Dragon Age and Mass Effect are two sides of the same coin. Both are sprawling BioWare trilogies – though Dragon Age will become a quadrilogy in the near future and Mass Effect has Andromeda – both have a large cast of charismatic characters, and both tell very human stories, despite the fact that most people in them aren't actually humans. Alix Wilton Regan knows how these stories are told better than most. Having first worked with BioWare in voicing the role of Samantha Traynor in Mass Effect 3, she returned to play the female Inquisitor in Dragon Age Inquisition, and much like BioWare's stories, choosing her favourite role is complicated.
"My preference as an actor is always to play a leading role," she says. "Makes sense, right? That's the honest truth. And it's not because I have some horrendously huge ego. It's actually because I love to work. I like to go into work every day and see the same members of the crew. 'Hey John, did your kid lose his tooth last night? Are you still waiting?' I like to see the same makeup artist five, six days in a row and be like, 'Did you end up making that banana bread or not?' I like the camaraderie and the rapport that you develop with people. The bigger your role is, just by virtue of the fact that you're around each other longer, the more you [get to] know people."
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You'd think then that the question would be open and shut. Wilton Regan is a lead in Dragon Age, and only a non-combat supporting character in Mass Effect. However, there's something about the space opera that she holds dear to her heart. "I love big, complicated, sometimes difficult, but always epic journeys as an actor," she says. "That's what I'm personally interested in. But I would say that I know the cast of Mass Effect a lot better than I know the cast of Dragon Age. Not because there's anything wrong with Dragon Age, it's just basically Jen Hale, Courtenay Taylor, and Alli Hillis [FemShep, Jack, and Liara's actors] kind of took me under their wings, so I got to meet everyone a lot faster, and I love them for it. They're wonderful people. The thing is with Traynor versus Inquisitor, Traynor's not a small character, it's a large supporting role. So I still got that sense of working a lot. I still met the same people, I still talked to the same directors, the same writers. There was something about the scope of Dragon Age that was quite extraordinary. There were also times where I was really tired during Dragon Age in the five days of sessions a week, recording tonnes and at times I was frustrated because I couldn't keep track of where we were in the story. So Dragon Age is a harder job in many ways as well. But I love going on those big, complicated journeys that involve a lot of work."
Another key distinction between Traynor and the Inquisitor is that as an NPC, Traynor responds to Shepard's choices. There are different storylines you can have with Traynor, but ultimately she retains her same personality. With the Inquisitor, because the player builds their version of the character, there is no set personality, and both approaches offer different challenges for an actor. "As the Inquisitor, you have to encompass so many different options," Wilton Regan says. "You have to be able to romance Iron Bull, Sarah, Cullen, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. You know what I mean? You have so many different lives that you have to lead and so many different paths that you have to wander down. And you as the actor always have to be able to return to your centres. You ping this way, you come back, you've ping that way, you come back. Whereas I feel like for Traynor, there are obviously different options because it's a personal choice. It's a responsive game. But it's more contained is how I would describe it. I don't want to say there's less scope, because that sounds like it's tiny and scope is huge. The choice is still huge. But it's something like there's less. I felt like with Traynor, I always knew who she was. I knew that she was this hyper intelligent Londoner who preferred women and could potentially have a romance with FemShep, whereas I feel like with the Inquisitor, each player makes the Inquisitor who she is. Your experiences with the Inquisitor will be very different, to a large degree, from mine."
This doesn't mean that Wilton Regan views the Inquisitor as an entirely empty vessel, however. While she says she "kind of agrees" with Jon Curry – the male Inquisitor – suggesting that the Inquisitor is essentially four different characters with the same voice, she also thinks there is a common thread between each interpretation of the character the various responses allow for. "I always felt like my Inquisitor was very strong," she says. "I never felt that mine was weak. So I think whatever path she went on, she had to have the journey of uncovering that she was the Inquisitor, not wanting to be the Inquisitor, becoming the Inquisitor, leading her Inquisition party. There were still common threads, I guess I would say."
Ultimately, what's clear from hearing Wilton Regan discuss her time with BioWare is her deep connection to both characters, especially when she describes the fan reaction to her performance. "In some ways, quite flattering and quite lovely to think about," she says, "because I've had a lot of like lesbians or women who are coming out of the closet or coming to terms with their sexuality, who've come up to me and said playing FemShep and romancing Traynor was a really big part of that. That enacting that in the games was a really big part of that. And lots of bisexual women as well as she have said the same thing about Traynor too. So in some ways, I understand how representation matters and I really get that inclusivity is important. The only way you make things inclusive is to literally be inclusive. So you have to represent different genders, sexualities, everything. And there's something just very beautiful about the idea that BioWare has put so much faith and trust in me, you know, over the years with these really pivotal roles, and these big, beautiful characters. I feel very humbled by that. Very, very humbled."
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