Editor’s Note – January 3rd, 2021: The original version of this interview is now live and visible to read below. This includes a link to the previously hidden audio version of the interview on Soundcloud. Please note that this Q&A includes major spoilers for the game. If you have not played the game yet, please keep that in mind.
Editor’s Note – December 3rd, 2020: The original version of this interview was removed as requested by Digital Sound Magic and My Dearest, due to information that was not ready to be shared and/or could be considered as major spoilers. The full version of this interview will be available January 3rd, 2021.
Hello everyone. Those of you that keep a close eye on the news at Informed Pixel may have noticed that we recently published a piece about Altdeus: Beyond Chronos. If you managed to miss out on reading that piece, you can find it here.
Following that piece going live on the site, the owner of Informed Pixel, Jordan Wharton, was able to sit down and talk with the voice actor Chelsey Moore about her lead role in the upcoming VR game Altdeus: Beyond Chronos.
The interview followed a Q&A format and touched on everything from Chelsey’s voice acting history to the Altdeus: Beyond Chronos game itself. Whilst the full audio version of this interview can be found on the Informed Pixel Soundcloud, please enjoy a summarised written version of the interview below.
Question: For those who might not know a lot about your previous work, can you tell us a little bit of history about your acting and exactly how you ended up voice acting in games?
Chelsey: I’ve kind of been all over the place in terms of how I got here, to this exact moment. Growing up I did a ton of musical theatre. I was always doing plays and local theatre, and then when I was trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life my mom was like “oh yeah why don’t you go to acting school” and I’m like “You don’t need to go to school to be an actor.” It turns out you do.
So I went to acting school and out of that I started auditioning for film and television. I mean singing has kind of always been my main thing. I would drag my sister into my room and sing her songs over and over again and she was like “k”.
Voice acting kind of came about because I was trying to figure out how to do more singing within the film and TV world, and there was a few animation shows here in Vancouver, like My Little Pony was here, they would have singing. So I was like “okay cool let’s train and break into the voice over world.”
So I got a coach and we put together my demo reel, and we’ve come full circle here as he plays Yamato in Altdeus. It was kinda funny showing up to the studio. I think I saw him once and I was like “hey, my teacher.”
I’ve got to do some cool things though. I do a musical every year, except for this year due to the pandemic. Evil Dead the musical, which some people might know. It’s kinda niche but it’s based on the Evil Dead movies and we get to throw fake blood on people in the audience.
Question: Moving on from your history, you’ve just done a voice over role for a game. Have you played many games in the past? Are you much of a gamer yourself?
I’m from the Nintendo crowd, I grew up playing mostly Mario. I grew up with Duck hunt, Super Mario World, Mario Kart. N64 games were kind of the last sort of stop. I just recently got a switch which has been kinda fun. I play Luigi’s Mansion and Super Smash Bros and all those ones. My main is Yoshi. I love him because he does the drop kick.
Question: Before now have you ever looked into Virtual Reality or tried Virtual Reality or is a new concept for you?
It is kind of a new concept for me, but I have tried it before. I have a friend who owns a VR production company here and sometimes they’ll do nights where they invite people to try and their latest games. I was able to try a few VR games a few years ago. I don’t know if they ever made it out into the world, but it was super cool.
I have tried it (VR) but I’m definitely not up to speed with all the Oculus games that are coming out. Hopefully that’ll change, I think I just need to make friends with someone who has an Oculus.
It’s pretty exciting what’s coming out with the game (Altdeus). The graphics are really amazing and it’s super cool that you’re fully immersed in the world. I think that is the future. That’s why I’m excited about VR because that’s what’s going to be on the horizon. It’s gonna be THE way the game going forward I think.
Question: What was it about the character Chloe that appealed to you when you were looking into the role?
So I auditioned for the project right at the start at the pandemic. You know, you audition for things and just don’t hear back in forever so I’ve kind of learned to forget about the auditions. When I found out that I booked the role I was like “Oh sweet, great, I’ve got a job” and then I had to go back and see which job it was for.
When you get sent auditions they’ll send you the character breakdowns and then whatever characters you feel you can comfortably voice, you voice them. I believe I sent an audition tape for Chloe, one for Coco and I think there was one but I sent in but I can’t remember.
So when I read that it was Chloe I was like “oh my goodness” because her whole thing is that she’s a designed human. She was created specifically by the scientist in the game to be a fighter and an ultimate killing machine. That’s cool to me. She’s got her one goal, to kill. I like people who have a little bit of a direction in life. I thought that was so badass and it would be a dream to voice that badassery y’know.
The more I looked into it and her whole journey that she befriends Coco and Coco helps her on her path to learning human emotions and discovering the beauty of the world, which is where the VR component comes in. I always thought that was kinda funny that you’ve got this badass on the surface tough character but then underneath you’ve got this robot becoming “human” in terms of discovering the beauty of the world.
I find often when I personally go through life you go through life on autopilot. The more I read into Chloe and the more I found out about her the more I thought she was just like everybody. She’s just going through life trying to achieve your goal and chase your dreams and also to stop and smell the flowers and rediscover the beauty of the world.
I definitely see myself in the role, which is so cliché to say. It was such an honour to get to be inside her head. Everyday I showed up to record I was like “oh man what kinda cool stuff are we gonna do today.”
Question: Have you had a chance to play Altdeus: Beyond Chronos and see Chloe in action with your voice behind her?
No I haven’t. They haven’t really sent us any gameplay. We did the voice work and that’s it. I think we get to play the game with everybody else when it comes out, but throughout recording we did have some images of the game that we could base our performances off of. That’s kind of all I get to see for now.
There was a cool thing that happened with the trailer, I was telling my dad about this. They created a trailer about a year ago just to put something out into the world and get some hype around the game.
When I was recording Chloe I sent my dad this trailer, and there was no voice acting in it just graphics from the game and some pretty intense music. So my dad responded back to me and he was like “Good job” and I was like “Good job? I didn’t do anything in it.” I watched back the link that I’d sent him and what had happened was they’d released a new trailer that day with my voice acting in, that I didn’t know about, and then I sent that to my dad so my dad heard my voice in the game before I even did.
Question: What excites you the most about Altdeus: Beyond Chronos?
The whole Visual Novel thing is really great in the Virtual Reality world because you’re fully immersed and you get to explore the different sections of the game. The graphics, the rooms, the various place. The Visual Novel aspect is really great and it goes hand in hand with Virtual Reality.
With Altdeus there’s 3 different components to the game. There’s the Visual Novel, which is the storytelling aspect where you get the relationships between the characters. That’s where the story really shines through.
Then, you have the interactive parts of the game as well. There’s full on battle scenes which are pretty fun. I got to voice some pretty intense battle scenes within the game, so it’s not just a Visual Novel it’s also interactive.
But then my favourite part was the concert component. Music has a huge influence in the game. They’ve got some amazing musicians that have come in and done music in the game, so there’s a fully immersive concert part of it as well.
I was consistently surprised by the game. Every new titbit of information I was like “Oh my god this sounds super cool.”
Question: Moving away from games and back to yourself in terms of the voice acting, do you have any plans to stay in games in terms of voice acting, or are you just going to take the work as you get it?
I would love to stay in video games. It was so much fun. Like what I was saying before, the quality of writing and the quality of voice acting has skyrocketed in the past decade. It would be a dream to make a living voicing video game characters. Really my whole goal is to be in an animated series or to be in a tv show as a regular character.
It is at this point in my career “I’ll take what I can get” but it’d be a dream to continue in the video game world. We do a lot of dubbing here in Vancouver so that’d be pretty fun too. Just to be able to use my voice as a way to make a living would be amazing. If I could just sing or just talk, I’d be so happy if that’s how my life ends up turning out. Small steps working towards it though.
There’s other places to go in Canada that do video games, like Montreal is a pretty big hub for video games. Getting down to LA would be a pretty big step too but you gotta have a resume to back it up.
Question: Have you got any tips for someone who’s starting out in voice acting or wanting to get into it about how to start building that resume up?
Really if you’re brand brand new, take a couple of acting classes. You need the acting ability to carry a character forward. Even a bad voice or a bad accent is not as bad as bad acting. Just get involved in community theatre as well. That will help build your voice. You wanna have proper speaking technique, breaking technique, breath support, that kinda thing.
YouTube also is a great resource. I follow tons of people on YouTube for their singing and vocal warmups. I’ll just be in my apartment going “nya nya” and my neighbours are like “k.” I’m a huge fan of creating your own content. For my demo reel I wrote a lot of my own lines, just to embody the certain characters that I wanted to portray on my demo reel.
After you’ve got your demo reel it’s time to start looking for agents. I would say if you’re wanting to be a film or TV actor you have to go to a main city or a hub where that happens, so for me it’s Vancouver, but with Voice Over work you can record a lot from your house. You can kinda do it, I know some studios don’t like that but some are okay with it. You have a little bit more freedom with where you live, so if you’re in a small town you’re not totally out of luck.
Question: Do you have any closing statements regarding Altdeus: Beyond Chronos or voice acting in general?
The one thing I forgot to mention was you’re going to be playing as my character. The character that I voice is the one you’re playing as and then you interact with all the other characters.
Well, that concludes the Q&A. A massive thank you to Chelsey Moore for taking part in the Q&A. We certainly look forward to seeing where she goes from here and can’t wait to check out Altdeus: Beyond Chronos. Altdeus: Beyond Chronos releases on Oculus VR Devices on December 3rd, 2020. For more information on the game, you can check out the games official twitter account here.
For more reviews and gaming news you can keep up to date at Informed Pixel. Want to speak to the team and interact with other gamers? You can do so over on the Informed Pixel Facebook page or on the Informed Pixel Twitter account.
