Warframe: 1999’s Ben Starr is proud to be gaming’s class clown

Last weekend, Warframe fans gathered in London, Ontario, for TennoCon, an event dedicated to the popular MMO. It was a busy weekend full of panels, demos, and announcements. Digital Trends attended the show, getting our first taste of Warframe: 1999. The upcoming update to the long-running series promises new story, weapons, and maybe even a bit of smooching in an alternate version of the Y2K era.

The star of that expansion? Ben Starr, the voice actor known for both his role as Clive in Final Fantasy XVI and his very online persona. I sat down with Ben Starr at TennCon to talk about his Warframe: 1999 character Arthur Nightingale, late ’90s nostalgia, and his knack for comedy — oh, and his presidential position in the “gerbil breeding society.”

How much do you remember of the year 1999?

I remember everything about 1999. I still go back to the year 2000 and see that as a benchmark in my life. For those people who weren’t alive, I don’t think it could be overstated how everyone was aware of what year it was. It was Y2K, the entire world could end. This sense of something new … there’s something so exciting and dangerous about what that represents. Especially where I grew up, in London, the millennium was massive. We had the Millennium Dome, we had the London Eye. A lot of the iconic landmarks that exist in London now were because of that. And so that aesthetic [in Warframe: 1999] is so incredibly nostalgic for me, you know. And I think they’ve captured it so brilliantly. It isn’t 1999, it’s how we imagine 1999 was, or how cool that period was.

I studied history at university, and the most interesting aspect of history to me … is the historiography. It’s how human beings chose to catalog that period of time in which they existed. Why were humans choosing to look upon the period in which they lived and reflect in that way? And that is what this is. This is a 2024 take on 1999 about how the people who grew up in that period felt about it, and kind of reflect back on that because it’s now not the present. It’s a hit of really powerful nostalgia.

Let’s talk a little bit about Warframe: 1999. Who is Arthur Nightingale? What makes Arthur tick?

I think we’ve kind of described him as a boy scout. He is kind of the anchor of this world. He is proto-Excalibur, after all, he is the player’s way into this new world. He has that gravitational pull around who he is. It allows other characters to accentuate really interesting facets of who they are.

You’ve seen in that demo all the really interesting different textures that the other proto Warframes are bringing to that. And I really think he is the strong leader and anchor that allows other characters to come to life. Hopefully people who love Arthur are gonna love Arthur, but it allows them to also go, “you know, I’ve played with this character. I want to figure out who these other characters are and enjoy the story that way.”

When you’re developing a voice for a character like Arthur, how does that process work? How do you find a character’s voice?

Literally, you look at a picture of them, and then you see them in-situ and see how their body works. [Warframe creative director Rebecca Ford] gave me an image, and then she showed me a demo. I saw the way that Arthur would move, and I go, OK, what would he have been through? How would he sound? And I remember voicing in my bedroom how I think Arthur would move and sound as I watched that demo.

Also, what is a realistic voice that you can do? Reb said, “I want someone who sounds like their voice is grinding gears, like they’ve been in the dirt.” A lot of Arthur sits in that, but hopefully, more facets to him as you learn his loves, his likes, his hates, his wants, his desires, all that sort of stuff.

When you are jumping into a role like this, how much of yourself do you put into that?

With any sort of character when you jump into it, is about finding how much of yourself you can bring. I am not any of the characters that I play; I am pretending. But in order to create a level of realism that works for anybody, particularly in a game and when you’re playing as a character, you have to create a level of heightened realism that is that is appealing to a player. The only way you can do that is by finding what parts of yourself you can associate with that character.

That’s the really great thing about [writer and voice over director Cam Rogers], who’s directing us. He’ll give me three different goes at some of the lines, and he’ll go, “Now take it for a walk. Try something.” And that freedom is incredible, because what you’re going to learn is how not to do it, and sometimes you’re accidentally going to create something that we could never have imagined in a planning stage. And I think that spontaneity is the most interesting part, and it also shows that they have a trust in us as performers.

Does joining a franchise with a game that has 10 years’ worth of lore present a unique challenge versus something like Final Fantasy XVI, where it’s all built from scratch?

No, because it’s the same thing. People that met Clive, they met him 35 years into the franchise that already existed, but an entirely self-contained story. It’s the same thing where you join a group of people who are deeply, deeply passionate. It isn’t just a game. It’s a way of life, it’s a culture, it’s a family. And this is an entirely new story set in that world, in the same way that XVI is an entirely new story set within the ideas and the motifs of what Final Fantasy is.

You have to be aware of what’s happened before, and then kind of throw it out and just do your own thing. Because if you’re too scared about what’s happened before, then you are just going to get in the way of yourself. It’s something that I did on XVI a lot. I felt like I got in the way of myself sometimes, but I was fortunate to have people around me who were able to just say, “No, Ben, you get to build something from scratch”… It’s intimidating, because I hope they like me, but I think they will. It’s really cool.

You’ve made a lot of absolutely silly videos that you put on Twitter, and you’ve worked with other voice actors on some of them. Where does that come from, that comedic element of your personality?

I’ve always been a clown. It was the thing that got me attention as a kid. The only reason I’m an actor is because of Jim Carrey. Comedy is where I learned to perform. I didn’t learn to be an actor through being a dramatic performer. My sense of humor is the thing that has kept me alive my entire life. It’s the thing that I get my most joy out of. Being funny for other individuals or trying to accept the world in a humorous way is the thing that means that when the hardest things happen to you in your life, you can accept them. It saved me on so many occasions where, if I’m incredibly low, if I take a humorous look at the world, it’s a self-defense mechanism, but it’s also a way that I heal.

It’s been a real joy to see the people who haven’t even played the games I’ve been a part of have enjoyed the stupid stuff that I write. I was given the power to write a thing which was me, Neil Newbon, Yuri Lowenthal, Matt Mercer, and Jennifer English doing a stupid sketch about Magic the Gathering. And I wrote a thing in which I just wanted Yuri Lowenthal to call me Bing the whole time. I wrote this thing, they think that my smell emits a noise, and so I’ve got like, 10 minutes of Matt Mercer on raw footage just saying different ways of saying “smoise.” It’s so stupid.

I like making people smile and making people happy. A person coming up to me and being like, “I was really upset, but I saw one of your stupid videos, and you made me happy,” that’s great, because I’ve been affected in the same way. I’ve seen clowns and comedians bring joy to my life. Hopefully I can do the same for them.

Do you aspire to do comedic roles professionally, or is this something that you prefer to keep for yourself?

I want to do anything. I want to work. It’s interesting at the moment I’m most well known within the work to do very, very serious down the line characters who bring a lot of drama. And that is so cool that I get to do that. Actually, a lot of the work that I’ve got coming up is still very much in that vein, because that’s kind of what I’m known for. But also I’ve had people see my work online and be like, “do you want to go and do something a bit silly?” And I’ve got a few silly things coming up, which is really, really fun. People are allowing me to be a little bit more silly.

Who inspires you comedically?

There is this group of British comedians who started around the ’90s and then kind of went and created, like, amazing stuff. And it all started with this television show called The Day Today, which is a ’90s British television pastiche of the news. It’s kind of in the vein of Airplane! a little bit. It is the most stupid television show ever made, but it’s done in the vein of a proper serious news channel. And from that, you had these amazing comedians come out. So you had Steve Coogan, who played the character of Alan Partridge come out of that. You had Patrick Marber, who wrote Closer, and he’s a ridiculous playwright. And you also had one of the main risers in that, Armando Iannucci, who went on and made a load of more ridiculous shows, Time Trumpet, The Armando Iannucci Shows, The Thick of It, and Veep.

Those people inspire me hugely, because they are able to take normal situations and extend them to ludicrous, ludicrous ways. I think Armando Iannucci, particularly his work on Veep, is incredible to see. That is a TV show that is about a horrendous individual, and it’s grounded in something, but it goes to such ludicrous heights. So those are the people that inspire me.

I’m going to ask one more, extremely serious question, because I was looking at your Wikipedia page …

Is this the gerbil breeding society one?

It is! What’s up with that?

So what happened was, I was on a podcast once, and I said that I don’t check my Wikipedia page. I don’t edit my Wikipedia page, I don’t have anything to do with my Wikipedia page. So if anyone wanted to make me sound cool on Wikipedia, they could. Someone went and added that, and I haven’t changed it since. And I get asked about that all the time. And now I don’t know. I kind of want to keep it there.

It’ll be a question for the historians and the philosophers one day.

Yeah, I want it to be documented that I was the president of the gerbil breeding society.

Warframe: 1999, starring Ben Starr, releases winter 2024 for PS4, PS5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, iOS, and PC.