By now, most of the players who have jumped into it Shadow of the Erdtree probably met Igon, Old Ring‘s most tormented yet fervent hater. Since the expansion’s release a few weeks ago, Igon has quickly become a fan favorite characterwhich has a lot to do with the passionate delivery of his lines by his voice actor Richard Lintern. It’s no surprise that the experience of recording the lines for Lintern was as “epic” as most of our encounters with his arch-nemesis, Bayle.
In an interview with IGNLintern—who had never done voice work before Old Ring—discusses how the character of Igon largely came about during his recording session. As an NPC in a Hidetaka Miyazaki game, Igon doesn’t have many lines, which Lintern was well aware of going into it. Initially, Lintern assumed he could finish his lines in about 40 minutes. The whole thing ended up taking about five to six hours. However, Lintern thoroughly enjoyed the experience, saying, “It felt creative and involved. And I didn’t really know what I was doing, but I knew I had fun doing it.”
Funnily enough, Lintern frames the VO session a bit as a boss fight that you encounter in a FromSoft game. According to him, he walked into the studio and found more than a dozen people gathered Old Ring‘s director Hidetaka Miyazaki, who compares Lintern to a “god of the gaming world.”
“I didn’t know the game, and I didn’t know the status of the game, and I didn’t know [Miyazaki’s] status. But when I walked into the room, his status was very clear, very clear right away. Everyone was very friendly, but at the same time I could see that this was a bigger deal than I thought.”
He describes Miyazaki as “the mysterious figure in the middle of the room… who has complete control of the operation.” After reading a sentence, it would be channeled back to Miyazaki, who would then take notes. “We would do lines hundreds of times, literally hundreds of times, because if I was there for five hours, I could have done the total number of lines I said in seven minutes,” Lintern said. I can see him walking through those theoretical fog gates again and again. Lintern says the most consistent note he got was simply to spice things up. “Do you have more? Can you explode?”
And damn, did the man explode. Lintern, who in his own words had to go from “zero to 5,000” for his portrayal of Igon, claims he “gave it his all, vocally, emotionally, neck-cracking, vocal cord-tearing, everything,” before taking a water break and letting it run down. Lintern’s director must have told him to take five, but I think he heard “change lives” instead and delivered the performance of a lifetime.
Lintern claims to be exhausted in more ways than one by the end of the session, and if that doesn’t sound like the feeling of triumph over a FromSoft boss, I don’t know what does. I’m visibly shaken by the end of most of the toughest encounters, including one that consumed my entire Saturday afternoon and evening during my first run of Bloodborne. I held my breath and then let out the deepest exhalations as I did that final blow of damage. I didn’t cry, but I did scream at the top of my lungs as I tasted the ichor of victory.
Elsewhere, Lintern talks about his time with Old Ring has given him more opportunities in voice acting, which is great considering the fan base his first attempt has garnered. Despite how little he knew about the gameand the mysterious atmosphere that hung around Miyazaki the whole time, Lintern still managed to save it. Now Igon is already one of the most beloved characters in one of the most esteemed catalogues of games. How’s that for a first day on a new job?