Get Played - Voice Acting with Ray Chase

Episode Date: July 17, 2023

Heather, Nick and Matt are joined by voice actor Ray Chase (Final Fantasy XV, Jujutsu Kaisen, Kingdom Hearts) to talk to him about his voice acting career, the process of recording voiceover, and more! This month's We Play, You Play: Final Fantasy XVI! Follow us on Twitter and Instagram @getplayedpod. Check out our premium series Get Anime'd on patreon.com/getplayed or on Stitcher Premium. Join us on our Discord server here: https://discord.gg/getplayed Wanna leave us a voicemail? Call 616-2-PLAYED (616-275-2933) or write us an email at [e-mail]: This was recorded before the SAG-AFTRA strike began on July 13.See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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the WGA, and all workers taking action. All right, everyone. As you know, this is a very exciting time. We're at one of the big anniversaries of the video game Pong. So we are going to be re-releasing it fully voice acted. We've got Pong Legacy. Pong Legacy. And we've got our voiceover artist here

who's going to be doing both the roles of Paddle and Ball. And Matt, Matt, is it in the booth? Yeah. Yeah. Have fun in there. Yeah. And so like,

I just want to know, like, we'll be doing them one at a time. If that's your question, you're not going to be playing both paddle and ball in, uh, in these records. So we'll,

we'll segment those out. we'll do three takes of each, uh, pretty industry standard. And yeah. Yeah. And just, you know,

have fun in there. Great. So, uh, we're just going to stop up, uh, start up at the top of each. Okay. Pretty industry standard. And just, you know, have fun in there. Great. So we're just going to start up at the top of page one here. So ball is coming in at a 30-degree angle. So go ahead. Bloop. Great. Great.

Can we get two more of those? Bloop. Bloop. That was great. That was great. That was excellent. Is that okay? I mean, I'm sort of new. Yeah.

No, this is great. I guess I have a question about two, like, I know that we're, like, getting angles, it seems like. Uh-huh. But the relationship between the ball and the paddle, I just, like, what's the story there? Like, should I be playing that a certain way? Because I want to make sure that I'm not want to make sure that they seem like different characters. Yeah, it's sort of a cat and mouse sort of situation. They're rivals, they hate each other, but they need each other. Okay, I think that's informative enough.

Yeah, okay, okay. that's okay. I think that's informative enough. Yeah, okay, okay. Yeah, yeah, I'm good. So let's do a couple more angles, and then maybe we'll break it up, and we'll have you do a couple ball lines. Oh. Wait, what was that O? I think I was performing paddle as if I was performing ball. Wait, so what?

What? So wait a minute. What? The bloop you're doing is traversal? I thought that was. Yeah, no, I thought. I thought I was your ball read. I will.

That's why I'm just asking. I, you know, I'm new. I mean, why did you have fun in there? But don't fucking lose focus on your task. I thought it was ball, but I'm happy to do those again. Or we could use those ones for ball and I can give a paddle right now. No, I think those kind of weirdly work for paddle. It's just.

Yeah, those definitely work for paddle. I'm going to be frank with you. We had Joaquin Phoenix in here yesterday and we fired him. And it was because of this. He came in dressed as ball. Yeah, it was full. He never broke character. But we don't want to repeat that today.

We're kind of we're we're we're up against a deadline here so okay if you can do here's back here another paddle maybe we'll do how about this to get you out of your head we'll do a run of a few different degrees all at once so i'll shout out the number that's the angle that the ball is coming in at and we'll get that record you ready okay yeah okay uh the ball is coming in at 22 degrees 17 degrees 45 degrees 90 degrees okay nope nope let's take that 90 again fantastic fantastic great i mean i mean he's a pro he He's a genius. And just to clarify, you were voicing the paddle there? Wait, fuck. Okay, no.

I was doing ball. What is your paddle read? In my memory of playing pong. Let me just clarify this real quick. The paddle's not the thing making the noise. The paddle's moving along on its own, right? Wait, you think that ball is making the noise? When you throw a basketball...

Ball is contact with paddle. Look, let's just lock this in right now. We're doing paddle, okay? Matt, paddle? You can give me paddle? Yeah, I got it. We're doing paddle. Okay, and now just take the ball

completely out of the picture. Let's just get some paddle. Okay, well then what am I reacting to? Because if it's not the ball, I don't know what I'm doing as paddle. Paddle is just sitting there. Gameplay has not started yet. All right? We're still waiting.

We're still waiting for the player one to press a button and initiate gameplay. But you can still control the paddle. You can still move the paddle vertically. So just imagine this gets some vertical whooshes. Yeah, let's hear this. What's hard about this is I'm frustrated

with you as an actor and blown away by your talent. Coming this fall, Pong Legacy starring Matt Apodaca in his performance as Paddle. We discussed the new Metal Gear Solid movie, aka the new Mission Impossible movie, and used our voices to talk about voices this week on Get Played. Thank you. Welcome to Get Played, your one-stop show for good games, bad games, and every game in between. It's time to get played. I'm your host, Heather Ann Campbell, along with my fellow host, Nick Weiger. Oh, that's me, Nick Weiger, along with our third host, Matt Apodaca. Oh, hello, everyone.

Hello, everyone, and welcome back to the premiere video game podcast, where it's Final Fantasy Month all month long. Is it really? It's it? Can we establish that? What are you talking? Next week's decidedly not. I don't think we said in advance this is Final Fantasy month.

I think we said we're covering Final Fantasy 16 for our We Play, You Play, which is coming Monday, July 31st. And then we did Spirits Within, and then we did a tier. What are you talking? So we've got one week where we're just doing the Squaresoft game. Should we pivot, I guess? Pivot to what? I don't know.

I think it works. It's a Final Fantasy inspired Squaresoft video game. I think it works. It's a Final Fantasy-inspired Squaresoft video game. I think it counts. It's Final Fantasy Month. I'm sort of thinking now Heather's right. We didn't do the normal push that we normally do when we have a theme to get people to listen. Yeah, now I'm pissed off.

No, now I'm pissed off. Because we had, when we did this in May, we had like a whole, yeah, we had Zelda. We had like a name, we had like a link to the legend of Zelda, a link to the cast, a pod to the cast. Yeah. And we had shirts. We had shirts.

God, we could have had Final Fantasy shirts. We're just calling this Final Fantasy Month? That's like the pitch when the writers want to go home. We've got to come up with something better. Well, hey, pencils down, bitch. That's a great point, Matt. It's 8 a.m. Let's fucking go. Because of the split time zones, I think we've talked about this, but we are recording

at 8 a.m. me and Matt's time and our guest's time, I believe. And while Heather is over in the early evening in. In Amsterdam. So, yeah, I'm I'm I'm I'm at the five the 5 p.m. Mark here. I've already done a 20 mile bike ride. Wow.

I I was biking up and down the Amstel with my wife. Mary had a little cheese bread, some olives. It was a real European afternoon for me. Our guest just put in the chat, Jelinal Fantasy Month. It's pretty good. It's very good, but because it's good, that means our show sucks.

That just, it's very good. But because it's good, that means our show sucks. Oh man, Julynal Fantasy Month. That's great. Can we just say that? We'll make one t-shirt and sell it for $1,000. That's very Squaresoft of us. You guys seen that? They have a statue that I think is like Sephiroth or Cloud.

I don't remember what it was, but it's like an $8,000 toy. And it's like, oh, come on, guys. What are you doing? They also sell like Final Fantasy engagement rings. We should have done a segment on the Square Enix jewelry store. Yeah. I actually just read something interesting about that statue. They tore it down.

They're tearing down monuments all over, and they tore the statue of Sephiroth down. Oh, boy. Well, because it's like celebrating the wrong side. Exactly. I say we need to keep our history. That's what I think. Jesus Christ.

They did tear down the Roger Rabbit statue at Disneyland, and that did actually make me legitimately upset. And for one second, I was like, I see what they're talking about. Wait, why? Because they rebranded Toontown. Yeah, they made it just like boring, I think. Yeah, they put grass where he is. Yeah.

They talk about it all on Podcast The Ride, a great show. Great show. But shout out to the boys. I think they should have, like, look, I understand that Who Framed Roger Rabbit is a singular work that is almost impossible to imagine the craft that went into it, right? That is almost impossible to imagine the craft that went into it. Right. But I feel like instead of tearing down the Roger Rabbit statue, you should instead make a sequel to Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Well, you're you're right. But it's too good of an idea for the studios to wrap their head around.

Yeah, I feel like they'd make because then they're going to try to make it into a franchise. And that's so antithetical to what the movie's all about. Yeah, who killed Roger Rabbit? Who, you know, who fucked Roger Rabbit? Right, that's the natural third entry. One thing I think they could do is

I think they could do more just like Roger Rabbit shorts, which I think that was like, because those like inform the world of Roger Rabbit and those could kind of was like, you know, because those like inform like the world of Roger Rabbit and those could kind of stand alone, you know. They were they were these interesting sort of because they did a couple of shorts and they were like strange combinations of live action backgrounds and animated foregrounds a lot of the time.

And so they still had that that hyper realistic look to them yeah they should totally do that but the truth is that like if you were to do roger rabbit today it would be more like the space jam sequel than it would be yes who framed roger rabbit it would be like they got close with chip and dale chip and dale movie was really good good and had sort of a similar vibe to it, but not really doesn't really capture that spark. You need that Charles Fleischer stank on it. You know, well, it's like. Is he here? Did he join the Zoom?

No, that was like actually really bad. I didn't do it with enough spit. I didn't want to short circuit my microphone. I didn't do it with enough spit. I didn't want to short circuit my microphone. I think the yes, Heather is right, that it would be just like the parade of cameos, that it would be kind of a more is more approach instead of being like, oh, they've really figured out the right ones to use and how to integrate them into it. But it's largely just still about the main plot. Yeah, it wouldn't be like Kingdom Hearts, let's say.

Matt, what a segue. Because our guest today, a voiceover artist whose many credits include Master of Masters from Kingdom Hearts, as well as Sukuna from Jujutsu Kaisen and Bruno from JoJo's Bizarre Adventure. Ray Chase is here. Hi, Ray. Hello, everybody. Very excited to be here. Hi, Ray. First time caller. Yes. I'm also here for Final Fantasy Month.

I am Noctis in Final Fantasy. And Edgar from Final Fantasy VI. Wow. Played all the installments there. And I did wonder, so of the three of us, of the three of you guys, did any of you guys play Final Fantasy XV? Just Heather. Just Heather.

No, I didn't get around to it. Just Heather. I'm getting to it. What the fuck? We talked about this last time. What? Wait, what? I said when we did our tier list, I said. But't get around to it. Just Heather. I'm getting to it. What the fuck? We talked about this last time. What? I said when we did our tier list, I said- Yeah, but it's been a week.

You haven't tried it in the meantime? What are we going to do? Put down Dave the Diver to play an old Final Fantasy? Old? It's not old. It's the last one. It's ancient history at this point. Our guest is in the game.

No, I know. I really meant- I really wanted to play Final- I intend to play Final Fantasy XV when I'm done with 16. I'm going to certainly get to it. Yeah. I think I've mentioned this

on the show before that my first shared birthday with Mary, she got me a voice greeting card from Ignis. Wow. What? Adam Crowsdale himself?

Yeah. Adam gave a little, he was like, hello, this is Ignis, and I'm wishing you a happy birthday. And I was like, oh, my God. That is so classy of him. Him in real life is exactly as Ignis. He is such, he's the most charming, dapper fellow himself. Wow. So did you play in sub or dub,

Heather? This is the question. Ray, tell us more about yourself. Get her ass. Nail her to a wall. So even this Adam Crowsdale birthday surprise, you were like, who is this? This is not Satoshi Nakamoto. You are such an exciting

guest. And it is so exciting to have you on the show. And I, you know, like, I just, I'm just First time I'm hearing that. Yeah. I don't know. And it is so exciting to have you on the show. And I, you know, like, I just, I'm just like, I have to say. Here's the other thing is I'm also, so I'm also the barbarian in Diablo 4, which you guys all played. But nobody played barbarian, I don't think, right? I didn't play Diablo 4. They did. I rolled up, I actually did roll a barbarian in the beta, in the open beta.

Oh, excellent. Yeah. So you got to hear me on that. Female barbarian, but... God damn it. What about Guile from Street Fighter VI? Did anybody play as Guile? Yes.

Yes. The answer there is yes. 100% yes. That's what I did. What the fuck? Beat the shit out of him. I was hoping that you guys would know my work, but it's understandable that if my work is adjacent to you.

Oh, we know it. Oh, we absolutely know it. No. Okay. And also, all of us have played Kingdom Hearts. You guys have all played Kingdom Hearts. Yeah, we've all played Kingdom Hearts. And Persona 5.

Oh, yeah. I am the subway announcer and the penis chariot monster, Mara, in Person Sunset. Okay. So we actually do know your work very well. You do know my work very well. Hey, everyone. You know, you want to eat healthy.

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Thank you, Magic Spoon, for sponsoring this episode. We were talking before we went on here, because you have just so many credits and we're trying to figure out what to set you up with, but from all the roles you've played, specific to video games, do you have any where you're like, ah, that character was great, or this game is something that I'm really proud of?

100%. There's a couple of answers for that. Noctis obviously is always going to be near the top. There's just so rare that you get to play a character for three years running with the same people in the booth all the time and tell a complete story from start to finish. Right. That always means a lot. But for your question specifically, something that I'm super

freaking proud of the game is Roy from Super Smash Brothers Ultimate. I played Melee back in the day. Roy and Dr. Mario were my mains before the word mains existed. It was just the characters you played. And I got to be Roy in this game called Fire Emblem Heroes, which was a mobile game. And they just let me try out while I was doing other characters in the booth. They were like, why don't you give Roy a shot? This legendary character that has never had an English voice. And I gave it my best shot.

They ended up using it for the mobile game. And so I became the canon Roy. And so once it was time for Smash Brothers Ultimate, my God, I was pumped. Best 15 minutes of my life. game and so i became the canon roy and so once it was time for smash brothers ultimate my god i was i was pumped best 15 minutes of my life that's awesome and then another yeah another one where the game means so goddamn much to me and nick this i i heard you every week as you were playing it but seiro Shadows Die Twice I was Genichiro and also the uh armored uh knight in that game oh wow says rubber as he falls down the uh the well uh that freaking game is my second

favorite game of all time I played it through way after the game came out and it is I I know uh Heather and Matt you haven't done it yet like, it is what Nick is talking about. It's a spiritual game. It teaches you things that you didn't know about yourself. I have never played a game like that in my life. I think, I think Heather has played some Sekiro, but like, I don't know if you've done the full, you've taken the full plunge and gone all the way through it. But yes, that's crazy because that's such an iconic moment, what you're describing from the game, specifically the armored knight, because that first off, that is like one of the few like puzzle boss fights in the game. They're almost all, you know, but that one's specifically like, oh, okay, I got to figure out how to dispatch this

guy. But then it just kind of ties in with everything in that game thematically, which is the world is so bleak and sad that you can't even revel in victory because you realize you've just executed a grieving father. Yes. And Genichiro himself is the one who teaches you how to play the game. 100%. That's where when I first played it, I was like, I can't play this game. I'm not good enough because I was using my old video game strategies of of trying my best and like getting faster. And that's not what the game is teaching. The game is teaching you to listen, to just slow down and pay attention to what's going on on the screen, which honestly, in in twenty nine years of gaming, I had never actually done.

Slow down and looked at what was going on on the screen. And man, it changed the way i've i've gamed from from then on it was a beautiful game it sounds like you and i are the same kind of gamer then like because uh when it is when it is that i have to slow down and pay attention i'm like what what no fuck you so um yeah no i get that i get that it is that is that for sure yeah we are it is i'm definitely a little bit of all three of you i would say uh uh for sure nick i i'm the one who plays all those the strategy games and the weird indie titles and uh and matt i feel like we are i don't know your age but i feel like we're this we're very much grew up at the same place same

time so yeah i'm 32 years old. We joke about me being a child, but I'm a functioning adult. I'm 36, and I feel like we very much grew up in the same cultural milieu and played a lot of the same games back then, too. Hell yeah. I'm old.

I'm very old. Okay, so you know that person's old because they're talking old. We did this last time when Stephen was here. Oh, so you know that person's old because they're talking old. We did this last time when Stephen was here. Oh, thank you. Us doing voices in front of somebody who does it for their job, I won't participate. But you can do it as much as you want. No, man, you got to go for it.

If Steph Curry steps into the gym, you start jacking up threes. Show him how he does his job. When you said start jacking, I got really scared. Yeah, I'm, I'm, I feel like there's a particular humiliation that I'm feeling because I, you know,

we've had Ash Ketchum guest on this show before. The actual Ash, not the voice actor who plays Ash. The character. Who's a different, legitimate, actual human being.

Yes. So Ray is a recurring Pokemon anime role. And so I feel like a shame. Like I've been like robbing the grocery store or something. Don't tell them. Who? Ray, don't tell Pokemon that we. The Pokemon Company?

Yeah. I won't tell the Pokemon Company. I think Ash also has come on the show a lot. He gets a little bit vulgar. And I think he knows that the crossover between people who watch Pokemon Journeys and people who listen to Get Played is not very high. So I think he's in a safe space. I will say, I know you guys are not the best voice actors, but you have had some incredible. Bubsy has been fantastic on the show.

You've had Joel from The Last of Us on the show so many times, and every time I'm just amazed at how good he sounds. And of course, the erstwhile and newly rediscovered Resident Evil merchant. His acting range is fantastic and his story continues to inspire. That's what I like to hear. That's nice. I'm sure he'd be happy to hear that.

Hopefully he is never coming to the show again. Ray, can we talk about anime for a little bit? Because, you know, you have a lot of, you do a lot of anime dubbing. You know, we talked about some of your other roles, but also Sound Hashira from Demon Slayer is one of your characters. And, you know, like such a, to me, that seems like a really fun role to play. But I'm curious, like, what is your experience with dubbing? Because I know that can sometimes be like a heady, exhausting sort of work.

For sure. There's a lot of dubbing work out there. And I think that's why a lot of people who do video games end up having a ton of anime credits as well. Whether the anime you're in is good or popular or well-known, it's completely up to fate. Sure. But doing anime is extremely technical. You really do. You have the picture in front of you.

You have the script and you have the lip flaps. And for dubbing, unlike the Japanese subs, when you're watching a subtitle, you're not necessarily watching the mouth. You're not, you're watching the face. You're reading the subtitles a lot. and so they kind of get away with not matching the animation all the time but for us we have to be absolutely lip uh flat perfect otherwise you get the old uh whose line is it anyway subtitle uh jokes um but uh uh doing it is

uh you you have these three beeps and then you have to do the, the line and, uh, you do as many lines as you possibly can in a row. Um, I like to, uh, if, if there's a monologue, I like to take it straight up two minutes, preview once, and then have the, for me, it's a very auditory experience, um, that you, you listen to the, uh, you listen to the Japanese and you keep the timing in your head. And then just keep that timing in your head while you're saying your line and going like, okay, I've reached the point where I should stop talking. Because you can't, you're reading the script while the animation is playing. You can't necessarily look back and forth at the animation the whole time.

It's very complex. Can we take a step back? Because this is all fascinating stuff. But I should have asked this earlier, but I'm curious, like, and I think this is the question a lot of people have for people in your profession, because it is kind of a dream job for a lot of people.

Like, how did you break into voice acting initially? Sure. It's funny. I feel like I was part of the last generation that, like, fell into it. Like, I feel like I was part of the last generation that like fell into it. Like I definitely found it, but it wasn't a, you know, in the 90s you weren't, you were aware that there were voice actors and it was professional,

but it isn't like it is today where it's like, I did a Discord interview last Saturday with a server that has 65,000 members of aspiring voice actors. It is like absolutely a coveted job today. Yeah. Hugely. And for me, it was, you know, I went to theater school, studied acting, acting, studied film and stuff, and had a face that was just covered in vicious acne

from age 22 to 29. And definitely found my way with voice acting that was like, okay, this is something, it doesn't matter what I look like. And I was really good at coming up with a lot of different voices. I will say that my normal speaking voice, I rarely book as. Only the Master Masters from Kingdom Hearts is the only one where I'm saying, may your heart be your guiding key. And I'm talking my real voice.

But most of them, I'm doing something else. I'm down here. I'm down here. Or I'm not dissing like here, this kind of like cool teen. And always playing around with my voice really, really helps. So being just ready for anything,

I guess was how I managed to break in. I did a lot of different work, a lot of commercial work, a lot of audiobook work. There was a time that Amazon bought Audible and just wanted to have the most audiobooks. I mean, quality mattered, but they didn't really care. They wanted to say, we have 100,000 books on our title. Come at us, Blackstone Audio. And they just kind of like, there was an opportunity at a recording studio called B Audio in Oregon, and they just let me go. They let me just go, hey, do as much as you, as you want. And so I did 200 audio books in a three-year period.

200? as much as you as you want and so i did 200 audiobooks in a three-year period 200 myself in a room did whatever i could yeah do whatever i could to get these uh get books out get paid and quit my job my day job as a bartender um that was uh that was kind of my getting the foot in the door to quit the day job to then get more and more opportunities, more fun opportunities. That's amazing. Wow. A whole audio book feels like such an intense amount of labor. It's a labor and it is, I think people, I read this in some voice acting guide of like, do you want to get into audio books?

Here's what the job is. Go into a bookstore, pick a random book from the shelves, read it all the way through out loud without, and anytime you make a mistake, go back and do it again. It is the randomness of the books that really kills you. These are not, sometimes I got to do a cool ass book. I got to read Jason Schreier's audio books. Those are great. Yeah. Yeah. I do his blood, sweat and pixels. And but it's the randomness. I had to do a book about about infinity that was very math focused about Fibonacci's sequences. So I was just reading numbers. Nobody's listening to a Fibonacci math textbook, but it's another audible title. So they got to put it on their website.

It was, it can be really, really be a slog. Can I just say, it was really cool. That part that you did earlier where you were set a bunch of different voices all at once, but it was like,

it was, it was really neat. You know, I just want to say that. That was pretty cool. No problem. Did you guys check out? I sent over my, my funny reel over to Matt

so you could see some of the voices that I've done. It's really fun. There was a time during the TikToks when all the voice actors were doing, here's all of my roles in a minute, me doing them. And I made it into a fun rap thing. Okay, well, uh when i'm editing the show i'll put it right here and then nice you're pointing exactly at it yeah i'm pointing

exactly at it exactly for the listener at home i'm pointing and this is exactly where it's going yo what's up tiktok my name is ray chase and i'm a voice actor i'm prince of lucis and kingishing! The boss gave us an important mission. Aside from him, I truly don't care. I love boys and they're underwear! You killed my brother! I am your brother. Both of my brothers just died.

Max Flamboyance! Why do birds fly? You were color-coded! Roy's your boy! Al's your pal! Guys love sweets. Fernand's an elite. Roswell and Mathers! Professor Cerise!

Also Corazon from the show One Piece! Next on Mascot! It's the MLB! Denathrius says, scream for me! Gone, gone, the form of mad! Arise the demon, Echragon! Aoyama Ichome! Aoyama Ichome! Behold the way of Tomoe! Aoyama Ichome, Aoyama Ichome

May your heart be your guiding key, okay? The route of terror starts with fear Anthem almost lasted an entire year Rising tornado! Fight properly! I play Reese Just in 4LANDS 3 I am crime, I am punishment

The troll always gets the girl Got a bunch of ass-capes See you around Ichiban Where are all my Karamatsu girls? Pizza sauce I'm trying to protect you! Also looking at Jelino Fantasy Month, it just sounds, I don't know, it sounds problematic to me. I came up with it in the moment. I'm not sure. Because it makes you think of Lionel's from

Zelda? Yeah. I thought you were saying July, like July-nal, but are you saying vaginal fantasy month? It's just, it's that July-nal that just sounds very sexual. I don't know.

Sounds like a Jerry Lewis exclamation. July-no! What's that reference you're wondering out there? Reminder, I'm old. Why do I know that is? Jerry Lewis is a legend. It's sad sometimes that, you know, I worked on tons of voices as a kid, and there's just not a lot of, call for Jimmy Stewart these days.

It's sad they just want sexy get your justin bieber impressions ready voice actors that's who they're going to be parodying in the future ray we could we could talk about this stuff all day and and i but i do i do have one more question on topic and then we'll get to some video games but but we're recording this at a very awkward time. This is literally the last day of the SAG-AFTRA negotiations. As of this episode's release, we may very well be at – the actors' union may very well have joined the writers' union on strike. I'm curious, and it's okay if you don't have an answer, but is there anything specific from a labor standpoint that you've encountered as a working voice actor that you think needs? This is a fantastic question. Very timely. And I also wonder how it shakes out, too. I was a I was really caught up in the previous strike,

the interactive strike. Yes. About six or seven years back at this point, SAG's longest strike in their history. And I was very aware of it because the Final Fantasy XV director, voice director and casting director, Keith Farley, was the head of the negotiating committee. So I was always working with him. I was at his house. I was doing call outs to other actors to get people more involved. I was always volunteering at SAG AFTRA. And even one of the ways that I got started was even doing the freaking AFTRA radio plays back in the day. I was on the I was on the a couple of committees way back when because I thought it would get me acting roles. And oddly, it did. It did get me started in voice acting. But I've always been highly, highly involved in the union

and excited to volunteer my time. And that strike was long and very, very difficult because we were asking for something that an industry just was not okay with giving an inch for. Having some sort of bonus payment structure for video games was something that was unheard of in their industry. It's not something that they give to their employees. And so why give it to actors? So it was a long teaching thing. This one is interesting because it is negotiating with studios who are very familiar with residuals and have not been

paying them for a very long time because streaming was able to sort of wiggle their way through negotiations and being like, oh, we're just streaming. We're not a big deal. We're not movies. We don't have to pay residuals and that sort of stuff. And I think this is where the jig is up.

We know that streaming is a behemoth and a monster. And this is absolutely the time to stand up for it. I'm not excited to strike, but I'm excited to take action. Oh, well, hey, well said. That and AI voices, which is another crazy thing. Wait, can you talk about that specifically? Because this is a thing that I've talked to some actors, you know, I've been on the WGA picket line as Heather has been. And I a lot of SAG after actors have showed up in solidarity. I've talked to some of them about their specific AI concerns. I've heard that this is already a thing that's happening, like SAG, SAG after actors have signed contracts, and their voices are being used to train AI, which is then being used to create content. which is then being used to create content.

And so specifically, it's like, but the idea of using an artificial simulacrum of your own voice without your permission or without you being fairly compensated, like that's a real existential threat to actors. 100%. Think about it every single day. And I think there's some solace to be had. I think Nick,

you made a lot of good points in, in last week's episode with somehow AI was being talked about. Oh, you're talking about the spirits within where the, the, the actors that, that humans really like seeing other humans in a role, whether it's an actor,

whether, whether it's a, a modified version of them or not. There is something interesting about, oh, it is, even though it's Polar Express, it is Tom Hanks in Polar Express. And I know Tom Hanks. I'm familiar with his work and I enjoy that. That's a question whether people, is that really something that humans enjoy? I feel in my heart that it is, but Heather might be right too. And it's like, maybe that isn't something that people ever needed. They just wanted the story.

So I think like we're kind of in between both camps of these things and seeing how things shake out. I think there's a couple of things that I don't hear people talk about. One is that media and movies especially, video games have a sliding scale a little bit with payments. But you don't pay more to see different movies. Movies, for some reason, unlike Fruits or Nice Dinner Out, is always going to be the same price whether you're seeing Spider-Man, No Way Home or Oppenheimer. You're going to pay the same price, whether you're seeing Spider-Man, No Way Home, or Oppenheimer. You're going to pay the same amount of money. And I wonder if that is something that might change, where you have something akin to organic movies later on down the line,

where you pay a little bit extra, but it's because you know it's going to be better, because it's made by actual humans, so it'll be more interesting and surprising, and you know it's going to the right place. I buy organic apples because I know that they're raised conscientiously. I think that might be another, a third path that I don't think a lot of people are talking about. I have literally had this conversation this week with a producer because I was like, I think that AI is going to, so it's, it's very much like McDonald's is available for everyone. Right. But if you want to go get like, I think that AI is going to, so it's very much like McDonald's is available for everyone, right? But if you want to go get like, same with Starbucks, you know, go to Starbucks anywhere.

But if you want a craft pour over coffee made by an actual person, not that there aren't actual people working at Starbucks, but if you want an artisanal experience, then you have to pay extra and you have this premium experience. Otherwise, you can sit down in this future dystopia, turn on AI-generated content, and it's just stuff happening that you can watch. And then if you want like, oh, it's like a play, but filmed, then you're going to have these human actor, writer experiences. And that is hell. What I've just described is hell. Please, God, don't let us get there. Art shouldn't. So the other problem is that these executives are thinking about stuff as content,

as opposed to art. And they're absolutely divorced from why we make stuff. They only see it as why we consume stuff. And they are funding one side of it and angry that they have to fund one side of it because they only want to reap the benefits of the other side, which is the consumption side. It's crazy how clear that divorce is and how on the nose it is in all of these anonymous interviews that you get with these executives who are like, well, yeah, I mean, the truth is what we want is an endless content pipeline and AI is going to help facilitate that. And you're like, Jesus Christ, dude. What happens to you when you go to an art museum? Do you only like go to the gift shop?

They should increase their content at the gift museum. We can fit in 20 paintings per frame. Like, is this the mindset of a human being who doesn't go to see Van Gogh's sunflowers, but loves looking at the prints at, like, the poster shop outside of a college? No, I think this is the kind of person who wants to own Van Gogh's sunflowers. It's like the status of it or the, like you were saying, the end result, the financial gain that you get from creating content is all they can conceive of. Yeah. I first gave AG1 a try because I was tired of taking so many supplements every day and wanted a single solution that supports my entire body by filling in nutrient gaps daily.

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But look, let's pivot to something that's more fun to talk about. Ray, I think that was really well argued, by the way. I think that was a really great distillation of some of the issues that are going on right now. But my question now for you is one we ask often on the podcast. What are you playing? What are you playing? What am I playing? Do I get to answer first?

Yeah, of course. Yeah, of course. Is this what I'm going to answer? I really, I listen to a ton of podcasts and there's that meme of the person sitting outside a poster of a bunch of, there's a poster of friends talking, the guys sitting around looking at it saying,

me and my friends. And that's exactly how I feel a lot of times. So it's wild to actually talk and you guys are here. What am I playing? I am playing Diablo 4 of this deluge of incredible video games. This might be one of the best years ever for video games. Starfield around the corner too. I don't understand.

Dave the Diver, one of the best ever. Hell yeah. But I had to choose one because I didn't have a ton of time to choose between these guys and Diablo 4 was the one I ended up because you really can play it in bite sized quantities and it's fantastic.

And I'm around Act 5 really, really fun game. First Diablo I've ever played and enjoying the hell out of listening to me. I've played a ton of games that I'm in and I usually can, usually you're like, okay, I remember this part coming up and I know that this thing is coming up and it makes a lot of, it's exciting to see how it's actually portrayed on screen. Diablo was such a wild recording thing because we did it over four, three or four years. And it was always out of order and always one line at a time. We would

do some sessions, you'd come in for two lines and then come back. And so I had no idea what was going on in the story. And your character speaks so infrequently that it always surprises me when he comes on. I'm like, oh shit, that is me. And it's so different from my normal voice when it's I'm out of fury. I don't have any fury. I can't do that. Out of nowhere. I really, that's the first time that I've gone, oh, that's fun.

I do enjoy it. And Blizzard sounds, they sound so good. They spend so much time. We go slow. Those two line sessions can sometimes take an hour because they really, really adhere to quality for them. I've been enjoying, I've been really

enjoying Diablo 4 and, of course, playing Slay the Spire, which I do every day anyway. So you are playing a male barbarian in Diablo 4. How have you kind of specced out your character? What skills are you rolling with? Wow, it's the question that everybody wants to be asked, but nobody wants to listen to.

Thank you. Also, while you're at it, tell me about your fantasy football. Barbarian is hard. I think coming out, I think it really does take a while to figure out what works for your build. And I finally leaned into my favorite, which is you can, you get an enchantment that gets,

or an aspect, uh, where you, um, your, your, your, uh, basic attacks go faster and faster. And so I have a two handed club that goes 80% faster than normal. And, and it's just, I am just all in on basics. And then I have an ultimate. So I have a basic where I bash and they go and they stun bash and then they bleed. And so I'm just going the whole time. It is pure barbarian fantasy.

And then you have an ultimate where you summon all the, the big barbarians who come and that happens once a minute so it's just oh oh oh oh oh over and over again and it's really really fun and i haven't gotten bored of it yet so that's my that's my build uh that's right yeah it's it's like i i one thing i think they really did well with this latest iteration, as someone who's played all the Diablo games a lot, is they've made it so that the – I'm sure there are efficient ways to min-max it, but the ways to play the character really leans into what's fun about the character. you were just saying about being a barbarian like like like it's a pretty optimal way to play it is just like to be like the big bruising brute which is what you want to embody and the same sort of thing i played the whole campaign as a necromancer is just like yeah surround yourself with minions and send out a lot of curses and that's what's what's fun about the fantasy of being that

character yeah i've done a great job with it yeah it's it's it's rad uh well let's uh let's uh let's talk to someone else uh matt over there i see what the hell i'm curious what are you playing what are you playing matt what the hell is that i was just looking around the hollywood squares of our zoom call and saw that that matt was in the corner okay matt you're up all right uh i don't know why i didn't like it well because i did it very awkwardly because i did it very awkwardly and it sucked me huh uh i'm playing well as you know i'm playing a lot of final fantasy 16 i'm still doing that uh obviously uh but i've i've served i haven't necessarily slowed down but i've i've i've gone at a more normal pace i guess with that now um but i'm almost

done with final fantasy 3 i'm on the final dungeon of final fantasy 3 and it is so fucking fun and so great the pixel remaster uh you know initially when it was launched it was like a bit of a debacle it was only on steam each game was 12 each for these old old games yeah and the font sucked the font sucked and people were sort of like it looks weird kind of uh playing um and as i said before they had to fix the font the font in your brain in your is good, but your old eyes now can't handle the old font. They just can't. Like, it legitimately hurts my eyes to look at. You're saying that, just to clarify,

you're saying that the change they made to the font was necessary just to make it playable in a modern sense. I think so, yes, because, like... Not from the, like, from the not from the like from the original right it's not and not even like it's not necessarily like i think it looks nicer it's legitimately like it's easier to read like it's just it is easier to read um but it's it's a lot of fun i i i'm just blasting through it i intend to go straight into four by the time this drops i will have finished it and i will have started final

fantasy 4 that's basically where i'm at and i gotta say i know nick's gonna talk about it yeah our friend wags here he's getting everybody to play dave the diver he's leading a one-man camp one-man campaign to get people to play this thing gifted it to me on steam and i started playing it i love dave hell yeah i love dave the diver it's playing it a little more i don't think heather's gonna like it very much but i think because it is like it has like a fun like there is a uh what would you how i mean nick's gonna talk about it but like the combat the combat aspect of it like the catching the fish part of it and like stuff that has its own sort of feel and that i think is gonna feel good to heather

the restaurant management stuff is not gonna heather's not gonna like that part it gets it gets very simmy once you reach the point where you're hiring staff, I'm like, okay, Heather's going to check out. But the actual yeah, the roguelite runs of it, like diving into the water and catching fish, I think is just a blast. It's just great. Action platforming. You're like weapon,

the harpoon gun thing that you have. Is that what it is? It's like a spear gun. Yeah, you have a harpoon gun, but then you get a whole arsenal of weapons you can upgrade. The elasticity of the harpoon feels great. It feels fantastic. It feels so good. I'm playing it on Steam Deck, by the way, and it's awesome on Steam Deck.

It's a perfect Steam Deck game. Oh, that's great. Yeah, it's really, really fantastic. Yeah, the thing that impresses me, I'll just talk about it real quick. The thing that impresses me about the Day of the diver is just every element is additive like there's just so much stuff in there there's none of it that kind of feels like a slog there's nothing that feels like oh now i gotta do this mini game or whatever it's like everything that's in there is like adds to the fun of it uh it's also in that sense it's got so many like just brief cut scenes like

super brief cut scenes that cover the same action they they got a sense of like, okay, well, you're going to have points where you upgrade your fish or you build a new weapon. That's going to happen repeatedly. So we're not going to show this cutscene every time. And you know what? We're going to have like a half dozen we're going to rotate between to keep it fresh. And that's like a really smart decision. So you don't get tired of those sorts of things. On that note, Dave the Diver himself, the protagonist, the player character, he's so great. He's such a guy. He's so lovable, and you empathize with him, and you're excited to play this dude. But he's also one of the other NPCs, or one of the NPCs is Duff the Weapons Guy, who's just such a cartoonish otaku who's doing it all for... He's got a waifu that he's doing it all for like, he's got like a waifu that he's doing it all for for Leah's John. And so like everything, every time one of his cut scenes, it's like he's got like a little

like model figurine that he's basically like praying to get to channel the strength to upgrade your harpoon or whatever. It's really fun. And it's really well animated. And I don't know, just just the whole thing tonally, I think, just nails every aspect. Can I play something from the soundtrack real quick, Matt? I put this in the track. Yeah. But I think just, again, for anyone who is thinking about playing this game, because I was talking again with our buddy John Gabrus of just how many hours he's put into this thing,

because it's just got such insane chill vibes. And I think this track, which plays when you jump into the ocean aka the blue hole is so evocative of just the energy of this game, this experience Oh yeah just sit here for a little bit. This is alright.

I could swim in this blue hole all day. Alright. I don't know, man. I just like the... Everything about this game is clicking for me. It's so good. Uh, Heather, what are you playing? Amsterdam!

Well, this week has been the Boom Chicago Comedy Festival. So I haven't had a lot of time to play a ton of video games. What I have had is some opportunities to meet listeners who have come out to the festival from all over Holland and as far as Norway. Norway? Yeah, I wanted to give a couple shout outs. Specifically, a listener named Alwyn gave me a copy of a video game called Kabuki Quantum Fighter for the NES. Oh, I remember this game. Which I have never played. I looked it up on Wikipedia and it's described thusly.

Players adopt the persona of 25-year-old Colonel Scott O'Connor, a military agent who has transferred his brain into raw binary code in order to combat a rogue program in the main defense computer. When O'Connor enters the system, his body forms the self-image of his ancestor, who was a Kabuki actor. And I was like, hey, that's pretty Matrix adjacent. That you would go into the Matrix and have residual self-image.

But anyway, looking forward to giving that a shot. Just real quick, the thing I remember about this game is you attack with your hair. You have this long, shock-up hair. Oh, this long, shocked up hair that you kind of use as a whip. Yeah, it's cool. That's really cool. We had a lovely couple from Rotterdam who spoke with my wife for a long

time. They came out to multiple shows. And it's got me thinking that I want to do a get played, get together. A get played together uh perhaps at an arcade here in Amsterdam uh sometime in the next couple of months and as soon as I have some details about what that would look like um I'll announce it both here on the pod and also on social media but um I just want to say thank you to to the listeners who've been to the shows.

And thank you for the gifts. And fuck yeah. This is, you guys are the best. And I mean you. You listening right now. You. Great. How about, what?

I just wanted to talk about one more thing before we move on, which is a movie that at least the three of us have seen. Oh, shit. And we won't we won't get into spoiler country at all here for anyone listening because it just came out. Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, one of the greatest films of the last. Oh, man. Hot take. We just we have all seen at this point as of this recording mission impossible dead reckoning part one uh and i think we all were just sort of like this is the most you know

what i think we all meaning everyone who's ever played the game and has seen this movie had the same reaction which is this is the most kojima ass shit i've ever seen in my life yes it's it's it's insane how like it it makes you just look at it and be like, did, did the director, Christopher McQuarrie, play Metal Gear Solid 2

and like, be like, this could be a movie. It's, it's, it's kind of, I don't want to say anything beyond that,

but that, that the, the aspect of like the, kind of the main narrative plus some of the character designs that are within it and some of the set pieces is just so Metal Gear. Yeah. It's it's it like it was enough that i i turned to

my wife uh and said this is just like metal gear and she went oh i don't know that one and i was like oh it's a kojima game and she went yeah i can see that but her her experience of kojima stuff is like filtered through the coffee filter of my experience yeah right so usually i'm like that's like kojima and i'll be pointing at a mailbox and uh she'll be like oh because of death stranding and i'll be yeah but yeah it's um it's a real Kojima movie. I can't wait. I want to know what he says when he sees it. Like, is he going to be like,

is he going to post a photo that's like, saw Dead Reckoning and then also post a picture of Metal Gear Solid? Like, is he going to recognize what we recognize in the movie and what kind of a feeling would that give you I think he's gonna see it and be like

yeah I know it was a fucking good idea I came up with it cause in his book he was like nobody listens to me I have all these great ideas and everyone thinks they're bad and then I do them and everyone says they're fucking great ideas he knows he knows he's got the vision ideas and everyone thinks they're bad. And then I do them and everyone says they're fucking great ideas. He knows, he knows he's got the vision.

Why don't they give him a movie? It is insane. It's too much power for one man. Just this year too. He shouldn't be able to. He absolutely should direct a film. I think it'd be interesting. Yeah.

Chris McCrory and Tom Cruise. What a team. I won't say much about it i do think because nick i think you've said that fallout is like your favorite movie not just like your favorite movie of the franchise mission impossible fall yeah like i think that one reached a high so high that it's like almost impossible to top but this movie is still good in that same way you know what i mean like and i think it's like better than fallout but it's like it's it's good in a similar way i think there's a there's a and and you'll if you've seen the movie you know what i'm talking about but i'll describe it vaguely re Ferguson's character has a scene uh where she's um in the desert and her wardrobe there just looks like she'd be in like Metal Gear Solid 4 named like the agony

it's like so stylized and so kind of impractical but it's but it's also just awesome. She looks like, I would go a step further than that, she looks like a female clone of Snake that they'd call Lady Snake. And she's fucking awesome in that sequence, too. She's really great. Yeah, she fucking rocks. It's a great cast. Ray,

you interjected a second ago and you said that you'd read Kojima's book. What did you think? Oh, I thought it was really interesting. I mean, it is just a collection of essays and a lot of really, really cool recommendations. I felt like I've seen a great number of the movies that he did. Went to the film school, did all the film school movies things. But some of these books, I even took in college, I took Japanese fiction classes. I even took in college, I took Japanese fiction classes and I read a lot of classic works that are now portrayed in Bungo Strain Dogs, the one about the guys stranded on a desert island,

and then more deserter people come in and want to get off. It just sounds really cool. And no penetration here in the United States where I'm like, I've never heard of these things, and I do want to read them. Sound really, really fun. Yeah, I love learning about that stuff. Because like you know like you you were just talking about so often it'll be um oh this this move this anime or this this series this movie was inspired by this like tale this folklore story that i just have no point of reference for uh because it's you know it's it's it's not commonly known in the west uh that's awesome um uh before we move on to to the beat of what we're going to discuss today, Ray, you said

earlier, before we began, that you had some thoughts on one of our tier lists. Yes, Tiers of the Kingdom, Final Fantasy. So I have played, so my Final Fantasy story is I grew up playing a lot of the wrong games as a kid. I was always going to the used game stores. I didn't know what to play, so I was going by

box art, I was going by title. I was just going, I don game stores. I didn't know what to play, so I was going by box art. I was going by title. I was just going, I don't know, this looks fun. Random games like Fantastic Adventures of Dizzy that nobody cares. Bait and Kytos, Eternal Wings of the Lost Ocean, my favorite freaking GameCube RPG. But Final Fantasy for me, I played Final Fantasy Legend, 1, 2, and 3, and Final Fantasy Adventure, all non-canonical Final Fantasy games, I found out. So when I got the role of Noctis, I was like, all right, I'm going to play all of these games in order because I know I'm going to talk about these games for the rest of my life.

And I played them all, even 10.2, even the entire Lightning Trilogy, all the way through. I have not played 16 yet because I haven't had time, unfortunately, but I will. So I'm a bit of an authority on the Final Fantasy series. And so I listened to your Tears of the Kingdom. And Matt, can you screen share what I sent over? After listening to the episode, I had a lot of thoughts on the tier list and I wanted to make some amendments. This is like an 80 page document.

It's a lot of graphs and stuff. So like, don't, like we'll get through it. Shut up. Wow, yeah. This is a lot to digest right now. It says, just kidding you got played.

The tier list was fucking impeccable. And you know what? We know. It's absolutely true. I've never found a better tier list. You guys got everything exactly right. I also am in the camp. Final Fantasy VIII is Tour de Forest,

one of the most perfect Final Fantasy games ever made. And I really, really enjoyed the list and the points that you guys made uh zero notes zero notes all the way through you guys did great wow that's the kind of feedback we like to get but there was something else in the documentary i saw this oh we got we got a nice uh jpeg of steiner there from final fantasy 9 and it looks like it's just like all steiner i was trying to i wasn't sure how we were going to all Steiner. I was trying to. I wasn't sure how we were going to do this.

I thought I was going to be able to upload something to Zoom to send to you guys. So I wanted it to be like a one gigabyte PDF. And so I filled it with a bunch of pages of Steiner. It's literally every page. It's just the exact same image. But it's also, you got to post this image. He's in different places though he slightly moves given like sometimes slightly bigger off to the left right i was thinking that making him bigger

would also like uh would make increase the file size in a little bit um uh i was trying to trying to make the the joke work uh uh but doing screen share is great i definitely go all the way to the bottom though matt um it's uh i think i make a good point right at the this also this document you know like when you're a third of the way through when you scroll a document you get like the the little uh the tab on the side that shows you how long and based on the size of that tab you get an idea of how large the document is and this tab is like a pixel large. It is the smallest tab I've ever seen on the side of a screen. It took me a second to click on it.

Like the size of a blood cell. I got it all the way up to 609 kilobytes. Couldn't fit any more in there. Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait. There it is. There it is. Bupsie at the end. Bupsie on the final page.

There was also like an image several pages up that was like a million images. You guys are finding all my secrets. It's a bunch of images of the moon. I tried to find like the biggest file because Google Docs doesn't let you upload movies or anything. I was trying to like upload a dummy file so you guys could get a one gigabyte thing, but it didn't work. How long did this take you to make? Like I said, I've been working on it since last week yeah about eight days straight uh doing a lot of research 609 kilobytes worth it i love it absolutely great amazing tier list literally zero notes the best the best ever

the fact that uh 15 was a ss tier is uh is my favorite it is a uh it is a goddamn good game um i will say also, because this is, I think I'm talking to an audience of a lot of, you know, I think your audience is interesting. It's a lot of hardcore gamers, but I think it's a lot of hardcore gamers with a lot of heart. And I think it's people who play a lot of different types of games.

It's not necessarily a, let's talk about games and talk about how good we are at them. It's let's play fricking Animal Crossing and let's play, let's talk about Street Fighter and let's talk about how good we are at them it's let's play freaking uh animal crossing and let's play let's talk about street fighter and let's talk about every game in between um and uh uh i think that 15 gets a lot of flack for like not being a hardcore game and like oh there's mistakes with the gameplay and like there's so many missed opportunities because people are imagining in their heads what Final Fantasy versus 13 was. But I will I think that 15 and the fans that I meet every single week at conventions are people with a lot of heart.

That game is is about relationships. It is about forging bonds. And it really does it in its design. The AI of the party members makes you feel like they're actual living friends. And it's not just a random assortment of like, here's a bunch of people coming together in a party and we're throwing them together and making them act out a bunch of anime tropes.

These guys feel real. They start tropey and then the more it goes on, it's like they play against it and they become super, super realistic. So I absolutely love that game and i love that uh that you loved it heather uh that was a wonderful surprise to hear i i rocks i truly love it it's i mean like love love it like i'll play it i'll play it after i'm done with 16 it is i will also say one of the shortest uh of the 3d final fantasies if you just main campaign, which a lot of people don't because the side quests are so much fun and being with the party is.

But if you just do main campaign, it's like 25 hours, maybe a little bit longer with the Royal Edition. But like it's it's pretty lean as far as like the main story goes. is also the expanded world of the game, the DLCs that give you like the insights in each individual character. The movie Kingsglaive is like, oh wow, if that had all been packaged into a single game that you were handed at Best Buy, then you'd be like,

mother fuck, this game is, this is a thick boy. And I also, I think it's the only Final Fantasy, and I haven't completed 16, but it is the only Final Fantasy that has made me tear up. Yeah.

Wow. Same here. It is the, other than Red Dead 2, I cried at the end but uh but 15 even though i knew it was coming even though i cried while recording these lines because they're so beautiful yeah um but uh i was uh heather you'll know there's uh there's the campfire scene obviously that's a god damn what it's hearing thing it the campfire scene is among the best. Like it is among the best scenes in gaming. Like I cried.

I cried. I'm recording it. Can I clip these and listen to them later? I absolutely will. This is all I ever wanted to hear. Like I cried during Left Behind for The Last of Us. And I've been kind of open about that on the show. But I can't think of any

other games ever that have made me tear up other than left behind and uh and final fantasy 15 and it's the campfire scene where i was like son of a bitch like yeah this is this is like a sledgehammer that i totally wasn't expecting. Like I, I was like, Oh, you know, this font, like it's such a good fucking scene. And it's raw and it's not tropey either.

I feel like sometimes with RPGs, they're like, no, this is bad. It's just, it's just a, it's just speaking from your heart. And, and you're right.

The Japanese voice actors did a great job of doing that. They really did a great job of, that. They really did a great job of putting those performances together. The other thing is that the Royal Edition, I feel, is what you're talking about, Heather, where it is, it came out a year or maybe two years after the game came out, but it is the full package. Yeah, it's the full, yeah. And it comes with the Kingsglaive and it comes with everything. You get to see the Brotherhood anime and all the DLC.

And it really is a complete tour de force. Fantastic game. Oh, and then the other point I want to make was the campfire scene. While I played it, it did not make me cry. But there's the scene because I knew it was coming. But I did not know about the scene on the throne after that with Noctis and Luna. And they play the Final Fantasy main theme from the series.

I had no idea that was happening. The trick they do at the very end with the logo, absolutely bawling when that happened. I'm getting a little emotional talking about it. I've never cried at a video game like that. That was so surprising to me. The catharsis in that game is,

is on point. Sold. Yes. I'll check it out. And then I'll come back. Hell yeah, I love that. And,

and talk about it. Please play in the dub so I can do all the fun voices and impress you guys. I will absolutely play in the dub. Yes. Very, very excited to check it out. Let's, let's,

let's, you know, I think we kind of broken format a little bit. We kind of been all over the place here. This has been a great discussion, but we were going to talk about voice acting today, which I think we've already gotten to, Matt. Yeah. But I think we can maybe just touch on a few more things. Yeah.

All the questions. you that you had talked about in your email uh ray is a jrpg voice acting and how there's kind of a wild variance in terms of sometimes some of the some some performances that are like you know really just just the just some of the best that uh video game voice acting has to offer and other ones that are kind that are just like kind of a distraction uh of how uneven or all over the place or just sometimes just amateurish they are. I mean, what do you think? I'm curious.

I guess you could just kind of talk generally about JRPG voice acting and why there is such a high variance there. A disparity, yeah. I think there's a ton and ton of different reasons. So many to do with time. And time, I mean, by like the times, the epoch in which we're recording. Sure. And then there's a lot to do with budget and a lot to do with passion. And I think a lot of those things are what really makes or breaks a JRPG for voice acting, or a lot of video game voice acting for that matter.

makes or breaks a JRPG for voice acting or a lot of video game voice acting for that matter. But there was a time like you were ragging and quite, quite well on the, you know, the Final Fantasy 10 dub is all over the place. And I think that was just, that was the first time they had done it. And I think what they did not do, which we were able to do in Final Fantasy 15, I'm sure they did it in 12 too, was be able to go back and redo a scene, have the time to do a scene, put it in the game, and go back and then iron it out. By the nature of JRPGs, unlike prelay animation or other things, you have to record your party characters

in isolation, which can always make everybody sound all over the place. And once you integrate it, you're like, oh, wait a minute, this scene didn't work. We need to rerecord it. And we were able to do that in Final Fantasy XV. And I really feel like there's no sour notes in that game at all because we were able to actually take the time and iron out some scenes that ended up being rough on first pass. And that comes so much down to the budget that the studio is willing to spend on it. I think a lot of lesser JRPGs will just absolutely rush through and just say, well, we got it, put it in the game, it's good enough to do it. And then once it's actually in the game,

maybe these performances didn't gel off of each other. Maybe it didn't work out. That's the budget thing. And then the last thing is the passion thing. I will say there's also, we're now finally reaching an inflection point where the people who are acting in voice in games, because yeah, there's two generations happening.

There's the directors happening. There's the directors and then there's the actors. And, um, I feel like we're finally reaching an inflection point in the games where the actors who are working on it grew up with video games are super passionate, put all their thought into researching the role, playing the rest of the game series, um, getting to know what's up. Uh, like I, I will refuse to do a line in a game if I don't know what's going on. Because I know how much it will just absolutely take you out of the experience. If you're playing it,

if there's one line where it's like, Oh, he emphasized the wrong word. They weren't talking about the, it like that dragon over there. It's that dragon over there. Oh, that was the correct read.

Only someone who knows exactly what's going on in the scene will keep you in the scene that way. And I think we're reaching a point where finally we've got the actors who are super passionate and then the directors, the usually older generation who are caring more and more about it and aware that video games really matter. Especially when I was first coming up 10 years ago, you had a lot of directors who was just play the,

play the line, do it. Did you get it? Keep moving on. And we're finally getting the point where we have enough passionate directors and passionate actors who are like, no, we didn't get it.

Let's make sure that we know what we're talking about. And, and on the studio side, have the budget to be able to redo a line if it doesn't work in the game. Just to go back to what you said about Final Fantasy X, because I remember reading about that. First off, I think a lot of people, it's been kind of memory hole, that that was the first Final Fantasy game with voice acting.

It's like that was huge, and that in and of itself was so momentous, and that was the early era of full speech, at least in console games. It's such an intense workflow to go, here's a spreadsheet of all of the lines, here's the exact Japanese

timing, and what we have, and I think what they didn't have back then based on on playing it and hearing the mistakes like oh sometimes they speed up a line too much is what your um in and out points are on the j so you've got like a two second line the english can be two and a half seconds or one and a half second a half second variance either way for For Final Fantasy XV, we had a 0.1 second variance, which is pretty damn tight. And I feel like they did not have as much of that variance

or weren't quite aware of what that variance was for the lines because some of them do feel a little bit too rushed or too extended based on the J. Yeah, and I think they, you know,

that's a really great insight. And I think also the laughing scene, I remember reading in particular that the voice actors just really didn't know what was going on there. They didn't really have context for what they were doing. And that's partly why in the dub, it just sounds like so alien.

It's because they're like, I don't know, you want us to laugh? All right, sure, we can try. I'm a defender of the laughing scene being cool. I like it too. Yeah, he is supposed to be awkward. Titus is the kind of guy who does not laugh normally, but I get it.

Out of context, it sounds absolutely ridiculous. And I'm sure not having context is a huge deal. 4.15, and I'm sure 4.16, because the dub from what I've heard is fantastic, is having the writer there to answer the questions. You know, Square has to fly somebody out in order to be on the correct time zone with LA. And I guess if they record in England over there,

yeah, you really have to fly someone out full time to translate, localize, and sit in on all the voiceover sessions, which is a big expense. And the fact that Square actually does it and has their lore master there so you can ask questions is what sets them apart for sure. Wait, the lore master is there? For 15, he was. Yeah, this guy, Dan Inouye, sat in on every single session. It was able to change lines around, make sure that everything was up to par. And you could ask him anything.

It was fantastic. We had, unlike a lot of video games, a lot of times you're just in the dark. It's just, here's the lines, do the lines, move on. This one, we actually got character notes and character sheets and like, here's what the entire game is going to be about. Here's the entire story. We recorded everything in order, which is wild. whoa all of that information really really helps campfire scene was one of the last scenes i ever recorded so um it really um it really brings it home uh how much passion goes into that and that's what really sets jrpg dubs apart for sure um a lot of them and i'd say what what why uh budget might be a thing. A lot of studios can sort of undercut each other in this sphere and say, like, you know, some other studio. I don't want to name names. I'm realizing, oh, yeah, people might listen to this. But other studios who aren't Square Enix might go to another studio and go like, who can do it the cheapest?

cheapest. And cheapest usually means the fastest. And usually you're just running through the lines as much as possible. And that's, I think, what also might happen with a lot of these with lesser dubs that aren't so good. Yeah, that makes a lot of sense. You know, one other thing I thought we could touch on real quick, and I can go first so everyone can have a chance to think about it. But just if anyone, if we have any thoughts on some of our favorite voice performances in any games or voice performances that have stuck with us, I'll start because I have two examples. One is from a recent game that we've talked about extensively on the podcast, but Lenval Brown in Disco Elysium, just being the narrator and then embodying all the different personalities or the different emotions that exist, going through all those. I think it's just such a varied performance. He's got just such a rich instrument. And it seems like an incredibly taxing performance,

just the volume of dialogue that he had to record, narration that he had to record. And it all just like absolutely like sings and enhances the experience. In fact, it's like to me, that is it's hand in hand with the writing of that game, which is so strong. And so that's one that absolutely just like lingers with me and that I think is one of my favorite performances ever and one of the better performances in game voice acting history. But another one that sticks with me that I don't think I've talked about really in the podcast is the first time I heard speech in a video game. This was a PC game that came out in the very early 90s, maybe late 80s. And I had this game and we, you know,

this sounds like ancient history, I feel like to people who maybe didn't grow up with this, but like there was a point where PCs did not have like any sort of built-in sound. They had a PC speaker, which was one channel. And it was just like a bleep bloop sound that if you were playing a game with just your PC speaker, honestly, it sounded so bad that a lot of times I just played these games on mute,

and this was one of them. But you could buy, like you have a video card these days, you could buy a sound card, and you could put that into your computer, and we convinced my dad, me and my brother, to get a Sound Blaster. And as such, the game Might Magic 3, which we've been playing with a PC speaker, turned into this game that had better audio than the consoles of the time, as well as speech. And so this happens in the intro, and when this happened, this blew my little boy brain. I am Sheltom, Guardian of Terror. I am Sheltom, Guardian of Terror. Twice now you have defeated my test,

thinking yourself worthy of invading my world. Walk carefully, then, through this third challenge, and take heed your final decision is truly what you desire, for the course of destiny cannot be turned once set in motion. Until our next meeting morgues. It's actually a pretty good read, too, because like a lot of the early PC voice acting was just like, oh, we gotta

we'll ask one of the programmers to read, you know, like there was a lot of like just like straight up amateurs being recruited to do voices, but like, yeah, I just, the I am Sheltom I mean, it's just like, it's so, it's so stuck in my mind. What was your reaction when you first heard it? Did you know it was coming? No, because, okay, so when you watch it, when you play with a PC speaker, it would just get to that part,

it would just go like, or like, beep, boop, beep, boop, you know what I mean? Like, it was like, literally like, just like some sort of garbled non, nonverbal sound. And I had no idea that he was actually talking there. So yes, from that, that was part of what made me just like my, my head just explode. So much of the early,

the early experiences of hearing a voice come out of a video game. You're like, what? How? Oh my God. How is this possible? Yeah. Holy shit. I just put one in the chat

matt that was i think the earliest i remember a video game speaking uh and it is uh this sound clip from altered beast oh hell yeah rise from your grave such a great line rise from your grave uh so yeah that that meant a lot to me as a kid i was like oh man yeah there's a human being inside this video game now um i'm gonna i'm gonna say uh it's not quite what what the what the assignment is ray but charles martinette you took it that was my answer well uh god damn i mean he he has been a figure of gaming for like three decades now. And there are very few sounds that you can associate with a game that are just raw joy. Like, you know,

when you hear that voice that you're going to have a good time, or at least the game is going to be polished or it'll be super Mario sunshine. And like, so like hearing that voice in mario kart hearing that voice in mario 64 those are incredible experiences back in the in the day and now you know like when he's fucking throwing that cap around and and wahooing across the desert, you're like, you can't really beat it. He's fantastic. Not my Mario.

You took my answer. Technically, what he does in those games is so impressive to do these efforts because it's, you know, very rarely is he doing a cinematic voice other than, thank you for playing my game. He's doing just mostly

efforts and they are so alive and so energetic. It's really easy to get tired when you're doing it over and over and over again. Over and over again and doing different variations and in the studio it can be super, super taxing. And the fact that he is

always giving his all. When Mario's butt is on fire, it feels like it's on fire and it's so high energy and not grating, which is an easy thing to think. You don't actually fear for his butt. You're like, oh, his butt's on fire, but he's going to be okay.

What he does technically in those games, his line reads are, again, iconic, is seared into my memory. Mario Party 3 played that game a million, million hours. And the fact that he does all four of the of the boys is is insane. Coming up with these these characters and having them sound all so different. He was he was my he was my choice. That's such a great uh he's also got that he's he's got one of the best injured sounds like not an injury that's like oh you're you're worried about him but like when he runs into a wall and it's like this yeah like just like a plane like it's like okay that registers as pain but i'm not

upset like it's great i'm not upset at it yeah that's really funny like well then also like just going back to the like like that yeah if you're in actual physical pain that's not what you're gonna do you know what i mean so like it is like you sort of just know that's like your cue to be like oh it's like funny but like don't do that like you don't want to keep you don't want to make a habit of doing that uh the the the folks that i'm thinking of the voices that i'm thinking of right now are just all also coupled with a physical performance also, which is like, I'm thinking about too,

like, uh, Ray, I don't know if you've said, I know that you have done, uh, you know, on your IMDb,

you have some live action credits too. Have you had a chance to do, uh, both in like a video game, like where you have to wear like the ping pong balls and stuff and like give a physical performance? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah,

absolutely. as far as surviving, I was leading a physical performance. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, no, as far as surviving, I was leading a game that was canceled, unfortunately. Um, but as far as surviving content, you can,

you can see my amazing movement in such games as, uh, days gone or, uh, horizon, the second horizon, but no, but not,

but all just, just the movement part, uh, as far as surviving, uh, Ray Chase, uh, ping pong ball content. Obviously those are different, different acting muscles, but like the experience of doing like the physical performance of that,

is that like such like a, is that weirder to do than just like standing in a booth and doing like the voice? Oh, I think, well, yeah, I think also for, for my generation of voice actors, it's all of us came from theater. So it is 100% aligned. We,

we all have that training. We're all super, super excited. There's not a ton of that work out there as far as in, in comparison to voiceover. So the, those roles are, are small indeed,

but, but it's, it's every voice actor's dream to get to uh ask for uh comic books for ellie yeah because like obviously like we talked about joel a lot and like troy baker's performance in that game and in in many games is like he's like the guy that does that right like or uh christopher judge in the new God of War games is such an incredible performance. But also in God of War Ragnarok, I don't know that he's done a lot of voice acting,

but Richard Schiff from the West Wing is Odin. He's so fucking good in it. It is so funny. He's just great. It's such a good performance. But I also, also yeah you mentioned horizon uh i think ashley birch uh is such a incredible uh performer in those games and in a lot of stuff yeah well and she comes from from youtube and hey ash what you playing

exactly and so having that comfortability to be like when you are when you are doing a voice you are not just you're not just channeling it into your voice, you're also acting as much as you can physically. That's where the alignment comes from. That's why the good acting feels so aligned because it comes from somewhere. You're not just doing a sound effect. I think that's why those performances translate so well.

Wait, Matt, did you say who your favorite performance was? Oh, well, I got gotta give it up for our our boy um Haley Joel Osment as uh Sora in the Kingdom Hearts series of course he's grown so much in that series he's gotten so much better as time's gone on I I'm really really there's a lot of actually really I was looking at the cast uh because I remember being a kid and like uh you know when games came with booklets I would just pour over those Kingdom Hearts booklets and just read like who the voice cast was and stuff. And I remember being like Lance Bass is Sephiroth in Kingdom Hearts 1. Lance Bass from NSYNC is Sephiroth.

And that's always, no disrespect, been a baffling choice to me. It's very strange. He's not a voice actor. He is a singer in a boy band um it doesn't it doesn't make it doesn't make a lot of sense um and i i feel like based on how i've seen him in interviews and stuff recently if you asked him why he did that he'd be like i have no idea like he would he would he would be like yeah it was weird i don't know i don't know what that was uh or he wouldn't remember that he did it. My agent said it was a good thing. Yeah. Yeah.

It was kind of a celebrity stunt casting. Yeah. Right? Like, they went kind of the other side. It was like, oh, wait, no, voice acting is a thing. Like, ah, we can maybe drive people to these games by getting big, splashy games. Yeah, yeah.

But, yeah, that is a strange one. It's really funny. Because I remember seeing, too, obviously Mark Hamill is such a great voice actor. But somebody asked him about his experience doing the dub of one of the yakuza games and he was like what he's like i did what but he's just done probably so much stuff like he's like you know like he's mark hamill they're probably just asking him to do a bunch of stuff all the time i wouldn't be surprised if he doesn't

remember half of the things he's done. Yeah, I've worked on those games too. And they are very, they are very codenamed. Oh, sure. And tough to keep track of because those are ones that do not have much character art to go for. That one's just a spreadsheet that you're just doing your best job. Interesting.

I'll also say another one of my favorites and most impressive is, not to break the lore of Get Played podcast, but Paul Merci in resident evil 4 uh doing his dual roles i won't say what dual roles obviously uh don't want to break the lore uh but uh unbelievable that he does both of those and again such an iconic performance too what who does he do? Yeah, who's... Who's the... Paul Mercier? Yeah. He plays Leon in another iconic character. Oh, cool.

I love Leon. Yeah, Leon is great. And he does somebody else. It's like a, I don't know, like a shop... I guess you could call it a shopkeeper. Oh, okay. Sort of thing. Like a stand-in for a shopkeeper.

I didn't realize he does both. That fucking rocks. Yeah. That's pretty incredible. That fucking rocks. Yeah. That's pretty incredible. It fucking rocks, yeah. That's my new favorite answer. That's really great. Yeah.

Because two great performances, too. Like, super funny. Like, really great. All right, let's do a segment. Hell yeah. Ray has a segment for us for a change, and I think it's going to be really fun. Yes, this is,

so for a little bit of background, when you're working on a video game, you usually don't, you get the name of the title of the video game. There's always some sort of confidential code name, usually appended with the word project at the beginning of it. And while you're working on a game, that's usually how your agents and everybody's talks about it is you're coming in for project X two, you're coming in for project Mithril, which was world of final fantasy, things like that.

And so I have a game for you guys. And here it goes. Can Nick, Heather and Matt guess the working title project name of each video game? Well, this dumb segment idea caused the industry to lose faith in Ray and fire him from all his jobs? Find out in Project Run Ray. Hey!

Can we replace one of us with Ray? Do you think like permanently, like moving forward? Oh, just in general? Can we just have Ray on the show? Wait so Nick wants to stay on the show I think what would actually make it better is that we do

the show we do the show as normal but then Ray dubs us I'll dub it I'll do the Japanese version or yeah if you have any more characters who want to come in I I'd be happy to. Hell yeah. This is, so this I've judiciously selected some project names based on games that I have worked on. Oh, that's right. We didn't talk about some of these things. So I think it might surprise you that I was some of these roles. And so I guess the way it'll work is I will say the title of the project.

And whenever you guys guess what it is, buzz in with your name, as always. And whoever gets it right first gets it. I'm going to say the name of the game, start describing it, and buzz in whenever you get it. Great. I'll keep scoring. I've also chosen games that are awesome. Some of these are, again, some of these project titles are absolutely nonsense. Like you can never figure out what Project Arkansas is.

But some of these are the ones that I've chosen. So hopefully a little bit of a hint to what they are. So starting with number one, Project Black. Project Black is an open world action role playing game developed and published by Square Enix, released for the PlayStation and Xbox One in 2016. The game features an open world environment and action based battle system incorporating quick switching weapons, elemental magic and other features such as vehicle travel. Heather. It's Final Fantasy 15. Correct. Wow. Project Black. Project Black. elemental magic and other features such as vehicle travel heather it's final fantasy 15 correct wow project black every time we came in it was for project black is asking for your availability to come in uh for for years and years wow number number two and also you'll notice that

all of these are released around the same time. These are things that I worked on around the 2016 to 2019 era. I chose nothing too current. Project Delta. Project Delta is an online multiplayer action role-playing game released worldwide for PlayStation 4, Windows, and Xbox One on February 22nd, 2019.

Set on a fictional planet named Coda, players assume the role of freelancers, heroic adventurers who wear powerful exosuits to defend humanity from the threats beyond their city's walls. It received mixed reviews from critics who criticized it for its grind and shallow gameplay. Matt. Is it Anthem? It is Anthem. Okay, wow. Good pull.

Well done. I was the main character in Anthem. Were you really? I forgot about Anthem. Were you really? I forgot about Anthem. Yeah, that was my big thing. I was like, coming off of Final Fantasy XV, I'm going to be in Anthem. I'm going to be the main character.

This is going to be the greatest game ever. And I'm set for life, baby. And unfortunately, we live in this reality. Yeah, well, that was like, was that Bungie who was making Anthem? I'm trying to remember. That's Bioware. Bioware, I apologize. Bioware was their, but it was like their destiny killer, right?

Exactly, yeah. And people were hyped about Anthem. I was so excited. Next, Project Database. Project Database is an action role-playing video game developed by Eidos Montreal and published by Square Enix in August 2016. It is the fourth game in the series, and the gameplay combines first-person shooters, stealth, and role-playing elements, featuring exploration and combat in environments connected

to the main hub of Prague, and quests which grant experience and allow customization of the main character's abilities with Praxis kits. Conversations between characters have a variety of responses, with options in conversations and at crucial story points affecting how events play out. Set two years after the sequel in 2029, the world is divided between normal humans and those with advanced controversial artificial organs

dubbed augmentations. After a violent event known as the Aug incident, augmented people have been segregated. This prompts heated debate in an era of mechanized apartheid. Main protagonist Adam Jensen Oh, man. This is, I remember this series. I know this is a series. I just can't remember the title of it. Interesting. It sounds good. Deus the title of it. Interesting.

This is Deus X Mankind Divided. Right, right, right. Have you guys not played Human Revolution or Mankind Divided? No. That's about the original back in the day. You don't know Adam Jensen at all. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha. He's the

protagonist of those two games. Thought he'd be more iconic. Alas, the point goes to me. Maybe I can win this one. Matt, you got that? By the way, all these projects sounds like something that like the colonel would be explaining to Snake in a Metal Gear game. Snake, it's called Project Database. The CIA began it in 1969. I've got one, two, three, four more. Okay, great. Project Lotus. Project Lotus is a

2019 action-adventure game. It won several year-end awards and sold over five million copies by July 2020. The game features a shinobi known as Wolf, who attempts to take revenge on a samurai clan that imprisoned him this is sekiro shadows yeah you got it all right we're all tied up with one lu appreciate that one of course uh i'm proud of it too uh i will say one of the interesting things

about from software that they do that nobody else does as far as recording which is really really interesting um is they uh they record everybody really, really close to the mic and you get very, very, very tender performances from them. Even though your character might be 30 feet away, the level of projection, they don't care about it. They just want it to be super intimate. And I think that really sets their voice acting apart. Obviously they yell when they need to yell.

But if a boss is talking to you, it's like he's right in your ear. It also, like, that's fascinating because it does. So those games, I think, make you feel isolated and alone. And that's part of, like, the dread of playing one of those games. Like, I'm all by myself. And maybe that's part of the logic for it. But that's a really interesting background. Next, hands on buzzers.

Project Fortnite. Project Fortnite is an online video game developed by Epic Games. Heather, yes. Fortnite? Correct. Nice job. No project name.

It was just called Project Fortnite. They're like, like oh we want you to know what this is hiding in plain sight but it came out actually let me see if i can find it because it was funny um because you know when when they were working on that game they didn't know it was going to be fortnight yeah sure this was uh when was the first audition sent out? Was this 2017? I don't know. I'll find it later. But it was interesting going through my old emails and going like, oh, yeah, they didn't know this was going to be Fortnite. This was just a random epic game. Okay.

Snake, Project Fortnite trains the next generation of super soldiers through an online game where they're virtually connected. Virtually connected? This sounds like the sort of game that I'd be a skinhead. Two more. Project BT. Project BT is a first-person shooter video game released worldwide on October 28th, 2016. Set in a science fiction universe, the single-player campaign follows the story of Jack Cooper, a rifleman from the Frontier Militia who bonds with his mentors Titan BT-7274.

Oh, Matt, Matt. Matt. Titanfall 2. Correct. Nice, nice. Matt. Titanfall 2. Correct. Nice. That was that recently? Yeah, Titanfall 2016. It's really good.

Oh, you guys haven't played it? Or just Matt has? I played like about half of it. That was the first game I was playing on my Steam deck, and it's fucking great. It is so good. I have it wishlisted. I'm going to get around to it.

I got to make time for it. Everyone says the campaign is so great. It is so good. I have it wishlisted. I'm going to get around to it. I got to make time for it. Everyone says the campaign is so great. It's just insane. Each level is just a set piece and so memorable. It's so well done. Last one. What's the score? It is tied to Heather and Matt.

One, Nick and Ray. Damn, we've got a chance to tie it up. Matt, let's hope. Last one. Project Chiral. Project Chiral is a 2019 action game developed by Kojima Productions and published by Sony. Oh, shit.

Death Stranding. God damn it. Death Stranding is correct. Wow. Heather's our winner. Congratulations, Heather. I almost said it on Chiral. Almost said it right there on Chiral.

I was like, there can't be anything else. It's got to be Death Stranding. You know, I thought, it's funny because the previous one was Project BT, which is a Death Stranding specific. So I was like, oh, is that where we're going? I waited a beat just in case because I was like, let me hear something. As Game Master, that was me trying to trick you. Well done.

That's why I did those both in there. Master of Masters said it again. Exactly. Congratulations, Heather. Well done. Master of Masters has said it again. Exactly. Congratulations, Heather. You win. I am the best. Canonically, I'm the best. That's true. That's what winning the game means.

It's settled. Hey, that's this week's Get Played. Our engineering is by Alex Gonzalez, Dead Air Alex G on Twitter and Instagram. Also, check out our paywalled show, Get Animated. Heather, we're taking a break from the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. Yeah, before we dive into season two of the melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya, we are going to watch Jujutsu Kaisen Zero, the animated theatrical release featuring the Jujutsu Kaisen cast at large in a prequel that is canonically. I mean, it's a real it's a real thing it's a real story that actually happens in the world of jujutsu kaisen so check us out on patreon.com slash get played if you want to listen to that and more episodes about our favorite other thing in the world anime our guest today the today, the great Ray Chase. Ray, what an absolute delight.

Thank you for lending us your time and your talents and for telling us so much about, you know, voicing the games that so many people love to play. Of course. It's been an honor. I've loved it too. And I really appreciate you guys having me on. As far as plugs, I've got one thing to plug,

which I forgot to even talk about because it's old, but I'm still really proud of it. really appreciate you guys having me on um as far as plugs i've got uh one thing to plug which i forgot to even talk about uh because it's old but i'm still really proud of it uh i made a podcast starring all of my friends during covet it's all the voice actor people you know it's called my brotherhood colon sky brother force and it is a uh it is a fake anime show it's nine episodes long fully produced uh with an anime theme song intro intro and outro. It is batshit insane. And I highly recommend podcast listeners. I know that as a podcast listener myself, listening to people talk is great. And having a serial podcast isn't the most fun.

But you've got to listen to Sky Brother Force. It's really, really, really fun. That's badass. Where can people check it out? Oh, anywhere that podcasts are sold. love that hell yeah and uh i know that maybe nick and heather don't want to do this because you've been such a great guest uh but i'll i'll sort of fall on the grenade for this one uh um ray i it takes i take no pleasure in this. What? What's up? You got played, and I'm very sorry. Oh, he's crying.

Oh, no. I made him cry. Oh, no. We all got raped. Oh, shit. Yes!