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The man who brought the internet’s 200-year-old vampire boyfriend to life is finally getting all the recognition he deserves.
Neil Newbon, who plays the roguish Astarion Ancunin in “Baldur’s Gate 3,” won Best Performance at the Game Awards (which is pretty much the Academy Awards of gaming) in Los Angeles on Thursday.
“Baldur’s Gate 3,” released this year by Larian Studios, is played with the “Dungeons & Dragons” role-playing system. At its core, it’s a choose-your-own-adventure game, where one can go on daring quests with companion characters — like Astarion. The success or failure of in-game choices depends on dice rolls.
Astarion, a flirty, roguish companion one’s player character can consort with, took over the internet not only with his charms but also his tragic backstory — which one gets to unpack if they follow him on his in-game quest.
And yes, you can romance Astarion. There’s more than one guide for it out there. (Yep, I checked. It’s not cheating, at least in my book, and I’m not sorry.)
Newbon — the actor whose motion capture and voice acting work brought pizzazz to Astarion’s every snarky insult, dramatic meltdown, and charming flirtation — had this to say after clinching the big prize.
“The community has reached out to so many of us at Larian, and said they were seen, and they were represented by this game when they lost hope, they felt isolated, they felt alone,” Newbon said. “And this game brought them together and gave them something to push through, to help them all.”
“You’re not alone – none of us are,” he added, quoting one of Astarion’s lines from the game.
You might recognize Newbon from his work on the survival game, “Resident Evil Village,” where he plays the enigmatic villain, Karl Heisenberg. Astarion, however, might be one of his most complex roles yet, and not just because of the character’s personality.
The game’s 17,000 possible ending variations also meant there were a myriad ways Astarion’s story could go, and thousands of lines for Newbon to record.
“Baldur’s Gate 3” also won the top “Game of the Year” award at the same awards show. For some reason, Timothée Chalamet gave the prize out. Watch that moment here:
THIS IS IT! @baldursgate3 is your 2023 Game of the Year! @larianstudios #GOTY #TheGameAwards pic.twitter.com/1u5hyGphbc
According to data released by Larian Studios this week, 1.3 million players have completed their run of the game since its August release. And in all, players have spent a total of 51,662 years, or 18.8 million days, on the game, per Larian.
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