Portal 2: Stephen Merchant as Wheatley

[Armageddon]

They told me if I ever said anything bad about this new voice I would DIE.

[Plague]

Oh, and Plague; regarding Hammer and SDK, it's impossible to tell what we'll get, so I don't think about it. This isn't speculation, it's annoyance.

Never actual meant anything about the SDK, the only thing i think that came close was VPKs and I was only half-serious about maybe a... dare i say it... A method of sharing VPKs through Steam, without having to navigate out and download it manually. (I can Dream...)

[Groxkiller585]

I prefered the orginal. I felt it fit the role much better.

This new one absolutely MURDERED the GLaDOS scene. The old one made it funny as well as not so annoying his cut-ins were considered trival. The new one makes him sound bland, and boring.

Maybe he should be mute. The Companion Cube didn't say a thing and it's halfway across the interwebz by now.

[nub]

Maybe he should be mute. The Companion Cube didn't say a thing and it's halfway across the interwebz by now.

Mute? No use in that. He'd just be a hacking, flashlight ball that follows you around if that were the case. Valve's been keen about companionship since Episode 1 where Alyx followed you nearly everywhere. It was the same case with Episode 2, and it's not at all surprising that they decided to do it in Portal 2. What kind of companion would Wheatley be if he couldn't even speak? As for the companion cube, it was meant to be used as a weight or a booster, nothing more. Valve just gave it some "personality" by naming it portal-style and having GLaDOS hint at the astronomically remote possibility of it speaking to you. That way it wouldn't come off as a simple box you can pick up and move around. I wouldn't be surprised if there's actually an incident where one speaks to you in Portal 2, but I seriously doubt it will happen.

Nevertheless, I'm surprised there aren't any Steam groups demanding the old voice back though.

[Major Banter]

Nevertheless, I'm surprised there aren't any Steam groups demanding the old voice back though.

Yet.

[Bema]

My original suprise was actually because Stephen Merchant isn't really an actor - not because I thought he did badly. He's really a writer who, along with Gervais, put himself in his own work. Sure he played his role in Extra's brilliantly, but he's somewhat limited in what he can actually...act. And voice acting is a completly different kettle of fish to acting on camera.


Buuuuut - Valve went with him which says he must have brought something to the role that others didn't, because he certainly wouldn't have been the only one in the running for the job.

[zombie@computer]

valve always had great successes with finding voice actors...

[Unstoppable Florence]

IT'S. NOT. BROKEN.

I. JUST. HAVE. A. COLD.


...

SIR.

On topic: I can't really decide between the two. In all honesty I don't think there is that great a difference between the two, and -as a result of them being so similar- any major disparities between them are more imagined that real.

Can we have a personality sphere voiced by Brian Blessed? Please Valve, please.

[ad_hominem]

Can we have a personality sphere voiced by Brian Blessed? Please Valve, please.

Best idea ever.

[Unstoppable Florence]

I'm picturing it now. Chell could make a death-defying escape like in the incinerator in the original Portal.

"CHELL'S ALIVE"

Actually, just having that man chastising me for making mistakes... that would make the game for me.

[Major Banter]

http://www.escapistmagazine.com/forums/read/9.228166-Poll-Portal-2-Wheatleys-voice

More agreement.

[YokaI]

I'm more than sure that the voice acting we heard as of now probably isn't the finalized work. Seeing the time between the original video and now, there doesn't seem like enough time that they've really done many takes of certain scenes, and it even seems to reflect a bit in the video.

I'm not really sure why they brought in a "new" voice actor, since the original was good and probably wouldn't need to be payed very much extra because, after all, he is already an animator at valve. It seems like now they're just paying for someone to replace him when really he could have probably done a pretty good job voice acting this role.


I'm glad to see a sidekick character in this game. My biggest gripe with valve games is that since your character lacks any voice or any input, you always get an experience which has little to no insight from different perspectives. It seems like adding voices and other characters to portal was probably the best choice they have made since it's announcement, atleast with the information we have of the game so for.

Half Life 2 / Half Life Episode 1 + 2 would have been, literally, nothing without the side characters and NPCs, and episode 1/2 really upped the experience when making Alyx a much more important character! Having said that, Valve always seems to slyly move away from ever killing off characters, or atleast making it clear that the characters has been removed (from the exception of Eli, who to be honest was killed off in a way that was less than ideal in terms of build-up). Barney is a perfect example, nobody even knows what the hell happened to him after the events of Episode 1. :/

Hopefully, portal 2 will be a bit better in terms of delivery. As much as people love silent main characters too, I have to say I am not a huge fan. It would kind of be like a book which had no clear emphasis on who the narrator was as a person, but the only clear thing is that it's from the perspective of "someone," it ends up being rather linear and you can't really use the character himself to build the story (I.E. HL2 / Portal could invovle any other character and the results would, ultimately, end up being the same game.)

Edit: May I add that I love the fact that america / europe is now much more interested in voice acting than they ever were before. I guess it kind of sucks from my perspective, since at one point I actually wanted to become a voice actor, but I think it was often a very under appreciated job since the majority of the work was done for children's television and other jobs alike. Since the addition of voices to video games, however, it's becoming much more like what Japan in terms of people knowing the names and interested in talking about differences is voices and how it plays apart of ones character.

[Psy]

Can we have a personality sphere voiced by Brian Blessed? Please Valve, please.

Best idea ever.

...YES!

[Unstoppable Florence]

I get the feeling that only those from the UK and a few enlightened fellows from other shores are aware of the great tower of a man that is Brian Blessed. Allow me to rectify this issue in the name of greater understanding.

Edit: fixed

[Phott]

Who doesn't know who Brian Blessed is?!