Voice Actor Recognition

"

Hey guys,

I just saw this post for the first time and wanted to respond to a few points. By way of introduction, my name is Damien Caine and I'm the Director for the voice acting and the editor for the trailers for Path of Exile. I also voice the Marauder character and Brutus which has been a lot of fun : ).

---

Still alive are we?

First of all, thanks for the positive feedback on the voice acting! We've got some tidy-ups coming (hopefully by Open Beta, if I can get the editing done in time after finishing the OB Trailer) that will address minor touches here and there - especially Tarkleigh's "Still alive are we?" i.e. more greeting options for most NPCs.

---

New Zealand Actors

All of the actors are based here in New Zealand - many of them move between here and Australia for work and there are both extremely experienced actors and fresh amateurs as well.

Some moved here from Europe many years ago and are able to handle the british and other accents with ease.

---

The Accents of Wraeclast and Oriath

The world that Wraeclast occupies is a mix of cultures, like earth, and all the same mixing and matching of accents and dialects applies there equally.

In general, the main civilised areas of Oriath speak in variations of the british/english accent with some areas having their own dialects and adjustments.

The american accent "exists" in Oriath also, but as a much rarer thing. You'll hear it on the wounded beach guy dialogue right at the start of the game and in the voice of Oak, the bandit leader, whose family hails from the minority culture where the accent exists. Both characters - the wounded beach guy and Oak - are voiced by the same actor, Campbell Cooley (Spartacus, Power Rangers), who was the voice of Oak in the earlier Duelist trailer.

The race of the Karui are our tip of the hat to our homeland of New Zealand with their 'model' being a mix of the indigenous maori race and elements of the surrounding polynesian cultures in the Pacific. They tend to speak with a clearly kiwi accent (the Marauder is pretty kiwi sounding if you ask me! ;) although some of the highborn Karui, like Maramoa in Act 3, hail from tribes whose accent mixes with that of the kiwi to create something... different!

Like any world of diverse accents and cultures the different races occasionally pronounce place and character names differently - sometimes, this is intentional on our part. On the rare occasion you may have noticed a mispronounced word but the one or two slip-ups that existed have been rerecorded now.

---

Silk's Voice

...is on its way. We recorded it about a month ago and are hoping to have it ingame by Open Beta. In response to Raycheetah - Silk is voiced by local actor Sam Fraser and I'm willing to put my masculinity on the line and say he sounds pretty sexy to me ; ).

---

Nessa

Once again in response to Raycheetah: Nessa's 'throat clearing' was actually the result of a pretty clever 'patch-job', in my opinion, by our Audio guy, Andrew. We didn't have greetings recorded and he just pulled her 'mmhmm's out of the outtakes between takes. Most of the time she was responding to me as I directed her i.e. not in character.

We intend to have tidy-ups for Nessa's dialogue, including a number of new greetings, by Open Beta also (time-willing).

The actress in the witch trailer does not feature ingame at this time. There was some not-insubstantial response to our use of the kiwi accent so we toned it down since that trailer in order not to alienate the larger game-playing world out there.

---

Captain Fairgraves

...is voiced by the very talented Mr. David Weatherley who played the role of Barliman Butterbur in the Lord of the Rings. We have some minor Fairgraves dialogue additions to make - also, hopefully by Open Beta.

---

Finally

We're very lucky to have the talented actors we've been able to find locally for Path of Exile. The voice acting you hear is the combination of talented actors, the writing provided by the game's lead writer, Edwin McRae, the direction I provide, and the final creative approval by the game's Art Director, Erik Olofsson.

What that means is that any flaws you hear are a shortcoming in one or more of those areas i.e. it's not always the actors fault!

When we come to voice record often the content is still in development so we aren't always able to give a great deal of context to the actors voicing the characters. Obviously we do our best with what we’ve got but once we see/hear the voices ingame it’s immediately apparent when dialogue is spoken out of context. We’ve been lucky to be able to get actors back to rerecord bits and pieces here and there and, as I’ve stated, I hope to have these minor tweaks and fixes ingame by Open Beta or shortly after!

As I've posted elsewhere, we will have a full credits list of the actors up soon.

Cheers!