Thinking about ... voices & space

The game that currently has me caught is called Mass Effect, where the hero (you!) is going for that long used staple of sci-fi stories, they're out to save the galaxy :-)

It's by Bioware, people who are extremely strong on Role Play, so there's a lot of story and side quests alongside the main event of saving the galaxy from the machines. And with Role Play comes voice acting, which brings me to what I was noticing earlier ... Some voices stand apart and in this case, it's the female version of Commander Shepard, the heroine of Mass Effect. I should really have recognised the voice, as I listened to it all the way through another of Bioware's games.

The voice behind the game belongs to one Jennifer Hale and my surprise at the voice being shared shows how good she is at her job. Games are sometimes criticized for the poor quality of their voice acting, often because Hollywood actors/actresses are used to provide the voices. Star Trek's Marina Sirtis also turns up in a cameo in Mass Effect. Not quite sure what the difference is between the Bastila character in the second game and Shepard in Mass Effect but the Commander personality exudes the confidence, professionalism and authority you'd expect from a tough soldier of the 22nd century. And it's different enough that I only recognised it when seeing the page on the Mass Effect wiki (linked above)

There's another common factor between the two games, they're both space scifi games. Doh - I never said what the other game is. Jennifer Hale's previous credits include Bastila, a character from the Star Wars universe set 4000 years before the movies. Star Wars, Knights of the Old Republic was a classic too, played that one to death a few years ago :-) (bugs mean I don't touch it now)

I have a few games but it seems like it's the space sci-fi games I go back to most often. I have a couple of others fairly new in the collection that haven't seen so much attention, which are both swords & axes games. I was wondering why that was and I figure, I must have a hankering to live more in the sci-fi world than the medieval world. Definitely more interest in living other places than the 21st century ...

I guess that's why I go for the games so much and the sci-fi movies. Even the swords & axe type books I read tend to have a sci-fi flavour to them occasionally, even if the sci-fi is magic. Both forms of storytelling allow one to escape the world we live in right now, to jump into one that has action, adventure, romance (yep - it's programmed in!) and that little bit of magic. They allow us to do things we couldn't imagine doing for real, like all those people who play Soldier on the online games or who have an alter-ego in Warcraft. And there's no consequences too, the "save" button lets you reverse decisions and it takes away the risk that real soldiers have to cope with.

Currently taking a rest from the virtual world, if you could call watching Die Hard 4.0 escaping :-) And later, I'll be back to listening to some more of those wonderful voices.

New artist alert ! This one's Natasha Khan, centrepiece of Bat For Lashes. Amazing voice here and another album on the list to grab :-)