Humberly González is living the dream. The longtime Ubisoft voice actress and motion capture performer is now the voice and face of Star Wars Outlaws starring Kay Vess. Not only is it her first starring role, it's a role that allows her to recreate her childhood, playing with Star Wars toys and imagining being one of the characters on the big screen.
Since then, she’s had a lot of time to dream. But when it came to getting serious, what did she want to bring to a role like this? Kay’s personality and look had been worked out by the rest of the team at Ubisoft. With such a risky license at stake, was there room for her to explore the character and build on everyone else’s work?
Yes. As he told Game Developer at Gamescom 2024, his time with Kay Vess saw the character transform from sarcastic and self-assured to someone who is more of a “dreamer,” honing in on what would make a compelling protagonist for Star Wars Outlaws.
González saw a lot of herself in Kay's journey
According to González, Kay was originally written as more “cynical” and “joking” before she came on board, describing a character who sounds like Nathan Drake and his many wisecracking peers in the land of video game protagonists. “When they cast me, they saw that I brought a little more heart and vulnerability and because she's a rookie scoundrel,” she recalled.
Ubisoft has made a lot of fuss about how Star Wars Outlaws fulfills the fantasy of the Star Wars “scoundrel,” a role tailor-made for fans who felt closer to the series’ Han Solos than to the various Jedi protagonists. Luke Skywalker, Anakin, and Rey were all chosen heroes, but Han Solo, Lando Calrissian, and other supporting characters embodied a sense of freedom, adventure, and loose moral obligation.
“There’s a different kind of story here than Lando Calrissian or Han Solo,” González said. “They have the experience, they have the confidence, they have the swagger… they’re almost too confident.”
Kay, on the other hand, is having what you might call her first day on the job. The game begins with her trying to earn enough money to leave the casino town of Canto Bight, and her adventure embodies a “fake it 'til you make it” attitude.
González said directing allowed her to bring “more of myself” to the performance. “I know what it means to put on a mask, pretend to know what I'm doing, and use my charm: Kay Vess has a lot of that.”
In other words, González brought back some of the energy of Luke, Anakin, and Rey, characters whose stories all begin with the dream of leaving and discovering a bigger world.
“She’s a dreamer,” González said fondly.
The motion capture team worked 8 hours a day to preserve the actors' energy
Since this was González's first leading role, Outlaw gave her the most work she’s ever had on a Ubisoft production. Great for her paycheck, but also tough on her body. She explained how Ubisoft’s motion capture process was designed to give actors time to rehearse and rest to get through months of filming.
“The wonderful thing about motion capture, compared to TV and film, is that it’s a very balanced lifestyle,” he said. “We work nine to five, we always have the evenings off… which means we get a lot of rest.”
The team would rehearse a week's worth of shows on Monday, then spend Tuesday through Thursday shooting scene after scene. “The scenes take maybe a little longer and when you shoot them, they're a little more linear like in the theater because we don't cut between [takes]. Because it's all mocap and there's no sets, hair, makeup or costumes, you can focus a lot more on the work.”
Vess said that as a motion capture performer, she's used to acting against “nothing” and quizzing directors for input on what will be on screen in the final game. But working with Camille Loiselle-D'Aragon and her Nix puppet handmade It was a special joy. “That was a special moment,” he said, recalling how Loiselle-D’Aragon maneuvered the puppet to jump on his knee and other “visceral” interactions.
“That was a really special moment,” he recalled, “because I know that doesn’t happen often to us as motion-capture artists.”
González and other artists face new kinds of threats.
González, a Canadian actress, is not a member of SAG-AFTRA and therefore not part of the ongoing strike against developers for their alleged refusal to bargain with actors on protections against the exploitative use of generative AI. But she supports her peers, including actors like Dee Bradley Baker (who voices Nix and Jabba the Hutt in Outlaw). “Voice actors can only play so many roles in a game,” he said, nodding at his multiple performances. “If they just say, ‘We’ll protect your likeness,’ it doesn’t really work.”
González has had to deal with another challenge that video game actors face today: the threat of online harassment. In his case, it manifests itself largely as part of a racist and sexist reaction TO OutlawUbisoft's first open-world game in recent history to not allow players to select their character between two genders.
She is not particularly concerned about the reaction (echoing comments made from creative director Julian Gerighty in our conversation with him at Gamescom), telling Game Developer that she doesn't interact “at all” with players who have nothing “constructive” to say, preferring to interact with fans like the ones she'd be coming to meet at Gamescom.
He said however that the persistence of these campaigns demonstrates why representing characters like her is important. “Having someone like me, who is an immigrant, who is queer, who is Latina, who is a female lead in one of the biggest franchises in the world… I understand that people are protective of those worlds, but we need to have representation of what [our] “What the world really looks like,” he said.
Kay Vess may be a dreamer making her way through the galaxy, but it’s clear that González is ready for whatever the games industry throws at her. Her experience shows what developers can learn from their high-performing peers and highlights why protecting their presence in our business is better for everyone.