Warframe is a massive setting, with over a decade of expansive world-building and character depth behind it. It’s the kind of game that can inspire an entire worldwide fandom just on its own, justifying the now annual TennoCon event held in developer Digital Extremes’ hometown of London, Ontario. It’s a setting that also never loses sight of the humanity at the core of its very alien characters, which can be a true blessing for voice actors stepping into that setting.
Sometimes that means finding the common spirit of multiple characters, as René Zagger, Elsa Pérusin, and Will de-Renzy Martin did when they took on the roles of the fan-favorite “Devil’s Triad.” For others, like Kevin Lim, it was taking his previous experience in Warframe and using it to reinforce his confidence in taking over the role of Ordis. During an interview with ComicBook.com during TennoCon 2026, the stars of Warframe reflected on finding the humanity in their deeply alien characters, the impact Digital Extremes had on their performance, and the biggest surprises of playing in this world.
The characters of Warframe are deeply alien but painfully human. As performers, what is it like stepping into a world like this?
Kevin Lim: It’s a lot of research. 13 years of lore have been built up for this game. For me, being the successor of the voice of Ordis, there are massive shoes to fill. Mike Leatham, who was the first to breathe soul into this character, was the focus of a lot of my research. Then I was having meetings with Digital Extremes to see where we want to take this character now, especially with a refreshed approach to it all. How do we honor what was created? How do we honor the backstory, which is very tragic and very complicated and very fascinating — I can’t wait to delve into more with this one — and then also forge something that feels unique?
You don’t want to be doing such a change that it suddenly doesn’t sound like the character anymore. So we’re trying to find that wonderful balance. In “Jade Shadows: Constellations,” in one sentence, we summarized that passing of the torch so beautifully and so brilliantly. The line was just a singing line, a “la la la la la la la. Ordis loves his new vocalizer module!” Now it’s canon that he sounds slightly different. He might sound like he has the spirit of it, but it’s like when Alexa changed her voice a year ago. It’s different, but I’m okay with it.
Elsa Pérusin: I was not sure what game I was recording at first because it was a big secret, and they told me you’re going to be happy, and they were right because it was right before TennoCon last year. They said we are going to make a reveal, and you will receive a lot of attention after that. And they were right. It’s massive!
René Zagger: Yeah, I mean, it’s amazing to see these characters take on their own life. I don’t feel like I’ve done a huge amount compared to all of the artwork and everything else that goes into it, and that has a massive part in the love that is shown to those characters. Obviously, the writing is a huge part of it as well. It’s very cool.
Will de-Renzy Martin: As actors, we have that tendency to do a job, and then once the job is finished, we move on. We remember it with fond memories, especially if it’s an enjoyable process. But to then sort of investigate how it has been received and how it is doing can sometimes be a little bit counterintuitive. There’s a reluctance as an actor to do something and then go and watch it. I always love the process, but the danger is that you then watch it or you listen to something back and think, “Ah, I didn’t think it was going to sound like that.” But suddenly it’s all come flooding in, and we’re discovering how important the characters are and how important that this event is to them. That was really lovely to discover.
René Zagger: I think one of the things I always say about games, as opposed to something like animation — in animation, characters are wacky, and the world to them is normal, but in games you’re playing normal people in a completely absurd world. The job really is to maintain that grounded nature of it. Yes, I’m someone who can see all possible pasts and futures, but I’m still a person who can do that. What does that do to my brain and this character, and and how does that play out?
Will de-Renzy Martin: I think once you suspend disbelief and you, as an actor, play your chosen list of objectives, you can do your job. It’s like with Star Trek and Star Wars. When they first got those scripts, what they thought was, ‘I can’t do this.’ You can do it as long as you are playing with real heart.
Elsa Pérusin: Plus, the Digital Extremes team is really precise. They know exactly what they are doing. There’s the director, the writers, the artists. There are a lot of people that are able to guide us through it. I was really well guided through the situations and relationships, and it is really helpful because today cinematics are like movies. You have to act like you are cast in a movie because when it’s done well, it’s beautiful.
Kevin, what was it like honoring what Mike had previously brought to Ordis while still finding your own take on the character?
Kevin: One of the things that I thought was really interesting was listening to the progression of the voice acting of Ordis from the beginning to the end of the 13-year run that Mike had. The progression of how he sounded — there is an evolution there. It’s plucking out little bits that I know I can bring to my performance. One of the difficult things about the study of this character and where he’s been in the past was finding the soul of the character so that mine sounds similar. Is it in the most recent stuff? Is it the beginning? Is it somewhere in the middle?
If you watch the first season of The Simpsons, it’s different. That doesn’t sound like Homer, but I know it’s the same guy. It evolves. I feel like the cadence was the first thing that I wanted to lock down and make sure was respectfully done, but then I took a slightly different approach. My take is a bit more whimsical, slightly brighter. My hope is that with the slightly brighter tone, it’ll make the contrast to the broken and glitchy Ordis, the contrast to when Ordan Karris is coming out, feels even bigger. It’s such a good collaborative effort with the narrative team, the writers, and the developers themselves co-creating this next chapter for Oris. I never felt left alone.
When I was first cast, they were originally looking for someone who could do a voice match, which is relatively easy as a voice actor. I know I can do certain voices. Can I do something similar? Okay, great. But it’s completely different when you’re seeing a line that has never been read before by a previous actor and wondering how they would say it. How would I say it? How would the character say it? This was probably one of the hardest roles I’ve had to prepare for because it’s a very challenging line. I want to do right by both the character and Mike.
One of the unique aspects of voiceover for games is that sometimes, as in Warframe, you have to play very different versions of characters as they make very different decisions. Do the differing paths you have to experiment with and explore impact your performances?
Elsa Pérusin: This is the marvelous part of this job because it’s a game where if you change something, it changes everything. You have to stay grounded in what you know about the character and what their core is. You have to know that if you change this, what effect does it have on the voice, on the movement, on everything. In video games, you have the luck to push things this far.
You also get the added pressure of having a very dedicated fan base — which can make everything come with an additional layer of expectation. How does that impact your approach?
Kevin Lim: I was met with wonderful open arms. I’ve had the fortune of being part of the cast of Warframe for four years now, with several different characters, so I knew the level of warmth from this community was going to be world-class. But there were a lot of nerves before my first session as Ordis because I wanted to do this right. Coming here to TennoCon helped solidify that we’re on the right path. I was joking that I was going to come here and wear a T-shirt that said “Hashtag Not My Ordis” in preparation for any kind of pushback. But everybody’s been so nice; I think one of the things that was so wonderfully done was how Digital Extremes approached the transition because they released the press release announcing that Mike Leatham was retiring from Digital Extremes.
He was one of the OG employees, one of the first five; he was the weapons designer. He fell into this role because they needed voices at the time, and so they wrote this beautiful tribute to him and then passed the torch to me. They did that about eight months before we even made our first session. There was time to prepare the audience and the fans for that transition, and to be able to say this is not someone being fired, this is not somebody being replaced by AI, this is something that we have given a lot of thought to, and we want to give this opportunity to somebody who’s very much a part of the Warframe community already.
I think that set me up as an actor for success. My previous life as a morning radio host and TV host here in Canada, sometimes my co-host and I or our show would be the ones to take over another show; it happens all the time in media. You’ve got a morning show that gets let go, and we have to move on. But if not approached right, there is a massive shift where people are like, ‘Those aren’t my friends; those aren’t my people!’ Digital Extremes got ahead of that by basically saying, ‘We’re behind this. Here’s some time to adjust.’
What would you all say has surprised you the most about your time in Warframe?
René Zagger: I played a little bit of Warframe back in the day. It was Space Ninjas when I first started, and then to come back to it and be like, “Wow, there’s a lot of quantum physics and metaphysics and all of this going on!’ [Laughter]. I didn’t expect that level of complexity. The ideas that are being expressed, the emotional layer on top of that. The fact that there is someone existing in this world, amongst those ideas, who still has feelings for people, and has to be existing in that weird world changes that for them. Yeah, that was unexpected to say the least.
Elsa Pérusin: For me, a twist was when I learned my character was romanceable because I was building something around Joan of Arc. She was strong but demure. I was trying something, but then I had to do it again when I found out about the romance option. If I’m dating the player, I had to be softer. This is a challenge, and I love that.
Will de-Renzy Martin: For me, it was the triad of our relationship. My character and the others did not like each other. But what I loved about the narrative was that he soon couldn’t live without them. They were the very reason that they were living. So for me, it was that I needed them, and they were acceptable to me. It was a hate/love relationship. I love the idea of the complexity of the relationship and how it started, what I first thought of them, and how it was something else entirely. It’s an understanding of what you’ve gone through and the empathy within a character that you can bring out.
Kevin Lim: I have a lot of notes for myself in the middle of the night where I go, “Oh, here’s maybe a fun approach to this line.’; When you get lines in advance, you get time to figure out how you want to deliver it. Ordis and I are just getting to know each other. There was a lot in the discovery process. The fun thing was actually doing some deep research and finding out if Ordis can sing.
Does he have a singing voice? Does he string words together? Does he musically do it? Does he hit high notes or low notes? That surprised me because there was a voice line that we actually had to reference at one point of a previous recording, and with the license of a new vocal module, we had the ability to be creative with it. It was interesting to look back in the previous 13 years of audio and think about if Ordis had ever sung before. What would he sound like? It was a cool way to think about what has been done with this character and what else he could do.
Warframe is currently available for PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and mobile devices.
