Stephen Russell, the voice of Garrett, joins Underworld Ascendant

[Update: OtherSide revealed on Twitter last night that another voice acting veteran from the Looking Glass days has signed up for Underworld Ascendant: Terri Brosius, the voice of Shodan, the "perfect, immortal machine" of System Shock. Brosius has worked on several games over the years as a voice actor and also a writer and designer, most recently on Arkane's Dishonored.]

Original story:

The odds are that you're either a fan of Stephen Russell's work, or you've never heard of him. He's lent his voice to a number of videogames over the years, including Skyrim and Fallout 3, but he's best known as the man who brought life to Garrett, the central character in Thief: The Dark Project, and its sequels The Metal Age and Deadly Shadows.

And now he's involved with Underworld Ascendant, the long-overdue follow-up to Ultima Underworld that's currently working its way through Kickstarter. "It’s our pleasure to announce that Stephen L. Russell will be doing voice acting for Underworld Ascendant," developer OtherSide Entertainment revealed in the latest update. "At LookingGlass we worked closely with Stephen, where he voiced some of the more memorable characters from Thief, Thief II and System Shock 2. Stephen also did voice acting for Fallout 3 and Skyrim. We’re looking forward to working with him once again."

It's exciting news, albeit in a very specifically nerdy sort of way, but I suppose it shouldn't be all that terribly surprising. As the update states, Russell was involved in three of Looking Glass' biggest games, and the OtherSide team includes a number of people from that era. So why not bring back the guy who helped make the characters from those games so unforgettable?

We recently spoke with OtherSide head Paul Neurath about what he has in mind for the sequel to a 22-year-old cult-classic RPG, which you can dig into here. 17 days remain in the Underworld Ascendant Kickstarter, which is currently sitting a little over $450,000 on a $600,000 goal.