Jennifer Hale has voiced some of the best known characters in gaming. However, despite being an extremely prolific voice actress, many fans of her work do not even realize that the characters are played by the same actor.
Hale has voiced characters from Mass Effect to Metal Gear Solid, and her range is as impressive as some of her work is surprising. She has played characters who go through some of the most tumultuous emotional arcs in video game narratives, and manages to pull them off. Here are 5 of her most iconic performances in video games.
Jennifer Hale provided the iconic voice of BioWare’s female Commander Shepard, AKA FemShep, throughout the original Mass Effect trilogy. Not only was she able to give the character a unique flare that distinguished her from her male counterpart, but she also got to have some of the best romances in the entire game, particularly with fan-favorite Turian sniper Garrus Vakarian. With the Mass Effect trilogy remaster likely set to be announced on N7 Day 2020, if not before as some rumors suggest, fans will be glad to hear the return of FemShep in the not-so-distant future.
Mass Effect wasn’t the first time Hale voiced a character for a BioWare project. She played Bastila Shan, one of the more complicated characters in BioWare’s Knights of the Old Republic. During the Jedi Civil War she Is tasked with capturing Darth Revan, and after she does so the Jedi Council wipes his memory of being a Sith Lord, leaving Bastila one of few characters with insight into Revan’s true past.
She also turns to the Dark Side herself as Darth Malak’s apprentice, before being turned back to the light by Revan. It’s a complicated story full of twists, turns and treachery, and Hale helps bring it to life with her performance.
Rosalind Lutece is one of the most interesting characters in BioShock Infinite. A quantum physicist, Lutece spends most of her time with her “twin” Robert, who turns out to be a version of her that she found in a parallel reality. The segments with the pair as they guide Troy Baker’s Booker DeWitt through the floating city of Colombia are some of the most entertaining and enigmatic in the game.
At different times playing the role of scientist, at others more closely resembling the angel of death, Rosalind Lutece shows Hale’s range and demonstrates that while she’s great at playing characters like Shepard designed to be relatable, she’s also great at playing some of gaming’s most alienating and strange characters.
Hale voices the English-language version of Naomi Hunter in the Metal Gear Solid franchise, including her original British accent and the American accent used in the 2004 remake. Hunter fled Zimbabwe in the 1980s and vowed revenge on Solid Snake after he defeated Big Boss and left Gray Fox disabled. Later in the story, she aids Snake on his missions, and Hale is able to play with some real emotional range for the character as she tries to sabotage Snake’s mission.
Leah is Deckard Cain’s ward in Diablo 3, and Hale plays her masterfully as she uncovers her true destiny and becomes the vessel for Diablo himself. Hale manages to play the character as interchangeably young and vulnerable and extremely threatening, and she quickly becomes the main character of the game and a fascinating moral complication to the sometimes black-and-white cosmology of the Diablo universe.
Fans will be excited to see what Jennifer Hale has in store next, and with a resume like hers hopefully it will not be long until gamers get to hear more of her performances in the not-too-distant future.
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