The ZAM staff concludes our "Reinventing Tyria" series with in-depth looks at the Sylvari, voice over artists, and the problem of endgame storytelling. Check it out!

As the ZAM staff discussed a few days ago, we had the incredible opportunity to take a trip to the ArenaNet studios, where the development team is hard at work on the sequel to one of the bestselling MMO (and PC) games of all time, Guild Wars. While at the offices, we sat down with two of the foremost Guild Wars lore experts at the studio, Bobby Stein and Ree Soesbee, who were kind enough to answer our questions about the story and setting surrounding Guild Wars 2.

In the first part of our interview, we discussed some of the general concepts people will find in the storytelling in GW2, and in this part of the interview we opted to go even more in-depth and really get the low down on the Sylvari and what it takes to really be a solid voice over artist. So keep reading to find out more, but make sure you check out part one of our “Reinventing Tyria” series to make sure you haven’t missed anything!

ZAM: Back to voice a bit, why’d you decide to bring in some relatively big name actors and actresses to do these voice overs? Was it just to show them off in the trailer? Or did you find that they were a really big asset to the voice team?

Bobby Stein: Sometimes if you read the dialogue for a certain character, you hear a certain voice in your head… maybe that’s for a particular actor or style that you’re familiar with. Generally we went with whoever, through the casting process, worked out best for the role. We wanted to individual that really brought the particular character to life. It’s not like we said, “Oh, I want to work with this particular actor in this role.”

ZAM: So there was a casting process?

Stein: Yes, and it was actually pretty involved. In fact, one of the agents for a particular actor made a Twitter post saying “Thank god this really crazy casting process is over. Congratulations everyone!”

ZAM: *laughs*

Stein: And we were saying, “We haven’t talked about this yet!”

Anyway, we go with the actor or actress that really fits the character or race that we’re looking to personify. We want to bring these iconic characters to life.

Ree Soesbee: We get some surprises too. When we talk to our casting company, we give them cues about looking for voices with certain qualities or give them examples of voices that we think might fit these roles.

Sometimes we get hits with those voices, and sometimes we miss. And then sometimes we get a voice that isn’t what we asked for, and it is absolutely perfect for the character. And then we get moments where we say something like “This character really should sound like this actor…” and a bit later we’ll get a call back from the casting agency telling us that that actor is free to do the work we want.

ZAM: That’d be a boon…

Stein: There were times where the voice actors actually approached us, because they were genuinely interested in the game we are creating.