Newcomers: Scorsese, with Nicole Byer and Lauren Lapkus - Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor (w/ Troy Baker)

Episode Date: December 8, 2020

Lauren and Nicole are back to discuss the popular 2014 video game, Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor, with the voice actor of the hero Talion himself, Troy Baker! Troy takes Lauren and Nicole on a deep behind-the-scenes look into the production of this runaway hit game, offering insight into the bizarre sensations of filming on a performance capture stage, the tightrope walk of carefully (and legally) expanding the lore of The Lord of the Rings franchise, and much more.Along the way, the fellow actors reflect on what life's been like working in entertainment during the pandemic, Troy's short-lived but intense experience doing stand up comedy, and an anecdote on dedication involving an actor giving a role-winning audition in the middle of a movie theater lobby!Like the show? Rate Newcomers 5-Stars on Apple Podcasts and let us know what LOTR media you'd like the series to cover.Sources for this episode:Movie version of Shadow of MordorArticle on the new Tolkien bookAdvertise on Newcomers via Gumball.fmSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

This is a HeadGum Original. Am I dead? You are banished from death. A curse binds us together. Who are you? I shaped the history of Middle-earth. I crafted the Rings of Power. Caleb Brimwall, greatest smith of the Second Age.

Sauron deceived you into making the Rings. He tortured both you and your kin. I had a family once, and I buried them along with everyone I even knew. Perhaps that pain is what connects us. Very soon, the Dark Lord and his army will march all over Mordor. I have seen Sauron's sons. They bring much suffering. Can the curse be broken?

Destroy the Black Hand and his followers and claim Mordor. How? How do I do this? Your power. What do you know of the Black Hand? Hunt is not about rules. Come close if you want the Black Hand. What would you know that all these other dead orcs didn't? Come, let's race.

I do not trust him. We're lucky to have you. Don't be blinded by your emotions. I'll have your guts! We are the servants of the Dark Lord. Kill him! oh wow it's another episode of newcomers i'm nicole byer i'm lauren labgus Ooh, wow. It's another episode of Newcomers. I'm Nicole Byer.

I'm Lauren Lapkus. This is our 16th episode of our second season. We're working our way through exploring the Lord of the Rings franchise. For the very first time, we've got the help of nerds, super fans, and people who've contributed to the franchise. We've watched Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Hobbit trilogies. We watched that fucking biopic. to the to the franchise we've watched peter jackson's lord of the rings trilogy the hobbit trilogies we watched that fucking biopic uh wait a minute hold on before we progress biopic yeah the do you say biography biopic this is my autobi Oh, so you think it's biopic? Biopic.

You're actually wrong. Okay, the small image of moving, it's not a movie file, but it's just like a looping image that you can reply to someone's snarky tweet. What do you call that? What? A reply? No, the little image. The little image that you use that is just like a repeating image.

It's not a movie. Three little letters. Are you GIF? What did you call it? A GIF. Are you going to try to say it's a GIF? No, I am not.

It's a graphic, interchangeable file. So we agree on that, but biopic? I don't get that. I think most people say biopic. Yeah. It's a biographical picture. Is that what it is? Like we're don't get that. I think most people say biopic. It's a biographical picture.

Is that what it is? Like, we're going to the pictures. Like, we're in the 20s. I think so. Well, I mean, it's a biopic is the most insane thing. Well, let's just introduce our guest. It's Troy Baker. Coming out with the hot takes already, just like, boom. You know,

just, I don't think it's a hot take i think it's just called a biopic but anyway troy baker's note for his roles is joel miller in uh the action adventure survival horror game the last of us and booker deway in the first person shooter bioshock in infinite i was gonna say i think it's byhek? No, no, of course not. No! That's where my hypocrisy enters in. This is the hardest intro I've ever done. Most recently, he provided

the voice of Bruce Banner in the 2020 action role-playing brawler Marvel's Avengers and reprised his role as Joel Miller in The Last of Us Part 2. He's also released music under his known name as well as with his band window to the abbey dude you went hard on hello thank you for being here hi troy i'm really hoping that you wait to bring me up like visually until just now so

that all of that banter just like happens like this disembodied voice. Here's the thing. There's no visual aspect There's no visual component which is why we it's why I'm in bed. In my mind there is. But I got this fancy camera

just for this. Do you guys understand? That's nice for you and it does make it easy to see you which is fantastic. That is good. Well, okay.

So today we're talking about the 2014 video game Middle Earth Shadow of Mordor. And we watched a theatrical version of this game on YouTube, which essentially combines all the cut scenes and only the very most important gameplay moments into a two and a half hour movie. Oh my God. And we're going to link in the show notes to, I'm glad you're shocked.

We're going to link in the show notes to take you to the exact version we watched. Um, of course, spoilers for the films are and the game i mean i don't know if there's spoilers in the game whatever but we're gonna talk about everything so if you have a problem with that you are listening to the wrong show but yes um yeah so we we we watched as much as we could of what is i guess a movie of a video game, which is a- Shadow of War or Shadow of Mordor? Mordor. Mordor, okay.

Yeah. And so, I guess someone edited it into a story without any of the like, what you would be like running around and killing people

or whatever. Oh, see, that's such a reductive. Okay, go ahead. Well, yeah.

I think it would be more satisfying to play the video game than it would be to watch it. But I think 14 million people, I noticed, watched that thing. Yeah, a lot of people. So I was really surprised. More people watched that video game than bought the video game. That's insane. Lower barrier of entry. So you are a self-professed fan of Lord of the Rings. Yes. So how did you

become a fan of the franchise? I was a wee lad growing up with a nerd for a father by and large. So I, yeah, I didn't do all of the, the cool kid stuff. Going outdoors was typically done under protest or duress. I like that. But I was actually thinking about this because I was like, what was my first entry? Liam O'Brien, who, how do I begin? I'll start with how I got into Lord of the Rings, and then I want to tell some of the other subsequent stories of how that specific game was made. Because it's very near and dear to my heart. Yeah. So I, typically on a Friday night,

my parents would be chock full of me, especially. And so they're like, you should go spend the night with your grandparents because that's what every nine-year-old wants to go do is go hang with their grandparents. But I actually have some really, really cool memories like of, I watched Fantasy Island and Love Boat like every Friday night with my grandparents. And then I would actually sleep in,

my dad was a twin. So they had their back room, their old bedroom. That's the room that I slept in. Were they identical? Identical twins. Did you get confused when you were a kid about that? Never, because they were, no, they were so opposite. So opposite.

Wow. To this day, still opposite, but also very similar. There's this really cute video of this little baby being passed between identical twin brothers,

like her dad and uncle. And she's like so confused. And then she looks at one and she's like, and then she looks at the other and then she goes to him and then he holds her and then she looks back

and goes back to the other one and it's so cute. This is how we traumatize the child. It would be very confusing. Every person is my father. So small beds and very, very small room. But on the far side of the room, there was this like, I think it was a desk that my grandfather had built. And it was like a long desk that obviously two people could sit at. And then

above it were this long row of bookshelves. And on this bookshelf was like, I wish I had these books because a lot of them probably were first generation. Star Trek were first editions, including the Hardy Boys and Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, like all of this, like Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, all the really cool, like nerdy, nerdy, nerdy, nerdy books. And so just one night, C.S. Lewis is where I first read like, you know, The Chronicles of Narnia. So like that was my escape because I couldn't do a lot of the things that I wanted to do and like what a lot of the other kids were doing when I was growing up. But in these worlds, I could imagine that's who I was. I could be Aragorn. I could be Peter, you know, from Chronicles of Narnia. So I rapidly fell in love with science fiction and fantasy both. So I started reading these, and I actually read Lord of the Rings before I read The Hobbit,

because I didn't understand. I was like, what is the deal with this ring? It's like a Seinfeld bit. What is the deal with these rings falling in the volcanoes? So I read that, and I don't think I actually ever read Return of the King.

I don't think I ever did, so I didn't really have anything to compare it to when the movie came out. But you start thinking about when those movies came out, and they're not only so far after the source material, but have been iterated upon so much. Bad animated series, other books,

kind of some movies, but like Peter Jackson was like, watch this, hold my beer, and I'm going to make a huge epic, you know, probably too long. Like Lord of the Rings does not need, could be a three hour movie. And he made it. Yeah, we would argue the same. Yikes.

The Hobbit was like, that's a shorter book. I was like, nah, it has to do three movies. Yeah, that's everyone's complaint. They're like, why is it three movies? It's rather short and it's a children's book. Peter found the udders and just milked it um so flash forward to um like i mean 30 years later or whatever and i get a gig and um it's for this um character named malbeth and it was just a vo gig and it was on the Warner brothers lot.

And I walked in and, um, they was at this point, had you already been doing that type of work? Yes. This had been my gig. So I started, um, like in 2002, 2003, and I got my first game cause a buddy of mine was like, Hey, do you want to talk on a microphone and we'll give you money for it? I was like, okay. And it was like, it's for a video game talk on a microphone, and we'll give you money for it? I was like, okay. And it's for a video game, and I said, okay, and I just kept doing it. So this is like 2000, I guess 2013, 14 maybe at this point. And this game is really, really cool, but it's all going to be VO.

And I was like, oh, this is kind of, this is interesting. It's, you know, about a hero, but he's like, he's a father and he loses his son and there's all this stuff. And then the game just goes away. I don't hear anything about it for the longest time. And then they come back and they're like, okay, so we're going to keep you on, but your character's completely changed. The story is completely changed.

And this game is not going to be full performance capture. And we think we're going to test it. And if it works, then we're going to do like five weeks of shooting a video game in like a condensed amount of time. Normally, like in a game like The Last of Us, we shot that over the course of two and a half years. Oh my God. Yeah.

Typically, we would shoot once a month. We would shoot, we would rehearse one day and we would shoot two days. And in those two days, we could shoot 10 to 15 pages. Um, cause you can typically do seven to eight pages in a given day, maybe more depending upon what the setup is like. Cause you don't have turnaround. You don't have coverage. You don't have to like change your camera setup or your lighting setup. Oh, so is it, you're filming yourself as well. It's, it's a voiceover thing, but it's also a physical thing. So performance capture,

like built upon what motion capture did back in the early 2000s and the mid aughts, which was, hey, if we put this funny suit on people and these shiny balls all over their body, these cameras can track that movement in a very skeletal way. And then we can apply that movement to our character model.

And lo and behold, you have more natural movements inside of a video game. That's interesting, though, because I didn't know that it was. Is it typical that the character, the voice of the character is also the actor embodying the character? Depends. Like in a game like Arkham Origins or the Arkham games, which were wildly successful. Kevin Conroy is the.

We're staying within the Warner Brothers franchise. We're good. Well, Kevin Conroy is the, we're staying within the Warner Brothers franchise. We're good. Kevin Conroy and Mark Hamill will forever and always be Batman and the Joker, respectively. Kevin Conroy, as tall as he is and as brilliant of an actor as he is, is not Bruce Wayne. So Bruce Wayne in Batman is like seven foot tall. So there's like six, seven, something like that.

And he's got to do a lot of physicality Mark Hamill is not going to do a lot of the physicality for the Joker so what they ended up doing was shooting all the motion capture and then

basing that off of what the performances for Kevin and Mark were cool so but a lot of times a lot of games like Cyberpunk

is doing this and a lot of these games that are coming out now Last of Us included and really what The Last of Us included, and really what The Last of Us did was building upon the pipeline

that Naughty Dog had, which was, we're going to shoot this like a movie. So our actors are going to be our actors all the way through. We're going to build sets for them. We're going to allow them to be able to really interact with their environment and interact with other actors. And then we will take that and then we will apply our character models and our environments and all those to it.

And you will have a very cinematic feel for these games because they're really narratively driven. So it's our face. It's our voice. It's our movements, our everything. We shoot it like a movie. The only thing that's different, it's kind of what they're doing with The Mandalorian. You know, it's, they're not actually on, you know, not Hoth, but they're not actually on Tatooine or anything. They're, it's a digital screen and then they're

overlaying that on top of it. So it's just a really cool way that technology has been able to utilize that. So we did the same thing with Shadow of Mordor. The thing was, it was going to be this huge open world procedurally generated game meaning your game could be different than my game so there was this narrative that was baked in that was built upon

Lord of the Rings but it was also going to be wildly different and we had to get permission for everything to the point where I remember one, uh, one time there was like, um, my character Talion went from Malbeth to Talion, um, was like trying to beckon a soldier to come over. And he said, you know, come here. I was like, why don't I say his name? It was like, oh, you want to give him a name. You want to give him a name. How about

this? How about we reach out to Saul Zantzans who's the purveyor or the the holder of the Tolkien estate and then we ask Peter Jackson what he thinks then we ask Warner Brothers

what they think and we get approval because you want to call him Phil and it's like oh alright he's like

because everything that we did had to either become or be checked against canon yeah oh how wild

so Talion is now canon yes it's a lot of work. And at the Shadow of Mordor was written and directed by Christian Contamesa, who came from the Rockstar Red Dead team. So Red Dead Redemption, brilliant open world Western game. He had this conceit for what he wanted this to be,

which is a story about a man who loses everything. this conceit for what he wanted this to be, which is a story about a man who loses everything. And the kind of typical anti-hero, I didn't want to be this, but this is what I must now be. And your curse actually becomes your power. So what's funny is there was all of this stuff that we shot for this game that you talk about editing it down

to a two and a half hour thing. We cut about an hour's worth of movie out of our game before we even shipped it. That explained so much and really helped establish to me who, who Talion was. And why was it cut? There's this, there's a phrase in music Where A&R reps used to say

Don't bore us, get to the chorus And there's a lot of people that That's why we like WAP Who's WAP? Yikes Much like biopic and biopic I say WAP Yeah, I think think i go either way

i could say wet ass pussy i the the thing about it is that i i believe that um a lot of films a lot of games a lot of shows. David Milch says you can operate out of fear or faith. And as a creator, his job is to allow actors to move around that fear and operate in a place of faith. And I believe the same thing applies for games or for films or anything else, especially when

you're talking about an established franchise like Lord of the Rings. There's so much that people are going, you better get it right. And you're just automatically, I wish people could have seen the terrible face that I just made. It was a petulant child. It was a very petulant child

with a very Jim Carrey-ian face. The notion that says we just want to get people to the action, to me, I like delaying it. I'm a foreplay. Let's go. We'll get there.

But let's get to know each other a little bit. And what we started up, Jack Quaid. Hey, I'm Jack. Yeah, Jack Quaid played my son. I knew that Jack was a huge video game nerd and I had a mutual friend with him and I was like, Hey, who's Jack with? And I was like, this agent. I was like, okay. I was like, I want to reach out and I want to see if we can't get Jack in here. So Jack came in and I was like, dude, are you, he was like, holy crap. I'm like, it's all good. Do you think you can play my son? He was like, yeah. So we had this,

his audition scene was this brilliant sword fight scene between he and I. And it's just this kind of like tit for tat back and forth, a father trying to show some tough love. And Jack crushed it. And I wanted to bring him back because I ended up directing the sequel, which was a huge, I should not started off directing a that big of a

game that's that's that's a that's a how does that happen like for for you in that situation like you to go from acting within it to directing it we sat down with a team and they brought me up very early on and i was very i like to be very involved I'm not a guy that waits in my trailer and just kind of waits to be handed sides and walks to set I'm like I've always been the guy that my first movie I was walking over to sound I was like what does that do and walking over to the key grip like what is your job I just wanted to know what everything was I've always been a very studious kind of person, and I think just as we're both actors, Nicole and I, that like when you are in these positions, when you're on set, nothing is explained to you. So

it's truly like, it's such a mysterious way that everything works and you are often just shuttled into one situation and you're like, I guess I'll slowly start to figure out what everyone here is doing. But that makes sense to walk around and, you know, take it all in. Some people like that. Some people are like, don't tell me about anything. I don't want to be aware of it. I just want to go in. I want to do my thing and be, and get out. Yeah. Me, I'm always like, I don't know. I'm a person who's driven by passion, but my passions are fueled by knowledge. So once I learn, it's like, oh, that's cool. I wonder if I, I wonder if I can do that. And I think I spent a lot of my youth avoiding challenges and avoiding

adversity so that now I'm like, oh man, it's like, I didn't, I never worked out as a kid. And I've got a two-year-old boy and I'm 44. So I got to stay alive and I got to stay healthy for this kid. And so now I'm like, now I'm finally, what most people were doing when they were in their twenties, I'm trying to do in my forties. And it's like, I want to get fit. I want to be healthy. And so I'm now learning how to embrace that, that kind of adversity and embrace those kinds of challenges. So I went up and I met with, after we shipped the first game and it literally shadow of Mordor. That team is monolith is,

is a tremendous studio. Michael de Plater is, is if you want to know anything about Lord of the Rings, that guy, he could, he could literally teach a, a, he could be a professor of this.

And they actually brought in there are people that, that have their doctoral thesis. Like they, they, they are professors of Tolkien. Wait, really? Absolutely. And they can tell you,

they can break everything down for you. And they had this person that was a technical advisor on everything. And even Michael de Plater would be like, actually, you're wrong. Because he just knows everything. He knows the full compendium of Tolkien's work. And he said, by the way, just to let you know,

I said, because I love Lord of the Rings. And he goes, cool. You need to read the Silmarillion. I was like, he's like, yeah, this is the one that is like an appendices to that takes place kind of like even before, and then in the middle of, and that's where we're going to, we're, we're before Lord of the Rings and after the Hobbit. So we are like this middle ground of middle earth. I like okay and so i started reading the similar alien which is not that big of a book but if you've ever read like matthew the book of matthew in the bible it's like or deuteronomy something like it's like this is not ever meant to be read but haven't read the book read like the the

i have heard some of the cliff notes what's the what's the new thing it's like I didn't read the book but I did this one little it's like spark or whatever it's called it's some like new app that you can like give the

basically oh spark notes is that what it's called well spark notes we used to I mean I definitely used that in high school it's like cliff notes

but it's called spark notes I think it's literally the same thing there's some new thing I'm sure they have an app now that you can be or it's like blink or blinkist

maybe that's what it's called blinkist it's like you don't need to now that you can be. Or it's like Blink. Sneakily. Or Blinkist. Maybe that's what it's called. Blinkist. You don't need to read it. You can just, yeah, Blinkist. Blinkist is like, we'll just give you the high level gloss. Yeah, we'll give you the gist. But it reads just like, it is so dense and there's so much lore knowledge in it. And just the terms alone, the lexicon is just like, woof, it's hard to read.

So it's not like this whimsical adventure. It is like understanding where this world came from. So I read that to understand kind of the world that we're in. And a lot of the characters that take place within those two games, that's where they exist is within Simmerly. those two games, that's where they exist is within some really, you know, um, but I went up to,

um, after, after the, the first one came out, it was, and this is where I was going with that. It was when they shipped that game, it was with the last one out,

please turn off the lights because they were not, they thought they were, they were done. Um, it was not necessarily like tracking to be this huge success and that that was going to shut down the studio. And lo and behold, it became this runaway hit because people started creating their own stories

out of it. They were, because what would happen is you would be fighting these orcs and then this one guy would just sucker punch you. And he was like the guy that got coffee for everybody. He's like this low level grunt. And because he killed you, the game says he should be promoted. And so now he's higher than even your ranking was. And so you're like, I'm going to go kill that guy. But now that you go find him again, he's now stronger and he kills you again. And so then he gets promoted again.

So you end up chasing this person that's just really a mechanic in the game. And so people love this notion of this nemesis system that you are crafting and building your own enemies. Super, super cool. this curse of this wraith possesses him. And together, the two of them are able to be this kind of superhuman being that has the powers of a wraith and an elf, and also the power of a mortal man. So that's, that's how you're able to fight the way that you are and, you know,

do all this cool shit. So, and then ultimately it's about trying to battle Sauron like everybody else is. But of course you can't beat him because that would preclude all of the Lord of the Rings from happening. So it's like this really weird, how do we do this dance? But we did it. The game came out and it just like swept the awards, did gangbuster numbers, especially for a game. It did really, really, really well.

So they brought me up. I was like, we're going to do a sequel. I was like, okay. And it was like, we're going to go in a little bit of a different direction narratively. We want to lean more into the narrative that we're doing. We have a couple different people that we're thinking about direct this. I was like, okay, who are you thinking about? I was like, well, this guy or this woman

who, you know, they did an episode of Breaking Bad or they did an episode of Vikings. I was like, cool, cool, cool. I was like, you guys have really cast a great vision for this. They're like, yeah. I was like, I mean, you kind. I was like, you guys have really cast a great vision for this. They're like, yeah. I was like, I mean, you kind of know where this thing needs to go and the rails that this train is on. They're like, right. It's like, that's not really what, I mean, a director is going to want to come in and really cast vision for this. And sometimes episodic TV,

it's like showrunners, the one who leads that. But I mean, really, what do you want? It's like, well, we want someone that can really speak to actors and really help bring those performances to life and understand where we're coming from and how this is all going to fit. I was like, well, that's not a coach. That's a quarterback. And they said, well, a quarterback is another player on the field. I went, hmm. And so then they were like, let's give it a shot. Let's see what happens when you do it.

And I learned a lot because I walked on as a quarterback to that field, trying to be a coach and that will get your team fucked and that will get your team to lose. And finally, towards the end, I realized that I was a quarterback, but more than anything, I was just another player on the field. And I had a huge team behind me that supported me that was really, really smart. That's why you have an offensive coach and a defensive coach. And you've got all of these people on the sidelines with all of this wisdom and expertise and knowledge that are communicating that to the players on the field. And then just leaving the people on the field to do what they are inherently good at. apparently good at. Um, so it took me two years, uh, but I learned a lot and I got to work with, um, some friends and some incredible talented performers. And we, we crafted a great story.

We, we, we, I learned a lot about camera language and, and how to direct and everything. But ultimately the coolest part of all of it is that that kid who was nine years old when he first pulled that book that dusty book off of a shelf had no idea that three decades later he was going to be standing on a stage and actually crafting and helping to create lore that would add to the book that he held in his hand that's so cool yeah that is very cool it's funny because because growing up I'd watch comedies and be like, one day I'll do a spit take and then I get to do a spit take. I've never done anything epic or cool.

That is epic. The beauty of the story of The Lord of the Rings is it is about lost and found. It's about returning something that wasn't yours to its rightful place. That's it.

And everything that that encompasses. That's restoring order. That is good overcoming evil. All of it. But it's just such a beautiful, that's why it's like, well, I haven't done anything really epic. I'm like, the spit take is epic. You know what I mean? Like standing up on a stage and holding a spit cover dirty mic in front of six people,

that's epic. When you finally get to do it. Here's my story of being a standup comic. Oh, oh, you're a standup? Two stories. No,

no, no. Two stories. One, one night, we were at this place called Jack's Half Yard House in Dallas, Texas, off of Greenville. And I was right on the edge of the stage. And it was a half, I'm sorry, Ben's Half Yard House.

Ben made half yards. Okay. So it's one and a half feet of beer. And we would go there because on like Wednesday nights or whatever, it was, you know, dollar stupid drinks, whatever. So I had a couple of those in me. And I thought that I was real smart. And the guy that was up on stage was not doing well. He was dying.

And he was like just reverting to anything that he could. And I said, and I just like went, oof, and I rolled. And he decided that was the perfect cue for him to start doing crowd work. And he was like, what, buddy, you think you could do better? And I said, brother, it wouldn't take much. Ooh, goes the crowd. And he hands the mic to me. So I stupidly grab it and I jump up on the mic and I do my seven minutes of stupid. And I keep waiting for them to kick me off. And the guy in the back just goes, keep going. People are cracking up and I'm doing walk-in and just, it's just funny. And everyone's having a great time. And the guy comes

up and he goes like, next week, come back. I'm giving you seven minutes. Do your thing. I was like, awesome. And I come back and I do note for note the same jokes. Guess what happens? You bomb. Eat shit. Bomb. Eat shit. Crickets weren't even chirping.

They weren't going to give me anything. It was bad. I could not get off the stage fast enough. And then I realized what makes a comic a comic is that, not that he would be funny in that moment, but that he would get back on the stage or she would get back on the stage and do it again and again and again and again and make notes and understand what they did wrong and what they could do better. And craft feels like, oh,

I'm not a comic. That's okay. I can be funny. Yeah. Yeah. And that's the difference. So I have a lot of friends that, that, that do stand, and Pete being one of them, or Kumail, and I'm like, what you people do is, I don't understand it. It is just, it is so wickedly vulnerable. It's one of the most interesting ways of cathartic storytelling I've ever seen. It's brilliant.

Should we get into the Shirewire? So that's our news segment. And there is, thank you. Yes. There's an unseen work by J. R. R.

Tolkien. And it'll be published next June. The nature of middle earth will be in one volume edited by Carl F. Hosted, Middle Earth will be in one volume edited by Carl F. Hostel, who is one of the world's leading Tolkien experts and respected head of the Elfish Linguistic Fellowship, according to the publisher. Cool.

And the book will transport readers back to the world of the Silmarillion. Okay, good. We were just talking about it and I can learn this word. Silmarillion, Unfinished Tales, and Lord of the Rings. It was said in a news release that Tolkien continued to write about Middle-earth in the decades that followed The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings right up until the years before his death in 1973. And the publisher Houghton Milflin states that this new collection is a veritable treasure trove, offering readers a chance to peer over Professor Tolkien's shoulder at the very moment of discovery and on every page middle earth is once again

brought to extraordinary life wow how wild what a treatVPN is, I'll tell you. VPN stands for Virtual Private Network, a service that protects your internet connection and online privacy. A VPN creates an encrypted tunnel for your data, protect your online identity by hiding your IP address, and allow you to use public Wi-Fi hotspots safely. I'm using a Nord VPN myself. And honestly, it's very easy to use. You connect with one click to enable auto-connect for zero-click protection.

It has amazing speed. click protection. It has amazing speed. Nord VPN is one of the fastest VPNs out there and it supports every major platform, Windows, Android, iOS, Linux, even Android TV. You can switch your virtual location to access apps and websites in other countries. Get an exclusive Nord VPN deal here at nordvpn.com slash newcomers. N-O-R-D-V-P-N dot com slash newcomers. It's risk-free with Nord's 30-day money-back guarantee. Link is in the episode description. And we're back! Ah, I feel refreshed.

Me too. That was a great break. We did a lot of stuff. We did. We did. I feel good. Should we jump into this? Let's jump into it. We'll get a little deeper into Shadow of Mordor. So it was developed by Monolith Productions, as you mentioned, and published by Warner Brothers Interactive Entertainment and released on September 30th, 2014.

So we watched a video game. And Nicole, how did you feel about watching a video game? It was a little tough, I will say. But so, okay, I i did i was like skipping around because i was like what is happening just just to put you in a perspective if you watch two and a half hours of gameplay including the cinematics and everything i clocked over a hundred hours in shadow of mordor alone i've clocked over well over a hundred hours. Actually, I've played the game twice.

Shadow of War, I've played twice and I've clocked over a hundred hours in each of those. So that's how much content you're literally getting like. Do you play every game that you've been in? Because I was looking at your IMDB, you've been in an incredible, you've done an incredible amount of voice work on video games. And honestly, you're like the nerd, not trifecta, but like the nerd conglomerate, because you've done Marvel, you've done DC, you've done, it's kind of, it's like,

it's really wild. Like Star Wars is up on there. So do you play every single game that you do, you work on? I try to. And not even just the games that I'm playing a game right now that I'm not in, Assassin's Creed Valhalla. It's a lot more challenging as a dad. And just like I run my own business. Fortunately, with quarantine, there's been a lot of people that I knew that was like, I got cast on a show.

I was like, I'm moving to Vancouver. And they come right back. I was like, never mind because on a show. I was like, I'm moving to Vancouver. And they come right back. I was like, nevermind because production shut down. Sucks. I'm fortunate that I work in an industry of professional problem solvers where they looked at, you know, a bunch of video game nerds look at, you know, quarantine or COVID and they go,

that's just bad design. We can fix that. And so we literally, the day that lockdown happened, my agent got a call from you know Warner Brothers Sony Disney

everybody was like can you work from home and I was like yeah so I beefed up my rig and I've been able to continue to work there was even a game that we started doing

performance capture from Miles Morales oh wow holy shit in your house we did face here interesting but we fortunately shot everything that we needed to shoot on the stage for Miles Morales. Holy shit, in your house? We did face here. Interesting. But we fortunately shot everything

that we needed to shoot on the stage and then lockdown happened. A buddy of mine that plays the lead in Valhalla was shooting in Canada and he's from Denmark and they went, they're closing the country. And so they were like,

can you shoot to the rest of the week? He was like, nope. And he flew out that day and that was it. That And so they were like, can you shoot to the rest of the week? He was like, nope. And he flew out that day. And that was it. That's so funny what like network execs or like you just execs will say to people, it's like, okay, so like things are bad. The country's shutting down.

The world's burning outside. Can you shoot to the end of the week? And it's like, no, dude. No, I have a life and a family. I also care about myself. Should I care about, yes. Weird. How wild. I will I have a life and a family. I also care about myself. Should I care about? Yes. Weird. How wild.

I will say, though, that there's a shoot I can't talk about yet, but there was a shoot that actually was the first production that I know of that went back to work this summer. That was like, we've got all of our COVID protocols in place. And fortunately, we were able to do it. It was weird, but I was able to be back on set again. Yeah, we both had a little bit of that experience and it's super weird.

Like, it feels kind of fun because you're like, thank God I'm like around people and it's like normal sort of, but then you also have like the fear in your mind. And I mean, even though everything is as safe as it can be, it still feels unpredictable. I'm a hugger. You can't hug.

Can't hug. Can't touch. Can't be hugging. It's all this. It's all elbows now. Yeah. I just get so worried about makeup artists on shows with younger people. Oh, that's a good point.

Because like young people, like, I don't know, when I was 20, if this happened when I was 20, like I would be bad. Totally understand. I know for a fact that like friends would be like, Nicole, you can't raw dog during the pandemic. And I'd be like, but I need it. That's exactly what it's like. It's like, ah, whatever. I did think about that. Like if I was in high school, I cannot imagine that I just wouldn't go hang out with my friends, but it's like-

30s. Even my 30s. Like I think, cause I was a, I was a pretty, you know, I grew up late, I think, is what it was. But like my 20s and my 30s, I still would have been a little stupid. It's just life experiences bring different perspective. And with that, I was like, oh, I think also just across the board, I wasn't like my wife and I are super, we're crazy quarantined, you know, like, we, admittedly. But it's also, I don't care. I've got to, like I said, I've got a boy that I've got to keep safe. And it's like, well, scientists are saying, I don't give a fuck, man. I'm not taking the chance.

Yeah. Because our boy. That's how I am. Me too. I really don't do shit. I'd rather just be dumb in in hindsight be like oh i guess i was overly cautious then like throw caution to the wind right i agree insane and i don't know we are it has taught us how to be creative and we've like we do some cool shit and where we we go on a lot of walks and we we go to the park and stuff um and my my boy can tell you all of the

beetles and his favorite beetles song so we're doing oh that's nice we were in the kitchen and we were singing hey jude together he's two and i lost it he's he's awesome like look up look up pictures of my boy he's like he's got this long blonde hair. He's like total like Kelly Slater vibe. He's just dope. He's cool and hip. Yeah, he's totally dope. How did you meet your wife? That has nothing to do with Lord of the Rings.

But as a woman who's single, she's always curious. It is. And is she into video games too? No, not at all. My wife is a photographer. She's a brilliant photographer. And so she got hit super hard by quarantine. And her and her partner have like found a way to be creative.

And it's really inspiring because there's a whole generation of people that this could be like marriage was already kind of like, eh, maybe, maybe not. And now it's kind of like, maybe we don't need to do this. People that were going to get married are like, fuck it. Maybe we're just going to just do our own little thing. And big weddings are kind of like fallen by the wayside. We had a very small wedding, comparatively, like 70 people at our wedding. We were like ending friendships to get people off of our list. We wanted to feel small and intimate.

But we're both from Texas. We wanted to feel small and intimate. But we're both from Texas. We both grew up in Dallas. And we moved out to L.A. within weeks of each other. And we knew a lot of the same people in Dallas. We knew a lot of the same people in L.A. And we did not meet until five years of living here.

And we were at a mutual friend's birthday party. And we looked across the room. We're like, who is that? And our friend went like total cock block. They were like, absolutely not. Why? Because it was either perfect, or it was like, it will end the friendship.

It's going to be a disaster, yeah. And we like just went whoop and went around her. And I told her straight up, I was like, look, I think you're cool, but this is never ending in marriage, and we are never having kids. Wow. And you were wrong. I guess she proved you wrong.

She's like, not only am I going to marry you, we're going to have a cool-ass kid. Cool-ass kid. And that's probably a perfect impression of your wife's voice. I mean, nailed it. I was like, honey? You're like, is she here? She is literally in my ear.

I have a question. Please. Are you a fan of Gollum? Just to bring it back to Lord of the Rings. So, yeah. So here's what I love about Gollum. And my kind of view of Gollum was always he was like the plucky sidekick of the Lord of the Rings. And he was, in a lot of ways, Peter Jackson.

He's not. He's a tragic character, right? We find him repulsive. He is the harbinger of, of doom. He is there, but for the grace of God, go I. But I think with a lot of what Peter Jackson did, he was like, he's the Jar Jar, you know, a little bit of like, he's, or the Yoda depending upon how you want to look at it. Like he is, he is the comedic relief at times.

He is the, here's, we can, we can put him on a t-shirt he's he becomes a uh the mascot for for lord of the rings and that's kind of how i always understood him um and then liam o'brien who played gollum the first day on set Liam auditioned Liam is a brilliant actor writer director like in his own right and he auditioned just like everybody else did

and he came on set and for the first game and we were at Manhattan Beach Studios which is where they shot Avatar and a whole bunch

of other stuff and he pulls out of his backpack and he was like I just want to show you this and And he walked to the director and he was like, this is who's on set today. And it was his child book version of The Hobbit, like the illustrated book. And he was like, I read this to my son every night. This is the one that I read. And this is the guy that made me fall in love with everything nerdy and so I got to be reintroduced to who Gollum is through Liam O'Brien and through his world perspective or his worldview

of that character and Liam like Andy we've all seen what Andy Serkis does and Andy Serkis is just you know he is the penultimate performance capture guy or whatever um i would put liam i would choose liam for gollum over andy circus any day yeah it's interesting hearing like i think it's really cool how um it sounds like the people that you've worked with on these games are so passionate about it and that's really neat just thinking about like down to every element of creating this thing, you know, everyone is seems to have such a strong connection to the material, which is really cool.

I don't think that's always the case with projects in general, but look, I worked with Norman Reedus on a death stranding and Norman has got one of the best work ethics of anybody in this industry I've ever seen. Like that guy is just his, his commitment to work is inimitable. He is unstoppable. He's always working, always, always, always working. And he's not a gamer. And he had no idea when they're like, think about this, when you show up on set and if, let's say you're doing a period piece or whatever, and it's like, okay, you obviously it's

20 whatever and but we're gonna put you in this like you know 19th century victorian thing and here's your wig here's your dress here's the the horse and the stable and we're gonna put you in this so all of a sudden like you can kind of like trick your mind into actually being in there when you do performance capture is like okay so here's your spandex suit that looks terrible on everybody. Here's a little hockey helmet that has these metal bars that come out six inches from your face

with a camera on it that if you bump into another actor, that blows the whole take. Here's some Apple boxes, you know, for that's your motorcycle, you know, whatever. And it's like, you're just in this blank white space. That's very off-putting and everything that normally informs you and informs your performance is, is literally working against you. So it is, it became this, what do you quintessentially understand about this character that nobody else does?

And that's the only thing you have. That's your handhold on to the character to, to move you through this. So it helps to understand like as a gamer, I'm like, I just don't, I know what it's like to hold the controller and go, this is dumb. So I don't ever want to do that. So what can I do as an actor? What can I do as a director or what can I do as a writer to go, let's avoid those pitfalls. So that's, it does definitely help to me to, again, knowledge fuels my passion. So whatever I have knowledge of, it's going to help hopefully make me more passionate and more

connected to the material. Yeah. Well, it makes sense. I mean, this, this game won a ton of awards or it won the GameSpot's Game of the Year Award, Best Action Adventure Game Awards from Game Raider, IGN, and The Escapist. It was the winner of the South by Southwest Gaming Awards, Excellence in Gameplay, Animation, and Design and Direction. And that's just a small sample of the dozens of other awards attached to this game, including Troy being nominated for Best Performance by the Game Awards in 2014. Congratulations. It paid off. And Hardcore Gamer also nominated Troy's performance for something known as the Troy Baker Award.

Now, are you aware that there's an award named after you? And what is that about? Look, there's a basement and there's some punch that's served. And that's all that. The thing that I loved is I remember being at the DICE Awards, which is the AIAS, which is the Association of Interactive Sciences, I think. It's like a peer award. So the Game Awards is there's a panel

of people that are brought together. And a lot of it is done kind of like the, um, the foreign press towards like, that's who judges the, for the Emmys or whatever. But this is like, Hey, these are people inside your industry. These are, these are fellow developers, fellow video game makers, and they're judging your work. And so diceICE, we swept the DICE Awards when it came out. Everything but Game of the Year, which is really, really funny. We were all there. It was like, here we go, guys. The Game of the Year goes to somebody else.

We're like, what? But like the Game Awards, which is actually happening this week with Jeff Keighley, that is something that the reason why I love awards is because, especially within this industry, there is a quantifiable, measurable thing that can happen because of an award. So, like, if you're an actor and you win an Oscar, your agent that day is going, well, his quote or her quote just went up. But that doesn't really matter for actors within this. It's like, doesn't matter. It's like, I've won, I've been nominated, I'm looking over, I've been nominated for three BAFTAs.

I've been nominated three times for the Game Awards and never won one. Those things don't really, because it doesn't change your work, right? It's not like all of a sudden your work becomes incredible. Whether you're an actor, a director, a writer, designer, whatever, it doesn't matter. It's like your work is your work and you toiled on it passionately and endlessly because that's what you had to do. You were compelled to do that by your volition and your

passion. But for a studio like Monolith, the reason why we were able to do Shadow of War was because of the awards that we won for Shadow of Mordor. So now we've got, you know, your Metacritic is kind of like Rotten Tomatoes for video games. And the Metacritic, when a game ships at a Metacritic of whatever, that's because a review version of the game has come out for uh, for people in the press. And so like games, radar, game spot, IGN, um, whomever they're, they're going to get

a copy of this game and they're going to review it. And then they're going to say, we give this game a 87, 89, 94, whatever. Um, and then as it gets released to the public, everybody else with a keyboard and an opinion gets to weigh in on that. And so typically what happens is your Metacritic ships at this and then it plummets because people just will review Bomb It! And they'll go, it was, it gave it a, there was a Death Stranding came out, Hideo Kojima, the game that did with Norman Reedus. And it was either a hundred or zero. People either loved it or hated it. It's so stupid. So the awards are, for me, are kind of like, I wrestled with that

dragon and I chased after it for the longest time. And now it's more, I want the game to win awards because there's a lot of people, like in the case of Monolith, there were 220 people, I think, at Monolith at that time. 180 to 220, I think, is when we scaled up, that worked really, really, really, really hard on that game. I want them to get the recognition for their work because they're a credit scrawl. They don't get asked to do podcasts. They don't get to... Entertainment Tonight doesn't want to talk about the QA people at Monolith that worked far more hours on a game than I did,

or the people that know way more about Lord of the Rings trivia than I do, because they're not as sexy. They're not as, you know, you can't, I'm not saying I'm sexy. I'm saying like the position is not as sexy. People by and large want to talk to the above the line people as opposed, but it's really the people that make it happen. I think that's true. Yeah, I agree. Areas of this business. Sure. true in many areas of this business.

Sure. So Dan Stapleton of IGN wrote the story, introduced memorable characters, but would not make sense to fans of the series. Do you think that the game was easy enough to follow for fans of the franchise? Yes. The problem is, is that we went in knowing, like the first trailer that we put out for, we call it the Shelob trailer.

It was going to be the big reveal that our big bad or the character that we were like, oh my God, they were bringing in was Shelob. You know Shelob, right? The spider. Okay, you do. Do you know how many people didn't? Yes, this is Lauren's favorite character. I'm very scared of the spider. So here's what's great.

She appeared in my fan fiction. Yeah, people who saw, especially Return of the King, know who Shelob is. But they're like, the spider? But it's like, our version of Shelob was not Shelob. Pollyanna McIntosh is also on Walking Dead. She's great. Scottish. And she came in. Here's how good she was. So we were auditioning and I really, there, there was three people that I really wanted for, for Shelob. And so, um, before there was Zoom, we FaceTimed with Polly and I was like I thought she knew that she

Was this is what she was doing And she didn't She didn't know that she was auditioning She had stepped out she was she had Gone to the movies with a friend and she Stepped out and in the lobby Of the of the movie Theater on her

Phone is when she did Her callback wow With me like now you're like yeah you just auditioned over zoom well yeah it's not yeah now it feels a little less crazy but that would never happen and she and she nailed it i was like guys that we have to just just offer her the role this is i love actors because normal people would be like oh we should probably reschedule at a time where I'm not at the movies. And actors like, I might get a job. I will do a soliloquy in front of the Vista.

And here she was, she was like, Ranger, you have no idea. She's just like giving to me. Wow, I love it. I love actors. Yeah, that's really cool. She crushed it. And she came in and she was someone who had never done this before.

And she just threw herself into it. And she was incredible. She was really, really incredible. She brought this. But anyway, we had this whole trailer that was like, boom, y'all, what's up? And they're like, who's that? I'm like, Buck. So you have these people who's like, that's not who Shelob was.

And we're like, yeah. And then you have people who don't know who she is. So what I loved about the whole Shadow of Mordor or those Middle Earth games, what they did was they showed you a version of this world and these characters. Like a lot of people knew who Celebrimbor was. And they had huge problems with the fact that we had Celebrimbor in our game. Like that doesn't make sense. And there's like weird time jumps that we could do. And so even though this was checked against, again, people that were holders of the lore,

there was still a lot of people that were like, hmm, no. I'm like, it's a game, guys. From what we've explored in like learning about this franchise, that's very common with every single thing that comes out related to Lord of the Rings. It's not as bad as Star Wars, but it is like on a level of, because there are people that are academics of it, and there are literally people that have, like I said, they have like

doctorates in this. Yeah. And not only that, but because of what Tolkien did and how well he, like Joseph Campbell looks at Tolkien and goes, I'm just breaking down and showing you what this was. It's not that Joseph Campbell came up with anything. He just simply pointed out the patterns. Like the whole Campbellian hero's journey thing is just him going, huh, do you know that this is what this does? And, and what Tolkien did was so, was such a great example of, of that hero's journey and, and bringing about the best parts of us in, in, in understanding that it's, it's through

adversity that we grow and it's, you cannot grow without adversity and that hope is only born out of despair. It's just this beautiful, poetic, everything has... And to also understand that C.S. Lewis and Tolkien were like, you know, they were contemporaries of each other and they wrestled with each other. And Tolkien... Wait, like literally? Yeah, like literally wrestled.

Like Greco-Roman style. they were like, let's just get naked Yeah, that Tolkien had rejected the systems that C.S. Lewis was wrestling with and just how the two of them C.S. Lewis was still holding onto the ring

and I think Tolkien was able to throw it into Into the volcano! Yeah Well, on that note we've come to the end Thank you so much for being here, Troy Yeah, thank you so much for sharing your experience It was truly so interesting to learn about

video games and motion capture I truly had no idea that the voice actors did that. Like, I don't know. It's really interesting. Do you have anything that you want to plug? Oh, man. If like we talked about this at the very, very beginning. But if there's if you guys have a desire, especially for things like I love what you guys are talking about as far as let's let's discover things together.

We're doing the same thing with this platform relator that that I have on on YouTube it's just my name youtube.com forward slash Troy Baker and every Saturday we watch a movie that someone hasn't seen before we get to share in that communally um we're doing cool things like every Sunday we get together and we have like a creative prompt where someone comes up with a theme and people have 30 minutes to find a way to creatively express that. And we do it together. Oh, that's awesome. And then we're doing writer's room.

We're doing like a book club. It's like, so especially in this time of quarantine, we're finding that we're social animals. We need to do stuff together. But more than anything, it's, we either want to be entertained together. We want to be educated together. But ultimately it's just about having community. So those are kind of the three things that we're doing with that.

But I clearly, if it wasn't abundantly clear, I love talking about the things with which I am impassioned. And I appreciate the opportunity for you guys to let me tell my tales because I really do enjoy loving it. Thank you. Really enjoy love doing it? There we go. I mean, I got it. I got it too. you guys to let me tell my tales because i i really do enjoy loving it thank you really enjoy

love doing it there we go i i mean i got it i got it i thought it was great nicole do you have anything you want to plug oh boy do i ever i'm uh i have a patreon uh for my 90 day fiance podcast 90 day bay also uh there are no new episodes of nailed it holiday because of the pandemic so you can still stream the old holiday episodes i'm in one of them yes lauren is in one lauren is so funny in it we share a giant piece of rice crispy at one time it's it's fun you guys should watch it i agree what do you want to promote? I have my Patreon as well. You can check out. And well, it's the holiday season. So I would say watch Happiest Season.

My friend Mary Holland co-wrote it with Clea Duvall and she stars in it. Mary is so funny in it. It's truly delightful. She's so good. And I'm in it for a brief cameo. Oh, it's fine. And I'm just plugging it from um because everyone should watch what Mary made I think it's so great and it's a nice way to get into the spirit of the season it is I watched it uh before my or my December 1st uh that's when I can start

watching Christmas movies but I watched it when it came out because you know me too streams count I know now I feel like I have to watch it again because yes I'm same I I got it when it came out because, you know. Me too. Streams count. I know. Now I feel like I have to watch it again because. Yes, same. I got it. Now I'm more in the Christmas mindset. So, okay. And we have our Battle of the Five Stars segment where we read five-star reviews.

So if you are listening and you want to leave a review on your favorite podcast platform, you will get a chance to have it read on air. And this one is from Megan M5 on Apple Podcasts. And it says, thank you for the gift of a podcast. As a casual viewer and someone who's fallen asleep during multiple Star Wars slash Lord of the Rings films, I appreciate that my opinions are affirmed by this podcast.

I also had to rate after the most recent fan fiction episode, Shirewire, because my world and this podcast collided. As someone in the space career field, I can provide some non-official context for the Atlas 5 rocket with elvish phrases. What it comes down to is the space career field is full of nerds. That's it. Just a bunch of nerds

getting to pick the theme of a space launch. Thanks for creating this podcast. I look forward to it every week. Thank you, MeganM5. So thank you so much, Troy, and thanks everyone for listening. And we'll see you next week. Bye. Toodle-oo, bitches.

That was a Hiddem original.