I was lucky enough to attend the Mark Meer and Raphael Sbarge panel at CCEE this year. As I do with almost every panel I attend or conversations I have with creators/actors, I jotted down some notes to share with you! The panel focused on Mass Effect, mostly the OT, but with some Andromeda questions sprinkled in for good measure.

 Meer collects action figures because he's a nerd. 

 Someone asked if they had met while working on the series. They said they first met at Dragon*Con 2012 as they were both guests. Technically they were still recording for ME3, so they had met while working on the series.

Both Meer and Hale met Martin Sheen when he was recording for the last game. They got to watch him record TIMs death scene.

Sheen referenced Apocalypse Now at the end of his scene while staring at Hale and Meer through the glass. "The horror... The horror"

Sbarge called Ashley Kaidan's “alter-ego”

As for Sbarge, he and Kimberly Brooks recorded after one another at the LA studio, and would high five each other as they went into the booth.

Meer played ME1, 2 and some of 3. He played through both Renegade and Paragon, romancing different people each time.

Sbarge played 1 and some of 2 (he made it clear he did not romance Kaidan).

Meer was originally brought in for ME to do alien and side character voices, but was asked mid-way through his work if he wanted to audition for the lead-role. He went through a few auditions and didn’t think he’d get it, but then he got the call saying he did!

Meer was the demo version of Carth Onasi (Sbarge did not know this and laughed when he found out).

It was at this point Sbarge got super excited and started talking about how incredible Meer is, and that his story of getting the role as Commander Shepard is really unique. He said it isn’t often someone who comes in to read for NPC characters lands such an important role. 

Meer is reason aliens sound like they do (such as the Salarians speaking like Steve Buscemi). He said he was the only one who could do the Vorcha voice, hence why he voices all of them. 

Sbarge egged Meer on to do the Vorcha voice, which he did much to the audiences amusement.

When asked Renegade or Paragon, Meer had a very diplomatic response, but finished by saying he thinks the Renegade interrupts are "pretty great"

Meer hasn't played Andromeda yet, but he's excited to try it out because he’s never played an ME game without knowing what's going to happen in the story.

Meer joked filming the romance scene was "sexy" and Sbarge was like "what was it like for you?"

The more serious response from Sbarge was that the writing of character’s relationships was amazing, and that a lot of the beauty of the game comes from how the relationships were crafted. He brought up a conversation he and I had when I got his autograph about the importance of same-sex relationships in the series, and he stated that the blurring of gender lines and the love between two men or two women was amazing and incredible. He thinks ME is an important series because of the relationships, and these relationships is what defined the work for Sbarge and why he liked working on the games so much. Basically he liked voicing Kaidan’s romance lines lol.

Meer shot down a dude trying to get him to cheer on the Oilers and start a war between Calgarians and Edmontonians. He doesn't like hockey but he's happy people are happy about it lol (for those who don’t know, Calgary [where this took place] and Edmonton have a ‘rivalry’ going on, and much of it is tied to our shitty hockey teams).

Sbarge lost it when Meer told the story of the Steeeeeeve glitch. According to Meer, he recorded a variety of lines for that shuttle-crash at the end of ME3, that varied from ‘you barely talked to Steve’ and ‘you romanced and fell in love with him.’ But the only line that made it into the game was the romance one, so no matter the relationship to Cortez, Shepard loses his shit every single time. 

Sbarge wants a t-shirt with the line: "I'll cut off your balls and feed them to a Krogan"

Meer's favourite ending was Control because Shepard "essentially" becomes Galactus. He also likes the change in tone between Renegade and Paragon with that ending. He thinks Destroy is also a good ending (and said that Shepard’s breath at the end is indication that Shepard LIVES and doesn’t die).

Sbarge said when the final card for reading came up he was shocked because he didn't know he was reading the last scenes that day. He ended up crying after he finished his recording.

Meer said the emotion in ‘the best’ line at the end of the Citadel DLC was real. 

Sbarge's opinion of the ending was that it was giving the trilogy a bookend and that the game "had its time", which makes it special to him. He’s happy about Andromeda because it feels like they’ve passed the torch to the next group. He says he misses working on ME but cherishes the fact that he got the chance to work on it at all. 

When asked about how he came up with Commander Shepard’s voice, Meer stated it was him "trying to be tough".

Sbarge said his voice direction was that they wanted his voice to be real, and to record like he was working on a movie or TV show. They didn’t want it to sound cartoony. They also wanted to get the tone of a military man, meaning no casual usages of words or manner of speech. He said it was an ongoing process to get that tone just right. 

Meer said the Indoctrination Theory was just a well crafted theory but that it isn’t true. He thinks fans needed hard facts while BioWare made a more "interpretive" ending. He thought the extended cut and Citadel DLC helped with that closure people needed.

Sbarge said BioWare was incredibly sad when it ended and that it wasn't a "casual" thing for them, and it's important to remember that they poured their heart and soul into the series. He likened the game to their ‘baby’, that they raised all the way into adulthood. When the original ending was released the ME team was also devastated by how it didn’t hit the right notes and left everyone hurt and frustrated. Sbarge said it is important to realize that the ending wasn’t something that Bioware didn’t care about. 

My fav image of me to come out of the con. Felt like such a badass hahaha.

“Look out world, Tracer’s here!”

Check out these super cute cosplays I saw today! 

Prompto in the first pic is @princenarukami