Mike Patton, the voice behind the Darkness in The Darkness, the Anger Sphere in Portal, and soon to be voice of the Infected in Left 4 Dead, recently sat down with the A.V. Club to talk about all things voice-acting.
AVC: You also had a brief appearance in Portal, the Valve game, and there's talk about you perhaps appearing in their game Left 4 Dead.You can hear more from the former vocalist of Faith No More over at the A.V. Club.
MP: I think what they did is they took some material that I'd already recorded for Portal - maybe it was vice versa. Basically that came out of the same session of work.
AVC: How did that come about? Is that another situation where you got a call out of the blue?
MP: Sort of. I knew someone who worked for the company that was working on the music there. He mentioned me to the producers, and I guess their eyes lit up and they thought, "What the hell?" I think that most of this work that we've been talking about came from the first videogame I did, called The Darkness, where I was just doing, well, the darkness! Imagine what that sounds like! And it was a semi-high-profile game and I guess there was enough publicity behind it that people knew I was involved. Basically the Valve stuff came from-it was an inside job. A friend of mine recommended me. Same with I Am Legend. I don't have many contacts in that world. I guess I'm getting to the age where a lot of other people my age have real jobs, and when they're hard-up they refer to an old-timer like me.