By now, most players who are in Shadow of the Earth Tree probably met Igon, Fire ring‘s most tormented but ardent hater. Since the expansion’s release a few weeks ago, Igon has quickly become a Fans’ favorite characterThis is largely due to the passionate way in which his voice actor, Richard Lintern, delivers his lines. Unsurprisingly, the experience of recording the lines was as “epic” for Lintern as most of our encounters with his arch-nemesis Bayle.
In an interview with IGNLintern—who had never worked as a voice actor Fire ring— explains how the character Igon was created largely in the middle of his recording session. As an NPC in a Hidetaka Miyazaki game, Igon doesn’t have many lines, something Lintern was well aware of from the start. Initially, Lintern expected to finish his lines in about 40 minutes. The whole thing ended up taking about five to six hours. However, Lintern really enjoyed the experience, saying, “It felt creative and engaging. And I didn’t know exactly what I was doing, but I knew I was going to enjoy it.”
Funnily enough, Lintern designs the VO session pretty much like a Boss fight as you would find in a FromSoft game. According to him, he came to the studio and found more than a dozen people working on Fire ringis the director Hidetaka Miyazaki, whom Lintern compares to a “god of the gaming world”.
“I didn’t know the game, 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 immediately very clear. Everyone was very friendly, but at the same time I could see that this was a bigger deal than I had imagined.”
He describes Miyazaki as “the mysterious figure in the middle of the room… who is very much in control of the whole operation.” After a line was read, it went back through multiple channels to Miyazaki, who then took notes. “We repeated the lines hundreds of times, literally hundreds, because if I had been there for five hours, I would have done the actual total number of lines I spoke in seven minutes,” Lintern recounted. I can see him going back through those theoretical fog locks again and again. Lintern says the most consistent note he got throughout was simply to get things going. “Do you have any more? Can you explode?”
And damn did the man explode. Lintern – who says he had to go from “zero to 5000” for his portrayal of Igon – claims he “gave as much as I could, vocally, emotionally, neck stretching, vocal cord tearing, everything” before taking a drink break and replaying the scene. Lintern’s director must have told him to give it a break, but I think he heard “change lives” instead and delivered the performance of a lifetime.
Lintern claims he was exhausted in many ways by the end of the session, and if that doesn’t sound like the feeling of triumphing over a FromSoft boss, I don’t know what else could. I was visibly shaken by the end of the most grueling encounters, including one that took me an entire Saturday afternoon and evening during my first playthrough. Blood transfused. I held my breath and then let it out deeply on the last point of damage. I didn’t cry, but I screamed at the top of my lungs when I tasted the victory secretion.
Elsewhere, Lintern talks about how his time at Fire ring has opened up more opportunities for him as a voice actor, which is great considering how many fans he built up with his first attempt. Although he knew about the gameand despite the aura of mystery that surrounded Miyazaki all along, Lintern managed to pull it off. Now, Igon is already one of the most popular characters in one of the most respected gaming catalogs. How’s that for the first day in a new job?
