Twenty-five years ago, Capcom released Resident Evil, a survival horror game that laid the groundwork for succeeding titles in the genre. Although the first game is the beginning of Resident Evil becoming a worldwide hit, it is also infamous for its over-the-top voice acting and dialogue, roughly translated from Japanese to English.
It is no secret that for several decades, the identities of Resident Evil's voice actors remained a mystery, mainly because the actors themselves weren't aware that they were part of the game. Such is the case with Pablo Kuntz, who provided the original voice work for Albert Wesker. In an interview with Game Rant, the voice actor shared how he got involved with Resident Evil, his discovery of his role as Wesker, and how he eventually embraced the iconic villain despite criticisms. The interview has been edited for brevity and clarity.
GR: Can you share with us how you got involved with the Resident Evil project back in the ‘90s?
PK: I think it's essential that I give you the context and how I ended up getting to Resident Evil because there's a bit of a backstory going on. Okay, so I got hired in Canada to teach English in Tokyo in 1993. But, truth be told, I didn't really like that line of work because every day was just the same and I got bored. I loved the students, they were fun and great, but I was not too fond of the routine of it all. So after five months of a one-year contract in a foreign country, I quit the job. And so there I was in Japan, thinking to myself, what else can I do.
Before I left for Japan, a friend of mine back in Canada suggested I should check out doing things like modeling or acting because, you know, they're always looking for Western faces in Japan. So remembering that advice, I joined a few modeling and freelance acting agencies there. I got some headshots done, and then, suddenly, I was invited to go to these auditions for TV commercials. It was a terrific feeling because a whole new world opened up — utterly different from what I was doing as an English teacher.
To get voice-related work, a Japanese director-friend of mine helped me produce my own voice tape demo. I think it was through Sergio Jones, whom you might also see credited as Sergio Alarcon, his name at birth, who connected with a production company in charge to provide voice options to Capcom. There wasn’t any in-person audition like I was used to doing to get modeling or TV commercial work. After my demo tape was presented to Capcom, they chose me for the voice of Albert Wesker.
GR: Can you tell us more about the process of recording Albert Wesker’s voice in Resident Evil?
PK: When I got the role of Albert Wesker, there wasn’t a detailed explanation of who the character was and what his motivations were in the game. I remember the classic picture of Wesker that we all know with his sunglasses and blonde hair. That was pretty much it. They gave me the script, and as I was reading through it, I figured out on my own that he was the bad guy. There may have been a paragraph or two explaining that Albert Wesker was the leader of the S.T.A.R.S., but there was nothing about him being the villain that I recall.
As far as the recording process is concerned, I remember that we did our lines individually. I was 24 years old at the time, and I’m trying to be as interesting and engaging as I can - trying to feed off from the other actors. But not feed off the other actors in the sense that we were in the booth together. It was one person at a time. But I did get to see some of the actors do their lines, especially Barry, which was rather enjoyable and entertaining.
GR: How does it feel to be the man that originated the role of Albert Wesker?
PK: Well, that's a that's a kind of loaded question. It feels good now. It feels great now. It's just been an unbelievable surprise because, for many years, I had no idea about Albert Wesker. I forgot 100% all about it. It wasn’t until about three years ago when I was showcasing my first Japanese sword on my YouTube channel when one person commented something along the lines of, “Is it true, are you really the voice of Albert Wesker?” So, I searched the name Albert Wesker on YouTube, and I saw Sergio Jones’ face. I pressed play, and I heard my voice. It took me completely by surprise… I had zero clue! I had no idea I was in Resident Evil. And so, I went through many stages digesting this new revelation of me becoming Wesker.
The first stage was surprising and then shock when I was looking at YouTube videos of Wesker and hearing my voice. Then a bit of laughter because it’s credited towards Sergio and not me. And truth be told, when I got to see videos of people ranking different games with the worst voice acting, and almost every single time Resident Evil 1 was there, I thought, maybe it’s NOT such a bad thing that Sergio was credited! But when I showed it to my 12-year-old son, he initially shook his head, but then he also said that it’s kind of cool. So, I thought that I shouldn’t be embarrassed about this.
I decided to come clean and responded to that YouTube question with, “Yes, it is. That’s a blast from the past.” And then, quite unexpectedly, this HUGE wave of support from fans came in saying things like, “Dude, you have no idea about the role your character played in my childhood,” and I really loved that. Since then, my son Lexonal and I have been doing YouTube videos of me re-enacting Wesker’s iconic lines, and now, we’re playing through Resident Evil for the first time. And that’s a rule in life. It’s not good to hide from something. I could easily have just said, “Oh, it’s Sergio.” I could have done that. But I didn’t. I thought this was just too interesting, and I wanted to see what comes from it all.
GR: Can you share more details about your thought process after seeing all the comments about Resident Evil’s cheesy voice acting and dialogue?
PK: I was a bit embarrassed when I saw that everybody was making fun of the acting and how it is over the top and not natural. But people need to understand the context of where it came from. Like I’ve said before, I also did modeling work and TV commercials in Japan. And most of the time, these commercials require the actor to overact to get whatever message across, nothing subtle. We’re asked to overact all the time in these commercials. Many Westerners who do these commercials that end up getting hired as voice actors for games and such tend to bring "the overacting to get a message across" style in the studio.
As for me, I carried a bit of what I was doing in TV commercials to when I recorded the voice of Wesker in Resident Evil. That’s one part. But also, it’s the dialogue. The original script for Resident Evil was written in Japanese and translated into English. But the lines are not natural English, and so you can’t help but read it in an unnatural way. For example, a line Wesker says is, “Stop it!! Don’t open that door!!” If it were written like, “Stop…don’t open that door.”, then I would have read it differently.
And if during the recording process, there was a director that had told me that “you may have acted this way in Japanese commercials, but now it’s time to be more cool.”- I certainly would have read it differently. But there was no such direction. So it is what it is. But now that I am playing Resident Evil, I think the voice acting actually matches the game because the graphics are not so natural either. Games nowadays are so hyper-realistic, so the voice has to be hyper-realistic, too. But in Resident Evil, the fact that the characters move in a clunky manner, there’s this harmony when you put in voice acting that is a bit clunky too.
GR: If given a chance, would you change anything?
PK: I know, the voice acting was kind of cheesy, but if you think about that era, it all matches, and it works perfectly. We wouldn't want to change anything. The voice acting works for that era, and you learn from it, and you grow from that. Going back to the levels of me processing this whole Wesker discovery. At first, it was a surprise, then shock, a bit of laughter, some embarrassment, and now it’s reached the point of me being proud of this project. I love the support I’m receiving from fans and putting it all together. There is this sense of personal connection that we are all connected in life. It’s a feeling of togetherness that I appreciate and have become truly thankful for.
GR: So now that you’ve discovered the Resident Evil universe and currently playing the first game with your son, what are your thoughts so far?
PK: I like that there’s a sense of freedom in the game. I still haven’t played the newer Resident Evil games, but everything looks more serious now in many regards. But there’s a breath of fresh air when you look back on those old games because there's a feeling of innocence, right? There’s a different dimension in the first Resident Evil, a dimension that we didn’t expect. It’s scary, but at the same time, it’s funny. I love the sense of freedom and exploration that Resident Evil gives - which I can’t help think of where we are now with the pandemic.
Today, we’re sort of stuck inside, no exploration at all, at least at this stage, and I hope it’s not going to stay like that. But the whole experience of going through the mansion, facing your fears, not just exploring, but also surviving. It’s like, what’s going to happen if I open this door? The player is in charge of the exploration, WE are deciding to go through that door, and when we encounter a zombie, we get to decide whether to kill it or not. So there are all these options on how to survive, but it all comes down to one thing, we’re in the driver’s seat.
Nowadays, it is easy to feel that we’re not in charge and not in control of our exploration in this pandemic. There are times we are even told where we can explore, where to go, and what to do, and those handcuffs are quite visible right now. So it’s one of the most interesting things about games like Resident Evil because it takes people back to that sense of “wow,” of wonderment and exploration that I think we’re desperately missing right now.
I also think Resident Evil encapsulates that sense of responsibility. I’m a big proponent of taking responsibility because I feel that your life becomes fuller the moment you take responsibility for it. And I can see that playing the game with my son Lexonal. There are many decisions in the game where the player takes responsibility. Should I use these bullets now? I might pay the price later on, but I’m going to do it. If your character dies, and then you start again, and in many ways, life is like that. You persevere. You take ownership of your actions. That’s a level that Resident Evil has managed to do, it touches certain parts of human nature, and that’s fascinating to me.
GR: What’s your favorite Albert Wesker line?
PK: Well, besides the obvious classics, I like this line when Wesker says, “Barry is such a fool… He’ll be under the control of Umbrella forever.” I remember thinking how that line encapsulates Wesker’s superiority complex, thinking that they just don’t know anything. As if they’re foolish, and they’re under control. So, from that line, I could see Wesker is a free spirit. I’m still learning more and more about him, I don’t know everything, but I could see through that line that he just doesn’t want to be controlled. He doesn’t want to report to anybody.
GR: What did you think about the Resident Evil Remake? Because while they dialed down the cheesiness of the dialogue a bit, it’s still there.
PK: Many people also say that the original game’s lines were cheesy because they were trying to capture that B-movie vibe. But personally, I don’t think that Capcom intended that for the first game. I guess it just happened to be that way. A lot of it was just translated from Japanese to English, and I think the cheesy vibe was a kind of an accident. Whereas in the remake, I think they realized that the original game happens to have this B-movie tone. Let’s not lose that. Let’s try and keep a bit of that. I’ve heard that so many people really enjoyed the Resident Evil Remake a lot, so I look forward to playing that too.
GR: So, after Resident Evil, you went on and founded Unique Japan. Tell us more about that.
PK: So here I am in Japan, doing the modeling, acting, voice acting, just trying to make a little bit of money go backpacking for like, three, four or five months come back, make a little more money and go backpacking again. I love to travel, and this freelance type of lifestyle supported that. In 1997, I went back to Canada and studied the internet, which was starting to get popular. I was curious and started thinking of publishing on the internet, so I took a course and began building websites.
This got me thinking that I'll go back to Japan and start a business called Marchforth International to help Japanese businesses use the internet to promote their companies online. Long story short, I built Unique Japan to support the craft industry, such as chopstick makers, Daruma Doll makers, kitchen knife makers, etc., not only to sell their goods in Japan but also internationally, and we would do that for them. Afterward, we were invited to a private sales event on a US Military base on the outskirts of Tokyo.
The servicemen and women just loved the kitchen knives and how the background story of these knives can be traced back to Japanese swords. Eventually, more and more people asked me about acquiring an authentic Japanese sword. Ultimately, all the other crafts in Unique Japan got gobbled up by the sword. In a nutshell, Unique Japan now focuses on offering genuine antique Japanese swords for people to collect, learn from, and appreciate and preserve for future generations. At the moment, I am also doing YouTube videos with my son, following our first playthrough of Resident Evil.
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