Bethesda’s “next gen” update for Fallout 4 didn’t change much about the game itself, but it did manage to cause problems for pretty much every mod out there. The most high-profile casualty was the hotly anticipated Fallout: London, an enormous project that was initially set for release on April 23 (St George’s day, of course), but was subsequently delayed while the team set about fixing things.
The good news there is that per the dev team “the end is in sight” (unless you’re playing on Epic Games Store), with the mod set to release as soon as the devs and distributor GOG have done their due diligence on the release build. In the runup to release, project lead Dean ‘Prilladog’ Carter has been revealing some of the features players can look forward to, and prime among them is a prominent UK politician that, during the Brexit years especially, went viral for his habit of shouting “order” in a manner that sounds more like “OR-DAH!”
I speak of John Bercow, the eloquent former Speaker of the House (2009—2019), who performed one of the crucial roles in the British Parliament. The speaker’s job is to maintain order as the various parliamentary parties of the day argue back-and-forth across the house, granting members leave to speak and, where appropriate, censuring their more ill-advised pronouncements.
Bercow’s time as speaker happened to coincide with the UK’s decision to leave the European Union and, as such, he was in the chair during some of the most spectacularly bad-tempered moments in Parliament’s recent history. Britain being Britain, Bercow’s put-downs involve saying “you are over-exciteable and need to contain yourself” in immaculately plummy tones to angry red-faced MPs.
Well if you thought Brexit was bad, and Truss somehow worse, get ready for some order in the post-apocalypse. Prilladog has announced that Bercow will be the voice actor for Fallout: London’s robotic speaker of the house, and even shared a little clip:
“Imagine being Fallout: London and feeling so lucky having all the talented voice actors on the team,” writes Prilladog on the mod’s Discord server (first spotted by VG247). “But then boosting it further with the fact that we have [two] Doctor Who actors as VAs… then Neil Newbon messages us and also wants a role.
“But the cherry on the top? Who better to represent our mod’s version of the Speaker of the House, than a robot version. Voiced by John Bercow himself.”
The robotic Speaker will presumably be found around the Houses of Parliament in-game, and the audio clip shared has nuka-Bercow barking “protect and survive” (a slogan taken from a real British public information campaign about nuclear war), “error” and of course “order” with a familiar inflection.
Sadly in 2024 there is an obvious question: is this real or some AI tomfoolery? “We don’t use AI voices,” said Prilladog in response to the query.
Surprisingly enough for someone with such rich and mellifluous tones, this appears to be Bercow’s first foray into voice acting. The former speaker joins the likes of Neil Newbon (Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3), and two former Doctor Whos: Sylvester McCoy and Colin Baker.