Bonny Bonnie

Last month, Overkill, the developers of PAYDAY 2, held a ‘Hype Train’ event, where, upon the purchase of paid content for the base game, ‘hype fuel’ was added to the site, with each purchase adding different amounts. Once a certain amount of hype fuel was purchased, then a ‘station’ was reached, with each station unlocking new content for the game. This included new heists, new mods for weapons and even free tickets to the PAYDAY Con held in Los Angeles (but only if you lived in America, which was a bit shit). Needless to say, the required amount of hype fuel to unlock every item was reached.

What was the most intriguing inclusion for me was the addition of the new Glaswegian character Bonnie.

Last year during the Hoxtober event, Overkill mentioned that they were including a new Scottish heister to the game during October. However, what we received instead was Clover, the vulgar Irish nutcase, who ended up being a good addition to the group. With that, the community carried on with their robberies and the fact that a Scottish heister had ever been announced slowly dissipated into memory…

So it was quite surprising when suddenly it was announced during Hype Train that there would be a Scottish heister after all in the form of Bonnie. Being Glaswegian myself, I thought it would be nice to see my under-represented minority appear in more videogames, so when she was released, I selected her and jumped into a game of Big Bank, the perfect opportunity to find out what her character was like.

So we did all the usual stuff: broke into the security room, hacked the PCs, dropped Floyd the big pink big into the lobby.

During this, I was listening out to Bonnie’s dialogue and while they did get her threatening, frightening, angry Scot persona across perfectly, I have to admit I wasn’t overtly impressed with the VA. Yes, she made references to living in Glasgow; she didn’t pronounce her Ts in certain words; she swore copiously; all the factors for being from Glasgow were there, but it all just sounded flat and a bit uninspiring, unlike the bright, colourful accents of Clover, Hoxton, Dragan, Wolf et al. I let out a little disappointed sigh as I sawed open the safety deposit boxes in the safe.

It was when moving the final bag of gold that it hit me: the reason I wasn’t finding myself impressed by the accent wasn’t because it was done badly, but because it was done so well. Being a Weegie, I naturally hear that kind of accent every day, so when I heard it in-game it sounded just like regular dialogue to me, whereas players in other geographical regions will get the same feeling from hearing her as I do with the heisters from other climes.

The fact that the VA was so good that it sounded completely natural to my ears turned my frown upside down and I laughed away as Bonnie would shout ‘shield, fur fuck’s sake’, answer pagers in a horrifically bad American accent –usually asking how the operator’s momma is doin’ – and shouting how a shopping spree on Sauchiehall Street is in order after robbing 26 bags of loot from the vault.

She’s not perfect – she challenges people to ‘barnies’ rather than square goes and she pronounces  the hard K sound when she refers to her enemies as sassenachs – but her awesome VA has propelled her to the top of my favourite heisters list.

Along with Jacket.

And Chains.

And Dallas…

Let’s just put the entire crew up there, shall we?