Dota 2 is getting a Cave Johnson announcer pack. Johnson is the deranged founder of Aperture Science from Portal and voiced by the Oscar-winning JK Simmons. Simmons doesn’t feature much in the six-minute advert for the pack produced by Valve, but Gabe Newell does. You can watch it below.
A lot of Valve’s recent marketing seems to be following a single directorial note – “louder” – but this got a couple of laughs from me, and it’s Gabe who, mostly without saying anything, steals the show.
The Cave Johnson Announcer Pack will release on November 3rd as part of Battle Pass: Part 2. The battle pass, as always, is a reward track you can buy into and then progress along through play or purchases. You can find details on part one of the battle pass, and other elements arriving in part two, on the Battle Pass 2022 microsite.
If you’ve not played Dota 2 – or any MOBA, really – then you should know that the announcer is a big part of it, calling out not just kill sprees but vital information about the state of the game. Cosmetic announcer packs replace all announcer voice lines, of which there are many, and have previously featured other Portal characters, as well as characters from other Valve games or indie hits like The Stanley Parable.
It’s basically a rare opportunity to hear a highly decorated charactor actor read a comical (or not) spin on lines like, “Our top barracks are under attack.” Or to me, a non-Dota 2 player, it’s this amusing YouTube video and nothing else.