It’s not about saving money, though it’s obviously a side effect. You bring VAs in for sessions that last a few hours and with the extra allotted time you have then voice random blurbs for some NPCs.
Matt was straight up talking to himself in the recent patch XD. He’s totally the fire druid dude that tells Fyrakk to remember their plan.
Liam O Brien tricked me recently tho. I love it when voice actors do that. That “WAIT THAT WAS YOU!??!?!?!” reaction. I never heard him do a western accent so I had no idea he could pull off a hot yeehaw voice. I’m too used to Travis Willingham and Matt Mercer’s yeehaw voices
Wait what he’s the fire druid? I’m ashamed to say I didn’t even notice, but I haven’t done that boss yet to have his voice seared into my brain.
He’s one of them. Could totally hear it when Fyrakk shows up to be all threatening in his dragon form when you get to the Emerald Dream. The one where you’re with the main characters at the tree home base.
Software to modify and generate human voices has become popular in the 21st century. AI startup Dessa created a computer-generated Joe Rogan’s voice using thousands of hours of his podcast audio, to give thousands of characters distinguished voices in the video game Watch Dogs: Legion announced in 2020 their solution to generate human-like speech from text.
Wait… the characters talk out loud? O.o
Just kidding, I play with the volume off so I had no clue this was happening. It would be annoying though.
Its like this in a lot of mmorpgs. Jennifer Hale does a ton of VA’s for a lot of characters in GW2. The voice actor for Illidan does as well and hearing his voice on random no name npcs drives me crazy sometimes.
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It always warms my heart to find more Mass Effect fans. FemShepxGarrus for life.
I dunno if there are any Dragon Age fans in here too, but Lor’themar is Gideon Emery, who was Fenris in DA2. Everytime I see him my brain is like “Stupid sexy elf.”
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As another Ashe main it does get a little awkward, lol. Like you said, she’s a fantastic VA, but they’re really casting her beyond a reasonable vocal range. And she definitely has one of the more distinctive voices out there. You got that with Jo Wyatt in SWTOR, too, every other Imperial girl was voiced by her and it just jumped out at you.
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There are 3 constants in life.
Death, Taxes, and Jennifer Hale in your video games.
Make your peace with all three, and be thankful Laura Bailey is just Jaina, because she’s everywhere too.
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I just replayed FF14’s ARR recently and noticed him as Urianger too. Merlwyb is Jean Gilpin/Meredith Stannard, one of the only cast replacements that genuinely made me sad.
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And the potatoe faces!
Yeah, Urianger was a sidegrade. And Merlwyb was a major downgrade.
Not the VA is bad but it’s a clear miscast since she is far from stern enough for that character.
Also enjoy this VA banter.
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TBH i couldn’t actually tell if they recasted her at all, but that’s just me. All i hear is Knight Commander Meredith when she’s on screen.
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Well she didn’t have that many voiced lines. But it’s clear that it went from a stern voice to a more nagging one.
Which is unfortunate since she’s suppose to be someone who brought all the pirate factions to kneel under her banner.
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I wonder who would voice Hogrus? It would surely be a distinguished individual of the highest quality. Morgan Freeman perhaps, or Sean Connery. 
It isn’t really just MMORPGs, she’s in Metal Gear Solid and apparently also Baldur’s Gate which both came out in 1998.
There probably aren’t any games anyone cares about from before 1998 that had a significant amount of voice acting so she was there from like the beginning in a way, and a lot of voice/audio director type people probably have experience working with her so they just get her to do everything
I still love DA2 so I remember being giddy when Gideon became his new VA.
I also fanboyed hard because Ramon Tikaram voices some npcs in Boralus. Look I miss my Dorian. I miss my mage husband.
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Blizzard has like 5 voice actors and it’s immersion breaking. I actually turned off voices and the game feels more like a classic RPG. I’d rather read the dialogue at this point.
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Also funny story if we’re talking WoW voice actors. I WISH I could find a clip of it but I remember Shaw’s voice actor was in I thiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiink a Dairy Queen commercial.
Always fun when your brain practically does the metal gear solid alert noise when you hear certain voices.