The voice of rapper-actor Ice-T will make an appearance in Gearbox's highly anticipated first-person shooter, Borderlands 3, and he'll be playing a robot teddy bear. More specifically, he'll be playing a sentient navigation AI, named Balex, who, due to some unfortunate circumstances, ended up in the body of a teddy bear. Safe to say the character will use plenty of explicit language, and have a familiar sense of humor.
The news was recently confirmed by Gearbox, with Creative Director, Paul Sage, explaining just how the decision came about. In an interview with GamesRadar, Sage revealed that they had already known Ice-T was a huge gamer and Borderlands fan, which prompted Gearbox CEO, Randy Pitchford, to get in touch with the rapper. The Gearbox team reportedly loved collaborating with him, saying that his sense of humor and personality perfectly matched the tone of the Borderlands world.
Before he gained a reputation of putting haters in their place on Twitter, Ice-T made a name for himself as a prominent hip-hop artist in the 80s and 90s, and has even released new music last month. He also experienced success in his long standing acting role as Odafin Tutuola on Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which will begin airing its 21st season on September 26. Now he can add video game voice actor to his already impressive resume.
From what we can tell while watching the early gameplay footage, Ice-T's character, Balex, will add yet another colorful character to the long list of Borderlands' entertaining NPCs. Not only does the robo-bear provide an interesting back story and a charismatic voice performance, but he also enters an armored mech and fights by your side during one of the game's dungeons. Based on what we've seen so far, Balex will bring a lot of life to Borderlands 3, and it'll be fun to see more of him in the full game.
Borderlands 3 is the long awaited loot-driven sequel to 2012's Borderlands 2, and is slated to release for PC, Playstation 4, and Xbox One on September 13. A few weeks later, you can catch Ice-T arresting bad guys on brand new episodes of Law & Order: SVU. Maybe even listen to some Rhyme Pays and pour yourself a glass of iced tea while you're at it.