Two voice actors in Starfield were given a lifeline after a late change in plans during development led to the roles they were initially hired for becoming redundant.
Initially, Bethesda planned for the main character in Starfield, which is created by the player, to have their own dialogue, and hired Elias Toufexis and Cissy Jones to voice the male and female protagonists respectively.
However, those plans eventually changed and, as shown in the full release of Starfield, there are no voices for the player-controlled characters.
In usual practice, it would have led to Toufexis and Jones being axed from Starfield completely but, taking to Twitter, the former revealed how the pair were given a lifeline.
Toufexis was given the role of voicing Sam Coe, while Jones provided the voice for Andreja—both of whom have proven to be popular Starfield characters in their own right, with deep underlying stories.
Bethesda’s approach was praised by Toufexis, who commented on the alien nature of the decision as, usually, “once you’re out you’re out.”
It’s definitely something Bethesda should be praised for, especially as Toufexis revealed that he and Jones had worked “for months” on voice acting with the main character before the decision was made to axe that approach completely.
Interestingly, it also seems to suggest that dialogue for some of the members of Constellation came much later than I would have originally thought, with the voice acting for the main character being the priority.
Although that does make sense, it shows just how much work needs to go into voice acting in games to bring the experience to life—even in situations where the average player probably doesn’t even acknowledge what is going on.
It provides further evidence of the brilliant creativity that happens with voice actor work, which was recently highlighted with a behind-the-scenes look at Marvel’s Spider-Man 2, which showed how the streets of New York were brought to life.
