Shadowheart's voice actor didn't initially love her character in Baldur's Gate 3 - until she saw the RPG community's reactions
The Baldur's Gate 3 cast didn't always feel as strongly for the companions they voiced as the community did - as is the case with Shadowheart's actor, at least.
Speaking in an interview with IGN, Jennifer English reveals that she wasn't initially a fan of God's favorite princess. It was only after discovering the community's positive reactions to Shadowheart that her growing love for the sassy character finally blossomed. English says that she learned that the reasons the RPG's fans adored the cleric were similar to the qualities that she likes about herself.
"The stuff that [players] like in Shadowheart is kind of the stuff I like about myself," the actor explains. The community picked up on the fan-favorite companion's quirks, highlighting ones that English wasn't as aware of while first recording lines for the game. Shadowheart also had quite a following before the game's release: "I'd gone to London Comic Con when the game was in early access and I remember being really honored that I had 10 people in my queue."
English describes how pleasantly surprised she was to see Shadowheart's influence already taking off: "I think I'd made my rent that weekend. And I was like, 'Wow, that's amazing.'" The year after her first Comic Con, the lines to meet the voice actor grew exponentially - there was a six-hour wait to get to English, and a full-blown security detail handling the sheer number of excited Baldur's Gate 3 fans.
As a dedicated stan of the Dungeons & Dragons-esque RPG myself, I can believe it - I was at London's MCM Comic Con in 2023 when the cast was greeting fans and doing signatures, and the masses waiting around me were mind-boggling. It certainly speaks to how much the community loves and relates to each character - and it's good to know that the same goes for actors like English themselves.
Baldur's Gate 3 devs thought making the RPG would be as "easy" as giving the D&D rules to programmers, but "before you know it, we're deep down in community forums"
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