Astarion is one of the standouts in Baldur's Gate 3, and his voice actor, Neil Newbon, has won several awards for his excellent work. Neil Newbon has been outstanding in "Baldur's Gate 3" and his voice acting has earned him several awards for his excellent work. Not that he is better than anyone else (there are many great performances in this game), but I think what makes Astarion special is the sheer range of emotions he portrays, which is as much a result of the game's script as it is of Neil Newbon's outstanding acting.

It turns out that Newbon wore many hats other than Asterion's during the production of Baldur's Gate 3, not as a voice actor, but as a mocap artist. This is according to a talk Greg Ridston gave at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2024.

Lidstone was the performance director on Baldur's Gate 3, but his current position is animation director at Larian Studios. Lidstone's job was to work with the writers, actors, and animators of "Baldur's Gate 3" to help "create the performances of the fellow, villain, and faeryn people."

"I used stunt actors (for mocap) because the schedule was very compressed and there were a lot of things going on. ...... One of the stunt actors I use fairly regularly is actually the guy who plays Asterion." This comes as no surprise when one examines Neil Newbon's work history.

When we spoke to him last November about how he feels "the game saved me," Newbon described Morkap as "amazingly free ...... I mean, I could play anything I wanted," he described. His company, Performance Captured Academy, specifically mentors game developers, actors, and directors to help them get a feel for the technology. Basically, Newbon lives and breathes this stuff, even directing that bear sex scene in addition to his voiceover work.

"He was really good at conveying the character's movements," says Lidstone.

"In fact, we would sometimes find scenes where the audio was recorded but for some reason the mocap was missing and we had to reshoot.

Lidstone describes one day when they brought in Newbon and had him break the motion capture of all the NPCs on the Sword Coast. 'I had a dog's breakfast of 150 lines of dialogue with no mo-cap: ...... For him, it was kind of a safe place. It was a really good, fun challenge."

He also said, "It was a good challenge.

Lidstone also emphasizes early in the talk the flexible use of actors as one of the many advantages of mo-capping, noting that Newbon was also essential for characters like Gautasch and Minsk: "We had to adjust. It's never perfect, but it's the best we can do at the time. For other dialogue sequences, we recorded the body and the voice at the same time."