Master of Orion has a treasure trove of legendary sci-fi voice actors behind it, including the likes of Star Wars’ Mark Hamill, Star Trek’s Michael Dorn and John de Lancie and Firefly’s Alan Tudyk. Hell, it even boasts Nightmare on Elm Street’s Robert Englund. That said, Jacob Beucler, Global Publishing Partner at Wargaming, has a rather interesting suggestion: try the game in Russian instead.

I couldn’t help but mention in a recent chat with Beucler that Michael Dorn, Star Trek’s Worf, makes some rather interesting choices while delivering descriptions of each of Master of Orion’s races. Pauses where they shouldn’t exist. Mispronounced words. Beucler said I was perhaps getting caught up in the game’s star power.

“I’ll tell you what, man – play it in Russian,” he said. “I’m serious. Play it in Russian and learn Russian. It totally changes the tone, and the Russian voice actors are awesome.

“You won’t be like, ‘ah, that’s Mark Hamill’, or ‘that’s [John] de Lancie.’ It’s a totally different experience and it just changes things. I play in Russian somewhat often just to change the experience and have a new experience.”

An interesting suggestion, but perhaps not.

Our chat regarding voice actors quickly settled to the star power of Master of Orion… and conversely, the amount of money publisher Wargaming would have had to spend to secure it.

“That was the biggest surprise,” Beucler exclaimed. “We had no intention on landing that type of voice talent.

“That’s a good example of things just happening. We didn’t plan on it, or set out a budget early, or spend half our budget [on voice]. It wasn’t the absolutely incredible investment that most people would anticipate it was. They were interested in working on this. They got paid, of course; everyone gets paid. Bringing this voice talent in was an accidentally awesome thing, and that happens a lot with Wargaming.

You can hear the sci-fi greats for yourself – or bypass them and use the Russian language settings instead – right now; Master of Orion is available via early access on Steam and GOG.

Stevivor flew to Sydney and attended a Master of Orion event courtesy Wargaming.