Dragon Age voice actor LARPs 40-minute career breakdown
7th December 2020 / 4:18PM
What did you do to celebrate Dragon Age day on Friday? I watched a voice actor get brutally shut down by Dragon Age fans, after he posted the cringiest video I have ever watched in my life. Greg Ellis, the voice of Cullen in Dragon Age: Inquisition, decided that it would be a good idea to post a 40 minute video, in-character as Cullen, complaining about him and his voice actor being victimised by cancel culture. It is awful. It is hilarious. It might well be the best thing to happen to Dragon Age since Dragon Age 2.
On Friday the 4th of December, Ellis caught on to the news that former Dragon Age executive producer Mark Darrah had left BioWare. Darrah hurt Ellis's feelings a little while ago, you see, after Darrah showed support to fans who voiced concerns about Ellis's politics and behaviour.
Ellis did some nasty Tweets about how good it was Darrah had left, Darrah was having none of it and absolutely dunked on him. Somehow this culminated in a 40-minute video of a man roleplaying as a medieval fantasy soldier complaining about being "cancelled" and plugging his voice actor's various podcasts at every given opportunity.
Greg Ellis's Twitter and YouTube have since been made private, but the internet never forgets, Greg. Here's a VOD of streamer "miggythemarvel" reacting to the video.
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"My name is Cullen, Cullen… Rutherford," he begins, leaving a lengthy dramatic pause I can only assume is because he forgot the full name of the character. "I am a popular fictional character from the video game, Dragon Age: an open world game filled with challenging combat, difficult decisions, and complex characters."
You may be thinking, huh, that sounds a bit like a press release – and you're not far off! That last line is, in fact, the exact product description for Dragon Age: Inquisition on sites like Amazon. Very nice of him to whack in a bit of PR for BioWare there.
"Recently," he continues, "a small vocal mob of social justice warriors attempted to have me, and my voice actor Greg Ellis tossed into the cancel culture wastelands."
I had to pause the video here and sit quietly for a bit. The words "cancel culture" coming out of this fictional character nearly sent me to the astral plane. It only gets worse, too. Here are some more incredible quotes, with plenty of third-person talking and some astounding nonsense words.
"This is my response to the mob's inquisition of me, and my voice actor, Greg Ellis, and how we attempted to understand the resultant blight it spread across the fandom."
10/10 use of Dragon Age buzzwords. 0/10 for yet again reminding us that you are talking about your voice actor, Greg Ellis.
"Greg and Cullen were summarily lumped together and generalized about due in part to the coincidence of skin pigmentation."
"Black Lives Matter, and they don't matter more than anyone else's. I love… I love… everyone. I support everyone's life choice and decision to love whomever they please, and to identify with whatever gender they prefer. So yes, all lives do indeed matter to me."
"#metoo, and the intellectual glitterati demand that men discard their past treatment of women and forge a new code, defining 21st century masculinity."
Intellectual glitterati.
"The manifest is filling up. The womanifest is filling, up too. Join me for this new adventure. Like, follow, subscribe. Plant your flag against cancel culture. Let not the naysayers win."
Womanifest.
"Mobbing is social murder, and by definition… people cannot survive their own murder."
Thanks for that nugget of wisdom, Cullen.
Other highlights include a part where he talks about being called a transphobe, but he couldn't possibly be a transphobe because "one of Greg's closest friends is transgender." Then there's a bit when Cullen begins monologuing his backstory (which I'm 90% sure has been ripped straight from the game's script). And how could I possibly forget the section when he cuts to riot footage while MLK's "I have a dream" speech plays in the background remixed with quotes from Ronald Reagan.
Over the last few years, some Dragon Age fans have increasingly disliked Ellis – not only for his politics, but for teasing Dragon Age news in what seems like a play to manipulate "Cullenites" (fans of the character he voices). The blog Greg Ellis Receipts has been keeping track of his "toxic and manipulative behaviour" if you're curious as to some of things he's said.
He actually teases DA4 news in the video from Friday, too, suggesting that he's already done the voice work for it. There's no way of knowing if there's any truth to this, however, because BioWare haven't yet confirmed what, if any, returning characters might be in DA4.
BioWare have teased that they'll have something to reveal at The Game Awards this week, so here's hoping we get some actual official info on who's in it.
Tagged with BioWare, Electronic Arts, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age: Origins.
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Imogen is a lore enthusiast and lover of all the fun shenanigans game communities get up to. She spends too much time playing Overwatch, and not enough time having interests that aren't to do with video games.
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