Cabernet, an indie vampire RPG out today on Xbox and PC, asks players one, core question: Will you retain your humanity or descend further into the horror you have become?
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And it asks that question through a lovingly crafted world of intrigue, romance, and drama set in 19th Century Eastern Europe. My name is Buddy Sola, I’m the Head of Marketing for Akupara Games, and I sat down with the developers behind Cabernet, Arseniy Klishin and Laura Gray, to talk a little about their process for making a compelling narrative RPG and recording incredible voiceover for the characters in it.
“(Cabernet) became a fully fledged idea to us once we connected the idea of vampirism, actually, as a metaphor for alcoholism,” they told me. “We have another tagline in our game: Demons are hereditary.”
And with a basis exploring that core conflict between humans and vampires, empathy and nihilism, it became important for Arseniy and Laura to capture the emotional heart beating beneath the skin of their vampire characters. Voice acting, it turned out, became one of the most important components to making Cabernet really come together. And they certainly helped me understand the complicated nature of casting, directing and recording voiceover for the myriad of characters in game.
At the end of the day, the goal with the casting process was authenticity. “We did actually, in all of our casting calls that were public, we really did try to encourage Eastern European submissions.” The game’s Eastern European background isn’t just window-dressing; it makes up a core component of the game’s worldbuilding, but Arseniy and Laura wanted to avoid anything that felt fake in their casting. “For me, personally, it is a little strange to expect the character to speak in a British accent. We decided that our approach was going to be completely different: For us, we would rather have an authentic emotional experience that the actors have. We didn’t want people to imitate an accent that is not authentic to them.”
And it couldn’t get much more authentic than having Laura herself voice the game’s main character. “Liza plays a very grounding figure in the game. It’s slightly odd as the main character because you have to be a little of a foil that everybody can play towards and relate to in some way.” Liza, a newly awakened vampire who apprentices as a doctor, really is the conduit for the game’s core theme of choices. “We put her in that position as a vampire where she requires a substance in order to survive.”
Casting happened both with public casting calls as well as targeted outreach. Some of the game’s most high-profile actors, like Brian David Gilbert, were already in mind when Arseniy was writing the characters. “We kind of envisioned Petya’s character with his mannerisms when we wrote the script and when he accepted, it was really, really pleasant.”
Other characters were voiced by relative unknowns who had spectacular auditions and captured the emotional core of their part. For some performances, Arseniy and Laura directed the voice and tone of the actors in their studio– a foam-padded walk-in wardrobe– and for others, they took actors who provided professional recordings in their homes. And while sometimes, actors had a particular take that surprised and excited them, for the most part Arseniy and Laura were directing actors very carefully to make sure their lines were accurately captured in a game that, in some ways, had yet to be developed around them. Because the actors are recording their lines from the game’s 1200-page script without one another to play off of, Arseniy and Laura kept a cohesive, coherent vision by, as he puts it, “holding the keys in our hands.”
Cabernet’s voice acting was crafted by a deeply human process, finding the authentic emotions in talented actors from around the world. It seems fitting for a game about vampires struggling with their humanity to focus so heavily on the humanity in the voices of those characters.
Play Cabernet on Xbox and PC today.
Cabernet
Akupara Games
$19.99
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Cabernet is a 2D narrative RPG set in a 19th century Eastern European inspired world, with a modern twist. Guide Liza, a young vampire struggling with her morality and the supernatural world she has been pulled into. Will you retain your humanity or descend further into the horror you have become? Prepare to explore a hidden world of political intrigue, class conflict, and decadent corruption. Use the moonlit sky to plan your next feast and explore. Mingle among vampiric society and the humans who feed them. Uncover who can aid your new kin and whose only purpose is to be drained. Vampirism isn’t just an unholy transformation of your body– it also threatens to transform your mind. Will you choose to indulge your empathetic humanity or embrace your newfound nihilism? But to lure your next meal somewhere safe and secluded, you’ll need to understand who they are and what they desire. A kind-hearted, alcoholic coachman? A fraying newlywed couple? A greedy, yet charming charlatan? Their lives are yours to aid or unravel. Art, literature, history, science, these are the skills you’ll require to succeed. Your knowledge will be your greatest weapon in a world where the cunning drain the brutal of life.
