The best moments in any tabletop game don’t come from your DM. Their hours of careful planning and months of preparation for a creative and surprising boss are nothing compared to the moment when you take it down with an exploding shield, a clay plesiosaur, and a quick magical incantation. Yes, I’m speaking from experience. This is notoriously more difficult to achieve in a videogame, where your options are coded in ahead of time. However, Starfinder: Afterlight is paying respect to the tabletop shenanigans of its progenitor by letting its actors have the same fun.
“We love how they improvize, adding their own interpretations and bringing our characters to life,” say Richard Pillosu and Albert Jane, co-founders of Epic Entertainment. They’re talking about Inel Tomlinson and Fred Tatisciore, who PCGamesN can reveal play the roles of Tycho and Kole respectively. Tomlinson is best known for his work in Final Fantasy 16, Dragon Age, and Space Marine 2, while you may have heard Tatiscore’s work on Family Guy, Mass Effect, and Overwatch.
Starfinder: Afterlight has only introduced two of its cast so far, but the pair have a storied history within videogames. They’ve also been mentored by Baldur’s Gate 3 alum Neil Newbon, who the developers say directs with “a mixture of kindness and intensity.” If Epic Entertainment wants it to be one of the best RPG games, it knows that players want great performances from a stellar cast.
For the developer, this means letting the cast embody that tabletop pastime of having fun. “It’s incredibly fun to witness their creativity,” Pillosu and Jane say. “Most of the sessions, we are laughing all the time. Actually, part of the lines in the reveal come from improvization: Fred turned a simple acknowledgment into Kole’s signature words that perfectly capture his personality.”
This will hopefully result in an RPG experience that will feel like a tabletop campaign with friends. “Afterlight is a game that doesn’t take itself too seriously,” the developers say, referencing Guardians of the Galaxy as a cultural touchstone.
Pillosu and Jane point to Pillars of Eternity and Pathfinder (the latter “to a certain extent”) when I ask about the importance of voice acting in RPGs. They also stress the importance of the Divinity series, seeing the cultural behemoth that is Baldur’s Gate 3 as a natural evolution of that rather than something to be studied in itself.
For Starfinder: Afterlight, though, voice acting fulfils one, crucial role: “Our main goal was to make our companions as alive as possible, and for that, voice acting is a great contributor.”
That’s why, at present, the companions and important cast will be voiced. The imminent Kickstarter launch, however, could provide more budget to voice more roles.
Epic Entertainment is focusing heavily on voice acting because the “companions are one of [the] cornerstones in the story and the game.” As for what’s going to be revealed next, the developers are keeping things close to their chests. However, they did mention that the Kickstarter trailer features a “very prominent actress” who caused some of the team to fall off their chairs when they realized they’d be working with her.
Will Starfinder: Afterlight become one of the best space games? It’s too early to say. But it clearly understands the fundamentals of turn-based RPGs, and allowing its cast of veteran voice actors improvize and have fun may be the key to creating a successful imitation of the tabletop experience on-screen.
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