Warframe 1999 is here at last and players are having a blast exploring the past, zooming around on motorbikes, and thirsting over Viktor. However, it’s also probably one of the most stacked updates in terms of popular voice acting talent. Warframe has always been solid in the VO department, but with Ben Starr, Alpha Takahashi, Amelia Tyler, and Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge the bar has been lifted to a whole other level.
So, with this in mind, I wanted to sit down and chat to one of these voice actors about what it was like stepping into the wacky world of Warframe in what is likely its most ambitious update yet. For this, Mr Starr was willing to spare five minutes to talk about bringing Arthur to life, if he had any inspirations for the performance, and the finer points of adding a voice of humanity to a warframe of all things.
Starr: “I was fully naked the entire time, bathed in goo, a la Get Your Own Back. Sorry, no. I would say the cool thing about this character is you get two very different sides to them. You get the wisened officer who barks orders, and then because of the romance system you get the really intimate tender moments if you want to choose that. For me, it was never about doing a 90s voice, because what is a ’90’s voice’? I’m not really doing a particular 90s archetype, it’s more just like, here’s an officer who has lived a life. Make him care about stuff, the stuff that’s in front of him. The battlefield, your character (if you choose it), the Hex group. The immediate circumstances that are around him.”
“I’m a huge fan of the 90s, they’re some of my most formative years, so to get to play in that sandbox is really neat. They – the devs – do all the work to make it sound like the 90s. I just make him sound human.”
VG247: How are you able to play in the 90s sandbox if the character doesn’t have a “90s voice”? If you aren’t doing a 90s voice, what are the differences between a performance on a character like Arthur and a modern day character?
Starr: “When it comes to performance? No. Because if you’re trying to affect something, it’s not going to be particularly interesting. I think the most interesting thing for us is that we’ve taken these characters. No, almost these archetypes! Excalibur, I play Excalibur which is the iconic Warframe character. How do you take that frame, and explore what makes them tick like a human? How do you take those aspects and show that battle between their humanity and the inhumane part of themselves.”
“It just happens that the backdrop is the 90s, the soundtrack is the 90s, but that’s not anything I can affect. This character is literally battling for their own survival, and for his humanity at the same time. How do those two things work together, how do they clash against each other, and how do they combine to make a compelling story.”
VG247: As the player proceeds through the update they can choose to get closer to Arthur. How do you as a voice actor shift from those harder, officer moments to the more intimate moments? How does your performance change?
Starr: “It’s just like, walls up walls down. Instead of it being having the walls come down suddenly, we create these little cracks to peek through. I think there’s got to be that tease, because it’s just a carrot on a stick for the player to explore if they want that.”
“There are these characters the player can romance and get to know, and it’s like how do we make Athur an appealing prospect whose story you want to learn more of. And each person’s story is going to be as interesting as the last, be it Amir or Lettie or Eleanor. They’re all very interesting stories, Arthur is just one of them. It’s really cool in my own way to have this character where if you as the player put the hours in, here’s this little treat for you! Here are some fun little easter eggs that are gonna make it worthwhile if you put the time in.”
VG247: Did you have any inspirations for this role, or did you pull from anything personal?
Starr: “I’m not pulling from anything personal. I would say there was a note that Reb made, which said the initial tone was ‘grinding gears into the dirt’. That’s what she wanted for Arthur. So there’s this real deep growl, but as you proceed further through Warframe 1999 it softens. If you choose to engage in that, you will see almost a need to be loved, and a need to find love in a loveless place. In a lot of action games you don’t have an opportunity to do that, so it’s really amazing. There’s a lot packed into this update emotionally.”
Voice performances like Starr’s (but not only Starr’s, I’m especially in love with Alpha Takahashi’s and Trieve Blackwood-Cambridge’s presense depictions) adds a lot of heart to Warframe 1999. It’s an important piece of the wider picture, a beautiful painting that has brought thousands upon thousands of players to the game to interact with the cast. It’s absolutely worth checking out if you haven’t already.
