Master Chief Actor Steve Downes Reveals His Favourite Halo To Date

The voice of Halo's Master Chief, Steve Downes, has appeared as part of a brand-new episode of the Gameplay podcast today, and as part of it, he's revealed that Halo's voice actors were almost recast on two separate occasions.

The first was during the Bungie days, where following the success of the original Halo: Combat Evolved, the developer reportedly wanted to look at bringing celebrities into the game as voice talent, but ultimately decided against it.

"They ended up introducing some new characters and did use some celebrity people in it, but they thought, you know, 'the people like Master Chief the way he is, they like Cortana the way she is, why are we changing it?'. And they didn't."

Bungie eventually ceased being developer of the Halo series and the baton was passed to 343 Industries, which again reportedly considered replacing the voice cast. According to Downes, it wasn't just being talked about this time, but it had actually taken place, and it was only the reaction of testing which caused 343 to perform a U-turn.

"They had recast - they weren't thinking about it, they had done it - recast the voice of Master Chief, and they recast the voice of Cortana. But when they went to beta test the game, people didn't like it.

'That doesn't sound like Master Chief, that is not, that doesn't sound like Cortana, that's not what's in my head. I don't know who that is, but I don't like it'. They came back to us, you know, a little bit of hat in hand, and we ended up recording, you know, what became Halo 4."

Fortunately both developers came to their senses and chose to keep the beloved voice cast in the Halo series, and the likes of Downes and Cortana's Jen Taylor will be returning for Halo Infinite when it launches this November as well.

The full podcast is a fascinating listen, so head over to Gameplay to hear the entire conversation.

What are your thoughts on Halo's voice talent? Let us know down in the comments below.

[source gameplay.co]