Entertainment
How one of gaming’s best-known actors took on one of film’s biggest roles
You might not expect one of the world’s best-known video game actors to suffer from imposter syndrome.
But, as Troy Baker will tell you, no-one’s immune.
His most famous role is Joel Miller, the main character of post-apocalyptic adventure The Last of Us – a game regularly praised for its storytelling and performances.
He’s also appeared in celebrated series including Bioshock, Uncharted and Batman: Arkham.
But stepping into the lead role of Indiana Jones and the Great Circle was a different matter.
Troy says taking on the character made famous by Oscar nominee Harrison Ford was daunting, even for him.
“I turned it down,” he tells BBC Newsbeat, thinking back to when he was first offered the job.
“I was scared. I felt the weight of what this character meant.”
Troy says the performance capture team at developer MachineGames convinced him to change his mind, but there was one more person he had to win over.
Todd Howard, the boss of publisher Bethesda, had long dreamed of making an Indiana Jones game and oversaw the project.
But, Troy says, he “rolled his eyes” when the actor was first put forward.
Howard felt it would ruin the experience for players so used to hearing him.
“I never thought that my success would actually work against me,” says Troy.
Rather than walk into the role, Troy says, he had to audition with dozens of others.
It eventually came down to him and and one other actor. The decision was left to a test audience and a “blind taste test” where they had to choose the performance they preferred.
“Todd Howard said they picked you every time,” Troy says.
“And I thought that was a compliment.
“He was like: ‘No, it’s a challenge. That’s the standard’.”
Christina Welch still remembers what the sky looked like the day a wildfire came within 2 miles (3.2 km) of her Santa Rosa, California, home.
It was the Tubbs fire of 2017, the most destructive in California history at the time. Ms Welch’s neighbour woke her in the morning, and told her to grab her belongings and get out. When Ms Welch opened the door, ashes were falling from the sky and smoke filled the air.
Then, in 2019, the Kincade wildfire forced her parents to evacuate for five days.
It was the final push for Ms Welch. After advice from a friend, she packed her belongings and drove across the country to her new hometown: Duluth, Minnesota.
“It was just the culmination of all of it,” the 42-year-old said. “There’s only so many times that I was going to go through every fall of worrying about what is going to set on fire, if I was going to lose a house.”
Ms Welch is one of several people who has left California in recent years because of the frequency of extreme weather, even before the most destructive wildfires in Los Angeles history killed 28 people this month.
Climate change has made the grasses and shrubs that are fuelling the Los Angeles fires more vulnerable to burning, scientists say.
Climate’s ‘whiplash’ linked to raging LA fires
California is naturally prone to fires, but scientists believe that a warming world is increasing the conditions conducive to longer fire seasons and larger burned areas in the western US.
Just this week, a new, fast-moving wildfire broke out in Los Angeles County, north-west of the city, forcing tens of thousands of people to evacuate a region already reeling from destruction. Trump plans to visit Southern California on Friday to witness the devastation from the blazes.
The latest series of The Traitors is coming to an end, after weeks of wild accusations, wilder betrayals and Claudia Winkleman’s devious looks-to-camera.
Many of us like to think we could handle the pressures and skullduggery of being a traitor in the remote Scottish castle. But could you really make it to the end undetected?
Work through our scenarios – from sitting at the roundtable with Claudia to rowing across an icy loch – to find out if you’ve got what it takes to be a treacherous mastermind, or whether you are far too faithful for that.
Quiz compiled by: Steven McIntosh, Helen Bushby, Yasmin Rufo, Rosemary McCabe, Jonathan Holmes
Netflix musical Emilia Pérez leads this year’s Oscars nominations, with Wicked also among the top contenders.
Emilia Pérez, about a Mexican drug lord who changes gender, has 13 nominations in total – although one of its stars, Selena Gomez, missed out.
Wicked received 10 nominations – including nods for British actress Cynthia Erivo and her co-star Ariana Grande.
Three-and-a-half-hour epic The Brutalist, starring Adrien Brody, also has 10 nominations, while Demi Moore has the first Oscar nomination of her career
Even before the LA fires, Californians fled for ‘climate havens’
Would you make a good Traitor? Take our quiz
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