Richard Epcar, Kingdom Hearts III, and all in between

[Yannis]

important:
"See what happened to them(square)with Billy Zane?!?! They are NOT stupid at square!! They learn from their mistakes and so they possibly made a contract with Richard which includes KHII and at least KHIII! They made it because they dont want to change Xehanort´s voice once again!

Richard Epcar has promised in his contract that he wont talk about KHIII´s existence before one date, when it is announced. Then the contract prevents him from talking about the plot of KHIII before its published.

Although we cant prove the existence of KHIII, we cant neither deny its existence. If you dont know about something, it doesnt mean that it doesnt exist....!!

It is possible that Epcar is working on the top secret project - Kingdom Hearts III!

Let´s imagine that Epcar is really working on KHIII. When McFadden asked if Epcar was approached to act Xehanort in future titles, he would still given the same answer, that "not yet, but im hoping". The proof is right here:

Richard Epcar: "Um, i'm in a new series um, you know what the problem is with all of these new games and series is that they make you sign all of these nondisclosures now. It's like we're making games for the CIA. You can't talk about anything. Like, I got about a dozen games right now that I directed and I voiced on that I can't even talk about until they come out."

Wasnt there rumors that KHIII will be announced at TGS this year?" TGS" is for Tokyo Game Show.

If the announcing is true, then they have already started making KHIII. No one knew about Birth by Sleep, 358/2 Days and Coded before TGS last year, even when they had worked on them for pretty long time.

Epcar kinda said that he said that he was working on KHIII, but it might have been him just saying it wrong in the first place. But I dont know if he was like:

Interviewer: "Are you working on KHIII?"
Epcar: "Am I?"

I hope you know what I mean..

So remember to vote in the poll also ;)

Originally Posted by KHI + FXN Otakon Interview - Richard Epcar
FXN: Alright Hi, i'm Lauren McFadden again and we have with us Richard Epcar
Richard Epcar (Henceforth RE): Where? Oh, here I am! (laughs)
FXN: (laughs) And what we wanted to tell you is that we actually went to our Forums - we have lots of members - and they all submitted questions and we picked some of our favorites to ask you.
RE: Really? Uh-oh. I'm afraid to ask what those are (smiles)
FXN: No, they're true Kingdom Hearts fans
RE: Oh, good good.
FXN: They want to know some they want to know some nice Kingdom Hearts related info.
RE: (waves at the camera) Hi Kingdom Hearts fans. I'm a Kingdom Hearts fan myself.
FXN: Nice. Alright so, first question is "What made you want to audition for the role of Xehanort in Kingdom Hearts II?"
RE: They.. should I talk to you, or should I talk to the camera? I guess i'll talk to you. You know the way I got the part is very interesting. I play the role of Batou in Ghost in the Shell, i don't know if you knew that or not but I do everything Ghost in the Shell, I'm Batou. So what happened was, Billy Zane played the character originally in the first Kingdom Hearts and I guess for some reason he was either unavailable or they couldn't get him or something, and so the person who plays this role, this character in Japan is the same voice actor who does Batou. So when they decided to do it here in America they said, "who's the American voice of Batou" and they said "Richard Epcar" so they hired me based on that and I'm delighted that they did because it was a great job and I had a lot of fun.
FXN: Oh wow, that's like a real testament to the fact that they you know, they like to have the dub actors kind of stick pretty close to the Japanese. Oh wow, that's really funny. That's a pretty fluke, but it's awesome.
RE: Yeah it was, and that's what's interesting about this business because you never know where stuff is going to come from. Right now I'm directing these two huge games that came from a game I directed about, I don't know, five-six years ago, and they loved it. It was a thing called Shadow Hearts 2 which I directed and did a voice in, and they loved it and just because of that now I have this relationship with this other company doing these two huge games - which unfortunately I can't tell you what they are - but we're doing that and I'm doing voice in them as well. It's funny how things come out of weird things that you know...
FXN: Yeah. Did you feel any pressure or difficulty out of having to voice a character that was previously voiced by someone else - by Billy Zane?
RE: Yeah you know the weird thing was that I, to be honest with you, I was very unfamiliar with this character. I didn't play the first game and when they brought me in, they basically directed me to do it - and they didn't let me listen to, like, his performance or anything like that and say "match he did", or anything like that - they basically brought me in to read it and directed me to do it in a certain way. So, if you love it, it's because I brought something to the character. If you hate it, it's the director's fault - he made me do it. I didn't want to do it that way - he made me! (smiles)
FXN: (smiles) Isn't that the way it always happens?
RE: Yeah (laughs)
FXN: The director, "Do this, do this!"
RE: Damn those directors! (smiles)
FXN: Did you have to collab with David Gallagher at all since you also did some parts where he is speaking for Riku?
RE: Umm.... the only person I heard was Christopher Lee. He was the only one I heard. I heard his tracks and I responded to him. Um, I think he was the only one that I heard actually. So that was a thrill for me, because I had done "Dracula" on stage, and actually there's another show I did years ago called Digimon where I played a character called Myotismon who is basically me doing Dracula. So, I'm a huge Dracula fan , so for me to work or do anything with Christopher Lee was awesome.
FXN: So you said you had a funny story about that?
RE: I got a great story about Christopher Lee (smiles). I went in to do this job, and I didn't know what to expect because I hadn't worked with these folks before. Basically I was in the booth and there were about ten Japanese clients and about ten people from Disney in there overseeing the operation and there was the director in there. I would do a line and basically, the engineer would come on the talk back and say "Uh, just a minute" and they would talk amongst themselves for about five-ten minutes and he would come back and goes "Could you do that a bit faster?" So then I would do the line a little faster and he would go "Just a minute" and they would talk amongst themselves for five-ten minutes and they he would come back on, "Can you do that a little slower?" and this went on like all day long, right? So I'm thinking like "oh my god" it took forever it was driving me nuts so when we had a break and I took the engineer aside and said "How did uh Christopher Lee put up with this?" and he said "Oh, they did it to him once and he said (in a Christopher Lee voice) "Alright, this is how we're going to do it: I'm going to read the script from the top to the bottom and then i'm going home.""
FXN: (laughs)
RE: And I though, how cool is that? So he just read it and then he left, and I thought how great is that?
FXN: I heard that Christopher Lee is like that, been doing it for years.
RE: Well the guy is like 80-something years old
FXN: I heard Peter Jackson had some issues with him on Lord of the Rings. "Oh Christopher Lee only does one take of everything" well he does a great job of it.
RE: Well he does a great job, I mean, he gets better and better. But I mean listen, he's been doing this for a million years but you know, he probably doesn't have a lot of patience at this point.
FXN: Yeah, who would blame him?
RE: He's getting a little long in in the toot, so I'm sure time is very precious to him.
FXN: This is true (laughs).
RE: So uh, but it was quite a thrill to hear his tracks and respond to him and he's just got that great voice anyways so it was wonderful.
FXN: (laughs) You did a very nice imitation of him too.
RE: (laughs) Thank you, thank you.
FXN: In Kingdom Hearts 2, the lips were synced to the English lines, which is not every common in video games anymore. Often, they just stick it right to the Japanese mouthing and if it looks off, Oh well.
RE: Right, I hate that (laughs)
FXN: Oh, my gosh, me too. Was there any facial motion-capture that you had to do with your role?
RE: Um.. you know, I don't think so. I think they synced it. Because you know, that's what I've done for years and years. I mean, i've done hundreds and hundreds of shows - Anime shows - you know that are done originally in Japanese and we replace the dialogue. And I'm also an ADR director, so I really like to sync well and I can sync well so I think they basically just showed me their film, and we just did it to sync.
FXN: So you have done that in previous series though?
RE: Oh yeah, you're right, most games don't do that and I think it makes it look so much better when you take the time to make it look like the characters are actually speaking those words. So when I direct games, and they are originally in another language, I make sure to make it look like those characters are saying the dialogue. And i think it looks a lot better. Getting back to Shadow Hearts, there was another issue we had was that they wanted to do it the way that you're talking about and they just wanted to basically do it the length of the Japanese dialogue and it looked like hell and I said no, let me. So I basically had to adapt it on the fly and make it fit on the mouth and they were so happy in the end because it looked so great - it looked like they were actually speaking to each other instead of just voice over narration type of thing which i think a lot of these games look like and sound like.
FXN: Right. yeah, we didn't like that in, did you see Final Fantasy: Advent Children or anything like that?
RE: No, no.
FXN: It was straight over the lips and the words were totally different so I appreciate at least one person who's up there and is able to affect that is aware of that.
RE: Part of it is because I've been doing it so long and it just really drives me insane to see that, so it's important to me to make the characters look like it, and unfortunately there's a lot of people "directing" that perhaps should not be. You know, they maybe okay as Voice Over directors, but seeing ADR and seeing dubbing is just a very specific kind of direction and acting and there's a lot of people that dont have that kind of facility. You know, it takes a real certain amount of talent to do it and unfortunately a lot of the time the companies don't care about it, so they just say you know "here do it, and i don't care" so I thank you, I appreciate you can see the difference and that you appreciate the difference.
FXN: Yeah (smiles). Alright this is another from a KH fan: "Have you been approached to voice Xehanort in any upcoming Kingdom Hearts titles?"
RE: (smiles a bit) I, uh, have not yet, but I'm hoping - keeping my fingers crossed - because I would love to do another one, and it's funny because I was just supposed to be at Mecacon this last weekend. I'm directing this huge game right now, it's basically going to take us three and half months to direct, so I'm just like crazy busy. Plus I have all of my other shows that I'm in, I have like six shows that I am the lead in in these series and other games that I'm voicing at the same time. So it's been very very hectic, lately i've been in the study from nine to six and then I work at night a lot of times. This last week I've been basically working from eight in the morning until midnight every day, because I'm trying to fit in all of my other stuff, while I'm directing this game. So, uh.. to make a long story, longer. Anyways so they basically asked me to do, because i was supposed to be at Mecacon and then I had to bow out, unfortunately. So they asked me to introduce this movie that I wrote and directed the English Adaption of called "Ghost in the Shell 2: Innocence" which for the UK/Austrailian version. And, I couldn't be there so they asked me to do a filmed introduction of the movie, so uh.. You're probably going "What the hell does this have to do with anything? It's the longest story I have ever heard and it's so boring, get to the point". The point is, is that in the film I was rattling off a few of my credits and I actually said "Kingdom Hearts 3". So I don't know if that was wishful thinking, but hopefully, maybe I'm intercepting something from Ethers. (laughs) I hope so, I would love to be a part of it, I really would.
FXN: Yeah there are a couple titles coming out that are going to focus on ten years before the Kingdom Hearts storyline when Xehanort would have been an acting force, so, we're hoping.
RE: Keep our fingers crossed.
FXN: Any advice to aspiring voice actors out there, who dream about voicing a Kingdom Hearts character? They're being very specific here. (smiles)
RE: (nods) Go to med school. No, I'm just kidding (laughs)
FXN: (laughs)
RE: Couldn't hurt, it could never hurt. You know, I get asked this a lot and basically my answer to this is that if it is something you really truly want to do, there is no reason why you can't do it. It's like anything basically though, you have to really train, hard, you know, you're training almost like an athlete. You have to train your voice, you have to be an actor. My advice to aspiring young voice talent is that they get into as many plays as they can, they read dialogue and copy daily so that it's really easy for them to do, they train voice, they can take some speech lessons, they can take some acting lessons, and so you feel confident and good about what you do because a lot of people say "Oh i got this voice and people tell me I got a good voice and that I should do voice over" well it's more than that. It's being an actor, it's being able to interpret the dialogue, being able to deliver the dialogue in a certain way, and so it takes a lot of training, a lot of technique, just certain things like that that you would need to work on and get to the point where you're comfortable at it. Once you do that, you put together a demo and you send it out to everybody and you go and meet people and you audition for everything that you possibly can, and if you go in and do a good job, eventually you will get work and hopefully maybe you too, can be in a Kingdom Hearts game (smiles).
FXN: (smiles) If it's still going by then.
RE: Like Final Fantasy, maybe they'll do Kingdom Hearts 73.
FXN: 73, yeah it will just keep going on forever.
RE: I would love that.
FXN: Yeah, so do you want to elaborate on any future projects you're doing to wrap up?
RE: Um, i'm in a new series um, you know what the problem is with all of these new games and series is that they make you sign all of these nondisclosures now. It's like we're making games for the CIA. You can't talk about anything. Like, I got about a dozen games right now that I directed and I voiced on that I can't even talk about until they come out. There is one cool game that's just about to come out that I really enjoyed working on which is "Mortal Kombat vs. DC Comics". I got to play Raiden in Mortal Kombat, and I got to play the Joker in DC Comics.
FXN: Very nice.
RE: And the Joker is the most fun I've had with my clothes off.
FXN: (laughs) There you go.
RE: I did say 'on' didn't I? Yeah okay good. This is a PG show isn't it?
FXN: Somewhat.
RE: I';s on cable. Er, it's on the internet.
FXN: And that's about it, thank you so much for answering all of these question, I'm sure the fans will be very happy.
RE: My pleasure. So are you an actress also?
FXN: Uhm, in High School I did some theatre (laughs)
RE: You look like you could be an actress.
FXN: Well more singing, but uhm
RE: Oh that's wonderful.
FXN: But I don't know, I have a very low voice, so maybe I could do the Villain (does villainous hand gesture)
RE: Well, why not? (Does the villainous hand gesture) That's international for villain.
FXN: Could be Xehanort-a.
RE: If you go to Romania and you do that they go "Oh, villain" (does villainous hand gesture)
FXN: (laughs) Thank you so much though.
RE: My pleasure.
FXN: It was very nice to meet you.
RE: Nice to meet you.

[Iridium]

I'd love for it to be so, but him being in KH3 or it being announced yet is inconclusive. The quote is not proof, I mean he does have many projects he's working on but I doubt right now it's KH3, personally I don't think anyone would have known about a 'secret' such as that so easily unless they are on the Square team. If anything I'm just hoping for more content on the current KH games at TGS, we still have a long way to go before KH3.

But that's just me.

*Edit*

1000th post, w00t!

[Yannis]

Originally Posted by Yttrxium

-personally I don't think anyone would have known about a 'secret' such as that so easily unless they are on the Square team.-

He said that they make him to do this agreement. It is really common and if you talk about the project, you must pay for them.

[Iridium]

I know about the contracts and such, but as for KH3 I mean that's pretty top secret <_<
Who knows really, I don't have my hopes up for this though, it's a little early to be worrying about KH3.

[megatron532]

I voted yes but, only because there was no "I DON'T KNOW MAYBE!!!" button and let's try not to get our hopes up

[Yannis]

Originally Posted by megatron532

I voted yes but, only because there was no "I DON'T KNOW MAYBE!!!" button and let's try not to get our hopes up

You shouldnt have voted if you are not sure.

[Gabo]

You shouldnt have voted if you are not sure.

Until theres some sort of confirmation, its impossible to be sure.
It'd be stupid to be certain about something such as that, with so little information released.

[Some Dude1]

who does he voice (i dont read credits)

[a real ass]

Originally Posted by Yannis

It is possible that Epcar is working on the top secret project - Kingdom Hearts III!

Let´s imagine that Epcar is really working on KHIII. When McFadden asked if Epcar was approached to act Xehanort in future titles, he would still given the same answer, that "not yet, but im hoping". The proof is right here:


Wasnt there rumors that KHIII will be announced at TGS this year?" TGS" is for Tokyo Game Show.

If the announcing is true, then they have already started making KHIII. No one knew about Birth by Sleep, 358/2 Days and Coded before TGS last year, even when they had worked on them for pretty long time.

Epcar kinda said that he said that he was working on KHIII, but it might have been him just saying it wrong in the first place. But I dont know if he was like:

Interviewer: "Are you working on KHIII?"
Epcar: "Am I?"

I hope you know what I mean..

So remember to vote in the poll also ;)

Thanks for posting this. It's interesting to read the interview with Epcar

[Smile]

What I love about this best is that you're basing KH3 on the words of someone from America.
I doubt it holds too much weight about a game that wasn't even hinted towards in Japan.

[Iridium]

That's basically what I said above, seriously I don't think even a voice actor from the game would have rights to know secret projects of a game company unless they are a part of the company themselves.

*High fives SA*

[Crimson Jazz]

I love how Yannis is trusting someone from America when the unannounced KH3 is a J-RPG.

[Smile]

Originally Posted by Yttrxium

*High fives SA*

*High fives back*

Congrats on Plat, Twilight ;O

[Iridium]

HEY! I got premium, you forgot to congrad me ;3
(jk, I'm not dying for attention)

Anyway, who's going to TGS?

[E.J.]

Maybe. I think it will be announced at TGS, but Richard Epcar doing a top secret thing....?