» Fri May 13, 2011 9:05 am
Why did they hire a celebrity voice actor? Because the character he voices is unique. Esbern is supposed to be a special character in the game, and his voice should be unique to set him apart from all of the other characters that share a race with him. Why the choice of Max von Sydow? When coming up with concepts for a character, you need to imagine his voice with voices you already know. And people know celebrities. Max must've fit their idea of Esbern, which is why they hired him.
Some of you talk about Bethesda as if hiring a single, or even two or three celebrity voice actors will cripple them financially. I'm a little upset that you have such severe doubts over the popularity of Bethesda's game franchises, that they can't earn enough money to pay basic expenses. But you really can't dictate Bethesda's budget without knowing it. Considering how popular Oblivion and Fallout 3 were, and how Bethesda Softworks keeps earning income from other studios, I don't think they're in any desperate need for cash.
If anything, hiring celebrity voice actors is a better alternative than other options. What are you going to do with the extra money? Hire non-famous voice actors? Who's to say that they don't charge just as much, considering they need to make a living and don't have famous Hollywood backgrounds to keep the money flowing? Pay for more development? The quality of work done by the game designers is not affected by funding at all. They're going to work regardless and all they care about are their usual wages. Maybe hire more talent? Although that would increase production speed, it runs a risk of lowering the quality of the game by hiring employees with less experience that aren't familiar with the series at all. Then you're left with other expenses, like publicity stunts and advertising, which would be covered by Bethesda Softworks, the publisher. And that just leaves one last possibility: a hefty bonus for the lead developers...
Max was a good choice, not only because he is good at what he does, but believe it or not it may increase sales by a slim margin. I doubt that people would buy the game solely because he's in it (Although Liam Neeson's presence in Fallout 3 was my motivation to buy) but famous voice actors give extra free publicity. If someone sees the work of Max von Sydow and Skyrim is in there, that is a person who is now aware of the game and may purchase it if it looks interesting. In addition, though it may be a remote afterthought, Best Voice Actor is a category of several video-game related awards. If you can get a good voice actor and win that category, or even be a nominee, you'll attract a wide variety of viewers who are gamers, who may be attracted to the game the more they hear about it. I know there are some games that I didn't care for when I first heard of them, but when they kept popping up all over the place it really forces you to notice, and I changed my mind and bought some of them down the road even.
So, my main point is, Bethesda knows what they're doing. They knew ahead of time how many voice actors they wanted, and know how much they want to spend. Just be glad it's Max von Sydow and not someone who was hired on celebrity status alone, like Tom Cruise or something.
