Joel Johnstone

Joel Johnstone’s Move From the Stage to the Recording Booth

A career that started in Milwaukee theatre productions eventually carried this actor into one of the busiest corners of the entertainment industry: voice work for blockbuster video games. Trained for the stage and later seen across television, he carved out a parallel identity in gaming, where his voice anchors soldiers, settlers, industrialists, and a few names that fans of major franchises recognize instantly. The September 3, 1984 birthday places him among a generation of performers who came up as gaming budgets and casting ambitions expanded, and his credits reflect that growth, moving from background and additional voices in the late 2000s toward fully named characters in marquee titles.

Marvel 1943: Rise of Hydra Project and Howard Stark

The role drawing the most attention takes him into the Marvel universe. Cast as Howard Stark, the inventor and co-founder of S.H.I.E.L.D. and father to Tony Stark, he joins a wartime-set adventure that places established Marvel figures in a 1943 narrative. The casting puts him alongside performers voicing Captain America, the World War II era Black Panther, and members of the French Resistance. For an actor who spent years building toward named leads, stepping into a figure as recognizable as the Stark patriarch marks a clear high point in his gaming work.

Horizon Forbidden West and Guerrilla’s Sprawling Cast

In Guerrilla Games’ post-apocalyptic open world, he voices Arnuf along with additional characters, contributing to a production known for its deep and heavily populated voice cast. Forbidden West asked its performers to populate a world of tribes, settlers, and machine hunters, and his work sits among dozens of actors building out that ecosystem. The game’s scale and critical reception made it one of the more prominent entries on his resume, and it connected him to a property that has grown into one of Sony’s signature franchises.

Konami, Square Enix, and a Run of Genre Titles

His gaming credits stretch across several studios and styles. He appears in Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes and Metal Gear Solid V: The Phantom Pain, voicing Palitz, soldiers, and other figures, and returns to the series in Metal Gear Survive. He brought Kazusa Futahito to the English release of Final Fantasy Type-0, played Overseer Teague Martin in Arkane’s Dishonored, and lent his voice to the marines of Aliens: Colonial Marines. Earlier entries include additional voices in Dragon Age: Origins and Lost Planet 2, marking a steady accumulation of work across shooters, role-playing games, and stealth titles.