I’ve been replaying a lot of the classics recently, and just like with Combs when I rewatch a Star Trek series, I keep finding myself saying “fuck, that’s him too?”
Playing Fallout, there’s Jim as the main voice of The Master.
Playing the original Baldur’s Gate trilogy, there’s Jim as Minsc, Gorion, Mulahey, and a bunch of other people.
Taking a break to test out some character builds in Icewind Dale? Fuck me, there’s Jim as Hrothgar.
Like I know he’s one of the most prolific voice actors, especially of that era, but I didn’t realize how entwined he was with that specific genre.
That clip of Jim Cummings talking to a fan and telling them “please remind Larian that I exist” still breaks my heart. I guess Matt Mercer is a cheap PR move or something to boost sales but I wish Jim got to come back to do Minsc.
The worse casting choice was who they replaced
Tap for spoiler
Sarevok
with.
EDIT: Also, I know they motion captured everyone for BG3, and when some of these guys are getting older, maybe it was less about PR and more about who they believed they could get into mocap gear.
Also who replaces ::: spoiler spoiler Viconia. Though the whole character assassination of Sarevok and Viconia in itself is a travesty. :::
Studios like Remedy and Sandfall have shown you can have mocap done by an actor other than the voice actor and still end up with a great product. Stuff like this is just one of the many little things that make me feel like Larian had very little regard for the original games, and only used the IP for brand recognition and marketing. Which makes me sad.
I never encountered her in my playthroughs of 1 and 2, so I couldn’t say. The guy I spoilered was fine, and I’d say Larian showed a ton of reverence for those original games throughout. The entire format of the game is one BioWare made famous via Baldur’s Gate II, after all.
I never really got the feeling of reverence for the originals personally, down to the references made feeling like lip service created by someone browsing a wiki who has never played them in the first place.
Choosing to set the game a 100 years later (so that they wouldn’t have to incorporate much of the original cast or story) but still shoehorning in two fan favourite characters never sat right with me either.
It’s set in the 1490s because that’s the current era in Forgotten Realms, just like the first games were set in the 1360s because that was the era that was current at the time. It’s not like they actively chose that specific time period for any of the three games.
The other point to setting the game 100 years later is that they’re not beholden to the same exact geography, architecture, or, most importantly, the choices the player made in the previous game. And it allows people to step into this one without feeling like the previous two were mandatory. They did still choose a canon, and they can handwave others away as hearsay told in legends where multiple conflicting things are true, but the game was unmistakably made by enormous fans of Baldur’s Gate and Dungeons & Dragons. It is still a story that revolves around the city of Baldur’s Gate and Bhaal. It is the most authentic D&D game made since those old infinity engine games and arguably more so, given the ways their games are made to allow you to get more creative with systems, like the tabletop experience.
Having a old man in a rocking chair who tells crazy tells of his adventuring years voiced by Jim would be peak. Could listen to him for hours.
Would be even cooler if he retells stories of the various characters he’s voiced by slightly changed so it’s all DND like.
Just picture him making subtle references to dark wing for example!
I mean the dude is/was Winnie the Pooh, so…
He’s also Kaa the snake in Jungle Book, which is kinda weird because it’s pretty much the exact same voice.
Jeffrey Combs was also in DOTA: Dragon’s Blood, and that series’s cast was a fun synthesis of video game voice actor luminaries plus Star Trek alumni (Michael Dorn, John de Lancie, Anson Mount, Andrew Robinson and more).
But yeah, really that whole late 90’s/early 2000’s gaming era had some genuinely great performances from actors of different media. I still think about David Warner in Baldur’s Gate 2 from time to time.
There was some military strategy game which was voiced by Will Wheaton. I remember you had to control the characters with voice command, and that was a very new and novel idea and so when playing online people forgot that that meant that you could hear what orders they were giving their units.
Just gonna:
https://www.mobygames.com/person/3725/jim-cummings/credits/He is quite prolific
Yeah, this isn’t him getting cast in a bunch of CRPGs; it’s him getting cast in a bunch of everything.
It’s like Steve Blum with 2000s generic action hero characters in video games. He was everywhere
