Far Cry 3‘s loss is Deus Ex‘s gain.
Voice actor Elias Toufexis, speaking at London’s MGM Comic Con, lamented – with a slight hint of irony – that success has cost him work. His performance made Deus Ex‘s Adam Jensen stand out, but other development teams became wary of using him, fearing that his Jensen would overshadow any work he did for other titles. Far Cry 3 replaced him as Jason Brody for exactly that reason. “It’s justifiable,” said Toufexis, “it’s understandable, but my normal voice is what I used for that character too. So now it’s like I’m losing work because Jensen is so popular.”
“I knew about Deus Ex [before auditioning for the part] because I was a PC gamer as a kid,” says Toufexis, whose two favorites were Deus Ex and Wing Commander, but all the studio gave him as a hint sheet was ‘Jensen’s kind of a Clint Eastwood character.’ Then, once he had the part, he had to find his voice. That’s why, early on in the story when Jensen’s in the cop shop trying to convince a former colleague to let him in the front door, his voice sounds very different when compared to his performance in the rest of the game.
“That was my first day,” Toufexis recalls, “and I was just finding the voice, and finding the character.” He then forgot about it until much later, when he heard his performance after the game shipped, only to be horrified by the way that sequence turned out. He even called Square Enix; “you guys couldn’t change that one line, where I sound like I’m from the Bronx?”
But those days are done, and now he has new projects on the go. “The games I’m working on now, I know they’re going to be next gen,” he says, “and I can’t wait to see what they’re going to do with them.” Nor can we!
