So I was playing Batman: Arkham Origins earlier today, and Batman started to inner monologue in his usual growling, brooding way. And while he was speaking, his voice hit a very particular tone and pitch that immediately reminded me of Ezio Auditore from Assassin's Creed, specifically his later years from Brotherhood and Revelations where his voice got a bit lower.

So, with my curiosity peaked, I went to the IMDB page for Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to look up the actor who played Ezio, and lo and behold, he also played Batman in Arkham Origins. His name is Roger Craig Smith.

I was surprised to see that Ezio and Batman were both played by Smith, but I was even more surprised to see that Smith has been in a very large number of games and game franchises over the years, including Resident Evil, Soul Calibur, Metal Gear Solid and more. I mean, he's played Chris Redfield for the last 3 years or so, give or take. LIKE, WHAT IN THE FUCK!

Now I'm not normally surprised by stuff like this. I can spot Steve Blum and Nolan North the instant that they start to speak (they are both in Arkham Origins, by the way). The thing that surprised me about this situation was how different Smith sounded playing Batman in comparison to Ezio, and how long it took me to figure out they were played by the same guy. And also the fact that he has been in many games that I've played and loved and I never even realized that he was in them. It just caught me off guard.

I think that's called acting? Yeah, let's go with that.

I'm definitely going to keep an ear open for voices I recognize more often now. And I'm definitely going to try to stop imagining Batman with an italian accent, because it's driving me crazy.

Anyways, has this ever happened to you? Have you ever been surprised while playing a game by finding out who the actor of a certain character is, or what some of their past performances were?

So you could tell that Nolan North was Penguin? I find the voice he goes with for that character is completely different from his usual VA roles and I would have not known that it was him if I didn't read somewhere that he is in the Arkham games as the Penguin.

For me (and I should say, I haven't played Origins, only watched the Quick Look and a couple other videos), whenever I hear Batman talk in the game, all I hear is Chris Redfield, another character voiced by Mr. Smith (at least in RE5 and RE6).

It's hard to tell most of the time. But if you listen carefully you can definitely hear Nolan North in there.

Roger only began voicing Chris from RE5 in 2009, with his latest reprisal in RE6, meaning he's of course only been voicing the character for 3 years, not 10. These days I like to think I'm pretty good at recognising voices, and it certainly helps that amongst video games in particular, there's a sizeable handful of voice actors that developers tend to gravitate towards. So you're bound to be hearing a lot of the same voices anywhoo, even when discounting the insane influx of Troy Baker we've been having lately.

I think the last time I was truly shocked to find out about a voice actor voicing a particular character was Nolan North as David in The Last of Us. Nolan North is otherwise pretty darn easy to pick out, and listening to it again now it's easy to hear that it is indeed Nolan. But in the moment, it completely past me by and I was pleasantly surprised to find it was him that whole time when the credits rolled on.

Also, finding out for the first time all those years ago that Luke Skywalker was the voice of The Joker in the Batman: Animated Series most assuredly must have left me feeling pretty flabbergasted. Finding out that Uncle Phil was the voice of Shredder in the TMNT cartoon was really funny, too.

Huh, I gusss I'm just better at picking out voice actor as of late. It's pretty cool that RCS has voiced Chris Redfield, Ezio AND Batman. Quite the resume!

@yummylee: I'm just going off of the IMDB page, which says he's been playing Chris for a long while. My mistake. Fixed.

Wow I'm really late to the party on that one, I never knew this! That is so weird!

I thought it was pretty obvious it was RE5 Chris Redfield, honestly.

@yummylee said:

Same for me. To be honest, while I was playing it, I thought sounded a lot more like Robin Atkin Downes, who also has a history with Naughty Dog, so I was surprised when I watched the credits and saw that it was Nolan North. I think that out of the popular (and arguably overused) video game voice actors, Nolan North is one of the most versatile, but he just has been cast in many roles for which his normal/Nathan Drake voice worked well enough.

As for the topic at hand, all I hear when I hear Batman in this game is a more gravelly Chris Redfield. I think knowing that he is being voiced by Roger Craig Smith is making that thought all the more prevalent in my head. I didn't know that Ezio and Chris Redfield were voiced by the same man when I played through most of the Assassin's Creed II Trilogy, so it didn't stick out to me at the time, but now when I go back and hear Ezio talk, it's hard for me to not think about Italian Chris Redfield.

To a much lesser extent, this also applies to Sonic the Hedgehog, but that's more simple amusement at the fact that he does that voice, too. He does a pretty good job with that voice.

All that said, they should really do a Troy Baker edition of the Northies this year. That man has been in so many major releases this year that it's not even funny. Hell, he voiced two characters in Injustice alone! I do like Troy Baker, though; he is very good at what he does.

@ahgunsillyo: I would ideally prefer they start up an actual Best Voice Performance award instead... but considering how none of the main staff follow voice actors all too closely, them creating another joke award successor to The Northies surrounding Troy Baker is probably the best we'd ever get. And yeah, Troy Baker as of late has been getting paid. I wonder if he's the only voice actor (or actor in general) that can claim to have played both Batman (Lego Batman, to be precise... but still a Batman all the same :P) and The Joker...

...And Two-Face, Robin, Sinestro, Nightwing, and God knows who else >_>

Requiescat in pace, Bane.

@yummylee: As far as I know, he is, unless there's some weird episode that I haven't seen of one of the Batman cartoons in which Batman and the Joker switch bodies or show an alternate universe where Batman is The Joker, but I don't think either of those cases count anyway. I almost forgot that he voiced Batman in Lego Batman 2 and its subsequent direct-to-video movie that was little more than the cinematics from the game, not to mention that he did voice two characters in Arkham City as well (I think he also might've been Two-Face again in Lego Batman 2).

What I'm curious about is whether or not this is just a case where all of the games Troy Baker has worked on for the past few years just happen to be coming out at around same time. I remember this happened for Nolan North around 2009 when Uncharted 2 came out and it just seemed like he was in EVERYTHING (that might've been around the same time they started up the Northies? I could be wrong). I'd be really impressed if he keeps up anywhere near this level of output throughout the next few years.

The whole time playing this game i kept going thinking about how Batman sounds like Ezio minus the italian accent. Didn't break my immersion much, just found it really funny because i'm so used to Ezio.

I actually like RCS's rendition of the dark knight and would mind hearing him in future games.

Also the voice of Sonic! I actually think that Roger Craig Smith is fantastic as Batman... and the little that I've heard of Troy Baker as the Joker is pretty damn good.

I do like Troy Baker as The Joker from what I've heard, although he's very clearly trying to emulate Mark Hamill's interpretation, and it's always more interesting to see/hear someone put their own spin on things, like DiMaggio in Under the Red Hood. But then, this does still exist within the 'Arkham Universe' so... I guess it does make sense for Baker's Joker to sound like a, well, younger Mark Hamill's Joker.

God, I forgot what I was watching...I think it was something on the History Channel? Discovery? A documentary or something? I really wish I could remember what I was watching, but it sounded almost exactly like Neil Ross when he Narrates the Codex in Mass Effect. Maybe it was "Saturn’s Titan – Voyage To The Mystery Moon"? Either way, all I could hear when I heard the narrator talking was Neil Ross listing off alien species and stuff about Element Zero.

It's funny, I don't think you ever had to listen / look at the Codex, but just listening / reading it made him one of my favorite narrators.

I kinda wish it occurred more, because I love it when a VA I recognize just shows up totally out of the blue, like when Mattias Nilsson (Peter Stormare) showed up in Red Alert 3. He was also in the movie Armageddon.

Also the fucking awesome Civilization V reveal trailer with Keith David.

Edit: Annoying when it decides to remove all the spaces between new lines.

Surprised he did the Bale style crazy voice, for intense scenes but he never did it for too long. Just interesting because we have other batman voices to choose from, he's solid. Will Arrnet is going to do batman in the Lego Movie, and Kevin Conroy will return, Peter Weller did Dark Knight Returns animated films..... a lot of batmen to choose from.

Not hating on the guy, but Nolans Penguin is pretty spotty and really easy to recognize. He goes from over-delivering to under-delivering all the time, even mid-sentence.