ZeniMax Online has revealed the cast of voice actors who will be giving

life to a number of the key characters in the Elder

Scrolls Online, releasing a cool announcement

video featuring interviews with some of the main cast. As one might

expect from this company, they went all-out and got some pretty big names.

I love me some pop culture and Hollywood trivia, so these kinds of

announcements always peak my interest, especially when they come out of

the big-budget studios who can afford to hire movie stars to sit in little

booths and yell things into a microphone.

In the past, ZeniMax has used some huge names. Here's a few examples:

The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion featured Patrick Stewart as the

Emperor, and Sean Bean as (ironically enough) his bastard son

Emperor, and Sean Bean as (ironically enough) his bastard son Liam Neeson played "Dad" in Fallout 3, and Ron Perlman reprised his

"War... war never changes" narration from the previous Interplay titles

"War... war never changes" narration from the previous Interplay titles Skyrim featured the voices of legendary actors Christopher Plummer and

Max von Sydow, among others

Max von Sydow, among others The voice cast of Fallout: New Vegas looks like it could have come

right off a movie poster from the early 2000's or so.

So going big with the Elder Scrolls Online is pretty much par for the

course. Some of the ESO voice talent is what we might call "the

usual suspects," but others are a pleasant surprise, and there are some

interesting dots to connect.

For instance, it's no shocker that 70s TV goddess Lynda Carter

will be returning to voice the Daedric goddess Azura.

She's done Elder Scrolls voices since Morrowind, and she's married to the

CEO of ZeniMax Media, Robert Altman. It warms my little nerd-boy heart to

think that a guy who makes video games for a living got to marry Wonder

Woman. To be fair, he used to be a lawyer and is super-rich, and she

hasn't worn the costume since the early 80's, but still. It's Wonder

Woman!

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We also get another go-around with our old pal Malcolm McDowell.

The last time he did work for ZeniMax, he voiced President John Henry Eden

in Fallout 3, and this time around he voices the Elder Scrolls Online's

chief antagonist, Molag Bal. Back in the 1970's, he did

such a bang-up job as teenage psychopath Alex DeLarge in A Clockwork

Orange that he has been cast primarily in villain roles ever since.

And he likes it that way. Malcolm McDowell prefers to play "the

heavy," as he puts it, because "a piece is only as good as its villain."

Scan his IMDB profile and you'll see the names of a great many "heavies."

He was even a bad guy on Entourage - Terrance McQuewick was so nasty he

managed to make Ari Gold look sympathetic.

And it's not just the gods getting the star treatment. The three faction

leaders are being voiced by some big-money talent also. It's important to

have quality voice-acting for these roles, because they will set the tone

for the entire faction, and thus play a significant part in the player's

game overall experience. Imagine, for example, that your faction leader

sounded like a high school drama student trying to read lines of

Shakespeare right out of a book - the whole faction would seem like a

joke. But put a proper Shakespearian actor at the helm reading those same

lines and it's a whole different story. You get a fancy-talkin' leader you

can take seriously.

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High King Emeric, faction leader of the Daggerfall

Covenant, will be voiced by one of my personal favorite character actors,

Bill Nighy. I really hope they did some face-modelling

and motion capture for the character, because Nighy is a man of great

expression - you can always tell it's him even when his face is hidden by

a swarm of octopus tentacles, as it was when he played Davy Jones in

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest, because of the eyes and the

very measured and particular way his mouth forms words. You can see his

expressive face more clearly in Shaun of the Dead, where he plays the part

of Shaun's step-father Phillip, or as the bowtie-wearing museum curator in

the Doctor Who episode, "Vincent and the Doctor," or with his Elder

Scrolls Online co-stars in the Underworld series or Harry Potter and the

Deathly Hallows: Part 1.

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Jorunn the Skald-King, leader of the Ebonheart Pact,

will be voiced by Swedish actor, Peter Stormare. Chances

are, you've seen Peter Stormare in something before (though not in the

cast announcement video), and I'm a fan of his work. He rarely plays

leading roles, but he is a fantastic and fairly prolific character actor

who often plays colorful but disturbing secondary characters. He was the

primary nihilist, Uli Kunkel (aka "Karl Hungus"), in the Big Lebowski, one

of the "funny-lookin'" criminals in Fargo, and he played Satan in

Constantine, the movie version of comic book series Hellblazer. He has

done voice work in Icewind Dale II and, more recently, The Secret World.

He also does a lot of work in small indie films, like Small Town Murder

Songs, which was filmed in my neck of the woods in rural Ontario, Canada -

Mennonite country, which features prominently in the plot of that movie.

We don't get a lot of movies filmed around here, so Peter Stormare is

probably a bigger name around these parts than he is most places outside

of Sweden.

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The third faction leader, Queen Ayrenn, will be voiced

by Kate Beckinsale. This one I find less impressive than

the others. Her biggest roles are characters that I find super-attractive

but ultimately completely despicable in one way or another, even though

everyone else seems to love them. I hated Selene in the Underworld movies

(featuring co-star Bill Nighy) because the character confuses "reckless

and self-centered" for "strong and independent." In fact, that seems to be

kind of a theme among her characters, starting with Pearl Harbor. I guess

it works well for Queen Ayrenn, as well, and the character will be consistent

with the ones she has done in the past. Kate Beckinsale describes Queen

Ayrenn as a "good role-model" in the cast announcement video - I guess she

missed the parts where her character's leadership is built on a platform

of racism and manifest destiny.

These are sort of the top-billed starring roles in the game, but the cast

of secondary characters is no less impressive.

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Alfred Molina may not exactly be a household name, but

he has an impressive body of work. He will be voicing Imperial

puppet-master Abnur Tharn, head of the Elder Council in

Cyrodiil (and possibly an ancestor of Jagar Tharn, the Battlemage who takes

center stage as the main antagonist in the very first Elder Scrolls game,

Arena). Most people will probably know him as Doctor Otto Octavius, Doctor

Octopus, from Spider-Man 2. But he has also portrayed revolutionary

Mexican painter Diego Rivera, husband of surrealist Frida Kahlo, in the

movie Frida. As an art-school nerd, this role matters much more to me than

his turn as a comic book villain. Although, as a Marvel/Spider-man

fanboy, Doc Ock is pretty badass, too.

But as a normal, every-day kind of nerd, Molina's involvement doesn't

inspire the same giddiness that John Cleese's does. His

role as "Don Quixote-like" Sir Cadwell the Undaunted, Knight

of the Port of Coldharbor, may not be as central to the story as a Daedric

prince or a faction leader, but it is sure to be memorable. Younger

readers may only recognize John Cleese as Nearly Headless Nick from the

first couple of Harry Potter movies, but us older types will surely

recognize our favorite Minister of Silly Walks from his legendary Monty

Python days. What strikes me as funny is, every time you see John Cleese

listed as a cast member for something, he is always credited for A Fish

Called Wanda, as though no American could have possibly heard of Monty

Python's Flying Circus, but surely every one of them knows that one movie

from the mid-80s.

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Speaking of Harry Potter characters, Albus Dumbledore himself will be

guiding the player through his journey to recover his stolen soul. Well,

one of them will be, anyway. Michael Gambon, the second

and longer-running Dumbledore, will be voicing the Prophet,

a mysterious blind man who seems to know a thing or two about Molag Bal

and stolen souls. Michael Gambon may come across as a bit cheeky in

the cast announcement video, but his characters tend to be much more

serious and occasionally a bit dour. He had some big shoes to fill

when the original Dumbledore, Richard Harris, passed away, but his sober

performance as the headmaster of Hogwarts proved he was equal to the task.

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He is assisted in this task by Lyris Titanborn, a Nord

half-giant voiced by another video game voice-acting legend, Jennifer

Hale. Kevin Michael

Richardson and Jim Ward are two more Elder

Scrolls Online voice actors who may not have familiar faces, but whose

voices you have almost certainly heard before. Richardson plays a

sword-master named Sai Sahan, and Ward

voices the legendary necromancer Mannimarco - a

character who appears in two other games, set hundreds of years later, as

a villain. Between the three of these actors, they've been in just about

everything since the end of the 1990s. Chances are good that if you do an

IMDB search of your favorite cartoon, video game or animated feature in

the past 20 years or so, one or more of their names will be on the cast

list. Certain Star Wars games, in particular, feature all

three. These three actors don't get any screen time in the cast

announcement video, but their contributions will prove significant if

history is any indication.

Got an opinion about the voice cast of the Elder Scrolls Online? Let us

know in our comments!

