Bethesda gave Starfield’s player voice actors new roles after scrapping all their work

Your character in Bethesda’s massive RPG Starfield was originally supposed to be voiced. While that part is already common knowledge, it wasn’t known that the player character’s voices were completely recorded.

Revealed in a Twitter post, voice actor Elias Toufexis, known for his role as Deus Ex’s Adam Jensen, explained that he and voice actor Cissy Jones recorded months worth of dialogue for the player characters.

However, partway through development, Bethesda decided to scrap protagonist voices. After all, the feature was a controversial addition to Fallout 4 which many fans believed lacked the depth of the series’ prior entries due to its need for players to be voiced.

“Yeah it’s true. [Cissy Jones] and I were originally the player voices in Starfield. We worked for months,” Toufexis explained.

While Bethesda did eventually scrap the voiced protagonists Toufexis and Jones provided, they also offered the voice actors new positions as part of the main cast of companions to compensate for their work being removed. Furthermore, their grunts and huffs for the player characters were gracefully kept in the final product.

In his Twitter post, Toufexis praised Bethesda for giving the actors more work and allowing them to continue being attached to the project. The voice actor explained that this type of protection never happens in the games industry.

“When they decided the player should be voiceless they gave Cissy and me Andreja and Sam Coe,” Toufexis explained. “Games NEVER do this. Once you’re out you’re out. Good on Bethesda.”

As Xbox’s biggest exclusive in years, Starfield has unfortunately had a rocky launch, and an even rockier development. With modders upset at the game essentially locking them out and the absence of features found in past Bethesda titles, Starfield is a good game with some major flaws.

Nevertheless, there will be new content coming for Starfield in the near future. The first Starfield Shattered Space release date is just around the corner, at least based on past Bethesda expansion timelines.

While Bethesda is hard at work on its Starfield DLC, the studio is simultaneously working on The Elder Scrolls VI. As the first Elder Scrolls game since 2011’s Skyrim, fans are incredibly excited to finally get to explore Tamriel in another single-player adventure. Yes, Elder Scrolls Online is also fun, but it’s just not the same.

Starfield is available right now on Xbox Series and PC. The game can also be played via Xbox Cloud Gaming on PC, Mobile and Xbox One.