You don’t always know what you’re going to get when you open up your casting call to blind auditions. For the team at Sandfall Interactive, this meant judging every audition in Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 solely by the performance, not by famous names.
As CEO and Creative Director Guillame Broche explains in a recent interview with Pirate Software, this process led to a genuine surprise. “It was, yeah, blind auditions, which is very funny because we got Ben Starr and Jennifer English, but when they sent their audition, we didn’t even know it was them. So it was just random, and they were just that good.”
Instead of targeting well-known actors, the studio sifted through a pile of anonymous recordings, just voices, with no background information or hint at the person behind each character. It wasn’t until the team picked their favourites that they realised who they had actually chosen. “Yeah, it turned out they were quite big in the voice acting world.” Guillame laughs.
If you’re not keeping score, Ben Starr is known for playing the beloved main protagonist, Clive, in Final Fantasy XVI, and Jennifer English is known for fan favourite and God’s favourite princess, Shadowheart, in Baldur’s Gate 3, two of the biggest roles in modern RPGs. Both actors landed roles in Clair Obscur, not because of their reputation, but because their auditions stood out.
Ultimately, the team’s commitment to a fair audition process meant they accidentally stumbled onto top-tier talent. The result? Two standout performers are joining the cast, chosen on merit alone, before the developers even realised they’d recruited some of the most recognisable voices in games right now.
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