The Voice Actors of BG

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OK, I mentioned this in one of the other posts, and it seemed like everyone was very interested in it, so I've made this new thread to discuss this here.

MY Original Post:

Turquoise



posted 06 January, 2006 17:07
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OK, here are some of the better known voice actors who did roles on the BG series, and some of their other works...

Rob Paulsen.... Anomen in BG2 & Kivan in BG1 and believe it or not Sarek, voices Pinky on Pinky & THe Brain, Carl Wheezer of Jimmy Neutron, Spike in the Land before Time Movies, Eric in the Little Mermaid, Yakko in the Anamaniacs, Morte the talking Skull in the game Torment, Major Glory in Dexter's Laboratory, and Raphael of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. He is considered to be one of the best and highest paid voice actors in the business.

Irenicus is David Warner, best known for his role as a serious actor in Star Trek as Chancellor Gorkon

Jim Cummings is Minsc,Gorion and Firrkragg. He is known for doing both Pooh and Tigger as well as Fuzzy Lumpkins on the Powerpuff girls, Did Rasputin in 1998's Anastasia, and is the "Announcer" on Pokemon.

Grey DeLisle is Nalia, better known as Daphne in the Scooby Doo Cartoon shows

Kevin M. Richardson/ Michael Dorn are Sarevok & Bhaal, The First does Captain Gantu in Lilo & Stitch, but the second is best known for his serious role as Ambassador Worf in Star Trek

If I learn of any more, I will post them

Oh, a "famous" name...

Melissa DISNEY did the voicing of Imoen. I haven't found many details about her, it seems that BG was one of her first voicing jobs. However, more recently, she did the voicing of Angie on a Shark's Tale.

Jim Meskimen is Edwin AND Khalid. While doing voice over work, he is another regular actor, and has had small roles on Friends, did all the voicing on one of the internet cartton spoofs with GW Bush and John Kerry, etc. Doing ALL the voices, and did the voicing of Ratchet in Robots.

Jennifer Hale does Mazzy Fentan. She is known in the voicing world as Ms. Keane and Princess Morebucks on the Powerpuff Girls.

Heidi Shannon does the voicing for Jaheria. She has done mostly video gaming work.

Roger Jackson voices Keldorn. Now see if this "fits". Roger/Keldorn has an archnemisis...a little mutant monkey, named MoJo JoJo. They are one and the same. He also did the phone voicing on the SCREAM movies.

Maurice LeMarche voiced several characters in the BG series. He did Yoshimo,Renal Bloodscalp, Rillifane and Hendak. He too has had many significant roles doing voice overs. He has done the voicing for Balto the Disney dog, and the one that swept me away, he was the voice of Salem the talking Cat, on Sabrina the Teenaged Witch.

Jason Mardsen is Lilacor in BG2 and is Ajantis in BG1. He is from my home state of RI, and you can get a glimpse of him as himself, playing the clerk at a convienence store in the new movie Fun with Dick and Jane.

Kath E. Soucie does Aerie. She is best known for doing work as Kanga on the Winnie the Pooh Series for TV.

BJ Ward did the voice for Bodhi, Faldorn and Keldorns wife, the Lady Maria. BJ has been in the "business" for years, voicing Velma in Scooby Doo (original), Betty Rubble, and Smurfette. She was doing voice overs before any of us were born.

Michael Bell does Haer Dalis. He is the "Zales Diamond" Man, and is the voice of Drew Pickles and Charles Finster on the Rugrats.

One of the sources where I found this happened to give out some other information about the actors who did the voicing and some of their other well known jobs. Rob Paulsens page, has his birthday listed. I just thought this funny. He voices Anomen. After seeing Robs birthday, March 11, I put his birthday together with Anomen. They go very well together. Rob is a Pisces. Make Anomen a Pisces and you got yourself a romantic, daydreaming, emotional person who sees the world through rose colored glasses.It fits the character very well.

 

Damn you have too much time on your hands... I won't worry though, I've seen Fel in action with his RBP History, so I *know* that it can be much, MUCH worse .

 

Intresting that same voice actors have voiced really different characters, like Lilarcor and Ajantis or Edwin and Khalid.

 

voicing characters is art, just like painters. Ie: My friends really like certain art works on Magic: The Gathering cards from specific artists that don't work for Wizards anymore. They've gone out of their way to learn those names and the cards they drew. This is kinda the same thing. These people did (for the most part) a very very good job voicing characters. It's not always a cakewalk just reading off a sheet of paper. There's character development that's gotta go on in your head, so you know what this character will be like and thusly how he/she will speak. It's also true that these voice actors deserve a little recognition for their work, 'cause where would cartoons/games be without voice actors? Who wants to play a game that only has music playing or has the same voice for every character?


Btw, I can't believe Michael Dorn voice acted as Bhaal. That's friggin' awesome!! (he's not an ambassador in star trek though. He was raised on Earth by a Russian couple (host family), and joined star fleet, so he's just a regular officer, (commander I think)). That guy is awesome.

 

Yeah, it's no cakewalk. Just getting the inflection and the emphasis right can be difficult. I've heard so much poorly-done voice acting over the years. Damn, though, I still can't believe Rob Paulsen did Anomen. The guy did Morte, too.

Interesting that the Infinity games all had excellent voice talent (Torment's VO in particular was also brilliant). I guess this was back when Interplay were actually worth a crap.

Oh, IMDB has the full listing, if you want.

 

Warning: trekkie ahead.

Worf started out as a lieutenant in TNG, but he rose through the ranks to lieutenant commander. Later, he transerred to DS9 as a full commander, and at the end of the series is appointed the Federation's ambassador to Q'onos on request by Chancellor Martok himself. Also, in Star Trek: Armada (a strategy computer game), he is given a field commission of Captain of the USS Avenger (a defiant-class ship) and put on detached duty so he can aid Chancellor Martok against Toral (Duras's son).

So, anything from lieutenant to captain is appropriate, as well as ambassador.

And despite my extensive ST knowledge, I still didn't catch Dorn's voice acting until someone told me. He got skillz.

Me either. He must have been desparate for money to have voiced such a cr*ppy character.

 

Poor old oft-maligned Anomen. It's okay Anomen, you're still a useful character.

An obscure one: the VO for Solaufein (Michael Gough) also did Deckard Cain of Diablo fame. This strikes me as odd for some reason.

Maybe Weimer should call him up and see if he'll voice some of his poetry pro bono?

 

You're crazy. Michael has one of those voices I can't *help* but notice when he talks. I got him right off as Bhaal and connected him with Jebediah Turner (CHiPs), Marcus and Frank Horrigan (Fallout 2) and I Am Weasel! (Cow and Chicken, I Am Weasel!).

Don't forget Cernd.

 

Michael Dorn voiced Horrigan too? Man.

 

Maurice LaMarche has also been on Futurama, which is objectively the best cartoon series ever made. He played (among others) Kif, Morbo, Calculon, Lrrr of Omicron Persei 8, and the Donbot.

 

@Western Paladin

Simpsons I'd have to argue is the best since it's the largest and longest.

@Felinoid

Damn you. Why do you always gotta come in here, with like knowledge and proof? HUH?! I swear you're an AI...

(lol you're awesome man).


Maurice LaMarche is awesome because Morbo rocks BIG TIME!!!

 

Me, given that I usually play with the sound off or down so low that I can't hear the voices anyway. Which is no great loss because in most games the characters say the same damn things over and over and over again

 

Enter the curmudgeon.

 

"Melissa DISNEY did the voicing of Imoen. I haven't found many details about her, it seems that BG was one of her first voicing jobs. However, more recently, she did the voicing of Angie on a Shark's Tale."

If you are referring to the recent Dreamworks movie "Shark Tale," Renee Zellweger played Angie, not Melissa Disney.

 

LC's talking about the Shark Tale video game, not the movie.

Click Me

 

Rob Paulsen has been doing cartoons and games for years. He was also the voice of BG2's Biff the Understudy and BG1's Kivan. He does a very good job disguising his distinctive voice with Anomen, but gives himself away in BG2 when he yells that the slaves of the Coronet have escaped.

Jim Cummings has been doing cartoon/game voice for about as long as Paulsen and is about as accomplished. He was the voice of Fallout's The Master, Gizmo, and Set the Ghoul, and Icewind Dale's Arundel the Druid and Hrothgar of Easthaven, among others.

Jennifer Hale hasn't been around as long but has established a strong legacy for herself in and out of Interplay RPGs. She was Silke (thespian extraordinaire) and both Fall-From-Grace and Deionarra of Planescape: Torment. For some strange reason, she was also given a speaking role as the Guildmistress from the Trademeet quest.

Probably the oldest and most established voice actor on the list* is Michael Bell, who did an amazing male voice set in the first Icewind Dale that had spoke no words at all (IWD players know which voice set I'm talking about). Bell has been in in a zillion games (the sage Medivh of Warcraft 3, Raziel of the Soul Reaver games, etc.) and a ton of cartoons (Voltron as Lance, G.I. Joe as Duke, The Transformers as 3 or 4 different characters, and several of the Smurfs, to name just a few).
*(This is only because for some crazy reason, Bioware never put Tony Jay in the BG games.)

The above actors have also done a bunch of TV commercials. Paulsen has been a spokesman for Honda and the California Dairy Council. Cummings did commercials for Six Flags' Great America theme parks; Hale's commercials for the National Holistic Massage Institute (or whatever it's called) are still on TV.

Tress Macneille has never gotten a major BG role but has been doing supporting voice work for Infinity Engine RPGs for years. She's the voice of Rumar's cuckolded wife, "Edwina" of BG2, an Icewind Dale female character voice, etc. She does most of her work these days on kids' cartoons and on The Simpsons as Principal Skinner's mother Agnes and various other characters.

For a good long time, Paulsen, Macneille, Hale and Cummings made many, many appearances in Interplay games (Baldur's Gate series, Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance seres, Icewind Dale series, Fallout series, Run Like Hell, Sacrifice, Giants: Citizen Kabuto, etc. etc.)

David Warner is best known most recently as the evil henchman who beat up Leonardo De Caprio in Titanic, and his most memorable role of all time is as the archvillain Sark in the classic 80s motion picture Tron. No role will ever overshadow Tron. Tron.

Maurice LaMarche's most famous character in the US is the voice of cereal spokesbird Toucan Sam. LaMarche doesn't try too hard to disguise that voice when delivering the lines of Renal Bloodscalp in BG2, since they sound exactly alike.

Cam Clarke, the voice of the BG1 "kicked him in the head" bandit, was also "Bim," the "hey there, I was tne speak with you" tutorial NPC from NWN and Leonardo from the Ninja Turtles cartoons. Who's more annoying and less talented, Clarke or Heidi Shannon, the Jaheira voice actress? Flip a coin.

 

Cummings has a very distinctive quality to his voice. I picked Minsc as Set/The Master pretty much instantly (and I'm horrible at picking voices, as I think I've demonstrated).

Warner was Sark from Tron? I don't know if I'll ever look at Irenicus the same way again.

 

Futurama is far more sophisticated. The late episodes of the Simpsons are almost unwatcheable. Ditto the first season.

QFT

 

Arguably, this means that Cummings has less depth as an actor because he has less range.

For instance, like you, I had trouble discerning that Paulsen was Anomen, at least until I added him to my party and he got hit...that means Paulsen has improved and added some range to his characters. If you played the Nintendo Gamecube game Eternal Darkness, you, like me, may not have realized that the main character was played by Jennifer Hale until her monologue at the end. Also a good job by Hale (who normally has a very bland, recognizable voice).

However, Cummings actually did a very good job in IWD and is a lot better than he used to be in the early days. Arundel was very convincing, it's just too bad he had to do two characters so close to each other in the game.

David Warner gave Tron whatever legitimacy it might have had. With a less-sophisticated sounding villain, that movie would have been [more of] a joke.

In the interest of being unbiased, even though The Simpsons used to be great, both shows are garbage.

 

Family Guy is where it's at

I think it's interesting just to learn what else the voice actors from the BG series (since i don't know who the actors themselves are)