The developers of Human Error, Flesh and Research and Development have announced a new Total Conversion mod called Water. The mods looks pretty cool and it’s another mod for review on my new website, but what this post is about is one of the features listed.
The article starts with details of the mod, followed by a few screenshots and then comes the list of features. The penultimate one is… No voice acting by PlanetPhillip. SHOCK! HORROR! have I become that infamous in the HL voice acting world that to actually promote a mod it needs to tell people I’m not in it?
Of course, I thought it was all a bit of fun until I read Stalk’s Mod Informer.Org news post where he finishes with..“Although, the far most important feature of the game is that it will NOT include PlanetPhillip.
I hope this is a joke. Cause I laughed. Don’t take everything serious, Phillip.
Although your voice would work perfectly for an light bulb. “Click!” “I’m on!” “Click!” “I’m off!”
Of course it’s a joke.
No seriously, …, the Blue Portals Turrets were so incredibly awesome! 🙂
Yeah, +1 for this, you did an amazing job, it was truly hilarious!!!
Amazing singing 😀
I think the problem, Phillip, is that since you have been in every single HL2 mod, your voice is immediately connected to something about Half Life 2. And they said this has no relation to Half Life 2. And Au-Heppa just said that “I think Larson was the player’s favorite character because of Phillip”.
Phillip is %#@& right. This means war! We demand Phillip’s voice in ALL mods from now on. And for the mod teams that refuse, the alternative, if you can call it that, is total extinction.
I love your voice acting, but like Nolan North, while a good actor you are kind of everywhere, and also like Nolan North, what I don’t want is for you to stop voice acting, but rather get a bit more picky about what projects you lend your talents to.
That being said, if I ever make a mod I’m guna want you to play every character…
You took the words right out of my mouth. Honestly, I like Nolan North in the Uncharted games, but hearing him elsewhere doing that exact same voice in another game is super distracting. And Phillip is much the same. Because his voice ends up being pretty distinct (well, to my American ears anyway – we love accents!), it is kind of an immersion breaker to hear him all over the place.
Trust me, I’m British and live in London, and Phillip’s voice acting is still incredibly easy to pick out. He has a very distinctive voice…
Aww.. I like your voice acting, the turrets in blue portal were great! I think its just that your the only well known voice actor in most mods lately, everyone knows you, but nobody knows the other voice actors
Infamous?!? Famously notorious, I reckon. 😀
“Top of the morning, Anders?”
I love your voice work, Phillip. My personal favorite is probably the Russian puzzle mod “The Trap”.
Phillips voice is rather monotone and nasally, it has to be said. He must be from somewhere in quaint middle England 😛
North West London
Just to be clear…I fully appreciate that hearing my voice in a mod can spoil it due to recognizing it. However, I feel that’s down to the modder to decide if they want me.
As longs as I can do a fairly good job, I’ll probably keep doing it.
My original plan was to have a character made for me that could be used in mods and wouldn’t break the immersion. This character would have been a resistance fighter who happened to by in lots of places without getting killed.
Anyway, I think there are only two or three mods that are using my voice and after that I don’t think I’ll get many offers.
If I hadn’t been absolutely certain that this was all in jest (both what you were reacting to and how you reacted) I’d be totally standing up in your defense.
However with the acceptance of this as a big “celebrity roast” style joke, I feel it is worth pointing out that Phillip’s voice tends to be for characters that are come across a bit bumbling/in over his head. It lends itself to a wonderfully whimsical humor or silliness that really offsets what would have otherwise been almost tediously grim stories.
With how recognizable his voice has become, I would seriously have trouble hearing a mod use that voice and not getting that same sense of silliness, so if that scene in a mod was trying to be serious, I don’t think I’d be able to accept his voice being in it. I know it’s typecasting, but when you’re talking about subtle emotions like that, it happens.
One thing I might recommend is to deliberately work on creating a completely different voice that has a different accent, different intonation, and just generally create as different of a mood as possible, and start out totally anonymously with it until you can break out of any typecasting that might be forming.
I thought it was a reference to the voiceville mod…
Oh wow. Honestly I don’t know what to say, but I think that is because I’m awfully sick right now (karma?). Although, I think I must write an apology.
Fist of all, I have to say that I loved the Blue Portals turrets. I mean, I think this was your finest work so far. I have never heard anyone say “Happy Face” or “Sad Face” so well. And, I think that Blue Portals team did modify your voice a bit (a little more robotic?) so that’s why it didn’t annoy me at all. The problem with your voice acting though, is that you’re the only good voice actor out there willing to do something for the modding community. Not to mention, you own the leading Half Life community website. It is simply impossible to avoid your name when it comes to modding.
A few days before Portal 2 was announced, P17 mentioned your voice acting. Now it was obviously a joke. They said something within the same lines of “If I hear Phillip’s voice again in a mod, I will certainly quit the game and never play it again.” (This comes from my memory, so if I said something wrong don’t blame me). When Portal 2’s Wheatley video was released, they thought that Wheatley’s voice was PlanetPhillip’s, and they did promise that if it was Phillip’s voice they wouldn’t buy the game.
Now I heard both of those episodes, and of course many other mod developers heard it too. People simply started teasing you about it, including me. Although, it was never serious.
Now, I have nothing against hearing your voice again in a mod, but there is a reason why people are commenting this joke about you. As I said before, you are the only good voice actor out there for mods. And also, because of your website, everyone knows of you. So when a mod developer needs a good voice actor, the first person that comes to his head is you.
Think of it as a mainstream song. Imagine hearing Ke$ha on the radio. That’s you (no offense). Ke$ha’s song Tic Tok is a very good song, but simply because of it being played repetitively in every corner of the street people start to hate it. That’s what happens to people that play a lot of mods. They just keep hearing your voice.
But seriously, the turrets in Blue Portal were AWESOME. They’re half of the reason why the mod is so good. If you noticed in my review of Blue Portals on your site, I complained about the difficulty because it didn’t allow to get the feel of the “small” things, which included your voice acting.
But, I know I was too harsh, mentioning the joke twice (on the website and on the P17 agenda). But I think you already know that I tease you a lot. I’ve put a lot of comments about you in the P17 chat and etc. I apologize for all of this and I realize my wrong action. Please don’t take it serious (I think you wouldn’t). I wouldn’t want any negativity in between us and our websites. I believe that now that I own a website, I will have to be more careful when mentioning other people and the jokes I repeat. I will have to admit I have a very ignorant personality. Again, I’m sorry for the commentaries I made.
No need. I took it as a joke and this was my funny response.
You are not ignorant at all. You have nothing to apologize for. It’s all good fun and makes website and personal relationships stronger. My post was just a little self-promotion and to “fight back”.
Feel free at any time to “bash” me in press – it’s fine.
Oh thank god. I really felt like this was bad news for me, since I’m still a tiny baby rabbit out here and you’re a big giant lion that just pointed his finger at me with raging eyes. You were on of my influences to start the website and I wouldn’t want any “war” in here.
But there’s another thing I would like to ask… how’d you do this? (the bellow reply which is actually a article written on my website)
I didn’t, it’s called a trackback and gets posted automatically when another blog post references another blog post. I will delete it now.
i think i’ve made comments in the past about some mod not using phillips voice for one of its actors.
though I will say there was a time when a lot of AAA titles seemed to use the same voice actors in most of the games. it sort of spoiled certain games because I would recognise the the voice behind the game character. which broke the imersion for that game. it also made me think that game developers didn’t really care about the voicing.
things have sort of changed these days. as there seems be a lot of titles that use famous/well known actors from TV/Film. so the voicing is more varied.
I would disagree that he is the only voice actor out there that’s good. I think if people would just ask other people to do voiceovers they would. I would, if someone wanted my voice in a game i’d say hell yeah. But thats irrelevant.
Like in my review, I loved the turrets. Phillip has a good voice, but he shouldn’t be the only one. I incourage people to give anything a try, we have a whole community devoted to mods, and im sure that at least 50% of us would lend our voices to any mod for free.
I agree, there are lots of good voice actors around.
I think the biggest problem is that because every speaks they think they could be good at voice acting. We also need a popular place to find those people good and interested. I have a friend who is trying to build a mod but says that everybody he asked either requested money or wasn’t interested.
Okay, I gotta tease you here.
Here comes Voice Actors Collective.
xD
EDIT: Yes but as I mentioned, I believe that because of your website, you’re the only well known voice actor out there.
I have to admit, it beautifully shatters the immersion to hear you.
“The mod includes a number of features, the most important one apparently being that Phillip Marlowe will not be doing voice acting for the mod.” – LambdaGen =D
And immediately following that sentence:
“That’s more of a bad thing. Just think of the parts Phillip could play! Disgruntled old veteran fisherman? Cheery bartender? King of the oceans?”
=P
Phillip, maybe it would be a good idea to use some kind of effect on you’re voice acting next time. there are many simple to use programs that can make sound you’re voice completely different, without making it sound silly or wrong.
just don’t listen to them, you did a great job in our mod Strider Mountain. And when you like voice acting, then please just keep going on with it!!
leon
Phillip- I have a never before seen video promo for StriderMountain that got left on the cutting room floor. I could resurface the video if there’s interest to hear your voice acting at its best?
Well, I don’t know if other people are interesting, but I certainly would be. It’s time I created some sort of demo reel. Thanks.
Here is the video. The team decision was not to release this version and go with another promo video. So, this one was shelved. As you can see, the web page was built but just not released. See if you can spot Phillip’s voice!
http://www.stridermountain.com/site/SM%20sneak_peek.html
I enjoyed that TB. The best voice? Yours. 🙂
Very clear, indeed.
Like yours, Phillip’s, voice is quite distinctive and should be used sparingly for quality moments.
This was very well done in SM and his voice fitted perfectly, gave continuity and some great cutscene links..
Did you do GF’s “Oh no” in Strider Mountain, Phillip?
to be honest was I the one who said we couldn’t use this teaser video, but now that I have seen it again for the first time after 2 years or so (?) I am not so sure anymore if I did make the right call back then. Its clear that TB did put in a lot of time and effort in this video and it I am sorry that it wasn’t used. when I just watched it I do remember why I didn’t want it to be released back then. my main complain was the fly through parts, they are well done but the issue with it is that you can see that the combines and Strider do see the player while he flies in noclip mode through the maps, because they all shoot at the player. and back then I did read several comments here and there on video’s for other mods, where they also did fly in noclip through a map, that people didn’t like this. I was afraid that people would only comment on this and not the whole mod, what is happens a lot. people only see the minor mistakes and not the whole issue.
i shouldn’t say this as the mapper of the mod, but watching this video does make me want to play the mod again, or even map with this game again, (although we have past this stage).
thanks for saving that video TB and showing it here through this link!
leon
o, and as far as I can remember is the voice at the end from Phillip, where you hear the radio make crackling sounds. (Phillip did more voices in Sm, but in this video I am quit sure that that was him)