Over the last two years, there's a good chance that performance director Beth Park helped bring at least one of your favorite games to life. Fresh from shooting scenes in Baldur's Gate 3, Park has worked on many of this year's biggest launches including Black Myth: Wukong, Metaphor: ReFantazio, and shooter hit Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2. It's an eclectic selection, and to top it all off, Park has joined BAFTA Breakthrough's 2024 cohort, a Netflix-supported initiative that spotlights the industry's most talented newcomers.
It's been a whirlwind that Park hasn't quite landed from. "I can't say that my excitement has gone down," Park tells 12DOVE ahead of her breakthrough being announced. "I'm just kind of getting into the skin of this successful woman who I apparently am!"
In the booth
On paper, Park's latest hits have little in common. Black Myth: Wukong is an action-RPG based on Chinese mythology, Metaphor: ReFantazio follows Persona developer Atlus into a medieval fantasy world, and Space Marine 2 revolves around, er, blasting as many aliens as humanly possible.
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But dig beneath the surface, and the similarities are there – particularly between Black Myth: Wukong and Metaphor: ReFantazio. Although they launched several months apart, both received praise for their phenomenal English casts – a feat that's particularly impressive, given dubbed games and shows don't always live up to native language performances. Speaking to that, Park says that the "secret sauce" is developers investing enough time in the production process.
"You can't just bang lines out every first take," explains Park. "A lot of anime and JRPGs work with tight budgets, and you have to record it all super fast. But say, for example, [with] Black Myth: Wukong, because we were syncing to cutscenes, you have to match the timing. There's a skill to that, and you can't do it quickly to a certain degree. But to actually have a game developer that understands it takes time to craft these performances is the secret."
"Then it's just generally about finding the humanity of characters, and not slipping into a stereotype of what you might have heard in another game, and taking time to think about what matters to them," she adds. "Having really good scripts definitely helps – with Metaphor specifically, the character arcs were really satisfying."
Likewise, both games were praised for having a broad array of British dialects – something that stands out, as Park notes, because "there's quite a strong bias toward southern English voices" in gaming. "It's quite hard to stray away from stereotypes sometimes because if you're directing a horde of goblins and they all sound really posh, that's potentially going to take the player out of the world," explains Park. "But at the same time, I think there's so much scope for us to include regional accents in games [...] I have definitely been trying to push for more."
But as senior casting director on Warhammer 40,000: Space Marine 2, which had a predominantly British cast, Park was very particular about nailing the setting's "theatrical" tone. Many of the game's voice lines have dominated social media – the game's creative director has even seen some of the role-play it's caused in person – and its performances capture the tongue-in-cheek excessiveness of 40K. "We had Games Workshop on the line for every single setting for that game, and they have a really specific parameter that you have to fit into about the lore of who these soldiers are – they can't be too stressed [and] they have to sound suitably majestic," says Park. "It's [about] finding actors who have got that type of voice, but who can kind of push it. It's slightly camp, in a way – like, macho-camp space realness!"
All in all, it's been a wild year for Park. "It has been nuts, and I have been very tired when I got home from work at the end of every day," she says, smiling. "But I feel very lucky to be able to get into a studio and play all day in these fantastical worlds."
You can see the full BAFTA Breakthrough cohort of 2024 here - and if you're looking for something else to play after Metaphor, here are the best RPGs to dive into next.
