As part of Dragon Age Week, I've spoken to a lot of different voice actors from across the trilogy, and the most interesting thing has been each actor's connection to the games. Jon Curry, voice of Zevran and an Inquisitor, told me he bought the game on sale years ago but is yet to play it - I even spoiled the game by telling him that actually, Zevran can live through to the end, with Curry believing that the death scene he recorded for Zevran was canonical for everyone. At the other end of the spectrum, Josephine actor Allegra Clark used to be part of a Dragon Age Livejournal community, and still streams herself playing both the Mass Effect and Dragon Age trilogies on repeat. When I sat down with Nicholas Boulton, voice of Hawke and a handful of minor NPCs, I asked where he sat on this scale of Dragon Age experience.
"Straight down the middle on a five to be honest," he says. "I played Dragon Age: Origins. I had a few parts of that as well, and got familiar with it there. And then I don't think I ever completed Dragon Age 2, and didn't play Inquisition. But I played a fair bit of 2. And of course, like I said a lot of Origins. Especially when we were recording Dragon Age 2, it was important to get a really good sense of it, to be as familiar with it as possible was really useful."
The main difference between playing a minor NPC and playing the lead, aside from having a lot more lines, is that as an NPC you respond to the player's choices, whereas as the lead you need to embody all the different choices a player can make. "The key when you're playing a pivotal protagonist like Hawke is to keep a really good sense of where you are in your neutral state," he says. "In your natural state, keep it as close to you as you can, and then branch out from there. Of course in Dragon Age's heroic realism, there's an awful lot of the storylines that are terrific and feel very natural and fun. But of course, you've got the dialogue branches into humorous, diplomatic, aggressive or whatever. As far as changing character, I don't think it's to do with a different characterization on those lines, it's just finding a different part of that character. How would he express himself if he had a particularly bad day at the office or whatever. And that's really the key."
While Dragon Age is a series that ditches its protagonist with each new game, Hawke makes a return in Dragon Age: Inquisition, but Boulton describes coming back to voice the role again as a very different experience. "It's kind of like a haunting in a way," he says. "I mean, he's older, wiser, maybe kind of more damaged by then. He's been through a whole thing. But it just seemed like he's an old friend, you're kind of putting the skin on again. There was something kind of poignant about it, I think. Enjoyable to do. It's always nice to get a job anyway, but a good job and a job that's repeating is even better.
"There's also something else about it, of course, is that you're only gonna get to meet Hawke in Dragon Age: Inquisition if you didn't leave him behind in The Fade, and so therefore, you already have an emotional investment in them. I wonder how those people who missed out on that felt."
Dragon Age is not Boulton's only experience with BioWare, however. Like a lot of his cast mates, Boulton has also appeared in Mass Effect, but as a completely different type of character. "Reyes is a scoundrel," Boulton says of his Andromeda role. "Those are the best characters to play. They're most fun, when you've got somebody who perhaps has a moral compass that doesn't point purely to true north. To divert every now and then is entertaining. He's unpredictable, and a fun character to play and also of course, very, very far from who I am naturally. I'm an Anglo-Irishman, and he was, I think Peruvian. Not particularly geographically hitched to any one place, but that flavour. He's a sexy mofo, and a fun one to play."
Reyes is somewhat similar to Dragon Age: Origins' Zevran, whose own voice actor told us he based the role on Antonio Banderas. Fittingly for a space faring game, Boulton's inspiration came from a galaxy far, far, away. "Han Solo," he says, but with one clear distinction. "[Reyes] definitely would have shot first."