Lae'zel actor Devora Wilde wasn't always happy with how she performed the viridescent warrior's voice in Baldur's Gate 3, but she's realized that making Lae'zel sound like she's transformed from a petulant schoolgirl in Act 1 to a humorless mean girl in Act 3 is accidentally perfect.
The githyanki grump "finds out things about certain people [...] that are a shock, let's put it that way," Wilde says in a recent interview with Ginx TV. "She changes very much as a character, and I think this voice modulation really works with that."
Initially, since Lae'zel is the youngest Baldur's Gate 3 companion, Wilde planned to voice her tendency toward "teenager-y outbursts" with a slightly more crystal version of her natural, clear speaking tone. But then, subconsciously, Wilde started speaking Lae'zel's lines "lower and lower."
"A little bit snarly," Wilde explains, "and a bit more gravelly. There came a point where I was like, 'Um, guys… do you think that my Lae'zel at the beginning is very different to my Lae'zel in Acts 2 and 3?' And I was a bit paranoid about that."
But Wilde learned to embrace it, saying that, though she still detects "a little bit of a difference" in Lae'zel's voice throughout Baldur's Gate 3, she's decided "it really works with her character development."
"I think she comes in, you know, all guns blazing, all swords blazing, whatever you want to call it," Wilde continues. But then Lae'zel is humbled by fate, and Wilde's voice follows her there.
"It happened very organically," she says, "which is kind of the best way."
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