Halo Infinite Echo-216 Interview
Interview with Nicolas Roye, Actor for (Echo-216) in Halo Infinite
For call based interviews we try to present the conversation replies as close to verbatim as possible, for context.
A staple I do in all interviews in order to start things off is to ask that you elaborate a bit about yourself for those not familiar with your roles?
Nicolas: My name is Nicholas Roye, I’m a voice actor. Known mostly for Apex Legends playing the character Octane, Halo infinite playing the Pilot Echo 216 and then a number of anime, Bungo Stray Dogs Wan! I play Chuuya and Shinki in Naruto and Kisaki in Tokyo Revengers but yeah that's what I do and I started out as a theatre actor, got into bit parts and movies and TV and then I ended up getting a voiceover right around in 2008, something like that and a voiceover actor ever since.
When it comes to your approach to doing say something like anime versus something like gaming how do you adjust your role?
Nicolas: It's completely different, so anime you don't get scripts ahead of time. You probably know all this stuff already, you know you just , I get kind of offered a role or something like that from a studio that I work with a lot and then you kind of just show up and figure it out.
Some characters kind of have like short stints and some characters go on and on and on. Those characters you actually kind of you know there's a lot more involved there with these leading characters and stuff like that but when you do like little runoffs and stuff like that it feels like you just kind of show up and figure something out real quick and then they send it out into the world.
With characters who are leading characters you know obviously you're kind of sculpting a personality that's, you know hopefully going to resonate with people and show a good side of your abilities as an actor, but yeah it's different because anime you're dubbing obviously. When you're doing like American animation you're actually creating something from scratch so again with anime the Japanese already exists.
They kind of have you listen to it, most of the time want you to kind of match the tone a little bit or match the performance a little bit and with American animation and creating characters and video games and stuff like that you have a lot more leeway. You get to actually sculpt it from scratch so hopefully you have enough tools in your belt as an actor to you know be able to do something special and create these characters that people will hopefully end up lagging.
Were you familiar with the series going in and were you given any prep work in getting ready for the role as the pilot?
Nicolas: I was fairly familiar with it just because it existed for twenty years already but I wasn't a player of Halo. So yeah that was a fun time, when they cast me as that character they flew me out to Seattle and just had like a meeting with me to kind of pitch what Halo Infinite was going to be about. Just kind of a reimagining kind of revamping of the Halo franchise and they told me that this particular character that I was gonna play was going to be a very human character.
Possibly the most human character they've ever brought to the franchise so I was like okay, yeah this is this is this sounds great. You know this is what I'd love to be able to do is add a human quality, you know a very human quality to the franchise. That was one of my favorite moments in my career actually, was being able to do that because it brought me back to my theatre roots.
You know obviously being able to, I hadn't been able to like physically perform a character in a long long time so it was cool to you know, I was going back and forth to Seattle to the motion capture stage for like a year and a half. I'd go there like a week at a time every month pretty much and get to be like I was back in college theatre again. There was a cool feeling, great experience and then yeah it's really like the entirety of that game. I think it's a beautiful game, the storyline I loved it. I loved being able to bring life to that character and it was a blessing, huge blessing.
So you played a very important foil to the Master Chief in the story, you know your character really is a huge part of that game. Is this something you see yourself being interested in if they were to do, you know further Halo entries down the road?
Nicolas: Yeah I want to. Tell them that. I don't know if it's just a combination of the recent possible recession, everybody laying people off. You know it's a weird time right now and the game had so many hurdles. I mean as you know from the beginning that it was just like one thing after the other and then I think they were just like.
I think Microsoft's just like we got to put the brakes on this you know. I don't know how many people they let go over at 343 but man that was that was crushing you know, that crushed me when I saw all these people on Twitter that were like losing their jobs and so I don't know where things are going to be man.
I'm down, I'm ready to go and me and Bruce who's the physical performer of Master Chief we've been chatting with each other since we wrapped and like you know, you heard anything? We've been waiting to find out and then you know to hear that the multiplayer is going to carry on but they don't know what they're going to do with the you know the storyline of this particular campaign and we were just like man, this kind of stinks but we'll just see keep the hope alive so I'm waiting. I'm ready you know, I hope it happens.
So when you’re going and doing these different roles, anime or game, what’s it like to see yourself in these roles?
Nicolas: Sometimes it's cringy. That happened to me with Shingo in Sailor Moon. That was like one of my earliest characters and you know he's like this very young kid and I was just like oh do I even stop man, I don't even know if I like that.
Then other times you're like oh my god man, that's you know, I've had times where I was just like can't believe it, they hired me for this. This is amazing, this is like a dream come true. Yeah it's a mix of emotions you , sometimes you really are content with how you came across and what you did and sometimes you're like a little iffy about it.
Just depends, but yeah I don't know, I don't know the true answer to that it's sometimes it's a yeah it's hit or miss you know it's hit or miss but so then thank god for the majority man. I'm actually you know, I feel like I don't phone anything in so I feel like most of the stuff that I've done I was I was happy with the way it turned out you know.
Lastly I would like to leave a spot for you to say something or go over anything I might have missed during the interview?
Nicolas: Yeah thanks, season three of Spidey and His Amazing Friends right now we're about halfway through it. It's one of Disney Junior's top shows. I love working on that. I've got um I got hired as the the voice of Hey Disney. While I was working on it, it was called the Magical Companion but they're rolling it out this year, it's basically the Alexa voice of all Disneyland theme parks and hotels.
So you'll be able to interact with it if you stay at a Disneyland Resort Hotel anywhere and within the US and outside of the US at other Disneyland Parks. I'll essentially be speaking to you so let's say you stayed at a hotel there'll be speakers in every room that you can communicate with.
You could ask it for towels to bring up to your room or if you're using the magic band at the park you could speak to the magic band and say like, hey what's the wait time for the Winnie the Pooh ride and then I'll I will speak back to you and you know give you the answer or whatever so that's been a cool project I've been working on for years a lot a lot of hours of work on that one.
Tokyo Revengers, I got to be careful what I'm saying I think there's some things I can't say but Apex carries on you know we're just working on a brand new trailer for Apex a few days ago so yeah I got a lot in the pipeline.
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