Actor Blythe Melin is now the voice of the male protagonist and his brother, J, in The Expanse: Osiris Reborn. This comes after fan reaction to the beta, which accused the voice work of being “flat” and “boring.”
“While the voice actor for the male protagonist and J put in a lot of good work, they felt less expressive than we wanted,” said the developer in a blog post earlier this year, before a replacement was announced. “Because of this, we are changing the voices of the male protagonist and J.”
Melin is best known for his roles in animation, particularly in the DC comics universe, but the U.S.-based actor has also worked in video games doing mostly background NPC voices. As far as I can tell, developer Owlcat never announced who the previous actor was.
Funnily enough, this isn’t the only game inspired by Mass Effect to change the look of its protagonist based on fan feedback. Upcoming sci-fi RPG Exodus also did a redesign of its male protagonist the other week.
For me, The Expanse: Osiris Reborn’s new protagonist looks like Marco Inaros, the terrorist leader and commander of the Free Navy in The Expanse TV show. He liked flinging asteroids at Earth but was pretty chill about it. Anyway, the new face looks a lot like him — maybe it’s the hair in the example images.
That hair is up to you, of course. You’re able to customize how your protagonist looks, whether you choose the male or female version of the character. But like Commander Shepard has a canon look, so will this pair. Details on who voices the female protagonist and other cast members are coming at a later date.
“Voicing both the Captain and J has been an incredible joy and a unique challenge compared to the rest of my work voicing in video games over the years,” Blythe Melin said. “TWO, biologically related characters! It presented a difficult task in itself, because I find it very important to make sure neither character felt one-note-ey or too similar to the other.
“The more a character talks, especially in a multi-path dialogue route like for this game, the harder the task of making characters feel fleshed out while still having their own flavors and mannerisms. Playing twins has definitely been tricky, but there is somewhat of an easy divide that can be made between the Captain and J, in that one is an avatar for the player themselves, and the other is a pre-established co-character within the context of The Expanse. This allowed us to give J more of a solidified personality to work off of, with a lot of credit going to the writers and directors.”
The Expanse: Osiris Reborn launches on PC, Xbox Series X|S and PlayStation 5 in spring 2027.
Kirk McKeand is a Contributor on IGN News. Find him on Twitter @MckKirk
