Just days after its release, the Cyberpunk 2077 expansion, Phantom Liberty, was nominated for Best Game Trailer and Best Game Expansion at the 2023 Golden Joysticks Awards. Today, it sits at a 9/10 rating at GameRant and IGN, and 87% on PC Gamer. Not every expansion finds success with fans and critics alike – Phantom Liberty has.
A blend of thriller and adventure, Phantom Liberty sees players take on the role of V – ‘a cyberpunk mercenary for hire’ – tasked with a high-stakes mission of saving Myers, the current NUS President. Along the way, players must navigate the complex power dynamics of Dogtown and its even more complex inhabitants. Amongst these is Aurore Cassel, voiced by German-born, UK-based voice-over actor, Leonie Schliesing.
Perhaps most famously known as Toka in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla: The Siege of Paris, Leonie is fresh off her win at the 2023 Voice One Awards for Best Female Performance in an Audio Drama. Outside of her work in video games, Leonie has voiced commercials for big-time clients such as EA (Electronic Arts), Playstation, and Pokemon.
Phantom Liberty – Interview with Leonie Schliesing
Here we speak to Leonie about her experience working on the Cyberpunk 2077 title and her advice to aspiring voice-over artists.
TAHLIA: Congratulations on your recent work on Phantom Liberty! How did you prepare for the role once you found out you’d booked the gig?
LEONIE: This was an interesting one because I didn’t know much about the context of the role until I was in the booth recording. These types of projects are very NDA’d [non-disclosure agreement], and you don’t get a lot of information.
When I was recording the audition, I could see that the character had different character names, but it wasn’t until coming in for the actual recording that the director, Justin Villiers, explained what was happening. Only then was I able to really start doing the work because up until then – because of the secrecy around it – I didn’t know much. I couldn’t do much preparation other than getting my French accent out.
TAHLIA: Aside from the ‘multi-roling’ aspect, did Aurore present any other unique challenges?
LEONIE: When I received the audition for Aurore, I immediately really liked her. I think the scene they gave me to audition was when Aurore and Aymeric are in the car together talking about Hansen, and she’s hungover and keeps swearing.
I just thought that was really fun. What I had to keep reminding myself was that her energy was just so ‘up’. Everything was really quite over the top – especially considering that in voice acting for games now, the style of voicing has gone very cinematic. So, to have a character where you’re going back to almost a theatrical performance, where everything had to be so ‘up’ and ‘out’… That was the biggest challenge with her. Apart from having to be three different characters.
TAHLIA: Although we don’t really have ‘typical days’ on voice-over jobs, can you give us a broad sense of what a recording day on Phantom Liberty looked like?
LEONIE: What I love about this job is that there’s no one day like any other. But when you’re recording on a larger project like Cyberpunk, there’s a little more regularity. You get booked for a few sessions in a row, which, for me, were a maximum of four hours … [Also], development is still happening as you’re in the recording process, so there really is no such thing as a typical day. It’s all very sporadic, and you just have to be very flexible and available.
Not a lot of people know that you don’t ever record with the other actors. If you’re lucky, you get to listen to their lines, but if not, then the director is reading them in for you. There was a moment when Justin was like, ‘This is a new character you haven’t spoken to yet. Have we got those lines recorded? No, we haven’t. OK, I’m going to read them in. Oh, by the way, this is going to be Idris Elba’. And I remember I just went to lie down on the floor for a minute. I was like, ‘Well, this is a normal Wednesday afternoon’.
It’s such an interesting part of voice acting – where you don’t have that direct interaction with your acting partner, and you can’t do the whole eye contact and feeding off each other thing. You have to be an even better actor, really, because you have to create all of those emotional connections and the circumstances – and all while stood in a box in front of a microphone.
TAHLIA: Were you given any space to shape Aurore, or did she come fairly fully formed?
LEONIE: She was fairly fully formed. I’d say the team and Justin definitely had a clear idea of what they wanted her to be like, but it was still – it always is, if you’re working with a good team – a collaborative effort. At the beginning of the first session, Justin and I did a bit of finding where she sits, and there was this one sound that I kept doing, which became a sort of signature sound – you’ll probably hear it loads now when you play – which is this teenage-like [sigh]. I did that once, and Justin was like, ‘I love that. Let’s keep that’.
As the voice actor, you take the lines, and you add some humanisation or emotes … and you do have a little bit of freedom with that. But when it came to the script and who the character was – that was nailed down.
TAHLIA: Wading into trickier territory – how are you thinking about the evolution of technologies such as AI?
LEONIE: I oscillate between two feelings, where on the one hand, I’m terrified, and on the other, I’m like, ‘It’ll be fine’.
It’s a really exciting moment in technology. All of these tools that are being developed at the moment – whether that’s AI or just clever algorithms – can be so useful in daily life. I have ADHD, and there are so many tools now that can help me better organise my day and break down tasks.
What I get iffy about – not just because it’s my job, but in general – is when people try to replace artists with those things. I don’t understand where the urge to do that comes from. Obviously, I understand that it’s a profit-driven development, but I just find it really difficult from my standpoint because I love my job and would like it to still exist in 10 years.
Also, people can clone somebody’s voice and call their loved ones and ask them for money [or] log into online banking accounts with someone else’s voice. And you don’t have a leg to stand on if somebody clones your voice because your voice isn’t a copyrightable asset. Those types of things really scare me.
The media coverage around [AI] at the moment is still very focused on actors and voice actors, and the general public doesn’t care about that. So, what needs to happen is that the media say, ‘You should be scared because people could take your voice and log into your online banking with it’. That’s how this topic should be brought to the general public, because John from down the road doesn’t care whether I lose my job.
We can’t stop it. We can’t put the toothpaste back into the tube. [AI] is here … I’m hopeful that at some point we’ll get to a place where this type of technology exists, but it exists ethically and alongside the job that I do. And not just me – visual artists, music artists, all of the people currently at the mercy of this new technology.
TAHLIA: You’ve been super proactive in mentoring aspiring voice-over artists in webinars and on coaching calls. What do you feel is the highest leverage move actors could take if they wanted to get started in gaming today?
LEONIE: It’s really a question of getting some coaching, and by that, I mean acting coaching. I keep using this quote, and I don’t know who I’ve stolen it from, but voice acting comes with a small ‘v’ and a big ‘A’. It’s about the acting. If you have a cool voice, that’s great, but really, there’s space for every single voice in this industry. You need to be able to act authentically, connect to a text and to a character, and convey emotion through your voice. Acting is the most important part.
Specific ‘voice acting’ coaching tends to be quite pricey, so for someone who can’t afford that, I would say go and find an improv troupe locally [or] try an introduction to acting at your community college. Start by understanding the fundamentals of acting. Then you can build on that and turn it into ‘voice acting’ because it’s all acting.
If you’re someone who’s come out of drama school or who’s already involved in acting, I would say find the beautiful community that’s out there because the voice acting community all around the world really is … There are people here who are looking – who are willing to help. So, that’s the first thing: join the community; find your tribe.
TAHLIA: To wrap things up, if you could lend your voice to any fictional character, who would you choose?
LEONIE: Ohhh, that’s a really good question. I love Cate Blanchett as Hela in Thor: Ragnarok. I love the woman anyway, but that role, I mean… I love that film. I think it’s hilarious, and I think she’s just so great in it. So, if there ever was a game version or an animated version or a spin-off – ‘Hela, The Spin-Off’ – yeah, I’d be all over that.
Phantom Liberty was released on 26 September 2023 and is now available on PC, PlayStation 5, and Xbox Series X|S.
Special thanks to Leonie for her time. Be sure to follow Leonie on X to keep up to date with all of her future projects.
