the creative director. That’s what happened, and in both cases, they went, “Let’s save some time in the room, let you have a think about it before you come in,” and it’s the most helpful thing ever.
And the AAA even had the lead narrative designer and the gent who was directing me, which was huge. So we’d had a little idea of what we were like before we went in, and it just saves so much time. It sort of lets you start a little bit ahead of the blocks, you know, so I love that. And really, I’m such a small cog in this machine, that’s what I can hope for. Getting to know the devs while it’s happening; what is happening with New Tales, is a real dream. But that’s not the norm at all.
Q: Yeah, I definitely understand that. About voice acting, what got you into voice acting, or what kind of brought you over from being a traditional actor to doing voice acting?
Yes, I don’t see it in terms of traditional acting and voice acting. I think it’s more like theater, film, TV, and games. In games, you’re going to be asked to do more of a variety; show a variety of skills, as opposed to film, TV, theater. You have an idea of what to expect for each of those entertainment mediums. But in a video game, you might be doing FMV, you might be doing mocap, and you might not find out until you get in there. So I’m very, very wary of calling it voice acting, because it’s kind of inaccurate now. And it’s not helpful for people who want to act from the neck up when they go into the room, and they have to put a full bodysuit on and play a fantasy character.
For instance, you might want to get some of that more traditional theatrical training just to make sure that you know where you are. And they do throw a lot of stuff [at] you, and because it’s NDA’d up to the eyeballs, you might not know until you actually step into the volume what the nature of it is. So it’s really an all-rounder area. I wouldn’t call it voiceover, and also, if you hire me as a voiceover, I’m going to be very disappointing. I don’t have those skills. I can’t play two siblings of different genders with a four-year age difference between them. That’s not gonna happen. But a real voice artist can do that, and that’s what you should hire them to do.
You know, they’re like athletes, so they’re bouncing off the walls. They’re possessed with voices, you know. It’s not something I offer. I offer something a little more grounded and filmic, as we’re getting into that with larger narratives. But going into maybe an anime, or a very heightened game, or something, maybe not within my wheelhouse. So I’d be very careful before you call me a voice actor, because I feel that’s not me at all.
Q: You covered a couple of these, but I was wondering if you maybe wanted to go a little bit deeper and explain some more about the differences between doing video game acting versus the other kinds of acting. Just anything; maybe you’ve run into difficulties you’ve had personally. I know you just brought up not having tons of voices, but just anything else like that.
Well, yeah, I mean, unless you’re in a quite experimental piece of theater, or it’s fringe, you play one or two roles. You’re not expected to play lots of different things. But of course, in video games, a lot of the time, you don’t have the face. Unless you’re doing facial capture, it’s your likeness or whatever, so that’s a real advantage, because you can play a load of things. If it’s a skeleton they’re using for mocap, they can blow it up, like they did with me and Karlach.
Or they can bring it down for some of our taller male members of our cast, who all seem to be about 6’5 on average. They’re massive guys. So there’s a versatility in that, in which you wouldn’t get in the screen industries. I’d say the main difference is role expectations. In film, TV, and theater, people have distinct roles, and they don’t cross over very often. The costume designer is not casting, for example, you know? The DOP isn’t an audio engineer as well on the side.
Whereas in video games, there are a lot of hats being worn, and it’s part of my mission with something like It Takes a Village for people to know that, particularly for actors, to be maybe a bit more forgiving than they’d normally be. Because they might be saying, “Why the hell is the composer directing me? What’s happened?” They might not have a performance director employed on the project, especially if it’s a micro-indie.
So there’s something about being a bit more forgiving, and the usual vocabulary we’re used to when it comes to film, TV, and theater might not be there with video games, particularly on that smaller end. So I think that would be the main difference, but also, like I said before, in a way, you’re being asked to do more of a variety of skills in a way that you just wouldn’t get for film, TV, and theater. Maybe theater sometimes, if it’s more experimental, but the sort of variety of things I’ve filmed with a green screen for Mike Bithell, because he did Solitaire Conspiracy, which had a full storyline for a Solitaire game. And I did that in my living room during lockdown, right? That’s different.
And obviously, Baldur’s Gate is fully mo-capped, and there’s a game I can’t talk about yet. It’s a real-time strategy game in which I did full facial capture. We had fully acted cinematics in it, in a genre that doesn’t normally have that. So I’m doing all these different things, and then the volume itself, without going on and on and eating up time, it’s like a black box theater, because you’ve got no props, no costume, and then you’re being filmed at the same time. Sometimes, on Baldur’s Gate, it was line by line, one at a time, because you have to separate those choices out, so it all makes sense when it’s all stitched together by the player. And they’re filming your face as well. And then you’ve got these big monologues, which is more theater, but it’s sort of everything. It requires everything from you, which makes it really fun to do.
Q: Wonderful! And now I am poised and excited for a new RTS game with you, so I cannot wait to hear more about that.
I think this time next year, maybe. I think it’s gonna be winter. That’s what they say to me, and then they drop all communications. So, winter next year is what I’ve been told.
Q: You did cover how it’s a little bit different for indies versus bigger studios and such. And I wanted to ask how much input do you usually get on a character? Like, maybe your input was on Karlach, about how they moved, or how they acted, or Cider for how they spoke, or how they treated other people. If you could just kind of talk about some of that; your differences for one versus the other.
Yeah, so my job is really to interpret, not to improvise, in a way like in cinema, particularly, because we can see the actors’ thoughts. So if that line isn’t the way they might say it, just as a human… Not like, “Oh, my character wouldn’t,” I don’t mean that. It’s just if it’s a clunky line that you have to then rewrite it or whatever to make that work. That’s the way people improvise on screen, because we can see when they’re fishing for the… Actually, no, I’d say you can see it all, so it needs to really look genuine.
In games, it’s more like theater in that that’s a “you problem.” You have to justify that line. Particularly, I guess the less involvement you have, is if it’s just voice. Call that less involvement than mocap. It might not be. It might be very intense, but let’s just call it that. If it’s just voice in an indie, I come in really at the end. I’m coming in at the end while they polish it up, and they’re going to implement it in a game that exists. So, that’s already been subtitled, that’s been translated to other languages, and it’s been localized. So, me coming in and improvising is not a good idea, and it’s a waste of time, so it’s just a “me problem.” I’ll just have to justify that line, and you chat in the studio and go, “Is that right, or is that just a typo?” But sometimes it’s like, “Huh, that doesn’t quite tally up with this character I’ve got to know.”
Remember, we do it out of order, so you don’t always get that authority on that character. Yes, of course, I got some say on how she moved around, but she’s also, like, a 7-foot barbarian. And on a big model, like a big skeleton like that, for me to be quite energetic and flap around like this looks weird. So we used Laban. The Laban technique is something dancers use; it’s a quality of movement. It’s about weight and direction, and whether or not it’s sustained. Very dull, but there’s a big old matrix you can look up. And we call that “pressing,” which is sustained, it’s got direction, it’s got weight. So that just keeps her nice and heavy and full of muscle, and maybe a bit tight in the chest, where there’s an infernal engine, and she doesn’t stretch properly after bench pressing.
That’s what I decided. So she’s very stiff in the upper body, so the whole torso would move. You can see that in the game, so the whole torso kind of moves around, because again, if she’s sort of young and more elastic, like One [from Fading Echo] is. Then it’s just a bit weird and doesn’t quite fit the character. But we had movement directors to keep us honest with that. They were absolutely watching everything we did for each line. It was pretty intense.
But One, I think, is a good example. I spoke to Anais Sorrentino, who is head of animation on [Fading Echo], and she showed me how One moves way ahead of the session, so I could go and see, “Okay, this is a very heightened performance thing.” It’s more like a cartoon or an anime. Because she’s just elastic, and of course, she turns into water, and she’s having the time of her life, and she’s young in this particular game.
If there are further games, she’ll age up too, but at the moment, this is very early days in the Echo Universe, and so there’s this sort of childlike element. Just showing me the animation ahead of time, letting me sleep on it, really helped. With Cider [from Absolum], and with the player character in Demon’s Souls, I’m shown on the day. And you go, “Okay, that’s the quality of movement that’s gonna help me.” You know, again, Cider, very light, that roguish character, and with a lovely telescopic arm to punch people in the face. It’s great fun.
And with Demon’s Souls, it was like, “Can you just sound a bit tougher when you die?” Because you’ve done this a lot. And it was a localization job, and the Japanese dub sounded completely different. You could see why you needed a different dub for the English version of it, whether American or UK. So, yeah, it’s really interesting stuff. It’s very specific and intricate, and my interpretation is what comes to force. I might offer something, maybe opposite to what seems to be written, and they might use that. They might not, but you just offer it anyway, and we negotiate together, and it’s a wonderful, collaborative beast.
Q: Very intricate answer. I love that. And you did talk about Karlach and how she walks around with her stiff shoulders and everything. Because you are an actor, was the mo-capping for Baldur’s Gate 3 something that was more in your wheelhouse, you would say? Something that you kind of walked in and were like, “Okay, I can do this well. This is something I know.”
Yeah, so the lovely thing about traditional European classical training is it’s a toolbox. They give you everything you will need, right? And so a lot of it you feel is useless. You’re never going to use mask, you’re never going to use Commedia dell’arte. It’s in the past, you don’t need it. But actually, I used a lot of that, because you literally have a mask. So we don’t have the expression, we can’t read someone’s eyes, nothing, and it’s the body that has to interpret.
And you don’t want it too over the top, so it becomes dance or something. But the body is then watched, and it’s something really interesting with Karlach, because it did a lot of the work. It wasn’t only the voice you were getting for the whole character, you were getting body language as well; you were getting my body language. So when we did things like that, we didn’t require mocap. Like when the game goes isometric, that’s not mocap, that’s animation. So we haven’t done anything, it’s just voice. So that’s spells, that’s party banter.
I found that quite difficult; I had to stand like Karlach to remember what she sounded like. Sitting down in it, it was just all wrong, all of a sudden. I had to physically embody her, because I’d been doing that for hundreds of hours, and I still associated her with that shape. So it came in really useful, and being okay in a black box with no props, and talking to myself, and just having the director read in lines, and imagining I’m madly in love with that person whom I’m speaking to. It’s all stuff we use in theater, and doing it out of sequence, and infinite possibilities of responses that you can get. It felt like a rehearsal room for a play, where you’re still just trying to work out where this character’s going, and it’s not set in stone yet.
It all felt very familiar; it wasn’t scary. Obviously, the mocap; every game’s different, the way they do their mocap, so you had to learn the way they do their T-poses. That would take 20 minutes, right? And then you gotta start wrapping up before they have to cut. Things like that. The physical discipline of it. I had to start from a neutral position at the beginning of the line, say the line, come back to that physical neutrality.
If I got carried away in a monologue and I forgot, you would hear screams in the booth. And I have to do it all over again. So, that quite quickly made you remember that you had to go back to that position. So yeah, that was the learning curve, but we’re humanoids, bipedal creatures; it’s not out there. It wasn’t too wild. People are always kind of surprised when they find out we didn’t train. But you learn quite quickly. Within a couple of sessions, you’ve got it down.
Q: Awesome! Incredible. I wanted to switch gears a little bit here and focus a little on Absalom, since that’s what kind of spurred all of this. Are you going to be reprising your role as Cider for the TV show for Absolum that’s coming out?
I’m right here. If they would like me, I would love to do it, but I’ve had no contact at all. So please, make it happen. Make it happen. You, anyone that’s reading this, watching this, anything. I’d love to, absolutely. Oh yeah, of course, I’d love to, and I’m sure the other three main actors would love to do it too.
Q: And we’d love to hear them! I thought the voice acting was phenomenal for Absolum. I think everybody did a really good job, and kind of the banter between everyone was so much fun to be a part of and see.
So, that was directed by Audrey Sheffield, and she’s a theater director; that’s where she comes from. So there we go. We analyze text in a way that we really get into it. And yeah, I just think it’s really interesting that people are coming from different disciplines. There was a lot of that in Baldur’s Gate. A lot of theater practitioners came in, and I think that seems to be the secret sauce with this stuff.
Q: We covered a little bit of this. I was wondering what are some of the biggest differences when you’re playing a player character, main character, sort of like Cider and One, versus playing a traditional companion character, like Karlach. I know Karlach can be a main character, but there’s kind of a difference there.
I guess you’d have more hours if you’re playing the lead, I imagine, and a lot of the time there are efforts, there are battle cries, spells, if it’s gonna be a fantasy game, instruction. “Maybe you should go left,” you know? Yeah, maybe, “Are we gonna go? Are we just gonna stand here? Maybe we should do that mission?”
We just said all those prompts that you give to the player as a player character. Whereas with an NPC, I suppose it’s more exposition? You know, it’s story, isn’t it? You’re there to do that, but you’re not as intimate with the player; you are not the avatar for the player, so it’s different, but it’s not something that really crossed my mind, so that was a unique question. Thank you very much.
Q: It’s my pleasure. I’m glad I could ask something interesting and unique. That’s my only goal for today. Hopefully some of these other ones strike an interesting chord as well. I did have a question that you’ve probably received before. When you are getting to know these characters, how do you go about connecting with the material that they’re giving you? I know sometimes they don’t have a lot to give you, or they have a ton to give you, and it’s a matter of kind of piecing together whatever it is that is important.
Well, it turns out, I quite like stories that are presented to me in a fragmented way. My brain likes to go, “Oh, that’s how that fits together.” Most of the time, you get a biography of the character, or you get an elevator pitch. If you’re lucky, you know what genre you’re in, which really helps, because something domestic is very different to a space opera, internally. And again, that will save time.
I was talking to a director the other day, where the actor doesn’t play games. They hadn’t been told the genre, and it took half an hour to get a good line out of them, because they just can’t envision it. Maybe it was a little bit quiet for the game, or whatever, but, yeah, that totally makes sense, and no blame on the actor for that. Studios can be a little braver, just letting us know what we’re actually in. That would help. Seeing the animation has helped that big time. I love that. Normally, most of the time, that’s in the room. If you can not make it an Excel spreadsheet, so I can read it like a human, that’d be amazing. But a lot of the time, there are ways of reading it.
And again, because I play games, I know that some of these lines are in isolation, right? They’re barks, and they’re meant to just tell the player what to do. And if they’re well-written, it’s a little insight into that character, of that player character as well. But generally, it’s functional, right? And then, if you’re really lucky, you get a juicy monologue here and there. We get to do a little bit of acting. But yeah, just as much information as they can give us.
It starts with genre, and for me as an actor, analyzing text, what other people in that world say about me, I’ve found to be very helpful, because we’re not always reflective or self-aware of how we come across. So Thomasina in the Excavation of Hob’s Barrow, turns out she’s a massive snob. She doesn’t know that, but everyone else says that about her behind her back, so that was really helpful to inject this arrogance into her, to make her a more well-rounded, complex character.
Q: When things get emotional, when you’re maybe giving those bigger monologues, or like you said, talking to your character’s love interest or whatever, how do you walk that line between too much emotion and maybe not enough emotion? Just for you personally?
That’s where the director comes in. That’s the answer, they’ll just go, “Can you do a bit less? You don’t love them that much,” you know, that sort of thing. But again, when it’s well written, and the director’s been able to put it together in some sort of coherent order for the actor, then you’ve built up to that moment, and it makes a lot of sense. It’s a very short answer, for one.
Q: Other than maybe the plushies for Fading Echo, is there anything you are particularly excited about for the game coming out?
Yeah, so they’ve just finished their first alpha playtest, which they opened to the public, and there’s been a lot of goodwill on that part, because they know it’s not ready. I was on a stream the other day. They were playing with a keyboard, which is not recommended at the moment, and they were struggling a little bit with it. I played it ages ago. When I accepted the job, they said, “Would you like a key?” I said, “Yes, please,” and again, that really informed my understanding of the character and the world and all the rest of it. It’s just done a lot of work for me. I think they’re planning some really cool things as the months go on.
We’ve already had a little bit of behind-the-scenes with Laura Bailey in her role as Vellum. There’s at least one more Critical Role actor getting involved, Matt Mercer. That was announced some time ago, so he’d better be doing it. And I hope we get to see some behind the scenes. No NDA, it doesn’t matter! And of course, lovely Jasmine Bhullar, who’s playing One’s mother, Rahne, who’s also a writer, which is a cool thing to do. Yeah, hopefully I will get to play with the devs at some point. We’ll have to play together and stream or upload that onto YouTube.
Yeah, there’ll just be more opportunities to play in the world before it comes out. It is based on a TTRPG. I think they have got a devlog, but a kind of podcast. And we started with me and Jasmine before we actually recorded, and the first question was like, “Why would you do a video game when you have a TTRPG?” And then we laughed for a very long time; a bit too long. But that’s what they wanted to do, and they said this first game is about 5% of the world of Echo. They know their world backwards. I think they started writing the TTRPG eight years ago, so these guys know their onions. They’re also from Blizzard. A lot of the devs are from Blizzard.
They know how to make a game. I feel that they’ve taken the best bits of that experience and brought it into the new studio, especially from my perspective. In terms of receiving writing, there isn’t much difference between a AAA indie and a micro indie, except really in terms of volume, and maybe that the smaller the budget, the easier, reader-friendly they make that text. But it’s all storytelling; it doesn’t really matter the budget or whatever. But it’s just been a joy to work with them, and I hope, if this is successful, there will be more. So please make it successful. Please play the game. Buy the plushies that don’t exist yet.
Q: I’ll certainly be buying one, and I really enjoyed the playtest from what I played. Definitely still feels like early days.
Tell me how it went down for you.
Q. Oh wow, I guess I can do that, right? I really enjoyed it. I opened it up, and I was a little worried that something was broken because there was no intro music or anything. It just starts with the cutscene, so I was like, “Oh my god, something’s broken, I’ve done something wrong here.” And then finally there’s talking, and I was like, “Okay, this is really cool.” As I kind of got into the world, I didn’t know anything about the TTRPG or anything like that, so it was all very fresh to me. Getting to experience it was very, “Wow, this is really interesting.” There’s a lot of worldbuilding happening in a very short span of time, and I think that that’s really difficult to encapsulate. I thought they did a really good job, especially with Vellum, and One, and her mom. Everybody kind of talking a lot through everything was really interesting, and just a lot of little tidbits of stuff that you could really pick out. The gameplay was tons of fun, I think. I’m hoping to see some more spice get added, where we’re having a lot more difficult puzzles, maybe having some more intricate combat sessions. I think that was a major kind of feedback from them, and they took it very well, from my understanding.
I can see it, I can see their polls, and I can look at all the things, because I’m on the Discord (laughs). But we’re thrilled at how many people played it and gave feedback, and people were playing it on Twitch. Quite a lot of people played it. I did not expect that at all, and it’s just been wonderful to have that very small feedback loop that we got. It’s gonna be a short game, we’re thinking 10 to 15 hours long. It’s a short game, so we have to establish this world.
And I just remember the first time I saw One step into the Multiverse, and everything changes, including herself, you know? It’s just gorgeous. And then the fluidity of that combat. In that, if you touch the lava, you turn it to steam, or you touch the waste, you just bounce around, and it’s constantly changing. And like I said, they did a dev stream. I think they just published it yesterday on YouTube, the day before, but the three devs played together and said, “Yeah, if you just hit things with a stick, you’re going to have a bad time.”
Q: You seem to play characters that all sort of have this zest for life, like, this sort of energy about them. Like Karlach, Cider, and One, to a much greater extent. They’re all very enthusiastic about living life their own kind of way and doing things the way that they want. Would you say that that’s sort of who you are as a person, or is that just a piece of a character that you like to play?
Oh, I’m a miserable bugger, but… I’m a doer. I don’t like to complain about things, I actually like to go and do it, which is how I ended up doing It Takes a Village, right? I was like, “We don’t know what each other do, and I think if we did understand each other’s roles, we’d have a better time in the studio,” and that’s where the genesis of that was.
So yeah, I’ve always liked to take action, preferably with other people. Community’s really important to me. Friendship, camaraderie, all those good things. That’s very Karlach, isn’t it? If I could get away with vigilante justice, I would do that, but I’m not allowed in this reality, so I have to do things the slow way. Yeah, it’s nice. What a nice typecast to have, if that’s the typecasting. I’ve played a lot of very clever, intense scientist types as well.
I was doing audio for Big Finish; you have a lot of Doctor Who properties under their license. Now in games getting to be action-based – I loved watching Alien and Terminator films when I was a kid, you know. And in Mass Effect, being a hero with a female-led character, it’s very much the sort of characters that I’ve enjoyed experiencing the world with. It’s a good position to be in.
Q: What kind of characters, either virtually, or on stage, or otherwise, do you enjoy playing the most?
Complex. I like that. I just like the… again, we talked about subtext earlier, everyone has their reasons, right? It’s very rare you’ll find an actor playing a bad guy that’ll say, “Oh yeah, they’re really bad,” and judge them and all that. They tend to say, well, you’ve had to go through that, because real-life bad guys don’t know they’re real-life bad guys. They think they’re just doing the right thing for themselves, or for their people, whatever, but they might be very, very mistaken, doing a lot of harm. But they really do think they’re doing the right things for the right reasons for themselves.
So you have to be very non-judgmental. I’m sitting on seven titles I can’t talk about right now, and there’s such a variety of roles coming. I’ve been saying to people, this is my 1990s Gary Oldman era. I’m just getting to play everything, like character roles as lead characters, or good supporting characters. So, yeah, we’ve had a lot of heroes. There are some villains coming along, and some domestic stuff as well. I think it’s been very large-scale fantasy sci-fi, which I love, of course. But there are some really cool little things coming up as well. So, very exciting times.
Q: Very, very exciting indeed. So, I’m out of my planned questions, but I do have a degree in game design and criticism, so one of my focuses is on writing for video games, and I have always adored villains. I love writing intricate, fun villains who have these kinds of complex needs and wants. It’s always more interesting, like you said, when they think they’re the good guy. I’ve always really enjoyed it when they are kind of the “good guy,” in a way. Like, whatever they’re doing is out of necessity for something, and by defeating them, you’ve opened up this whole new world of terrible things, just like in Absolum, you know? We go through this whole thing where we’re beating down bad guys, and we get to Azra, and we finally beat Azra, and now we’ve unleashed some interdimensional space god, Cthulhu-esque beast, and it’s so good.
I enjoyed it. You just don’t know when you record, you don’t know when something’s going to be a hit or not. And obviously you do your best, everyone does their best. What was different about, you know, I’ve played beat-em-ups probably the first genre I ever played. It was probably Streets of Rage or Golden Axe or something on an arcade machine for a bit, until I ran out of money, which would have been very quickly. So I wasn’t very good at these things. But they didn’t require fully voiced dialogues, cutscenes, and cinematics.
There was a little bit of that. Coming into it was great, and of course, because it’s roguelike. Because you can only play so many characters at once, you can have a very different experience every time you pick it up, which I think that’s part of it, and then the beat-em-up element, and it’s gorgeous, and the music’s amazing. It’s smooth. I played the demo. I haven’t had a real chance to play the full game yet, but I played the demo.
And it’s wonderful, and now seeing these reviews come in saying it’s top of its genre, it’s fantastic. I mean, Supamonks made Streets of Rage 4; they know exactly what they’re doing, but it’s great to know over time that the players are enjoying the iteration, the improvements on these genres, and that there’s room for narrative, because that’s good news for me. Very selfishly.
Q: I don’t think it’s selfish at all. I mean, obviously, Karlach is a well-loved character in the industry as a whole, and I think you did a fantastic job of really delivering on who she is as a person. I think you really did a great job encapsulating everything about her, from her boisterous joy to that sort of deep-seated sadness that she has, because life is the way that it is, and she’s like, “I’m fine with that, but not really.”
She hides it quite well. She does. Until she can’t hide it anymore. But you know, Sarah Baylus was the dialogue writer for Karlach, and I couldn’t go wrong with the words I got. I mean, there was no debate; it was always like, “Am I doing this right? Is it what you want?” Is it rooted in that, essentially, let’s call it PTSD, that she’s carrying around, that she’s hiding? Everything was coming out of that, so when we got to that quite well-known now, the scene after you defeat Gortash, you take Karlach with you, you’ll see this scene.
That’s when all the covers are off. There’s nowhere to hide anymore; it’s just the truth. And what she’s done is it doesn’t change anything. And I thought it was a really beautiful exploration, because in today’s endless adaptations of comics, it’s always, “Okay, so you’ve killed all the goons, but you can’t kill the Joker, because that will change you.” But Batman’s killed every… “No, no. If he kills the Joker, it’s bad.” And we never find out what that means to get revenge, that true revenge. And you do with Karlach, you do with Astarion, and you do with Dame Aylin as well, and it seems to be something a little lacking. There’s something lacking in that revenge. You don’t get that satisfaction, and the game, Gortash, refuses to tell you why he did what he did. You can go back and tie it up in a bow. Iago does it.
At the end of Othello, they catch him, and they say, “Why have you done this?” And he says, “I’m not gonna tell you.” You get to suffer, you get to wonder why for the rest of your life, and it’s grim! And that’s 400 years ago, storytelling. So yeah, they did such a great job, and it was such a good team of people I worked with, just making sure it worked. It was consistent, and it was the luck of the draw, my friend. I don’t get to choose what characters I play. That was the one they wanted me to audition for, so I really lucked out on that.
Q: I suppose. But hey, you know what? Like you said, it takes a village, right? Everyone’s gotta contribute their part, and I think everyone did contribute their part, and you contributed your part, and it made something lasting; something I think that’s had a real impact on the industry.
I mean, it has. That’s why I genuinely think that’s why we’ve got narrative in Absolum. I’m not sure we would have had that without Baldur’s Gate. That could be a very big claim, but it feels like something’s shifted. Demon’s Souls, we won’t do it suddenly. Having these scenes, I do wonder if they remade it again now, maybe we would. I don’t know.
But, yeah, it’s something I’m seeing, doing a castle-building game that requires fully acted scenes that would not have happened before. So yeah, I know, I know. I know, you’ve just got to forget about it, that’s the easiest way. Just watch my Instagram, that’s what I’m using to announce things these days, so I’ll keep you up to speed on that.
Q: I’ll be there. And then, before we adjourn, I don’t want to eat up too much of your time, because I think I’ve already gotten much more of it than originally planned. Were you really surprised to see that Absalom was getting a TV show prior before the game had ever even come out?
I saw an article saying that it’s good… that’s it, that’s my involvement with that decision. I have no insight; this is not NDA speaking. I have no knowledge, so I hope. Yeah, that’s weird, isn’t it? Maybe that was part of the plan though, you know? So there are three studios doing it: Guard Crush, Dotemu, and Supamonks. So I’m not party to it. Not everyone can be New Tales and give me access to their Discord.
Yeah, totally surprising. I imagine there’s a whole ton of actors in it that don’t even know that’s a thing, because most actors don’t play video games; the ones I know don’t. So yeah, they might not even know, so let’s hope we all get called back in. There’s so much story in that game. Why not, you know?
Q: I really hope that they bring everyone back, and we get kind of the same… I really hope it’s just more. I know that’s always a ridiculous thing to say, but I always hope it’s just…more.
No, no, I’m with you. I’m with you. I did it in two sessions, it feels like I’ve hardly touched that world at all. So yeah, I’d love to do more.
Q: Thank you so much for all of this. Hopefully, I get to hear you reprise your role as Cider in the Absolum TV show.
I’m handing it over to you, Shane. This is all your responsibility.
Q: I will organize. We will go to war if I have to.
Excellent. That’s the kind of talk I like.
Q: I will not settle for less from them. But yeah, I’m also looking forward to getting more time with you as One in Fading Echo. I think that’ll all be really great. But again, thank you so much for your time. This was so lovely. You are an incredible person, and this has been such a fun interview.
You’re very likable. Hopefully, we’ll bump into each other sometime soon. Thank you so much, I really appreciate it. Have a great day.
- Released
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October 9, 2025
- ESRB
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Everyone 10+ / Fantasy Violence, Mild Blood, Mild Language, Use of Tobacco
- Publisher(s)
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Dotemu, Gamera Games
- Multiplayer
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Online Co-Op, Local Co-Op
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