This morning's StarCraft II 'Lore' panel brought the game's cast of voice actors up on stage to talk about the game's characters and storyline. The big news here was that Kerrigan will be played by actress and model Tricia Helfer, who plays Number Six in the Battlestar Galactica TV series, and the voice acting will be directed by experienced Hollywood voice director Andrea Romano.

Additionally, seasoned voice actor Fred Tatasciore will take on the role of Zeratul, Neil Kaplan plays Tychus Findlay, James Harper is Arcturus Mengsk, and Robert Clotworthy reprises his role as Jim Raynor.

Here's the details as they happened:

[9:32] Chris Metzen is on the stage. He says they're doing something a bit different with this year's lore panel. The (voice) cast of the game is going to be in the panel.

[9:34] Showing a trailer. Jim Raynor on screen for all of 4 seconds.

[9:35] Now Robert Clotworthy is on the stage. He's the dude who voices Raynor in the game.

[9:36] Fred Tatasciore is up next, he plays protoss Zeratul.

[9:37] And here we have space marine Tychus Findlay himself, as played by Neil Kaplan.

[9:38] Andrea Romano now on the stage, she is voice director for SC2. Apparently she was also in Spongebob Squarepants and is in James Cameron's Avatar.

[9:39] A new character: Gabriel Tosh, voiced by Dave Fennoy.

[9:40] James Harper plays Arcturus Mengsk.

[9:41] Last person coming on now... it's Karrigan herself! Played by Tricia Helfer from Battlestar Galactica!

[9:43] They're asking Robert (Raynor) what it was like to come back and play him again. Says he's thrilled to be back. "This game rocks!" and "Metzen is a freaking god!"

[9:44] Metzen talks about 12 years ago when they first started to pad out the Raynor character. He says there was something about Robert's voice that they knew he would make an ideal Jim Raynor.

[9:45] Andrea Romano chimes in to say: "You can never anticipate what voice comes out of an actor... They always surprise you, and they [the cast] have an awesome arsenal of voices." She's worked with Robert before on Animaniacs and Batman.

[9:46] She says Raynor's voice was new and unusual and his voice evolved over the months. They discovered new levels to his character. Robert says that Raynor is the "reluctant hero", and a great role model, so he had a great responsibility.

[9:47] Robert jokes that while Andrea may have seven Emmy's, only he has a n00bz figure.

[9:48] The voice actor who originally played Zeratul in the first game died some years ago, so they found Fred Tatasciore to take on the role for SC2.

[9:49] Fred says Zeratul is one of the best characters in the game, and he had to think carefully about how to voice him. But he really enjoyed playing the "good Darth Vader" type.

[9:50] Fred demonstrates a random sample of voices. He plays Raynor's mechanic on the ship as well.

[9:51] Neil Kaplan, the dude who plays Tychus Findlay is talking now. He says it's the coolest character he's ever voiced. He just came in and said the words that Chris Metzen wrote. The coolest thing about the character is that Neil could stay up until 5am drinking scotch and not worry - his (deep) voice would still be right for the character. Says he's working with the best voice director who has ever walked the planet (Andrea).

[9:56] On to Gabriel Tosh, played by Dave Fennoy. He's a black dude with dreadlocks. Says Tosh is much more of a "do as thou will", "number one is everything" character - he's a product of a tough universe. He's graduated from his army experience to be a nihilistic man. But they're not going to tell his unique story line yet.

[9:57] Now here's James Harper who plays Arcturus.

[9:59] James says this has been a phenomenal experience cramped down into a very short time. His whole character in SC1 was about 3.5 hours, recorded over three days when he did it 12 years ago. The studio offices had no aircon.

[10:00] He drove down to Blizzard HQ in Irvine, CA to do it there. He still has an unopened, unplayed SC game from when it first came out, because he's a Mac user and it's a PC copy (audience boos at Mac reference). He says he might ebay it along with his cowboy shirts.

[10:01] He says the entry for him in IMDB is wrong. It says he voiced Zeratul, and it was so long ago he'd forgotten who he had played, so he thought he actually did play Zeratul. Couple of months later he got a call from Blizz asking him to voice Arcturus and he thought, "oh that's a shame, I won't get to play Zeratul again!" So he's happy to be back.

[10:02] Chris Metzen's turn now. He's talking to the new chick who plays Kerrigan in SC2 - Tricia Helfer, better known as Number Six in Battlestar Galactica. He asks her what she makes of the role.

[10:04] She says it's intimidaing because she doesn't know the history. She's a "video game virgin" and personally not very tech savvy. She didn't know the backstory of SC2. She only does one voice, but it wasn't threatening to play two different characters in SC2 because she played lots in Battlestar Galactica.

[10:06] Tricia thanks the panel for all the help she got, because she knew nothing about the game. It was fun to try to find the small differences, how to bring Kerrigan into the Queen of Blades. Good/bad duality. She says it saves on therapy bills to be able to voice the two characters. They'll have more to tell next year about the character.

[10:08] Metzen is waffling a bit...

[10:09] Metzen is talking to Andrea. How did she deal with all the different people?

[10:10] She hadn't thought a lot about the history of the game - she asked Metzer if he knew what the story arc would be - where was the emotional high in the game? Metzen sits next to her in every recording session and she understands what he needs, she communicates that to the actors. She likes to have all the actors in the room at the same time. Acting and reacting is the process, the reaction is as much a part of the acting. It's key that they remember what the actor before did, and what the next actor will do, for continuity.

[10:11] They have a raw environment where they can record it, play it back, then change it again afterwards. They can go in and fix things afterwards. Her early video game dev work was recording "75 types of 'grunt' or 'grunt'".

[10:12] Blizzard bought Andrea back into directing video games. Says you're going to be blown away by the cinematics in SC2! Wings of Liberty is "a very interesting beginning", and they have years to go. She hopes everyone enjoys it as much as they enjoyed making it. Game is a tremendous amount of fun.

[10:13] That's it for the panel, on to Q&A now.

[10:14] Question to Andrea - "Are you also doing Diablo III? And for people wanting to get into voice acting what would you suggest?" Reply: "The key number one thing is to take acting classes. It's good to do different voices, but if you can't act then you're just a lot of fun at a party. You need to learn acting terms and get motivation, then take voiceover classes to learn mic technique, how to manipulate voices. You may only be able to do one voice, but that doesn't mean there isn't a place for you, just learn how to do it well. You put together a demo, send the demo to agents, hope that you have a good agent. There is always room for excellence - if you are really good and you perservere you'll make it." (She didn't answer the D3 question.)

[10:17] Question to Neil Kaplan (Tychus) - "How do you visualise your character?" He replies that he looks at the set and the artwork so he can attach to the character. He has to see what the character looks like to give him ideas. Reads the backstory to find the things that he does.

[10:20] Tricia says (again) that she was new to the work and she had to visualise the character more so than when she is in front of a camera. "In front of a camera it's easier to become the character. When you're sitting in front of a mic you can't jump around and be the character." She has to visualise more so because all she has to go on is her mind rather than using her body as well.

[10:22] Chris Metzen says the writing team is exceptional and it's a team effort. He thanks the writing team (audience applauds).