Shadowheart's voice actor didn't initially love her character in Baldur's Gate 3 - until she saw the RPG community's reactions
Sep. 3, 2024In Shadowheart, she discovered “the stuff I like about myself”
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TheBaldur’s Gate 3cast didn’t always feel as strongly for the companions they voiced as the community did - as is the case with Shadowheart’s actor, at least.
Speaking in aninterview withIGN, Jennifer English reveals that she wasn’t initially a fan of God’s favorite princess. It was only after discovering the community’s positive reactions to Shadowheart that her growing love for thesassy characterfinally blossomed. English says that she learned that the reasons the RPG’s fans adored the cleric were similar to the qualities that she likes about herself.
“The stuff that [players] like in Shadowheart is kind of the stuff I like about myself,” the actor explains. The community picked up on the fan-favorite companion’s quirks, highlighting ones that English wasn’t as aware of while first recording lines for the game. Shadowheart also had quite a following before the game’s release: “I’d gone to London Comic Con when the game was in early access and I remember being really honored that I had 10 people in my queue.”
English describes how pleasantly surprised she was to see Shadowheart’s influence already taking off: “I think I’d made my rent that weekend. And I was like, ‘Wow, that’s amazing.'” The year after her first Comic Con, the lines to meet the voice actor grew exponentially - there was a six-hour wait to get to English, and a full-blown security detail handling the sheer number of excited Baldur’s Gate 3 fans.
Baldur’s Gate 3 devs thought making the RPG would be as “easy” as giving the D&D rules to programmers, but “before you know it, we’re deep down in community forums”
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After spending years with her head in various fantastical realms’ clouds, Anna studied English Literature and then Medieval History at the University of Edinburgh, going on to specialize in narrative design and video game journalism as a writer. She has written for various publications since her postgraduate studies, including Dexerto, Fanbyte, GameSpot, IGN, PCGamesN, and more. When she’s not frantically trying to form words into coherent sentences, she’s probably daydreaming about becoming a fairy druid and befriending every animal or she’s spending a thousand (more) hours traversing the Underdark in Baldur’s Gate 3. If you spot her away from her PC, you’ll always find Anna with a fantasy book, a handheld video game console of some sort, and a Tamagotchi or two on hand.
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