On August 3, 2023, the gaming realm was graced with the release of one of the most acclaimed RPGs of all time—Baldur's Gate 3. Set in the enchanting world of Dungeons and Dragons, its captivating storyline has mesmerized millions of adventurers over the past year. After our interview with The Witcher 3's voice and casting team, we thought it’d be a fantastic quest to uncover the secrets behind this unparalleled production.

In a truly exclusive interview, we had the rare opportunity to chat with Tom Pallai, the Voice and Casting Director for Baldur's Gate 3. For the first time ever, Tom reveals the magical process behind the casting and voice acting that brought the game’s characters to life. Prepare yourself for an inside scoop that’s as thrilling as a critical hit on a mind flayer!

SzinkronJunkie: Hi, Tom! Throughout your career, you've not only excelled in voice-over work but also writing, and as I have a copywriting background myself, I cannot avoid this question - How does one come from a writing background, and then arrive as a voice and casting director? What was your journey until Larian?

Tom Pallai: I started as a runner for a television company and from there I started writing, directing, and editing. Then moved into animation where I was writing and directing the animation and the voice actors. 

Then from there, I did some stints as a writer only but found that a little bit too isolating. I like working with people, being on set, working with animation teams and actors. So I moved more into directing and started to really focus on directing animated shorts and animated series. I still wrote one or two episodes here and there, just so I didn't completely lose the skill. 

And then, the Larian job came along, and at that point, I was like, “OK, Larian's too complicated to write for”. I don't think I could do it justice, to be honest, when you see the crazy stuff they come up with and how complex it is. My job at Larian is very specifically focused on directing and enabled me to hone in on the talent rather than spreading myself thin across writing, editing, and directing.

SzinkronJunkie: Your surname has a distinct Hungarian ring to it. Could you share a bit about your Hungarian heritage?

Tom Pallai: My dad was born in Budapest. He left Hungary in the 1956 revolution, ended up in England, met my mum, and I was born. About 30 years ago, he moved back to Hungary. I still go to Budapest and sometimes to Lake Balaton as well - like every year or two. We still go very regularly. 

I'm the only person in the family that doesn't speak Hungarian. My brother does, my sister understands it but doesn't speak it much. My mum speaks it, and my dad obviously speaks it. My dad was doing night shifts when I was a kid, so I never learned how to speak Hungarian, but I understand enough. And I can order a beer, so that's good.

SzinkronJunkie: That's an important skill, at least in Hungary! As far as I know, you are the most successful international voice and casting director with Hungarian roots. How did it feel to be part of such an acclaimed project as Baldur's Gate 3?

Tom Pallai: I'm sure there are more successful Hungarians in the creative industry than me! 

I'll start at the beginning. I played Baldur's Gate 1 and 2 when they came out, which is how I actually heard about the job in the first place. In animation, you record all the voices very early on and then do the rest later. So when I was interviewing, I thought they'd already recorded the whole game and I would just be there starting to work on the next project. But actually, the team was not even halfway through recording when I joined. So luckily I got to do a lot. 

Honestly, it's a dream come true for me, working on that game and being a part of it. The team is so talented, you go in every day and feel like everyone you're working with is a genius.

SzinkronJunkie: Do you get any guides from the writers for the pronunciations?

Tom Pallai: Yes, we have a glossary with phonetic spelling. However, depending on your accent, it affects how you pronounce it. We have a colleague in the office who knows every word, and that’s where the idea came from: if you say it first like this, as long as you get the phonetics right, that’s how we will pronounce it in the future.

There’s a bit of a thing where, if you’re the first person saying the word, however, you say it is how it’s pronounced, which I always found funny.

SzinkronJunkie: That’s a fun fact! What is the main goal and responsibility of the voice and casting director?

Tom Pallai: My job is to ensure we bring the characters to life in an honest way, keeping it in the style of the game, which is quite a grounded performance. You want the characters to be very real, feel their emotion, and be believable in their performances.

SzinkronJunkie: At what point does a voice and casting director join the project?

Tom Pallai: Well, I’m on the next project now in the pre-production stages. Generally, voice directors can come in when you’re recording, maybe a few days before recording, so they can get up to speed on the project, the characters, the narrative, and the style of acting. From my point of view, I’m there from the ground up on this next one, which is fantastic for me to get my ideas out there early on.

SzinkronJunkie: The main idea behind my question is that certain projects have voice recordings before the animation is done, and sometimes it's the other way around. What happens in this case?

Tom Pallai: In animation, you'd write the script, do the animatic and the storyboard, then record the voices to that. You do the animation to the voices as a last step. But in a video game, you need to check the scene is working first before recording too much. Scripters and writers set up the flow and narrative, cinematics team checks it for visual beats and blocks out the scene in the engine for the positions and cameras while the voices and performance mocap get recorded. The in-house animators work on any custom animations at the same time and then the whole scene gets put together and goes into further detail and the facial performance, so there’s a lot of back and forth between our departments, it’s more of a circle than a linear process.

SzinkronJunkie: What's the ideal process for casting, and can you share any secrets about what a good character brief looks like?

Tom Pallai: A key point in a casting brief, for anything not live-action, is character art, which helps actors see who is speaking and affects performances. Providing a range of emotions in the sample script for auditions is important. If the character has rage issues, like Karlach in Baldur’s Gate 3, show how they shout. The best auditions bring their own flavor to the character, adding depth and nuance.

SzinkronJunkie: After the recording is completed, what's the next step?

Tom Pallai: Essentially, they go to the cinematics team and animators to get built into the game. Once we've recorded and delivered, we move on to the next role. The recordings get post-processed for effects if needed, re-rendered, and then sent out. The recordings are passed to other teams to make it work in the game. If not, we do a retake.

SzinkronJunkie: Is it common to have retakes or edits during game development?

Tom Pallai: With the complexity of Baldur’s Gate 3, it’s inevitable. Sometimes you realize you can’t say something because a character is dead or in another condition. It's common to have retakes to ensure the scene flows well. Sometimes a brilliantly performed line doesn’t fit the scene, so we do retakes to make it work better.

SzinkronJunkie: Voice actors working on video games in the US went on strike in 2023. Did it affect any of the voice recordings?

Tom Pallai: We were lucky in that we worked with a few American actors who are SAG-AFTRA, like J. K. Simmons, but we finished recording them just before the strikes. Most actors we worked with were British, so the strikes didn’t apply. It didn’t affect the project as a whole, but we sympathized with the American colleagues. It was a hard time, but we narrowly missed it by a couple of weeks.

SzinkronJunkie: Baldur’s Gate 3 is one of the most ambitious RPGs ever, featuring a staggering amount of dialogue and internal monologues. When did you first get involved in this project?

Tom Pallai: I joined in late 2022. I started talking to Larian in the summer of 2022. When I initially went for the job, I thought it had all been recorded, but they told me there was a lot to record. So for me, it was a delight, there was a lot to get my teeth into, and a lot of casting still to be done. 

SzinkronJunkie: Were there any characters that you specifically did the casting for?

Tom Pallai: Two of the big ones for me were Orin and Wyll. During my interviews with Larian, they gave me a test with a bunch of auditions. Theo Solomon, who plays Wyll, was one of the auditions. I wrote in my feedback that if it was for a charming, heroic character, he was the guy Larian was looking for. Six months later, I had to recast Wyll and remembered Theo. We got him in, and he was brilliant. 

Another was Maggie Robertson, who plays Orin. Orin was one of the hardest characters to cast because of her specific way of speaking. Maggie’s audition was an 11 out of 10. I had to ask her to tone it down for most of the scenes, and she delivered an amazing performance.

SzinkronJunkie: Since you mentioned these instructions, are there any common instructions you give during the performance?

Tom Pallai: It depends on the actor. Some embody the character automatically, while others take time to get comfortable with the performance capture suit. Generally, the main thing is to make sure actors feel comfortable and find their own version of the truth in the performance. Let them find their voice and the character. The main directions are ensuring they hit the emotional beats and the performance fits the context with other actors.

SzinkronJunkie: Did you get any feedback from the actors about how they imagined the scenes differently after seeing the game?

Tom Pallai: A common one was, “Wow, you guys went so far!” They weren’t expecting some of the scenes to be as intense. We’d show them bits during recordings for reference, but seeing the final product often surprised them.

SzinkronJunkie: It's common in Hungarian localization and dubbing to record solo due to tracking management. Did you have a chance to record multiple people at a time?

Tom Pallai: Everyone was recorded solo due to scheduling and space constraints in the mocap studios. However, we are hoping to do group recordings in the future on other projects.

SzinkronJunkie: One of the game’s standout features is the array of choices it offers players. How did you manage to keep everything organized in such an enormous project?

Tom Pallai: With great difficulty! (laughs) We have dialogue trees that show the thread of the scene, character status, and responses. The scripts have this information but not all of it to avoid being unreadable. The writers have to think of every scenario, which is a huge challenge. The further you get into the game, the more edge-case scenarios there might be for the writers to deal with.

SzinkronJunkie: The game’s voice cast includes incredibly talented actors and stars like J.K. Simmons and Jason Isaacs. What was it like working with them?

Tom Pallai: A genuine pleasure! J.K. Simmons is in nearly every animation I watch. Working with him was like a dream come true and more on top of that. JK is such a fantastic actor and a genuinely nice person. He was very welcoming and warm during our sessions. Some of his deliveries gave me goosebumps! 

Jason Isaacs was also fantastic. I'm a huge fan and was happy to work with a fellow Englishman. I've followed his movies for many years, so we had a lot to chat about outside of the sessions. In fact, in our final session, we were talking so much that we got asked to leave the studio because they had another recording coming. He needed very little direction. He understood the character's motivations and embodied Gortash to the point where I can’t imagine anyone else playing him. 

His attention to detail was second to none. He just got the scripts and knew already what he was talking about. Jason quickly understood the characters and motivations. His questions were more logic-based ones. For example: Where is this? What's the context of this? The things he suggested were just brilliant. Jason actually argued with one of the things on the script because he thought his character wouldn’t say this, and we agreed with him, so we ended up changing a couple of his lines.

SzinkronJunkie: Most of the actors provide voices for several characters. For example, Theo Solomon played not only one of the key characters, Wyll, but also Bernard, a Scared Boar, and Tingmiaq, a bird! Or Andrew Wincott, who won the BAFTA award for his performance as Raphael, was also one of the cash guards and a dead Flaming Fist soldier. How do you decide who will do multiple voices?

Tom Pallai: When casting for multiple voices, we look for very versatile actors. Some actors can play four or even five roles. Their versatility is evident in their reels. I think one of our actors did over 20 character voices in the game, mainly NPCs, but also a couple of more major ones.

When you are in the casting process and listen to the actors’ demos or their agents send you their reels, you'll hear that versatility. As long as it's authentic, sounds correct, the accents and the emotions are right, and the performances are on point, there is always a place for such experiments. For actors like Theo and Andrew, it’s fun for them to jump into another character briefly after playing the same character for so long.

SzinkronJunkie: Which was the last scene you recorded for Baldur’s Gate 3?

Tom Pallai: The last scene I recorded was with Andrew Wincott for the epilogue. It was great because I hadn’t worked with him before, and we had a whole day working together. He is one of my favorite actors in the game, and his performance as the lord of the House of Hope, Raphael, was fantastic.

SzinkronJunkie: Thank you, Tom. It was a fantastic thrill to see behind the scenes. Good luck with your next project! We look forward to seeing you back as soon as we get the chance. Again, thank you very much! 

Tom Pallai: Absolute pleasure. Thanks very much for having me.