When Tracy Wiles was cast in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 3, she didn’t even know her character’s name. Working wi🃏th the recording studio PitStop Productions, everyt🥂hing was on a need-to-know basis, and all she needed to know was her lines.

“I really didn’t know what I was getting into,” says Wiles. “When it started, I would just turn up at PitStop, put on the suit, figure out what I was doin꧅g, and try and get through as many lines as I could.”

Working like this made it hard to piece everything together. But bit by bit, details came through - she was Jaheira, a druid and High Harper. Still, the team 🥂told her 🌠she’d probably only need to do a few hours of mocap work, and then she’d be done with the game.

“At that stage [Jaheira] wasn’t there long,”♋ Wiles recalls. “They we𓄧re doing [the game] for a couple of years before I started.

“Then, I’d been doing it for maybe eight months, when they told me in a session, ‘Good news, your character is being developed into the game’. And I was like, yay! More hours! Then I did another year, after thinking it was goingꩲ to take a couple of months.

🅠 “I was over the moon. Just as an actor, I love the character, but the financial security - we don’t h﷽ave any jobs where we have pensions. We get a job where you’re told it could be another year of work.”

Now, the role has become so much more than a paycheck. Within minutes of our conversation in the busy halls of 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:EGX London, it becomes clear that Tracy Wiles is Jaheira. She lives and breathes the role, and her love for it only grows as she watches videos of her scenes on 🧸YouTube. When we speak, it’s actually a huge milestone for her Baldur’s Gate 3 journey; EGX is her first convention. In turn, this means she’s only meeti🌸ng some of her co-stars for the first time.

“Sometimes you’d bump into each other and you’d go, ‘Who are they playing?’ And they’d be like, ‘I’m on the poster,’” recalls Wiles. &ldq𓂃uo;The bigger picture is only becoming꧃ clear to me now. I’m still looking for Jaheira scenes, there’s loads more that I haven’t seen."

Right now, she’s actually on a Halsin binge. “Dave [Jones] put a story up the other day with a wonderful scene from Halsin that I never knew existed and it’s amazing.𓂃 And you&ಞrsquo;re like ‘Oh, so I’m a fan now!’.”

Like a proud mum, Wiles starts to tell me about Jaheira’s kids. I confess that Jaheira was my “group mum” in 168澳洲幸运5开奖网:Baldur’s Gate 1 and 2 as well, and then she asks me to fill her in on what happened in those games too. Then, I’m showing her my Tav, going over my team s🐈et-up. I apologize for getting so off track, but Wiles has none of it.

“Gush away to your heart&rsquo༺;s content. There’s nothing better than playing a character that means something to someone. I’m the same as you, I’m a fan. I watch it now like a fan.”

That she does. A🔯 quick🙈 look at her Twitter timeline, and all you see is Jaheira. “I retweet every single drawing that’s ever made,” Wiles tells me, and I don’t doubt her for a second.

"Jaheira is in her prime. I know they go on about her being old. But look at her! Look at what she does. She fights, she&rsq꧟uo;s strong."

“I’ve got quite a small following still, but even so, my old friends must have muted me,” Wiles laughs. “Now, I put out a tweet about anything to do with Baldur’s Gate or I tweet a picture of Jaheira and it’s like, oh my god, look how many people liked that! I am stunned. It's a brilliant game. And when I see all the clips now I'm still so proud.”

Even as the game still unfolds itself to her, she’s quickly amassing favourite scenes. One that sticks with her is actually a bug - the scene where an evil doppelganger of Jaheira tur🍃ns up in black clown ไmakeup.

“I've been talking to these gamer photographers and they put a picture up, and then I go cheekily, ‘Have you got any more of Jaheira in clown makeup?’”

Wiles was a huge fan of these ‘evil Jaheira’ screenshots, something that was patched out fairly early on. I reassure her that you can still💃 slap some makeup on Jaheira with a disguise kit. “But it’s not that black clown makeup is it?” Alas, it is not. “I think it loo💟ked great!”

But t🦹here are so many other Jaheira look🐟s she loves. She shows me one where Jaheira pulls a duck face, looking grumpy, and another of her looking shocked. Yes, she reads every single tweet that mentions Jaheira, and she remembers them all.

“I said I was stealing this, and they were fine. I just love any picture w💫here she looks a bit goofy.”

Her memory for fan interactions is amazing. Later on, when I show her some of my own Jaheira snaps, she sees my Tav and can remember seeing her 𝓡on Twitter before. She loves seeing everyone’s 𒀰playthroughs.

But before we can dive any further into Jaheira’s fanbase, Wiles is very quick to credit the actor who came before her: Heidi Shannon. She voiced Jahei🉐ra in the first two games, something Wiles only discovered when she was already shooting Baldur’s Gate 3.

“When I was announced☂, I went online and I put in ‘Jaheira’ and you could see a lot of people going, ’Why isn’t Heidi doing it?’ Tha🐓t was out of my hands,” says Wiles. “I deliberately didn’t listen to [her performance] a lot. I thought ‘I’m not. No one’s asked me to’. They never asked me to mimic, they never sent me anything. I think that would be really restricting.

“They just said, &lsqu💜o;Can you be Eastern European’? And that’s my Eastern European! I have seen some funny comments asking where the hell Jaheira is from. But as long as you can’t hear my ꦕScottish 99.9% of the time, I’m happy.”

Maybe this is my ignorance speaking, but I’d always thought Jaheira sounded Spanish - something Wi🐽les finds hilarious, and slips into character to correct me on.

“I think me and [Minsc] sound similar-ish,” says Wiles. “A lot of people think I’m Russian. But I would say it’s more towards Polish. I’d say it’s more of that than [dramatic accent change] Russian.

&ldqu🦩o;It depends how emotional she is. I do get a lot of Borat comments as well. Particularly when I talk to Minsc and I get a bit annoyed with him because [Jaheira voice] he does not listen!”

Whatever the accent is, it still retains that spark that Shannon g🤡ave it in the 1990s. In a Baldur’s Gate 2 scene Wiles had just watched before we met up, she got to see the original Jaheira’s reaction to her husband, Khalid’s, death.

“It was so beautiful. I felt really emotional. A little tear came to my eye,” Wiles praises. “We can't actually see close in. It's not like cutscenes, but it was all there. The emotion… It made it more powerful for me. It felt very old, very archaic. But the power of the grief was there.”

It’s how Jaheꦫira carries that grief in Baldur’s Gate 3 - more than 100 years later - that has captured Wiles’ heart. It’s easy to see why. Jaheira and Khalid were half-elves, so their marriage should have lasted a century. In the first game, it very much seems like it will. Jaheira is wildly independent and headstrong, whereas Khalid is shy and stutters a lot. The fact that they won each other’s hearts as exact opposites is beautiful, and made all the more tragic when they’re violently denied the happy ending they so deserve.

“It's an actor's dream,” says Wiles. “She's so well written, which I bang on and on and on. But she really really is. I just connected with the humour. So a lot of the times when we're doing the lines, I have to stop myself [from laughing] or I do and go ‘give me a second.’

“But then you get the bits that we know about when she's talking about [Khalid] all of that. Which is so deep. And then she's got the rage. And then she's got the friendship with Minsc. Like all of the characters… there's so many layers to them.”

"I am stunned. It's a brilliant game. And when I see all the clips now I'm still so proud."

Wiles credits this to Jaheira’s writer, Ruairí Moore, who she worked alongside while recording. She says the characterisation came to her immediately from the script, even before she knew the full picture. In fact, she nailed down t🥂he motherly side of Jaheira before even knowing she had kids.

There iꦕs one side of Jaheira that, somewhat controversially, hasn’t been explored in Baldur’s Gate 3 - roꦦmance. It sounds like this was decided quite early on, with Wiles making no mention of some kind of scrapped romance scenes. In fact, she only caught up on Jaheira’s love life once the game was already out.

“Originally I was like, no I understand,” says Wiles. “I understand it would be difficult to hear her talk so emotionally about Khal⛄id. And then go, ‘Yeah, anyway, c’mon.’

“But also I feel like Jaheira is in her prime. I know they go on about her being old. But look at her! Look at what she does. She fights, she’s strong. I’ve got a feeling that Jaheira has needs. It’s not an age thing. Halsin’s older than me. Asterion's older than me. I’m going to ask [Larian]. I don’t know whether they could add it in [...] The age thing is funny, but she’s not old. And even if you’re old, old people are still active.

“There’s a sensual side to her,” Wiles continues🎉. “That side of her we don’t see. I keep picturing it in my mind, of her at night bathing, being slightly sensual.”

It’s a side to Jaheira that Wiles has a lot of thoughts on, and flows through how she interprets the character’s relationship with her other campmates. For example, she can see Jaheira getting on with Wyll particularly well, because she loves his dedication to courtly love, espeꦛcially in the dance scene.

Jaheira’s best friend, though, is Karlach. Wiles frequently references a piece of dialogue Karlach has about Jaheira, where she fangirls over the old hero. “The Jaheira”, Karlach calls her, 🐭a title Wiles has very happily adopted. She’s even got a playlist ♐on Spotify called “The Jaheira”.

“I do have a soft spot for Karlach, be𒁃cause we’ve got that lovely bond. Every time I watch that scene it makes me laugh,” she says. “Sam [Béart] plays the vulnerability so well.”

It’s not surprising that Jaheira and Karlach are paired together as friends so much by their actors and the fans. Jaheira has been through hell and only comes out of it stronger, kinder. S♈omething Karlach can relate to all too well.

In 🎉many ways, Karlach is a stand-in for the fanbase - especially those of us coming from Baldur’s Gate 2 - as we see Jaheira as a living legend. Or, of course, as our mum. Wiles happily accepts all of these Tavs as her cubs, and stands arm in a🌜rm with fans fawning over her character.

In fact, this only becomes more apparent when our interview comes to an end, and I casually mention seeing a Jaheira cosplay𝔉er walking around the ExCel Centre. This catches her attention immediately. Wiles gets out her phone, and starts going through her likes on Twitter. Eventually, she finds a picture of a cosplayer in full Jaheira get-up, taken just before they left for EGX that day. So, with 🌼an image in hand, we get up and start looking for her.

After just a few minutes, we found her. Wiles is a little worried about approaching, perhaps scared she won’t be recognised♔. I offer to go in and introduce the pair, but I needn’t bother. As soon as the cosplayer sees us, she recognizes Wiles immediately - and I’m not ♛sure who’s more excited to meet who. This is Wiles’ first convention, first snap with a cosplayer, and she’s adoring it.

In Wiles, we don’t just have an actor, we🌠 have a champion for Jaheira. Alongside Ruairí Moore, Wiles has revived Jaheira and shown that this old warrior still has fight in her, all while retaining her love and vulnerability. Once ag💎ain, Jaheira is the heart and soul of Baldur’s Gate, and her future is in great, incredibly passionate hands.

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