‘Breath of the Wild’ Impa English VA Reveals Her Most Awkward Recording Session
The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild English voice actor cast reunited to celebrate the Nintendo game turning five years old in 2022. The Wii U and Nintendo Switch game also marked the first time Zelda characters spoke full lines. However, Andi Gibson, the voice of Old Impa in Breath of the Wild and Young Impa in Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity, revealed her most awkward recording sessions for the BOTW characters.
‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ English voice actor cast reunited for the five year anniversary
The voice actors for Princess Zelda (Patricia Summersett), Old and Young Impa (Andi Gibson), Sidon (Jamie Mortellaro), King Rhoam (Bill Rogers), and Daruk and Yunobo (Joe Hernandez) came together for a Q&A through Zelda Universe to celebrate the five-year release of the game.
BOTW was the first 3D Zelda game after The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on Nintendo Wii in 2011. And Breath of the Wild 2 will likely mark the next, even if some fans worry about its release date.
The voice acting cast recalled the stories of how they joined the Nintendo project. Most had no idea they were auditioning for Legend of Zelda games. And it made for some bizarre recording sessions.
King Rhoam voice actor Bill Rogers commented that earlier sessions did not have any words at all. They mainly consisted of grunts and noises. And Breath of the Wild Impa VA Andi Gibson agreed, noting that she had some awkward sessions, too.
‘The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild’ Impa English voice actor Andi Gibson revealed her awkward recording sessions
Even though The Legend of Zelda characters have never spoken full lines, the process of recording grunts and ‘Hya!’ remains strange. Gibson added on to comments from the Daruk VA.
“I was going to say when Bill mentioned earlier having the early sessions where he was just doing non-verbals, I, as Impa, had a lot of those as old Impa,” Andi Gibson said about Breath of the Wild. “And that’s just an awkward session because you don’t really know what’s [good].”
She described the strange process of making the characters’ various sighs and groans during dialogue. Outside of cutscenes, when Link ventures to Kakariko Village and visits Paya and Impa, the characters make emotive grunts, moans, or sighs that are bizarre to record.
“All I’m saying is [you do them] over and over again,” Gibson said. “Those are funny because you just feel like you’re kind of grasping at straws.”
Princess Zelda English VA Patricia Summersett agreed with the strange process of figuring out tiny grunt variations
Princess Zelda has the most voice lines out of any other character. Urbosa, Revali, Mipha, Daruk, and other heroes have a few cutscenes, but Zelda appears in nearly every one. Zelda voice actor Patricia Summersett agreed with Breath of the Wild Impa VA Andi Gibson how difficult it could be to voice noise lines.
“It is true,” Summersett said. “Sometimes you’re doing repetitive emotes, like something between an ‘awe’ and a gasp and fear. They might all sound very similar, but you have to find a way to make them a little different. Even though you’ve given it five things that sound surprised, then you [give] five things that sound like ‘awe’ surprised.”
Since several Breath of the Wild characters died in the Nintendo Switch game, few know if some voice actors could return in the sequel. While Impa was already ancient in Breath of the Wild, she was still alive, meaning her English VA Andi Gibson will likely return.
However, Nintendo always has new tricks to bring back heroes up their sleeves.
