Armin Shimmerman is the man

I've kind of been prepping myself. Sort of. In a weird sort of way.

See, I'm (hopefully) going to have my grubby little hands on two video game sequels soon. Both Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 came out recently and I've heard nothing but good things about both. I had been intending to get Dragon Age: Origins before that, but I'm thinking I can wait for the latter.

The original Bioshock was an incredible game. If you haven't played it, well . . . why not? Yes, it's a first person shooter, but the writers did an absolutely fantastic job with that game. Rapture, the underwater city setting for the game, is a sick and twisted place where society has basically been run off its rails. Picking through the rubble is fascinating. And the twist. The twist in the middle of the game. Such an awesome, awesome thing.

While I loved Bioshock right away, I wasn't totally enamored with Mass Effect. I think I picked it up on the cheap several months, maybe even a year or two, after it came out. But again, I've heard such great things about the sequel, I pulled it off the shelf and replayed it. Twice. The story is pretty good, but the twisting morality of the game kept me hooked.

But here's the crazy thing I learned recently: Armin Shimmerman is the voice of Andrew Ryan in Bioshock. I was absolutely stunned when I learned this. Mr. Shimmerman is best known to me as Quark on Deep Space Nine. Playing Bioshock tonight, when I heard Andrew Ryan's voice, I had to remind myself of Shimmerman's involvement.

And the heck of it is, as I was perusing Mr. Shimmerman's IMDB page, I noticed he also played the voice of Fai Dan in the original Mass Effect. I just played through Mass Effect recently and had no idea. None!

I doubt Mr. Shimmerman will ever stumble upon my little corner of the Internet, but if he ever does . . . Mr. Shimmerman, my hat is off to you. Bravo, sir. Bravo.