Lucy Liu and director Eloise Singer talk ‘The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend’ and storytelling in VR

nme.com:

NME, actor Lucy Liu and director Eloise Singer have discussed bringing notorious Chinese pirate Chen Shih to life in VR game The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend.Set in 19th-century China, The Pirate Queen: A Forgotten Legend follows Chen Shih – a real-world pirate who commanded hundreds of ships – on the night she rose to power.Chatting to NME from New York, Singer shared that she felt “compelled” to share Shih’s story upon realising that it wasn’t very well-known.“When I first discovered more about Chen Shih’s story, I was fascinated,” said Singer, pointing to Shih leading 70,000 men in the lead-up to the Opium Wars. “She [also] created a code of laws that meant men and women had to be treated equally on her ship, which was phenomenal.”Originally a courtesan, Chen Shih took control over a large confederation of pirates when her husband fell overboard.

Chen Shih’s fleet became so powerful that the Qing dynasty eventually offered to pardon her in exchange for her weapons and ships – a deal she accepted before retiring peacefully.“This is beyond Pretty Woman,” joked Liu, who plays Shih in The Pirate Queen.

Though Liu has starred in a small number of games before, The Pirate Queen is her first performance in VR, and it took two recording sessions to bring the pirate to life.

In the first, Singer and Liu collaborated to find Shih’s voice and develop her character, while the second – which was held after winning the Immersive Storyscapes award at last year’s Tribeca Festival – was spent recording her final lines.“The one thing I learned with doing voiceover in VR is that it’s got to be very quiet and intimate,” Liu explained. “I didn’t really take that into account when I read the script, but that’s nice because it’s such an.