Fallout And Dead Space Actress Elizabeth Plant On The Community Spirit Of Modding

You might not be familiar with her name or face, but if you’ve ever gone on a deep dive with a load of Skyrim or Fallout mods, you’ve more than likely heard her voice.

For Elizabeth Plant, voice acting is a form of catharsis: “Voice acting is a huge part of my life,” she tells GAMINGbible about what got her into voice acting. “I’m here to tell stories, I think that’s the reason I’m alive.”

Plant has voiced characters and companions from several popular The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim mods, including Skywind, Lordbound, and A Tale of Blood and Snow.

Outside of Skyrim but still within the Bethesda scope, Plant has also voiced several characters in the popular Fallout 4 mod, Fallout: London. Here she plays Eve Varney, the leader of the powerful organisation called 5th Column, alongside a large roster of other characters and miscellaneous voices.

“I thought Fallout: London was absolutely brilliant. It’s such a marvel of community spirit and ingenuity.

“To me, modding is the platonic ideal of creating your own art in response and saying: ‘I love this world you've created, and I see your perspective; now here's mine.’ And what a world Team FOLON made; with so many characters, factions, unique lore, items and about as many actors and contributors bringing it to life in ways only they can.”

On Eve Varney, Plant said: “I connect with Eve incredibly strongly. I even have a t-shirt with her face on because I really loved playing her. I connected with her very deeply because she is also a disabled, queer woman in a space that wasn’t built for her. The post-apocalypse isn’t exactly friendly to people with disabilities, so therefore she had to become a certain way in order to survive. The reason she is the fascistic person that she is, is because she had to be that way in order to not get taken advantage of in a way that so many other people are in the wasteland.”

Diagnosed with chronic fatigue syndrome at the age of nine, she recalls a drama class she took in high school as the first time she found her true calling.

“In year 10, so I would have been about 14, I discovered theatre. And I thought ‘this makes me feel like a normal kid’. My drama teacher was absolutely glorious and he really saw the best in every kid. And he really saw that was what made me come alive.

“In year 11, we were doing a musical. I was one of the leads and worked the entire year on this production, but the day before the performance I had a massive health relapse and I couldn’t do it. And so someone else stood in for me, and it absolutely broke me. That was for two of the three days and I perked up on the final day of the performance. I had every strepsil from the pharmacy in my mouth, chugging ice cream, and anything else that would dull the pain in my throat and then I went and did it. As I say, it was like coming alive and that’s when I knew it was what I had to do to stay alive.

“That happened over ten years ago and it still wrecks me. A robot can’t replicate that,” Plant tells me as we move on to discuss artificial intelligence, a technology that threatens the acting industry by being able to replicate an actor’s voice to read any kind of script without the consent or input of the original actor.

This kind of stuff is already very rampant on video-based social media such as YouTube and TikTok, and we’ve seen it in Hollywood movies like Alien: Romulus and Top Gun: Maverick too. It’s close enough to sound like the original actor’s voice, but it misses the inflections and tones that can only come through in a real live performance. Even putting aside the ethical and moral issues with this technology, it brings an uncanny result that sounds more creepy than immersive and should never be used as a substitute for a real actor’s portrayal.

“It's so important we don't stop fighting to tell stories for ourselves and with our own voices, because the journey of what led up to them being told is a huge reason they make us feel the way we do. An immediate example for me would be The Quiet Things by Silver Script Games, who I mentioned hosting a panel for. It's an autobiographical game about the lead developer's [Alyx Jones] childhood abuse, and so much of its narrative arc is taken from official government documentation and written diary entries; but even if an AI was trained on those exact words, whatever it might generate would carry none of the weight or meaning behind the fact a life actually lived those exact circumstances and we are allowed to walk in her shoes through this experience. It carries no sensitivity, no nuance, no soul of these memories and how that pain's become a force for good through Alyx's work here. It can't even imagine for itself what it was like, only describe what sources it's been trained on say it might be.”

As well as working closely on Bethesda-related modding projects, Plant also shares a passion for EA’s Dead Space franchise. Last year, she played a role in the officially licensed audio drama, Dead Space: Deep Cover as Dr. Hannah Milevska, a villainous scientist performing immoral experiments for the Church of Unitology.

“I didn’t know too much about it. I only got the script a week before we recorded, so all I really knew was that I was playing this slimy, larger-than-life villain, which is something that I play a lot. There are ways you can prepare for what that is. You get this pre-conceived notion of asking in the world of Dead Space, what motivates a person to be this way?

“So with Dr Milevska, it was honing in on that human element of ambition. She was so ambitious. She was going through all these horrible, depraved experiments for the Church of Unitology, but she was also doing it for herself. And whether we want to admit it or not, that’s something some people can really ascribe to. We can really see that ambition in ourselves, like ‘how far would I be willing to go, and what would that do to me psychologically?’”

In addition to her job as a voice actress, Plant also works as a community manager for Glowmade Games, as well as an organiser for Guildford.Games, an initiative formed by members of the games industry in Guildford, UK to support developers in the local area.

On the similarities between her role as a community manager and her voice-over work, Plant says, “there’s definitely a lot of overlap there. I like to describe what I do as crafting spaces for connection and telling stories. I tell stories through my voice, and I make spaces for people to hear stories. To tell the story of my studio, and the game we’re making, and ensuring every voice matters. It’s really important to me and my studio that the space we make for the players is safe, and they feel that no matter who you are and how you identify, you can be a part of the story.

“But also, I think it helps to have skills that transfer between these roles. I’ve analysed hundreds of characters in my time, so you become quite good at conflict resolution, if there is anything like that online. And putting on a persona to represent a community versus finding the genuine beats that keep people engaged and wanting to be a part of the story.”

In terms of what comes next for Plant, she has several projects in the works. She’s done voice work for the upcoming game She’s Leaving, and is part of the cast for the second season of the audio drama The Madness of Chartrulean. She’s also playing Commander Hana Loshe in 333 Studios’ Retrieval, a game that seems like a love letter to Dead Space fans.

Despite her experience with playing companions and side characters, playing Loshe represents a new chapter of Plant’s life, as it will be her first video game protagonist role. This kind of role presents a lot of new challenges. Considering the interactive nature of games, writers and actors have to account for all possible scenarios players can find themselves in. That means recording breathing, screams, and grunts for specific scenarios. As well as contextual dialogue to guide the player if they get stuck. It’s the kind of stuff not every player might hear or pay attention to, but it’s a crucial part of making the character fully realised.

“I’ve always wanted to voice a protagonist, because I really enjoy doing all the little efforts. You walk into a door or try to climb over a barrel, and you’re just like …[she imitates a small grunting sound]... really softly. Trying to get those to sound realistic is harder than you think. One session it would be like, today we’re figuring out how to open doors at different velocities. So those are fun days to figure out, where it’s just 45 minutes in a box making grunting noises and then logging off.

“So I’m really excited about that one because, I quite enjoy games that I’m in for the novelty of it, but playing as myself for once is going to be a whole other level of weird. But it’s one that I’m really up for, especially when I’m running for my life.”

As for her dream project, Plant’s answer to that is an obvious one: “Elder Scrolls 6! Todd, please. I will give every scrap of flesh that I have, just let me voice one line.

“I feel an immense dedication to the Elder Scrolls universe because it gave me everything. My first ever voice acting role was The Forgotten City, the original mod, and then I came back for the actual game remake. I just love the community that surrounds The Elder Scrolls.”

If you’d like to keep up with Elizabeth Plant’s work, she regularly provides updates over on her X page and Bluesky, as well as her official website.