When given the option, I don’t usually make characters that resemble myself. Sure, it would be amusing to see an slightly overweight asian who wears knitted hobo gloves when it’s cold being addressed as a son of Bhaal, but that doesn’t really confer the dramatic weight I’d like to think games are capable of.

Conceited dick that I am, I tend to go for characters that look a bit like Dante. All the testosterone, none of the bulky space marine armor. Unfortunately, that trend’s becoming a little harder to address, given new games’ penchant for adding voices to customized player characters.

Even largely silent PCs are being given nominal “battle grunt” voice acting. One of the more surprising moments for me in recent history was the final line during Persona 3: FES’s last boss battle. As your hero ends the fight, a teenage, 4kids-dub squeak emerges, saying the line “All right. Let’s do this!” I immediately cringed, exclaiming, “Oh shi- that’s what I sound like?!” I mean, sure, the same actor occasionally yelled out the personas’ names during regular combat, but it was easy enough to dismiss as background noise while you were busy getting Mitsuru to quit casting charm on all of her targets.



Just like Oblivion’s notorious vocal schizophrenia for minor NPCs, Bethesda’s chosen to grace Fallout 3 with a bit of unchangeable stunt casting. Regardless of chosen ethnicity, your character’s father would be voiced by Liam Neeson. Great enough for Caucasians, but unless you’re playing a Vault Dweller who looks exactly like George Takei, it can be a bit jarring. Black Scottish Cyclops jarring. Even Mass Effect was not immune to these sorts of identity-crisis customization gaffes, though it was mitigated somewhat by male Shepards having a generally accent-neutral profile.



It’s probably sexist (maybe even racist) of me to say so, but having an inappropriate voice for a character is easier to pull off with females, at least in the case of the dulcet tones of Jennifer Hale, who also voiced Naomi Hunter, female player characters in Mass Effect and Mercenaries’ Jennifer Mui.

Now excuse me while I get slightly creeped out by my Hispanic dad’s asking me to walk over and read my S.P.E.C.I.A.L. book in his authoritative Irish tone.