Deckard Cain Audio Interview

The folks over at PurePandemonium have uploaded the results of an interview they did with Michael Gough, the voice of Diablo's Deckard Cain. Lucky for us, there's also a transcript:
Thecowking: How did you come up with the voice for Deckard Cain? I mean obviously you had to come up with some sort of old, raggedy man.and as a side note, what steps do you normally take when creating a voice for a certain role?

Gough: I'll just answer the first part of the question first. The Deckard Cain voice was, if I remember correctly.they sort of had a vague idea that he was kind of an old, wise character and that he might sort of have like a Shawn Connery thing about him. Ya know, (Deckard Voice) (which is kind of the way it).If I'm remembering right, and it's been a while ago but actually coming up with the voice didn't take too long. Like I said, older, sage, wise, kind of character.and this is back before anybody really knew.ya know , it was just all really new.and maybe a hint of a Sean Connery thing.so (Deckard voice))So it just sort of happened naturally.).To answer the second part of your question, you have an ear of things and you use your imagination. In this case there was no picture, no visual or anything. Sometimes you get a picture of a character ahead of time, and that gives you a hint as to what it might sound like. Otherwise you kind of look at the description and you play around with it in your head and with your voice.if it requires some sort of accent or something you can play around with those. And yeah, Deckard Cain just kind of fell into place pretty quickly I think as far as the sound of his voice. His personality.that kind of evolved. He sort of became.not that he's a comical character.but he does have a certain humor about him.just the fact that sometimes he gets impatient and he's kind of cranky sometimes. Luckily it's just a voice that's right in my (wheelhouse) so to speak. A lot of times with video games you have to do things, like if you are screaming a lot, or if there is a lot of battle, or mutation going on.you're really taxing your voice and you have to do it over and over again for many different takes. I've definitely damaged my voice with some video games. Deckard Cain is great because I can keep it sustained for a long time.and it's a great character. It's fun, and apart from having a certain humor about him he also has a deadly seriousness too when he's getting into worrying about the great evils that are coming, or the dark forces and all of that. (Deckard voice):)So it just sort of became.it just sort of evolved into who he is.rather quickly I would say!)