A formerly unreleased remnant of the unfinished chapter of the M4-78 Documentary
M4-78: The Problem with Master Vash
One thing that I don’t think I’ve previously discussed is the problem of voice overs of the character Master Vash – the Jedi we’re seeking in the M4-78 materials. Did you know that there are two voice actresses for the lines that appear in the game?
When we first see and hear Master Vash, it’s an old video that T3-M4 plays of your Exile’s trial on Coruscant. The voice actress for Vash in this scene is Vanessa Marshall.
Vanessa Marshall has played a number of parts over the years, including a few characters in the Extended Universe including: Master Bela Kiwiiks (from SWTOR), Hera Syndulla (from Star Wars: Rebels and Forces of Destiny) and assorted characters in KotOR2. [ed: insert pictures of the various characters] I’ll put an IMDB link to her CV in the video description below.
Here’s where things take a turn. Vanessa Marshall isn’t who we hear on the planet of M4-78 though. That completely different voice actress is Kath Soucie. In the Star Wars EU alone, she’s played the female Smuggler and minor characters in SWTOR, Mira Bridger and Minister Maketh Tua in Star Wars: Rebels, Mon Mothma from the Star Wars: The Clone Wars cartoon, the Nightsister in Star Wars Empire at War: Forces of Corruption, Mara Jade in Star Wars: Empire at War, and the list goes on and on with other non-Star Wars roles. [ed: insert pictures of the various characters] I’ll put an IMDB link to Kath Soucie’s CV in the video description below.
There are two people doing the work of one character. Most folks don’t even notice the actress change up as each section has few lines and they are separated by a decent amount of both in-game and real-world time. Let’s be honest - most people aren’t making off like a shot from T3’s Trial video to go straight to Korriban so they can meet Vash right away.
Why bring this up though?
One of the limitations of any of the versions of M4-78 mods is severe limitation of lines that can be used for what Vash can say in the mod. There’s not a lot. Since they are two different voice actresses, you can’t grab sample from one Vash iteration and hand it off to the other. It won’t sound right as they aren’t trying to actively mimic each other. An enterprising modder could technically grab lines from other games to try to extend Kath Soucie’s lines from one of the games listed below. However that modder would have to limit themselves to lines where Soucie’s lines sounded like her Vash impression that were left on the KotOR2 disc. Then they would run into the same issue of limitations of what the actress can say based on those lines.
The answer to this would seem to be to recast the part of Master Vash entirely. Whenever this has been brought up, there’s been pushback. The most common reasons is a connection to the few lines that appear in the Coruscant files that appear in both modded and unmodded versions of the Coruscant trial scene – which as pointed out earlier – isn’t even the same actress as the one on Korriban.
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