Azrael the cat
Arcane
I don't mean that in the sense of 'game sux, he could do better' - I've loved the fuck out of this game, and it's had me addicted to crpg gaming in a way that no game has since...well...the last era in which a company helmed by Fargo made crpgs. What I mean is that the quality of the voice-acting was writing cheques that the characterisation couldn't cash.
I know a lot of folk have the opposite opinion. He certainly wasn't a David Warner character, where it doesn't matter what lines he's saying because you could listen to the guy's delivery all day. But that part was on track, for me - an overly cool 'love to hate' villain wouldn't have suited the kind of cult that the guardians and children of the citadel are portrayed as, and I liked the whole 'low charisma, I'm just a reasonable guy doing what's reasonable, see how reasonable I am?'.
I was completely satisfied with him as a villain all the way through to the Cochise takeover...when the voice actor suddenly stepped up about 10 notches, creating an image of a far more complex villain. He absolutely nailed the delivery for 'I have so many plans. I have so many plans...' Not meglomania - which is how most actors would have done it - but oozing an honest desire to lift the world from darkness, with himself as dictator not out of ego, but because someone has to step up and do the job.
But of course, we only get the barest outline of that in the characterisation itself. It's certainly consistent with the game's writing that Matthias could be a complex character - not just a tragic antagonist, but someone several steps more complex than Fallout's Master, who may have agonised over the killing but knew that it had to be done. But there's nothing in the game that creates that - it's just fanwank between the lines, assisted by the actor outdoing the script for those final lines.
I know a lot of folk have the opposite opinion. He certainly wasn't a David Warner character, where it doesn't matter what lines he's saying because you could listen to the guy's delivery all day. But that part was on track, for me - an overly cool 'love to hate' villain wouldn't have suited the kind of cult that the guardians and children of the citadel are portrayed as, and I liked the whole 'low charisma, I'm just a reasonable guy doing what's reasonable, see how reasonable I am?'.
I was completely satisfied with him as a villain all the way through to the Cochise takeover...when the voice actor suddenly stepped up about 10 notches, creating an image of a far more complex villain. He absolutely nailed the delivery for 'I have so many plans. I have so many plans...' Not meglomania - which is how most actors would have done it - but oozing an honest desire to lift the world from darkness, with himself as dictator not out of ego, but because someone has to step up and do the job.
But of course, we only get the barest outline of that in the characterisation itself. It's certainly consistent with the game's writing that Matthias could be a complex character - not just a tragic antagonist, but someone several steps more complex than Fallout's Master, who may have agonised over the killing but knew that it had to be done. But there's nothing in the game that creates that - it's just fanwank between the lines, assisted by the actor outdoing the script for those final lines.
