Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Geek-tastic stunt casting

Even as I happily continue playing through Dragon Age: Origins, I am eagerly anticipating the release of Mass Effect 2 on January 26.

A short video on their website reveals much of the significant voice cast of Mass Effect 2. The returning cast includes Keith David as Counselman (formerly Captain) Anderson, Liz Sroka as Tali, and Seth "geek living a geek's dream" Green as Joker. The new cast members recruited into the sequel represent a surprising selection of major sci-fi franchises. Stunt casting has previously crept into high profile games; Mass Effect 2 seems to have followed with an impressive selection of the kind of people who make the kind of geeks who will be playing the game go squee. These include

Tricia Helfer (Battlestar Galactica) as EDI the Normandy's computer
Yvonne Strahovski (Chuck) as Miranda Lawson
Carrie-Anne Moss (The Matrix) as Aria, an Asari
Michael Hogan (Battlestar Galactica) as Capt. Bailey
Adam Baldwin (Firefly) as Kal'Reegar
Michael Dorn (Star Trek TNG) as Gatatog Uvenk

The rest of the cast revealed in the video includes Simon Templeman (who has done a lot of voice work, e.g. Dragon Age: Origins and KotOR) as Han Gerrel, Shohreh Aghdashloo (who has recently had a recurring guest role on FlashForward) as Quarian Admiral Shala'Raan, Natalia Cigliuti (I didn't recognize her from anything) as Asari Morinth, and Martin Sheen (perhaps the actor I was most surprised to see) as "Illusive Man".

I tend to have more faith in experienced, proven voice actors than in big names when it comes to video games. There's always the danger that I'll hear the actor--or worse, their more famous roles--instead of the game character. But we'll see how this one turns out. They've got some great people, so I'm hopeful.

2 comments:

Holly said...

OHH that looks awesome! I never played the first one, one of the few Bioware games I haven't played. Is it worth it??? haha I want to play it before the second one comes out if it is...

Eleni said...

I can't speak for everyone, but I loooved Mass Effect. The gameplay really suited me, and I connected with the story and the characters. It takes place in an original sci-fi universe much in the way that Dragon Age is in an original fantasy world, which is fun. I would definitely recommend it, though it may seem like a step backwards from DAO (graphics aren't as good, of course, and the story and characters aren't as elaborate or deep--though really, there aren't too many games that wouldn't seem like a step back compared to DAO). It can't be very expensive a couple years after its release.