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Astarion's actor from Baldur's Gate 3, Neil Newborn, believes the key to the RPGs omega success, including tens of millions of copies sold and numerous accolades, is developer Larian's insistence on putting "the player first over profit."
Speaking at a panel on Baldur's Gate 3 at Rhode Island Comic Con featuring five of the game's actors, the fan-favorite character's actor gives his opinion on why the tabletop-style RPG was so successful, giving the example of Larian's late addition of more player pronouns.
"If we needed to redo something, they spent the money, and we did it," Newborn says. "They added in they/them [pronouns] at a huge staggering cost of money. Because I tried to kind of do a mind palace [and] work out how much it was. It's insane, and mine is probably an underestimate of how much it cost. But they did it anyway because they wanted players to feel representation."
The cost Newborn is likely talking about is in hours spent in the booth. Actors need to record several versions of each line, not only to offer different versions to the director, but so there are versions for differences like pronouns. With how much dialogue there is, it's very likely the addition of just one extra set of pronouns added up to dozens of extra voice acting hours for the cast.
"I think the point is that," Newborn adds. "As we've known before, and as we've seen Larian and other games coming up afterwards as well of different genres within the gaming space, if you put the player first over profit, you're gonna make a better game, it's going to be well received, and you're probably gonna sell a shit-ton of copies of it." And we didn't think we could stan our problematic fave vampire any harder.
