We sat down with voice actor Cory Yee who plays Akito, the main protagonist in the upcoming action-adventure game Ghostwire: Tokyo.
Ghostwire: Tokyo is Tango Gameworks’ upcoming role-playing game set in Tokyo overrun by supernatural entities. This marks Cory Yee’s biggest role in voice acting yet, as he plays the main protagonist, Akito. For Yee, it started off like any other job.
Those who were in charge of the casting sent out the “sides”, which are pages or selections from the script that actors are provided to learn for an audition. Yee then gave his own read of the sides and submitted them. When he auditioned for Ghostwire: Tokyo, he didn’t realize how important of a role he would eventually end up getting.
“But at the same time, I try to take every project seriously,” he tells GLHF. “It’s like ‘oh my god, that’s super exciting!’ For me, this was probably one of the biggest long-term projects last year.”
Yee’s most prominent past roles include Gorou in Genshin Impact and Shaw Han in Destiny 2: Beyond Light. Typically, he gets cast for his lower register voice, similar to his performance as Shaw. In contrast, Yee’s voice was at a higher pitch for Gorou due to the character’s younger appearance. Yee approached Akito’s voice more as a young adult, and not necessarily a teenager.
“Ultimately, we want it to give Akito kind of this mixture of youth, but also that he’s a normal guy in a serious situation,” he says. “But really, Akito is not very far off from my normal voice. He’s kind of just a more innocent version of what I am.”
There are parallels between Shaw and Akito. Both characters are survivors, where Shaw’s comrades lost their lives following an enemy assault and Akito is the lone person waking up in the streets of Tokyo with mysterious powers after everyone in the city suddenly disappears.
To Yee, what makes Akito different from past roles he’s voiced is that the tone of Ghostwire: Tokyo’s story is more serious, but contains lighthearted moments. “I think that there’s always this level of seriousness mixed with levity that I bring to some of the characters,” he says.
When it comes to voice acting, the English recording is usually done first, and then the Japanese one follows, according to Ghostwire: Tokyo producer Shinsaku Ohara. For this, however, the recording process was done the other way around: Japanese first, then English second. Since the game is set in Japan, Tango Gameworks wanted to make sure that the proper actors for the Japanese voices were found, and then use those to find similar English voice actors that fit.
Ohara also notes that authenticity was also important in casting voice actors for the game, saying, “When we were auditioning for Akito, everyone had to be Asian. All of the actors that we hired that are Japanese [characters] in the game had to be Asian.” Yee says that this approach meant a lot to him personally to be able to provide a level of authenticity, being from an Asian culture himself.
According to Ohara, Yee had a humble tone to his voice, and that’s what stood out. Ohara muses that if Akito was bilingual in both Japanese and English, then he would sound like Yee. Yee notes that there is a cultural element of being Asian-American that bleeds through his own personality without actively thinking, saying, “It’s kind of baked in, to try to be more humble or respectful or quiet on certain times, even though there are things we have to be passionate about.”
One of the most important aspects of Akito is that he’s just a normal, young Japanese man. Ghostwire: Tokyo director Kenji Kimura says that Akito carries grief and memories of how he acted towards other family members in the past. He isn’t the greatest at expressing his emotions, but he’s also the kind of person that did his best to show how much he cared for his family.
The family connection is something that Yee resonated with personally, as he lives with some regrets of his own in past family interactions. Every person goes through those kinds of experiences where they feel like they were a complete jerk in the past – we’re all flawed, and we’re just doing our best. This is why flawed characters are often more relatable.
After a special encounter in the game’s story, Akito becomes able to speak his mind more clearly. Picking Yee was a unanimous decision for Tango Gameworks since he was able to get across that character growth. “I was looking for an actor that could bring that range to the table and that was Cory,” Kimura explains.
The casting process for Ghostwire: Tokyo had another positive effect as well. Tango Gameworks worked with veteran voice director Kris Zimmerman, who directed fabled franchises like Metal Gear Solid and God of War. Ohara explains that this was the studio’s first game with Asian characters, and so more outreach was needed to cast Ghostwire: Tokyo authentically for the English voice track.
The studio took the opportunity with Zimmerman to expand and diversify the voice actor pool to include more Asian-American talent, and that’s how Yee got involved. This was the first time he worked with Zimmerman, and he recognizes the dedication and effort that she put in reaching out to different agents in order to find the right actors.
“I’m just so grateful to be given that chance just to be listened to in the first place, but then to be trusted with such an important role meant so much to me,” says Yee.
He notes that Ghostwire: Tokyo’s scope is immense, combining beauty with horror, levity with sadness, saying, “This was just another amazing story. And I can’t wait to see how it continues to help me evolve my own acting abilities.”
Written by George Yang on behalf of GLHF.
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