After a hiatus, I’m pleased to continue the team introductions! Next up is Jamie Campbell, the narrator of Fallen Gods, is another of its longest-running contributors and another teammate who brings both amazing talent and passion to his work. When we set out to cast the narrator for Fallen Gods back in 2016, I expected a few auditions—instead, dozens upon dozens of voice actors put in, each with his or her take on the text and the speaker. (One of them, Steven Kelly, would fittingly go on to voice the scribe Fimbul Fambi in Strangeland, bringing the same skaldic personality to that role.) We ultimately chose Jamie, who not only delivered what I had heard in my head, but also drew out qualities that the written words had only hinted at.
Jamie’s distinctive delivery—sometimes wry, sometimes epic, sometimes disgusted, but always warmly, wisely human—brought the language to life, and inspired the approach I took to the many thousands of words I wrote over the next eight years. Throughout it all, he has remained a rock of reliability on the team, steadily working through the hours upon hours of voice acting. His answers testify to the thoughtfulness and sophistication with which he approaches his work.
After reading what Jamie has to say, go listen to his stuff on SoundCloud, including a fabulous reading of “The Raven” (anyone who played Strangeland knows how much I love that poem) and a performance as Kefka, a villain who left a lasting impression on me.
- Mark Y.
Mark: Within hearing just a few events’ worth of voice over, it becomes apparent that the narrator has a personality of his own. How would you describe that personality, and how did you construct it?
Jamie: One of the things that drew me to the project in the first place was that I read that one of Mark’s influences in creating Fallen Gods were the Lone Wolf game books by Joe Dever, which I collected and absolutely devoured as a kid. These were grand fantasy adventures told in the second-person, and once I understood this as an inspiration, I had that type of backdrop in mind, and I remember how my inner voice would hear those books as I read them. They were like Tolkien meets Choose Your Own Adventure.
The skald introduces every event node that the player comes across, and because the player is accompanied by his voice so often, I wanted to establish a sort of “baseline neutral” as a launching off point. Unless there’s an emotional or dramatic start to an event, the skald generally approaches it with a similar level of calm and interest in whatever’s transpiring. However, when the action is punctuated by something dramatic or unusual—an ambush or an environmental peril—I wanted to get right into it to make the player sit up and take notice so that they’re emotionally tuned in when it comes time to make their decision as to how to proceed.
The narrative takes stylistic inspiration from ancient epic poetry, and the fact that this sort of luxuriant language and poetic structure is woven into the writing presents a unique challenge, but also makes it ridiculously fun to read. (I majored in Classics, and I absolutely love this stuff.) Because of that narrative tradition, and due in large part to much of Mark’s wonderfully-paced writing, it felt natural to deliver the lines with a sort of ‘round-the-campfire, oral tradition vibe. Some of the lines are more prosaic than others, but the skald’s lines often lend themselves to a bit of a rhythmic, metered delivery, so I’ve tried to inject a bit of poetic flair and musicality into them where appropriate.
Regarding the personality of the skald, I see him as something between a conscience, a co-conspirator, and occasionally a judgmental observer, like a bemused St. Peter (or Valhalla’s equivalent) taking notes in his Big Book. At times lofty and serious, heavy with gravitas, and at times conspiratorial and sly. He’s concerned about the player-character when their life is in danger, and relieved and content when things are going well, or when some boon materializes. Because the skald spends so much of the adventure “over the shoulder” of the player and spinning their song, it strikes me as a fairly intimate relationship – with a caveat.
When I was brought on board as the skald, I remember thinking back to how much I absolutely loved John Rhys-Davies’ wonderful narration for the CD-ROM version of Quest for Glory: Shadows of Darkness when I was a kid. I haven’t heard that stuff in 20+ years, as I intentionally stayed away from revisiting that when developing the voice of the skald. But what stuck in my memory all these years later is a sense of what I’d call “detached intimacy.” Similarly, it feels to me like whoever the skald is, their fate is somehow intertwined with the player-character’s, as if the skald wouldn’t exist or wouldn’t serve a purpose without him. They’ll never meet face to face, but they’re close companions anyway.
The mystery of the connection that may or may not exist between them is part of the fun; the skald may truly have some stake in the wellbeing of the player, or he may just be doing his best as a storyteller. I think that this sense of mystery also colored the not-quite-discernible accent of the character. To me, he feels like a “person from nowhere,” and this unknowable, faceless voice is another element that fits right in with the ancient poetic and oral traditions to which it pays homage.
Mark: You’ve been working on Fallen Gods for almost a decade. Has your approach to the voice over, or the narrator’s personality, changed at all during that time? Has the passage of time presented any challenges?
Jamie: It became apparent early on that consistency was going to be absolutely vital so that there’s a level of comfort that the player settles into as they travel along in the adventure. This is especially true because of the non-linear, procedural nature of the game. At any given time, a player’s next encounter might be something that I recorded five years ago, or it might be something that I just finished yesterday. Thankfully, Mark and Maciej have been not only an excellent audience, but fantastically helpful collaborators with regard to choosing which takes felt most appropriate. I think that in doing so, they helped steer that consistency along.
With regard to whether the approach and personality of the skald changed over the years, I’d say that it’s been a very engaging balancing act. On the one hand, keeping the aforementioned “baseline neutral” as a bedrock to keeping consistent with what’s come before, and on the other, developing a keener sense of just how close the relationship between the skald and the player comes to feel over the course of this vast number of lines and encounters.
I mentioned earlier that a lot of the passages have the feel of ancient epic poetry. As the voice developed, it was important that even when voicing events that don’t necessitate this poetic rhythm, I wanted it to feel like that same heartbeat was there; it needed to remain buoyant and ready to move when the words next wanted to dance to Mark’s lead. After years of recording, so many brilliant passages have come in and surprised me, and there’s an ever-widening scope of just how many adventures the player goes through with the skald accompanying them. I hope that ultimately the passage of development time won’t be evident, but on the other side of the microphone, I’m always learning more about this world, and I’m just having a blast throughout.
As to the challenges of working on a project with this kind of lifespan, it’s presented one particular challenge which I’m delighted to have. Over the last few years, my wife Katya launched a successful handmade jewelry brand called GogolHaus, which she operates out of our home studio. She’s crafty enough to have also built the structure of my recording booth (Orm bless her) in the same room, so we’re often splitting work time between a jewelry workshop and a recording studio. But we’re both able to pursue our creative work in our little space, and I feel very fortunate for that.
Otherwise, it’s been great fun to be on this Fallen Gods journey for so long with such talented collaborators. Being a spoke on the wheel of this project, which is so clearly a labor of earnest love, has been hugely fulfilling, and I can’t wait to see (and hear) it in action in its final form.
Mark: In addition to the narrator, you voice any character who has direct dialogue in the events’ intro nodes. How do you go about differentiating these voices?
Jamie: It’s very common in video games and other media that take place in a pre-industrial setting to lean on British accents. It seems as though developers or creators often think that in the minds of the audience, those voices feel authentic to anything “fantasy.”
I’m not Scandinavian and wouldn’t purport to fake such an accent for hours upon hours of dialogue and narration, so we established a baseline with the Fallen Gods trailer (which also served as my audition for the role way back in 2016). Leaning into an American accent felt like it might clash with the world of the game, but I wanted something that was familiar enough to retain a lot of range and consistency. What felt right was a sort of dampened Transatlantic accent that tended toward a rhythmic mode of speech, which would lend itself to the often poetic pieces of writing that Mark provided for the events.
The flavor of the writing and visuals are suggestive of the history of a certain region of our world, but because we weren’t tied to leaning into a Scandinavian accent for the skald, it meant that there was also a lot of freedom when it came to the voices and accents of the other characters. The game isn’t reflecting a slice of history from our world; it’s its own thing. As such, I was able to play around a lot with the voices of the many characters that the player encounters throughout the adventure.
This is also a world where many of the people and creatures that the player encounters understand who the player-character is: They’re speaking to a god who’s fallen from Skyhold. The player-character isn’t someone who’s at the height of their once lofty powers, but they’re no one to be trifled with either. This often informed the development of a character’s voice and differentiated them from each other. What’s this character’s relationship to this fallen god? A wary thief who stumbles upon the player in the wilderness is going to have a very different attitude to the haughty Lord of the Mud who laughs at the very notion of the player’s supposed power.
Sometimes Mark would have a specific reference in mind that I might use as a baseline for a character, but most often I was given free rein to just reach for context clues and have fun with it. There’s a great collection of memorable characters here, and many of them were such a joy to voice. A wurm who’s trying to project the power it once had through intimidation, while being deathly ill and desperate for help from the very person it’s threatening, or an undead who finds it so hard to speak and whose mind is so addled that it vocalizes on its inhalations. There was typically some quirk to work with, which made each a singularly fun challenge.
I can’t wait for you all to enjoy the game, and to let us know what you think!