I Got An Audition

I’ve been asked many times how I came to be cast as the Voice of God Multiplayer Announcer in the Microsoft game, HALO. Fans have wanted to know if I already knew folks at Bungie, the company that created the game (I didn’t) or if I had to audition (I did). But the first thing to happen was that I got a call one day from my agent, Topo Swope. She told me I had an audition at the Microsoft campus for a new game they were working on. But when I asked what the name of the game was and what it was about, she couldn’t tell me. Evidently, Microsoft didn’t want ANY information getting out.

So, on the day of the audition, I drove over to Bellevue, Washington where Microsoft had a studio. Or was it their Redmond location? 23 years later, some of the details are a bit hazy. I checked in with the receptionist and after a short wait was escorted to a room with a vocal booth in it, as well as Marty O’Donnell, the creative genius behind the game. I was handed a page or two of copy consisting of a series of lines for a character called “Master Chief,” who appeared to be the hero. There were also lines for an alien who appeared to be the villain. I seem to recall that the direction I was given for the hero was to do something “like” Clint Eastwood. For the alien, I shamelessly ripped off Ian McDiarmid’s performance as the Emperor Palpatine in STARS WARS. And when I had finished those, I was asked to die. “Die?” I asked. As if I was being killed by other soldiers I was told. “Sure,” I said, and proceeded to howl agonizing screams at the top of my lungs. Marty later told me that the reason that that came at the end was that he was worried the actors would blow their voices out if they did the screaming before they’d had a chance to read Chief. Anyway, with that, he thanked me, I thanked him and left.

A short while later I got another call from my agent. “Congratulations!” she said, excitedly. “You got the job!”

“What job?” I was auditioning quite a bit so the question was a genuine one.

“The Microsoft job. The game is called HALO and they want you for the role of Master Chief. He’s the main character in the game!”

“Great,” I said, surprised that I had actually managed to snag a major role. I started to get a little bit excited..

“When do I record?”

“They’ll let us know.” And with that, we hung up.

Well, weeks passed and I heard nothing. Actually, that’s not entirely true; I was hearing that other friends who’d been cast had been in and finished their recording for the game.

I started to get a little bit nervous.

So I called my dear friend, Jen Taylor, who I knew had been cast for a big role as well (fans will know that the big role she got was Cortana). “Say,” I asked, “ have they called you to go in to record for the game?”

“Oh, I finished my stuff a couple of weeks ago,” Jen said.

Now I started to worry. So, I called Topo. I explained that just about everyone I knew who was in the game had been in to record. Why hadn’t we heard anything? She said, “I’ll check into it and get back asap.”

And she did. A few hours later, my phone rang and when I picked up Topo said, “I’ve got good news and bad news.” I imediately knew what was coming. The “bad news” was that Marty O’Donnell, the fellow in charge of the game (and the spectacular music for HALO) had had second thoughts about giving this important assignment to an actor he didn’t really know. He had decided, instead, to offer it to a voice actor he knew and had worked with in Chicago named…well, you know who it was. Steve Downes. And it was—of course—a brilliant decision on Marty’s part.

But I was pretty disappointed.

“Do you want to hear the good news?” my agent asked.

“Sure,” I said, although I wasn’t sure I did.

“They want you to be the Announcer for the game!”

My heart sank. Announcer? That seemed like a pretty boring consolation prize. But I’ve made it a practice of never turning down work so I said: “Tell them I’d be happy to do it.”

Later, a friend of mine who worked on the sound design for the game cheered me up a bit when he told me that my voice was going to be all over the game (boy, was THAT an understatement!). And when I went in to record, Marty and I put our heads together to come up with the sound for the Multiplayer Announcer.

'“Try a little Monster Truck Rally” he would suggest and I did.

“Pull that back a hair,” he said.

I pulled it back a bit.

“Good. Can you add a bit of the alien you did in the audition?”

I added that.

And within just a few minutes we had “The Voice” that I would use for next 23 years.

And that’s the story of how I got cast in what is surely the defining role of my career.

As for how I got into voice acting in the first place…well, that’s a story for another time.