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Darin De Paul Absolutely Nailed His Performance as Ardyn Izunia

Iori Fuyusaka

Iori Fuyusaka

Banned
Oct 26, 2017
2,901
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Recently got a 4K OLED and decided to play through my unplayed Final Fantasy XV season pass, solely because it's one of the few HDR games I own.

The DLC wasn't bad, wasn't great, but what stuck out to me the most was how well voice acted Ardyn Izunia was.

Darin De Paul is probably most well known for his role as Reinhardt from Overrwatch, but I think he deserves some special recognition for his performance in Final Fantasy XV.

www.behindthevoiceactors.com

Darin De Paul (visual voices guide)

Known for voicing Ardyn Izunia, Reinhardt, and Samuel Hayden. View 86 images and 10 sounds of Darin De Paul's characters from their voice acting career.
www.behindthevoiceactors.com www.behindthevoiceactors.com
www.imdb.com

Darin De Paul | Actor, Additional Crew

Known for: 3Below: Tales of Arcadia, Shazam!, Abominable and the Invisible City
www.imdb.com www.imdb.com

ardyn-izunia-is-coming-to-dissidia-final-fantasy.jpg
 
TheGreatDirector

TheGreatDirector

Member
Oct 26, 2017
11,031
Yeah, one of my favorite villain performances from this gen for sure. Ardyn is a weird character and he managed to imbue him with a voice fitting for such a strange antagonist.
 
Socivol

Socivol

Member
Oct 25, 2017
6,651
Everything about Arydn (except his backstory in the base game) is perfect and it's because he is voiced so well. Darin just gave him the perfect voice to bring out his personality and was a standout in the game.
 
sensui-tomo

sensui-tomo

Attempted to circumvent ban with alt account
Banned
Oct 25, 2017
4,629
Hell he was great as J Jonah Jameson in the spiderman game too. Whenever he was on screen in this game it always seemed like he had a great time acting.
 
Mifec

Mifec

Member
Oct 25, 2017
17,699
No he didn't it's horrible like the rest of the VA. Recently played Episode Ardyn too and I genuinely felt second hand embarrassment for the man and whoever the writer was.
 
Firima

Firima

Member
Oct 27, 2017
4,469
Darin De Paul absolutely nails every role he plays, really: J. Jonah Jameson, a quarter of the cast of Darksiders 3, REINHARDT REINHARDT REINHARDT

He's an MVP wherever he's cast, for sure.
 
Geg

Geg

Member
Oct 25, 2017
5,529
I replayed XV last year and yeah I liked his performance as him even more than I remembered lol. Ardyn just steals the spotlight in every scene he's in
 
Whales

Whales

Member
Oct 25, 2017
3,138
yep. Ardyn is probably the most fleshed out , best FF villain too. Good part of it is because of him.
 
Brivs

Brivs

Creative Director, BancyCo
Verified
Nov 4, 2017
339
Toronto
Agreed that he nailed the role; he seemed to really wrap himself around the eccentricities of the character.
 
Jessie

Jessie

Member
Oct 27, 2017
9,921
Ardyn was one of the most well written Final Fantasy characters. But I wish he got a full trilogy to preserve the plot twist and further the mystery surrounding his motivations.

Maybe Kingdom Hearts 4 will have an Ardyn expy.
 
Kalor

Kalor

Resettlement Advisor
Member
Oct 25, 2017
19,620
His performance helped elevate that character a lot. Good generation for FF villains when Shadowbringers main villain and their VA is even more amazing and has a better story/writing to back them up.
 
Kyle Cross

Kyle Cross

Member
Oct 25, 2017
8,401
Hands down the best part of FFXV, and easily one of the best villains in gaming. Darin's performance made it.
 
Arkeband

Arkeband

Banned
Nov 8, 2017
7,663
His performance was fine, undermined by poor audio mixing and abysmal writing. I think people are overvaluing his work here based on how poor the game surrounding it is.

If you compare it to the gut wrenching VA work done by Kira Buckland and Kyle McCarley in Nier, it blows everything in FFXV out of the water. I'd even argue that Noctis's VA, Ray Chase, had more entertaining work in Nier.

The standard voice acting in FFXIV is also leaps and bounds beyond what FFXV manage to honk out.
 

Deleted member 21709

User requested account closure
Banned
Oct 28, 2017
23,310
He was amazing. And the Ardyn DLC was GREAT!

On PS4, only 1.2% of owners of the game have finished the Ardyn DLC on Normal.
That is... ridiculous. Don't miss out on this!
 
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