“I would have loved to have a female role model like Aloy when I was little”

Although it is becoming common to find triple A video games starring women The truth is that it has not always been this way. This Friday opens Horizon Forbidden West the second installment of the saga starring Aloy, a warrior from the Nora tribe who faces machines with animal forms in a world between archaic and post-apocalyptic, voiced by actress Michelle Jenner.

I have played since I was little and the references that I had were not the ones that exist now. I would have loved to have had an Aloy when I was younger.“, said Michelle Jenner, Aloy’s dubber in the Spanish version of the game, in an interview with Europa Press.

Jenner, in addition to being a regular face in film and television, is also one of the most recognized dubbing voices in Spain, thanks to roles such as Hermione Granger in the Harry Potter films, with a career that began as a child when she was just six years old. At that time, the nineties, video game protagonists were almost all men and the few women tended to be sexualized.

In the saga from PlayStation Studios developer Guerrilla Games, Aloy is a strong and independent warrior who has to hunt huge machines and solve mysteries. “You don’t always get roles and characters like that and I’ve enjoyed it a lot“, has assured Jenner, who values ​​​​the character he plays as “an icon” and “a marvel”.

Now, embarks for the second time on the mission to voice Aloy in the new installment Horizon Forbidden West after having already played this character in her debut, Horizon Zero Dawn, released in 2017. “As Aloy, she had not done any character until now. It is very special, and also the world in which she lives,” she has valued.

The actress, more common in other fields such as cinema and animation, now reaches a different sector such as videogames which also has its peculiarities and different ways of working behind the microphones.

“Normally when you’re with the video game you don’t just work with the image, and most of the time you work by viewing the audio waveform. It’s a bit strange, because you have to match your voice and many times you are not seeing what is happening“, has described the voice of Aloy in Spanish.

Jenner has highlighted the greatest The importance of using your imagination in video game dubbing to understand the context of the situation and the character. However, he believes that he had the information he needed to get the job done at all times.

The return of the voice of Hermione Granger to a video game in Horizon Forbidden West is one more case within the growing presence of actors and celebrities in game dubbing, and that in other cases have not been well received among the players. Clara Lago recently voiced Cleopatra in Assassin’s Creed Origins, while comedian Dani Mateo lent himself to the dubbing of Knowledge is Power, the PlayStation PlayLink quiz.

What always has to prevail is respect for the product and the viewer and that whoever decides looks for an option that is the best to maintain quality and give the viewer the best possible product”, Jenner commented on this aspect, noting that her reception in the role of Aloy among the ‘gamer’ community since Horizon Zero Dawn it has been “very good”.

“THE VIDEO GAME IS CULTURE”

The attraction of talent from other disciplines to the video game sector can be seen as another symptom of its growth. Not in vain, the video game industry invoiced 1,747 million euros in Spain in 2020more than any other form of entertainment, according to data from the 2020 AEVI Yearbook.

In this context, there are many who are increasingly inclined to identify the video game as a culture, something in which Jenner agrees: “For me the video game is also culture, it is something that also makes you feelthat tells you a story and that makes you live an experience and think“.

In film and television, the choice between dubbing or original version with subtitles it is usually precisely one of the sources of disagreement among those who debate about what is the way to consume culture in foreign languages. The case of video games, whose original version tends to be in English, is no exception.

Some video game studios have clearly positioned themselves before this debate, as is the case with Rockstar Games developer of the popular Grand Theft Auto and Red Dead Redemption sagas, which does not allow the dubbing of its titles into other languages. However, the most common nowadays is that the player can choose the language that he prefers.

“I’m a dubbing actress and many times I see movies in the original version and others dubbed,” Jenner acknowledged, who has also clearly positioned herself in this debate: “I think the beauty is that the player can choose and have the option they prefer“.

By Editor

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