Q&A with the Cast of Baldur's Gate 3 (EGX 2023)

[Music] hi welcome to bgx 2023 how's your day going so far good good you Conor wants me at the same time why am I asking well you kind of anyway uh you might be wondering why is this woman on stage with a phone she's supposed to be a professional host I was asked to do this show yesterday I don't know what's going on but we're going to have fun anyway yeah yeah we love it all right so I'm Liv um I'm on YouTube channel called dice breaker but you don't care who I am we are here to talk to some of the cops from a little game called balers game 3 I know it's pretty good so without further Ado why don't we start bringing people on okay let's start with the one and only jira Tracy Wild yes yes we love to hear her see her at moonrise we can all do it thank you very much and next we have Jennifer English who plays Shadow [Applause] HW you know him you love him you've let him bite your neck it's NE new born who playan [Applause] anyway yeah wherever you want so then we have The Guiding Light hous in played by Dave [Applause] Jes Are You Soldiers ready because it's Samantha Bayer who plays col and then we have well effectively she's the GM of the whole goshon game it's the narrator of balers Skate 3 Amelia [Applause] Tyler oh no absolutely nobody saw nobody saw anything all right gang welcome thank you so much for chatting to us all um I will say as well you might notice that we have a little mic in the center there uh towards the end maybe like 20 minutes towards the end I'm going to ask if we all form an orderly line whoever might like to ask a question to our wonderful panel here uh but that will be later on so don't rush up now or anything how did you get casted in Boulders Gate 3 amelon I got cast in Boulders Gate 3 when I thought I wasn't going to get cast in Boulders Gate 3 what because the Early Access version had come out and I'd seen all these amazing people yeah and I was like oh never mind better luck next time and then they changed the narration and I got brought into audition for that we tried all sorts of different things uh I was a little bit snarkier to start with a little bit smirk here a bit more sort of sitting back watching you up and enjoying that thoroughly uh and then we decided yeah we decided maybe solidly dumbing people for 100 plus hours wasn't a great idea and maybe just calm it down a bit so you only get that if you're really good now I don't know about that personally wouldn't be my passing choice but fine yes noted fantastic uh Samantha how about you is this on on there's no red light you have a red light I know it's on I can hear myself unless you can't hear me where am I what year is it the Pres anyway so same sort of half the first half is the same as Milli I I accepted that I wasn't going to be in B this game I auditioned a few years ago didn't get the rooll and then long story short we did an indie game called the excavation of Hobs Barrow which yeah here it for thomasino going to places she's not welcome um yeah and um I I through that when Twitter was still working um Michael dome laran made his enthusiasm for the game and the performances known and his DMS were open and the rest is his and I I carefully worded a kind of if you have a significantly large role going in this could I be considered and and that was it really I yeah I just gave it with that sort of confidence of someone going I believe in you you go in and you go right I'll just try something and just happen to be what they wanted so that was my way in if you don't ask you don't get you know yeah Dave how about you uh yeah I got uh it it was just after lockdown started so it was uh very welcome um I got this uh email from uh Kirsty she did my games re and she's absolutely amazing uh oh course yeah massive luck kiry Gilmore Cy Gil yeah and uh yeah she said um could you uh audition for for this character and uh yeah it's it's going to be uh we need a video that okay that don't normally do that uh so and then and a goon's t-shirt uh and just did stuff the name you did it it was it was his original audition name was Galvin so it's uh it's it's not that not that far from it I like housing personally but yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah and uh like one must cherish all of Nature's Bounty but uh Goblin guts are quite far down the list that that was an audition line I love that yeah yeah yeah um which was great and just just that line that encapsulated the character for me absolutely um and then sent it away didn't here for weeks months and uh just out of the blue said yeah we'd love you to uh be involved so yeah that that that was me nice that must be nerve-wracking waiting I would have just been on the edge of my SE the entire time yeah yeah um Neil how about you uh how did I get in the role um I was very lucky I'd met um Josh Weeden from Pit Stop on Resident Evil 3 when we were doing D the DLC which I name I forget it's like a mini game with so i' already worked with him before and he remembered me from then so he asked me to audition like everybody else we did we had a list of all these different races that we could play like tling and DF it was given a name called dragonfell which for those of us that know is a Warhammer roleplay uh setting and character so I was like oh wow that's like a Warhammer game cool and then I looked at the races they were asking us to audition for I was like no no no that's D and D I must now submit for every race of the 12 they have S and I'll just play anything I don't care so I kind of thought it could be this or it could be ice Dale or something like that so I was like I need to get in that game so I was very lucky in tenacious and Josh championed me with Jason la know and also swen as well who all signed off for me playing the starian I didn't realize he was companion initially I thought it was just a vampire that you kill because that's kind of what people do most people play a game they kill me I think most people in this room have killed me at least once right anyone sorry you're lying that's say but yeah so that's how I got involved and then I was very lucky uh to be championed and and supported by as we all were by some amazing directors and the career pit stop as well and byan and they allowed us to really flesh up characters out over four wonderful years of working aming yeah Jennifer how did you get cast I had no idea what I was like I had no clue I didn't I didn't coton on to what it was I just auditioned for a bunch of them and it was the one audition so like part of an actor's job is like the main part of an actor's job is actually auditioning um and usually I get really anxious try super hard overthink everything have a crisis and for this one I was like uh like I've worked with Josh before I did Divinity I'll just slap it out like I gave no effort to it like I didn't light it properly and um and then all of a sudden I'm playing one of the lead characters it's one of the jamest things that's ever happened to me and I do accept that I think that's the perfect Vibe for shadow heart though I do not carear what you think you know it Mak sense exactly the one time I didn't care what I thought I got Shadow heart so Universe thank you yeah perect how about you so did everybody just do one addition no 10 I did 10 too by the way this is sailing close to the wind because um this this sort of devil kid sounds like a tling and if if they get wind of it these guys are in trouble I laughing and they went that's stretching it I think maybe I'll just do the other 10 it's like yeah I did hang on sorry really rude sorry but I thought I was the one that did three but you did 10 you did so what you they holded it down to aari and then then kept twe different audition phases we just went it was the initial phase and we basically did his dwarf human High we just oh I see yeah okay thinking no one else is going to do exactly the same thing like here you go we like anything please anything I'll take anything oh well I mean I did three just for Jahira but I mean she was called Yan at that point and like Dave said I had some significant lines that are now in the game and uh yeah but not for months months and months you just think oh it's gone and then they come back with a new Direction can you be a bit more like they would send me cinema clips of film actresses and things be like this do that and then another tweet yeah and that's it that's really interesting I love that we're going to learn stuff today I know we're all learning we're all going to learn fantastic I wondered if any of you had played Dungeons and Dragons before you audition before you even got cast oh yeah oh okay big fan B three of us have have played tblop bit before i' I've played on I'm on my second and third D and campaigns at the moment wow but I've played a bunch of different systems as well LS of vampire the Masquerade a song of I and fire um cult I'm I'm forgetting tons of them but yeah I love TableTop love it amazing yeah so I I was first introduced by a very spotty friend of mine who took me to a London Meetup and the premise is that we're all mercenaries you turn up to the tavern and you get picked for a mission it work really nicely like proper one shot of few drinks that was great that was a a dragon born Barbarian called Denise that's easier to pronounce she's a bit she's not the arest tool in the VA I've done a similar thing before where I've like made a very Regal high up and called her Sunbeam the Destroyer so like you know that kind of opposite Vibe I love that yeah yeah no no I I knew I didn't know the rules and I didn't get to learn them so I just point me I hit the things and occasionally come out with a Zinger she set things on fire by accident and said sorry and then during the lockdowns we played online which was it just kind of took me out for the for the high rollers cuz I haven't actually rolled a real dice in years it's all been done vir so um I played a regretful tling warlock called hope and so between that we have a tling and a barber and so that really helped again when once I knew the class and I knew where we were going with it I could pick that up and that really helped pronunciations not so much but that's always been a problem but um yeah in terms of the worlds worlds and where we are like that really helped cut down some of those sessions cuz the poor directors having to look up what you know some obscure thing that you say yeah very nice Neil did you say also played some tabletop some D I may have yeah I played a lot yeah I started D my first D and D character was a swash buckler it was supposed to be the beginning of a campaign i' join us so the DM set on a pirate ship I was breaking out the pirate ship and trying to swim to shore I decided at the point of jumping into the water I wasn't going to do that and then I took tried to take on the entire ship my character died and that was the end of that first campaign I think my first experience of something similar SAR to D and D I think it was like a sister campaign or something was also tpk it's a right of passage really isn't it you got to have your tpk game isn't you're going to die in a lot of fantastic ways uh I also wanted to ask when you were given the character to aition for what kind of brief were you given like or was it a kind of case that you were able to like develop the character over time or what do you think down the line sure I can swap it around if you want I don't mind it's you you're in charge I'm not master right now it's you you're so right and for sucking up to me you make a thank you I know how this game is played um I I've forgotten the question now the brief you were given for like your character okay so the first version of the narrator that we went for uh the brief was Scar from The Lion King so it's essentially that smirk of like oh you think mhm oh lovely what a um and then slowly as we started to develop it and we gave it more of a character like a lot of people that were on their first playthroughs don't realize there are distinct narration Styles depending on who you're playing as so we ended up with hang on 17 completely different narration Styles depending on what's Happening which character you're playing as so like if you're playing as Shadow heart it's a much higher pitch it's much lighter it's a little more um emotionally tense if you're playing as dark herge it's like fullon bestial I want to tear you apart and ruin your life yeah yeah so it strayed quite far from the initial brief eventually um but I particularly enjoyed the duck Edge yeah that was a lot of fun I I think the tap pole stuff is as close to the original brief as we ended up going going cuz when something's when when I pipe up and something's deliberately uh manipulating what you're thinking we wanted that nod because there's nothing worse in D and D or any tabletop right than the dungeon master taking your choice away yeah so in those moments that that's happening in the game we wanted it to be a very knowing nod and like we know this is happening we know you don't want this it's cool we're aware that this isn't great it'll be over soon just breathe through the pain I think a good example of that is when uh have we all played I hope I'm not going to spoil anything for anyone hopefully we'll see uh uhoh you find a creature that can tell you what to do via a tad call in your head and you can kind of hear your your voice takon kind of like H maybe you like them maybe you think they the best actually and you can really sense that in the performance really cool than of course uh yes yeah so I um realized later that I'd auditioned for carac already some years ago and didn't get it at the time and the brief was I think a little closer to the um aest add-on but I can't remember what is it called oh oh oh a descent into a descent into Aus descent desent descent into a ver into it not out of that so just send up yeah so the idea that it was I don't think car's in that but it's it's happening at the same time your El Terell is there for a year Dam we have an understanding we've both been there but he's been there year been there 10 years um so that origin was always there um when the press release for the final version of carlac was out it was pretty much what I'd been given which was if this was set today carlac would ride in in a on a Harley uh with a Le jacket with a cigar between her teeth blaring Black Sabbath yeah so lesbian coded yeah so I got the brief just give him something let's give him a character right I would personally love to say thank you for that I said thank you I was like yeah absolutely cuz we got yeah and then like Everyone likes her anyway but um yeah said diesel soap Dynamo with a heart of gold and it just gives you so much giv an entire character chaotic good that's what I went with and and that was consistent and then I think eventually my writer Sarah bis um was cottoning on some of my delivery and and you know any more snark or sarcasm we could get out of carlac was was just started to go in there but the brief was always that same that same origin of of being enslaved in hell for 10 years and getting out so that was always there and and and so then we found out as it went on the audition had five different scenes anyway including a very Brian blessed delivered back God don't want to rise you you see stars and that's what got me the chobs or one of the many but you know I really held on to that side of the horniness and U but I said she didn't really change we developed but she didn't change that much okay gotcha yeah do uh yeah um my it it was I I generally tend to get um most of my characters from the actual lines themselves rather than the brief um he he was he was yeah he they said he's a druid but he's he's a bit more buff than your normal Druid oh yeah um he really is quite yeah very so um is everyone okay are no not even slightly um and so yeah I I I just thought right he's going to be a lot more uh deeper registry the lines themselves uh were just Exquisite um but and then he he just like he he he kind of grew as gu you know yeah but to be honest the the character like even evolved from uh the First Act anyway cuz basically like went into Early Access um um and so yeah his his character it just took off from there but the the actual original brief yeah yeah he he was he was just just a buff guy yeah just a buff guy and you can that you know yeah but that was it yeah he's he he he was um there's no real good or bad side to him he'll he he loves nature he loves order um he loves most things but if there's um something bad out there he will not be afraid to tear the apart yeah yeah yeah yeah as we see when he do a big bear and help yeah love that happy to go to town yeah ne how about you what grief were you given about aaran um um so when when they asked me if I'd like to demo through star and then go through it and all stuff which was amazing um it it was there was a lot of space to work in so they gave me things like they wanted a high inflected accent like an upper class accent cuz he's from a noble background um he's a magistrate Etc um they had a very brief summary of kind of what happened to him and why he's in a predicament he's in without going into too much detail and it was pretty open apart from that really so um so it was all you basically no no not do not no The Bu no not at all it was all Steven and the writers and also lar um I was given a lot to work with straight away he happens to be quite gous which is useful so there's a lot of information that he also was very apparent that he because of the theatricality of him which they obviously informed me a lot about as well that we could play a lot with the text so I started pushing the text a lot like way further than maybe they had expected me to do so and stepen Steven Rooney is an amazing writer he's the main writer for staran absolutely incredible writer um you know he heard my rhythm on things that he didn't expect me to do in a certain way and because of that he sort of s okay well if I push that a bit more in my writing let's see what he does with that and so we very quickly had a rhythm between us which was amazing and through that I realized that okay if they're letting me do do this what else can I do can and then suddenly I started going right well we can open the character up uh he is manipulative he is uh he diverts he's a Survivor which is a big thing as well so all these different amaz and he's also up for Farm he's also obsessed with freedom the idea of being completely free so that would gave me loads of stuff to work with um we had so much time like four years to develop with the story the other cool thing about it is that we were doing act one act two it wasn't necessarily the whole thing we weren't jumping to the end of the game we were going we're in at one right now let's focus on that which meant that there was an immediacy I think I don't know how you feel but I I'm pretty sure it's the same for all of us I don't know I know want to speak to you but I think when we found out what the story was how the story was progressing our characters was finding out so there was an amazing sense of oh okay cool that's where that leads so which is not always apparent sometimes get a full script on a shorter game on a shorter script or a film whatever you know the whole story whereas this was like we're discovering where it goes and how it can end up in many and multitud different ways so for me it was like right all I need to do is develop my character and really see exactly how far I'm allowed to take it and then the habits will come through that and the background as it gets developed will inform me more about him which informs me more about the habits and the movements and the voice and then actually we ended up with what we have which is wonderful gift of a character um the interesting thing as well is at the beginning of the sessions we were still quite bound with a character which was appropriate cuz he doesn't know the player and then as we were developing the character he becomes more and more open and it works is a happy accident yeah because I wasn't sure exactly where to take the character in on the first few sessions that came later on as we developed him and so what you have if you notice in the game his voice register is slightly lower he's a lot more physically closer and then he starts opening up to who he really is cuz he's incredibly guarded at the beginning and it's a happy accident and Steph and I have talking publicly about that together so I think pretty sure that's okay to talk about but um but yeah it was a really interesting experience as an actor um I'm not speak for everybody but I think it was probably the same you know um yeah it was amazing so that's a a gift awesome J what was the question again I forgot one of us what kind of brief did you get for shadow and was it did you kind of develop the character as you went along which I guess you kind of did yeah so I I did an audition as I said I didn't audition for shadowa I auditioned for like generic races of the game so when I came in I found out everything kind of on my feet really um which was great because I think it meant that as Neil was saying like you got to add all these layers in as we were going along cuz I had no idea about Shadow I think I got a little bit I knew that she was like a Shon cultist which I don't think is massive spoiler it's pretty obvious too late now too late now guys sorry um but you know and so i' would find out about it and I'd look up the D and D law and what shab was about and blah blah blah but as the as the character developed and the writing developed and and what the player found out as NE said I found out which meant that which kind of works with Shadow heart's back story which I will not spoil but maybe a lot of you know there is something that has happened to certain things in I can't we know stuff happened to shadowart that but she just won't tell us about it so it's like you know it's yeah I'm going to be really careful because I don't want to spoil it but um yeah it just really worked with that aspect of her character and it just meant that yeah as as you said that like the authenticity of the relationship with the player was just really there because and that's what I really love about this game and all the characters in it is there isn't an immediate Bond because there just wouldn't be you wouldn't be like well unless you're carak cuz car's incredible but and we all want to be kak's best friend or L depending um um sorry govern um but yeah it just means that it feels like a real relationship and and when you get to that point of best friendship or or um loverom what's that called loverom partnering partnering romance stage not it's not this win state it's not just like oh you've achieved this you've unlocked this well done it feels organic and truthful and I love that cuz it just it serves the hundreds of hours that you've been investing in these characters I think that's what absolutely uh Tracy hi the ti of course doesn't get Romance so that's true everyone's disappointment I'm pretty sure yeah mine anyway what was the question about I was about ask you remember uh so uh the brief you got for jira yeah the brief I got for jira yeah it was it was brief it was jira half elf duid old and maybe 10 lines and I think they were to do with Marcus is that spoiler hope not won't say anything else and for each Edition subsequently it was the same 10 lines because I think that you know we're all NDA so even at that's I didn't really know anything I hadn't tweaked what it was even if I'd heard the name I wouldn't have a clue so I just went on Instinct of did just with the lines and and tried to take the direction so the brief for me was really small and okay the brief was brief yeah love that me and slowly winning R I think it's a fantastic job and what a great opportunity you got to do that so yeah let's let's challenge ourselves for the sake of not being a boring bastard on this panel you know the interesting thing about that is that if I G you know if I had to professionally yeah carlac would probably be my challenge I'd love to play a car body swap DLC body Swap this still the voices though still the voices like oh my God I'm enormous oh my god oh yes just both of them looking in the magic mirror just horrifying it's a Freaky Friday DLC the one we all need yeah I think my casting type is halfway between aarian and carlac let's face it and I kind of played an asarian esque role in laren's previous game in Divinity original sin to I played malady who's essentially if you haven't met her a starian but with way more power and gave absolutely zero shits about any of your drama that's very interesting I may have to look into that she's great science um so yeah I think it' be carac for this I just I just want to play someone who wants to punch the world in the face yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah don't we all with love with love but really H but really H it's a dichotomy ADHD and uh kind of put the mic on and just goes don't know where she is and she go she's here she's here and she goes yeah I'm do you do you have ADHD at this point I was not diagnosed and no I did not know I had ADHD and um but I was like okay this this woman gets my movements this woman can rain in my ticks and um I wish somebody would do that for me oh my gosh and I was like I was like great you you can you can be my performance director luckily like I I could do that and then and then we fell in love and uh now we've been going out for years so you know the the moat was great yeah [Applause] that's pretty cool I think that's a pretty cool story yeah also on that note I just spotted some other people that do moocha that are amazing in the crowd there as well so hello to the rest of those people who don't want attention but too late and they they've also created an amazing space in uh doing the motion capture for cinematics movement as well all across the world but also in Guilford on top ofuma and Quebec and they are the unon hero of a lot of the games animation as well as the animators and developers as well but those cats over there who don't want to be seen right now especially Leah uh they amazing a little bit of a clap honestly [Applause] huge it's great here as well you're going to have to ask Jen the question again now do we never really know if it didn't go through would you know because there's so many lines that you I mean there's definitely lines I've not seen yet my lines change and my favorite one at the minute and it's quite loud I'm sorry but it's it's it's kind of out of context but maybe you've seen it in the game she just goes um I don't even know what they ask her she just goes trying to do it what shut up and I kind of I watched it and I thought I don't remember that delivery I don't remember why I'm doing it seems a bit odd but it's funny and that's my favorite line that's now my favorite line as well so my ringtone shut up okay this is being streamed pretty sure it's going to be clicked uh Jennifer how about you I got I wrote down the list I couldn't sleep the other day and I just went I was like what are my favorite night so I've got it all prepare um I do like you can't cast a shadow without some light I think that's stunning you can't cast a shadow without some light um but also I do like um this one's my favorite at the moment your loyal as a pup and twice as pretty it's true uh Neil how about you I got too many one there's too many I don't know I don't have a favorite no um there's some really fun ones I again they allowed me to really push way too far yeah in some ways um what was it uh about the uh oh the clown moment oh very good which again I was lucky we all got the scripts early so a few days before so I'd always go through thousands of lines going that's what I'm going to do with that and then just try it asle word that one works out really well um it um of cool s fun I'm here to kill you things are you know I was right there that one I was going to say is that is like trending on Tik Tok constantly just like that was interesting cuz it's a good example of reactive lines that some of the lines that we have including the ones that we haven't seen yet you know that are in the game BL you can only do that if you do certain things in certain ways and there's stuff that people will never see dialogue wise because you didn't make that choice I think it's amazing that there's so much not only that but also accounting for things like uh chosen pronouns you know all that kind of stuff it's amazing Testament to Lan to see how much they put in the game knowing that some people will never choose this that the other it's incredible so there's too many good lines yeah very true uh Dave how about you L um yeah it's oh [Music] um honestly I I didn't think that a lot of players would actually choose that path anyway um but it it it's going to be the uh you like it so yeah probably that actually it's a good one good one yeah I've got one for the content and for the context which is kac's been dying to say this for 10 years and now she gets to say it ah Mur I've taken more pleasant shits than you and at least those can be buried after fighting talk oh it would be easy to say Authority but aside from that which I love and I now have on a necklace and apparently I'm saying that in people's heads now um every single dark urge line I just love cuz it's so juicy oh um I love some particularly snarky gravestones where it's like made the crows use this grave as a privy that sort of thing but my favorite line at the moment is changes on a weekly basis my favorite line at the moment is um tongs a wide variety of tongs because it went just so deliciously pracy I like I like the silly ones lovely okay we have some questions in the audience hi

Channel: Gamercf97

Views: 20,505

Keywords: Baldur’s Gate 3, EGX, panel, video game, EGX 2023, Video game convention, UK, London, ExCel, gaming convention, Baldur’s Gate, Q&A, Baldur’s Gate 3 cast, cast

Id: efOspSWHhVE

Length: 35min 6sec (2106 seconds)

Published: Mon Oct 16 2023