Synapseis a highly-anticipated PSVR2 exclusive that takes full advantage of the headset’s features such as eye tracking and headset haptics. Of particular interest is the game’s telekinesis mechanic: players use a combination of motion controls and eye tracking to manipulate the world and aim at targets with shocking precision and immersion. Taking place in the surreal mindscape of the deranged Colonel Conrad,Synapseis also a visually strikingVR gamethanks to vibrant colors contrasting with a monochrome backdrop that serves to showcase the PSVR2’s 4K OLED display.
Synapsealso stars a world-class duo of voice talent:Metal Gear Solidvoice actor David Hayter takes on the role of antagonist Colonel Conrad, while theMass EffectandMetroid Primeactress Jennifer Haleportrays Clara, the player’s handler and guide throughout the game. In an interview with Game Rant, David Hayter and Jennifer Hale spoke about their roles in the game, their thoughts on AI voices, and how they’ve approached a variety of roles in their careers as prolific actors.The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
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Q: How has the experience of voice acting for a virtual reality game differed from traditional games? Are there any unique challenges working in that space?
Hale:Working in a space like this has the same throughline for me, which is “Who am I, what do I want?” All that character stuff, everything that comes out of the writing. I do keep in mind technical considerations, but they don’t change the performance or how the performance goes. It’s always about the being that you’re playing. For me, that’s always my anchor point. There are obviously differences if you’redoing work for VRin just a voice acting capacity, and then also in performance capture. For me, that drives the difference more than anything.
In voice acting, I’ve got to stay in this three-inch cube. I’ve got to stay right here and not leave, regardless of all the things my body may need to do. But if I’m doing performance capture, I’ve got to keep my body super active and moving, but my voice is more like film and TV. Those are the considerations that drove me more than anything in that way.
Hayter:Yeah, acting is acting, and it really comes down to communicating what you want the audience to feel and what you want the character to feel. But having done a few VR games, it tends to be first-person perspective, and because you’re so immersed in the world, you tend to be immersed in the voice as well.
I didPhantom: Covert Opsa couple of yearsago for nDreams, and my voice was coming through loudspeakers. It was just always there, through the whole world. And inSynapse, you invade the mind of my character, Colonel Conrad, so you’re literally in my brain. Knowing that as the performer, I’m trying to put subtleties into it. You’re literally in my mind, and I’m teasing you for it. I’m manipulating you with that fact. So it’s sort of cool from that perspective with this particular technology, but again, acting is acting, and you just want to be as clear as you can.
Q: I recently interviewed Zelda voice actress Patricia Summersett who raised some concerns about AI and how it can be disruptive to the industry. What are your thoughts on the issue?
Hale:I have very clear thoughts on it. I run a support site for actors, and I speak to the newer people a lot on this because I think they’re the ones who need more support than anything.
The fact is, if I took your face – if I grabbed Joey’s image and used it to promote my company – then it wouldn’t be long before I gotsome sort of legal actionthrown my way for giving you absolutely nothing for stealing your image.
And the same is true for our voices. Many people have awakened to this fact and are absolutely present in it, and I really appreciate that. We have rights, and if you’re going to use someone’s voice, they need to be compensated for that. You don’t get to steal people’s voices, because that’s what it’s doing: It’s theft.
My number one request to everybody in the community is let’s not go to fear. Let’s go to specific constructive action. Every time you put your voice somewhere, have the AI rider that NAVA (navavoices.org) provides that we can use. Check and see what’s going on in the contract. Don’t give anything away in perpetuity, ever. You not only have a right to stand up for the use of your voice, you have a responsibility, and that requires all of us to step past any people-pleasing tendencies we may have – to want to be liked and maybe get hired again – and to set a standard for everybody to watch out for each other in this.
I think we are in a really good position because legally, guess what? It’s our voice. No one has a right to steal it. And I think ultimately the law will come down on our side.
Hayter:The computer’s amazing at replicating the voice, but what it is not good at doing is replicating the soul of the person. If you listen to deep fakes of Joe Biden or Trump, it sounds like them tonally, but it also sounds like a computer. You’re never going to get the thousands of subtle emotional cues thatJennifer Hale puts into each linevia computer. I just don’t think that’s ever going to happen. The less scrupulous producers might try to steal our voices or our faces, but as Jennifer says, you have to be vigilant against that. You have to verify that you know what your legal rights are.
I thinkAI is a fun toolthat people will explore and find out the limitations of, and it’ll find its place within our community, but I don’t think it’s going to be writing our scripts and I don’t think it’s going to be performing our performances. If you want to create an Ari Aster film, you’re not going to tell ChatGPT the basics ofMidsommarand getMidsommar. You’re just not. That’s a human being that made that – and a twisted one at that.
So I think Jennifer’s right across the board. Don’t be afraid, know what your rights are, protect yourself and know what’s not okay to steal from other performers.
Hale:To David’s point, I think it’s really easy to get fascinated by the bells and whistles and go, “Oh, my God, that sounds just like that.” Sure, on the surface, it’s a very similar sound. But that word that he used is everything, which is “soul.”
I think that’s what we’ve seen play out time and time again in games, for example, which is that you’re able to hire just anyone to do just any line, but it’s the actors who know how to bring the human soul forth, who move us in ways that stay with us for years and years and years, that change our lives, that elevates us. That element of the soul is everything, and it cannot be duplicated.
As a musician, that really resonates. You can’t program soul. It’s a uniquely human quality that comes from human experience.
Hayter:On the music front, you can listen to versions of Led Zeppelin where the beats are perfect, where every note falls in perfectly, and it’s not the same. That’s computerized music.
Beats weren’t always perfect or sometimes the note would come in a little early, and that’s the soul of the guitarist or the singer or what have you. It’s just not replicable in an original way. I’m not terribly concerned.
Hale:I would venture to say that that’s the thing we’re actually all chasing: the expression of the human soul. We think it’s the content, but it’s the expression of the human soul.
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Q: You’ve both had roles where there are morality-based dialogue trees such asMass Effect’s Shepard or the Jedi Knight inStar Wars: The Old Republic, where players can take these characters in vastly different directions. How do you approach these kinds of characters?
Hale:To everyone, I say “Look in the mirror.” Sometimes you get out of bed, and you’re in a great mood. Other days, you get out of bed and you’re like “Don’t talk to me for a couple hours, leave me alone,” but you’re still the same person. you may get out of bed as one person and something can happen, and in a nanosecond, you’re the other person.
And so playing a character like that – It’s the same character. They’re just hopping from mood to mood and circumstance to circumstance. The throughline is there and it’s very definite. You’re not a wholly different character from line to line, it’s just a different moment, and how you respond to it is with maybe tighter governors or looser governors.
Hayter:That’s an interesting way to put it because playing the Jedi character voice inStar Wars: The Old Republic, that’s one of the prime examples of what you’re talking about. Sometimes he’s the Light Side Jedi, sometimes he’s Dark and he’s threatening, and sometimes he’s just cynical.
I almost use the same voice for all of them, but I kind of feel like they’re different personalities. One of them is kind of a Han Solo, while the Light Side responses are heroic, but kind of bland – he’ll never deviate from “May the Force be with You,” that sort of thing. The cynical guy is just like, “What is wrong with you?” which is so much more fun. The moments whereI’m full-on Dark Sideand I’m like, “I am going to destroy you!” is arguably more fun to do.
I try to deliver it all through the same guy’s vocal cords, but they are different. They’re having different journeys, and some of them are more funny and exasperating than others. I like to be a Light Side guy, and I like to play heroic, but if I was playing my performance, I’d rather hear the Dark Side or I’d rather hear the snide side than just a flat-out unshakeable “good Jedi.”
I just recently replayed theMass Effecttrilogy as a Renegade female Shepard, and there were so many fun lines.
Hale:Paragon is who I wish I was and Renegade is what I wish I could say.
Q: Changing gears, Hayter’s character Conrad inSynapsecomes across as sort of a madman. How do you go about voicing a character who’s a little unhinged?
Hayter:I tend to play pretty unbreakable characters. That’s part of what I bring to a thing: this indomitable will. I think that’s really fun for gamers to play, and this guy is such a prime example of that, except now he’s been locked into this torture device and he’s been put into this “brainalyzer” and they’re sending people into his own brain.
So the key here was, “How do you take somebody who’s of indomitable will, who is used to winning every battle, and have him be so vulnerable to internal attack? How badly does that piss him off? How much more unhinged does that make him? And how much more determined is he to destroy you and Clara and all the rest of them that are messing around inside his head?”
That’s the core tension of the character that I think is really fun.
Q: On that note, the player is inside Conrad’s mind while Hale’s character Clara is mostly guiding the player, and the player isn’t doing a whole lot of talking back. Does it pose a challenge when the dialogue is often one-sided?
Hale:Clara has a mission, and that is one of the clearest things about her character. She’s a dedicated Bureau Five agent, she’s senior, she’s experienced, and she’s determined. She’s giving orders, she’s making this thing go where she needs it to go. So there’s not a lot of listening.
Claire’s not a big listener, she’s a talker. She’s guiding you, and she’s on a mission to destroy David’s character at all costs.
Hayter:Yeah, well, good luck with that!
It’s the same thing for me. It’s such a battle of the wills and I don’t think you hear the player at all, he’s a poor pawn caught between these two titans of military insanity.
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Q: We were talking about how it’s a lot of fun to play those Dark Side characters. Do you have a favorite character “archetype” in terms of performance?
Hayter:What makes a character exciting to me is enthusiasm and fire. That can be for something positive, that can be for something negative, it could be for something egotistical, but whatever it is, they really want it and they’ve got the skills to go and get it.
That gives a layer of confidence of character that’s really fun for the player, and yeah, it’s arguably more fun when it’s for evil because you just take the bumpers off and go a little crazy in a way that heroes aren’t normally allowed to do.
Hale:I would say exactlywhat David said, 100%!
Q: You both worked together in the past onMetal Gear Solid. How did you end up together again onSynapse?
Hayter:I had done another game with nDreams, aVR game calledPhantom:CovertOps, and it was a really cool game. I had an amazing character; I played a Russian military commander who was also pretty unhinged and that was really fun. They asked me if I’d do another game with them, and I said “Absolutely!”
I love this publisher, and I love the games they make and the fact that they offered it to me is pretty flattering, but they were like, “Okay, but the actress playing opposite to you – you’re not going to believe who it is.” And they wouldn’t tell me.
So I recorded the whole game, then I went to a Comic Con and hung out with Jennifer Hale all week and I’m like, “What have you been working on?” and she said, “Oh, you know, I can’t really talk about it.” And then, like that Monday, we had a meeting with nDreams where they revealed to me who the actress was, and it’s Jennifer Hale! I said “Oh, my God. You could’ve mentioned this yesterday at dinner!”
Hale:I knew, he didn’t.
They said, “David’s doing this game.” And I was like, “Yes! Okay, now what’s the game?”
And also,everything that nDreams sent over was really beautiful. It was a beautiful presentation. Everything about it looked incredible. It had a great story, a great setup, and a really fun, interesting character. So I knew we were doing a “big reveal” that we were in the game. And I thought, “Okay, I’m supposed to just pretend to be surprised. I won’t say anything, because that’ll make Dave have to work harder at pretending to be surprised. So I’ll just leave that out of the conversation.”
And also I am a strict NDA obeyer. I never say a word about anything, not to anyone. It drives my kid crazy.
Hayter:Basically, she’s saying my acting would be improved through her lying.
Hale:No! Just your surprise!
Hayter:It was kind of cool because I went into the game and it’s these two characters just going head to head, voice to voice, and the way they were talking about the actress who was going to play it, I thought “Oh, it’s going to be somebody serious.”
So I threw myself into it, assuming that the other actor would have my back and be equally amazing. And then I was like, “Oh, I’m outclassed on every level, but, you know, I still got paid.”
I didn’t hear it until the trailer, but I just knew that Jennifer’s going to bring massive fire and that’s going to be pretty cool.
Hale:And also, for the experience of playing this game, you’re not seeing us – you’re hearing us. Because of the nature of the way the game was built and the way the story is shown and experienced by you, you’re essentially being batted around between these two forces.
Hayter:We’re literally in your head and it’s a pretty compelling world and effect.
Q: You’ve both played roles in not only video games but other media as well. Is it different when you’re playing a video game character as opposed to something on film?
Hale:For me, the baseline is always acting, it’s always whatever the writer put down because writers make the world go round. Writers are everything, and I live to honor whatever that writer put on the page and what the team has in their heart that they want to see come to life.
There are always technical considerations and style and tone considerations, like maybe it’s a little more over the top, or are we sharing this experience with younger kids, or is it for adults? Is thetone of it black comedy? Or is the tone a serious intensive sci-fi drama experience? Those are some of the fine-tuning considerations. But yeah, character is always at the foundation of it.
Hayter:If you’re on camera, most of the time you’re sitting around in a trailer, it’s super boring, or it’s terribly cold, or it’s incredibly hot, or you’re covered in toxic goo. Always covered in goo.
I directed a movie calledWolves, and I murdered Jennifer in the opening sequence. At four o’clock in the morning, I dumped a bucket of blood onto her and she was just covered in this sticky blood, and she comes up to me looking like a horror show and she’s like, “Can you believe we get paid to do this for a living?!” Such an enthusiastic actor.
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Hale:It’s so much fun just hanging around watching Dave direct and watching the whole thing go down, that I hung around long enough for all the blood on my costume – which, yes, he did dump like five gallons of fake blood all over me – and so it dried.
What I forgot as I went to change clothes is that it essentially becomes like wax and rips everything off with it when you go to change. Oh my god. That was an awakening, for sure.
Hayter:He wasn’t there at the time, but she used Jason Momoa’s trailer to shower off the blood and left it looking likePsycho.
Hale:No matter what I tried to do! I was so careful. Like, “Okay, keep it neat. Keep it clean.” But once you start splattering water on that fake blood, it just scattered everywhere!
Hayter:And Momoa was like “Who killed somebody in my shower?”
Hale:He had hot water though. I didn’t have hot water, and I was dying!
Q: Speaking of the writers, how much creative freedom did you guys have with your voice roles inSynapse? Was there very specific direction from the team as far as your performances?
Hale:One of the things that I loved and really appreciated as an actor was that they brought us in because they liked our previous body of work, but they didn’t tie us to our previous body of work.
For my part, when I came in, they had a really clear sense of Clara and really specific ideas about the elements of her sound and her tone, and how she expresses herself vocally. We got to tinker together and create that and bring it together, which was really awesome. It was inventive. It was new, it was different. I really enjoyed that.
Hayter:For me, once again I’m playing a career soldier. So obviously there are elements of Snake that play into that and in a way, this game is like stepping into Solid Snake’s brain and fighting all the demons that he’s collected along the way. However, it’s notMetal Gear. While I still sound like Snake in some ways, no matter what I do, I really tried to focus on the version of insanity that this guy was playing.
I usedMichael Keaton and Batmanas my inspiration. “You want to get nuts? Come on, let’s get nuts!” That sort of thing. And so while Snake is back here in the back of the voice, this guy’s kind of up here, like, “Okay, you’re going to take this on? I’m going to destroy you.” Really showcasing the insanity of it.
I just sat down in the booth. The nDreams guys and I worked on it together and came up with the final result. We don’t typically as voice actors have a lot of impact on the writing of the games. They’re set by various factors, computers, and scripts. But as far as the voices go, we do get a good amount of freedom to develop what we want to do usually. Although sometimes they’ll just say, “Just do Snake” and I’ll be like (In Snake’s voice) “I don’t want to. I’d rather not.”
[END]
Synapsereleases on July 4 for PSVR2.
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