Do you remember your first job? The one where you got your foot in the door and found the motivation to prove yourself? Ashly Burch had two of those jobs: voicing Tiny Tina in Borderlands 2, and writing for a little show called Adventure Time. Currently, she flexes both these talents in the Apple TV Plus sitcom Mythic Quest: Raven’s Banquet. But before everything, she was killing it on YouTube, co-creating a series with her brother Anthony called Hey Ash Whatcha Playin’?
Ashly stars in our third episode of “Behind The Voice,” where we give you a look into the lives and careers of the actors who voice the game characters you play. In it, she talks about the challenges and rewards of being both a writer and an actor. As a writer, she has learned to trust her instincts, and as actor she learned how to channel them into tangible results.
She also tells us about the challenges of voicing characters in open world games. In these games, one major story arc is responsible for the bulk of a character’s development, while smaller story lines, like side-quests, need to fit anywhere within that. This presents a challenging obstacle for the actor when it comes to not betraying the character’s development no matter where the player is in the overarching story. But Ashly is no stranger to a challenge, and faced this one head on during production of Horizon Zero Dawn.