Voice actor of Elden Ring’s Igon had to have his character explained to him in recent interview
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One of my favourite things about studios hiring professional actors is that a lot of times, they just have no bleeding clue about the game in question. That’s exactly the case with Robert Charles Lintern, the voice behind Igon’s pained character.
Having recently played Thomas Chamberlain in the BBC drama Silent Witness, Elden Ring was Lintern’s first foray into acting for games. He’d never heard of Hidetaka Miyazaki – a sentence that games journalists seldom write – though “his status was very clear, very clear immediately,” Lintern said in a recent interview with IGN.
“I had never engaged, or been used, or tried to be used, or even thought of myself as a possibility for use in voice work in the gaming world,” Lintern says. The voice actor also had no idea what Igon looked like, the cult status he’s acquired, nor the story behind his character. In fact, he had to ask his interviewer to explain to character to him outright.
And I think at the time, I don’t think I even knew that Bayle was a dragon. I think I might’ve thought Bayle was a person. Anyway, I can’t remember, but I’m giving it as much as I possibly can, vocally, emotionally, neck stretching, vocal cords ripping, everything. And then we would come back, and then there’d be silence again, during which I’d have a glass of water. And then we’d come and do it again with a tinge of sorrow, or with a tinge more rage, or slower, or faster, or whatever it happened to be.
Robert Charles LIntern
Upon listening back to Igon’s lines again, I wonder if ‘the pain’ he speaks of is not just from his misery at the hands of Bayle, but Lintern’s at the hand of Miyazaki.
The Elden Ring director needed him to “explode,” and from the sound of things, he did just that. It’s quite amusing to hear Lintern’s experience working on Elden Ring. Realising that it’s such a monumental piece of art, realising the aura of Miyazaki, and realising Igon into a believable character despite knowing nothing but his name.