Larian Studios Forums Baldur's Gate III Baldur's Gate III - General Minsc's Voice Actor?

I hope they bring in other members of Critical Role in some shape or form. Would be awesome if there was a Vox Machina cameo somewhere in Baldur's Gate

Why? Seriously, I get that fans love their show, but does it have to be in anything D&D related? Save it for the Critical Role game, please.

Matt did a great job with the Va there in the stream, but this whole thing being a big marketing thing to bring in CR fans with Matt Mercer fanservice feels uncomfortable to me as someone who has never been interested in the show.

I've been watching Critical Roll for years now still I have no desire to see any of their campaign charcters in here. The whole show has nothing to do with Forgotten Realms as they even moved away from using the gods names from season 2 on. I don't mind if they do the voices, as they are great at it, but I just don't want any connections to their show in the lore.

I agree, Matt Mercer is a great pick for Minsc but if people want to see Vox Machina show up in a game, then Latian should have their next game set in that (very cool) setting. Have the cast reprise their roles as major NPCs and maybe as new characters for the main companions, and in the interest of accuracy, Matt Mercer should of course voice every other NPC.

Matt Mercer did a really good Minsc! BG3 has a slew of great voice actors already, now even more.

The cast of critical role is full of talented VOICE so of course I wouldn’t mind them lending talent in BG, but I would rather they were picked because they are best cast for the job, rather then “critical role” Easter egg.

Matt sounded good to me, Jaheira too. I am surprised that the original guy didn't return, based on Hondo Ohnaka, he can still do the voice, I guess his going rate is just too much.

According to reddit, he wanted the part but I guess Larian doesn't returning his phone calls or something? There was a nasty divorce with mutual accusations of abuse apparently, but from what I can tell, he's still getting tons of work so I don't know how much there is to that controversy. If Larian is pretending he doesn't exist that makes me think it wasn't about money, because it sounds like he was very much interested in that role-besides, he was in Siege of Dragonspear and that had a fraction of the budget BGIII has.

I suspect it was the controversy or the fact that Mercer has a large, devoted fanbase in the D&D community that could be leveraged to sell games. Possibly a combination of the two, but the likelihood of the second being a major factor really doesn't appeal to me. Despite his skill, I really am not a big fan of using celebrity fanservice to sell copies of BG. Minsc has already been leveraged way too hard by WoTC marketing, IMO. Honestly putting me off the game a bit.

Meh, one thing I learned from Splinter Cell: Blacklist is to not assume things. There could be a myriad reasons as to why J.C. isn't back.

Is it really that much of a reach that Mercer was chosen in large portion because he's already outrageously popular with a certain portion of the fanbase though? I watched the stream, CR fans went ballistic when he appeared on screen.

For whatever reason or reasons JC wasn't chosen, it doesn't take much to guess why Mercer was.

Eh. Matt voiced not one, but two characters in PoE1 and Deadfire, and entire CritRole cast was hired to do major voice work for the sequels, and game still initially flopped. I really wouldn’t look for any conspiracy theories, he constantly gets to work for a reason - he is a superbly versatile actor, and I just recently joked about “City of mercers” when playing Spider-man. With his knowledge of D&D and genuine interest in cRPG it is not too far fetched that he would win audition fair and square. I doubt he was casted because of his fame, but he certainly got to do the hype reveal because of that. Afterall, the actress who voices Jaheira also seems like an excellent cast (I genuinely thought it was the OG voice) and there was little fanfare about her - it is nice that she was mentioned by name though.

In case people didn’t know, Matt hosted promotional Dungeon Master stream back in D:OS2 days:

I'm not questioning his acting chops or his voicework. He isn't a hack, we all know this, it's well established. But lets not pretend that he was chosen to promo as 'Game Master' for the DOS2 'Game Master Mode demo' because of either of those-it was because he is famed first and foremost for being a DM.

Sure, but that was an advertisment, not actual contribution to the game.

But sure, recognisable names help when casting, so whenever it was part of the decision when hiring him or not, Larian is wise to take advantage of his profile in D&D community.

I would hesitate to assume bad faith on the part of Larian based on so little information. If it was merely about getting Matt Mercer and his name recognition into the project, they could have hired him for a prominent, important NPC, or another companion like Gale.

That's a good point. I don't think having Matt play Minsc in particular would inspire noticeably more publicity than having him play any other companion.