Key Takeaways
- Neil Newbon didn’t hear back from the Fallout: London team for 18 months.
- Someone had seen his message, but didn’t know who he was because Astarion hadn’t become popular yet.
- Newbon admires the passion of the Fallout: London team and loves that the project wasn’t for profit.
Baldur’s Gate 3‘s Neil Newbon reached out to the Fallout: London team to offer his services as a volunteer, but didn’t hear back for almost 18 months.
Newbon revealed this in an interview with GinxTV (nice spot, Videogamer), saying he was immediately interested in the project. Unfortunately, the role that catapulted Newbon into voice actor superstardom, Astarion from Baldur’s Gate 3, hadn’t reached mainstream popularity yet. So, although someone from the team had seen his message originally, they didn’t know who he was and didn’t respond as a result.
“I just heard about it: Astarion and Baldur’s Gate 3 had just kicked off in a wonderful way,” Newbon began. “I’d heard about Fallout: London for a while and I’d already sent them a message like a year before. Maybe two years – it was a long time ago, saying ‘Hey, this sounds great, I want to be involved.'”
Although Newbon had prominent voice acting roles before Astarion, such as Karl Heisenberg in Resident Evil Village, there’s no doubt that his portrayal of the vampiric Elf made Newbon a household name in gaming. After Team FOLON realised the actor was interested, they were able to write a character for him, Barry the Boat.
“They missed my message, for about a year and a half. Apparently one of the guys said, ‘Oh I got this message from him ages ago on Twitter, but I don’t know who this guy is.'”
Barry the Boat is a literal robotic boat currently experiencing existentialism as he rallies against the notion that he need always be a mindless boat. Newbon expressed in the interview that he loved the volunteer nature of Fallout: London and that it was refreshing to do something for artistic, not monetary, reasons.
Newbon also revealed a couple of other tidbits during the interview, like how motion capture technology saved his acting career, and how he’d like to play Seifer in a potential Final Fantasy 8 remake. It’s been a relatively quiet 2024 for Newbon, having played the aforementioned role of Barry the Boat in Fallout: London, and Dracula in Vampire Survivors’ Castlevania DLC.
Baldur’s Gate 3 is the long-awaited next chapter in the Dungeons & Dragons-based series of RPGs. Developed by Divinity creator Larian Studios, it puts you in the middle of a mind flayer invasion of Faerûn, over a century after the events of its predecessor.