Idris Elba: Actors in video games like Phantom Liberty is 'sign of the times'
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Idris Elba, who stars in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, sees a future where films and games converge.
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Kristen Bell was in Assassin's Creed II and that was 14 years ago... Fuck I feel old.
But still, it's been slowly happening for quite a while
Sean Bean was in Oblivion, that's even older.
Patrick fuckin Stewart was in it as well but he dies in the tutorial.
Batman Begins (2005) had an all-star voice cast from the movies:
He's also in civ 6 but I know that's newer. I just love his soothing voice
Bruce Lee was in Bruce Lee in 1984, if you really want to get down to it. And he wasn't even the first.
Oblivion is TESIV.
There it is. This was a big deal at the time because it wasn't just voice acting but a character built around his likeness too. The game was meh
The game was kickass for a kid who loved all kinds of weird action games! I probably shouldn't try it again and ruin my memories of it.
But a top down shooter where you could fire in different directions than you were walking was revolutionary for a kid who had mostly played metal gear solid on his new PlayStation.
Games have been doing that since Robotron: 2084 in 1982.
Not surprised. But I had never seen a game like that by then. And very rarely after too. Most recent one I played was.. Alien Swarm, I think? I loved that one too.
To be fair, they were often arcade games which required two joysticks. I had a game for my Amiga that I don't remember the name of that used the keyboard to do it.
Matthew Perry was Benny from FO: New Vegas
Ron Perlman provided opening and closing narration for all the numbered Fallout games.
And Fallout 1 was very much a “budget” title for Interplay, so it’s not like the studio was just splashing money around because they could.
And before that, Liam Neeson was the player character's father in FO3.
This kind of thing has been going on for at least 30 years. One of the earliest examples is Night Trap starring Dana Plato. You may not know who that is, but anyone who grew up watching Diff'rent Strokes certainly does. If you want a more mainstream example, look at Ripper from 1996 which features Christopher Walken, Paul Giamatti, Karen Allen, Burgess Meredith, David Patrick Kelly, Ossie Davis, and John Rhys-Davies.
Wing Commander III a 1994 release had Mark Hammill, Malcolm McDowell , and Tim Curry. Video game actors , voice actors and mainstream actors have intertwined for many years.
And John Rhys-Davies!
Who was also in Dune 2000
TIL!
LOL, you mean like Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077?
coughKeith Davidcough
I mean Keith David has been a huge voice actor for a long time.
Oh I know. Just mentioning him cause he's a badass. Just finished Mass Effect trilogy for like the 6th time so he's fresh in the noggin.
Keith Davids sultry tones will be welcome in any game no matter what the context.
Doki Doki Keith David Club?
I'm not digging those repressed memories up to know what you're talking about.
How did they miss that!
I'm not really a fan of real A-list actors' faces in games. Inspired by real faces? Sure. I know the term "immersion" is mocked a lot, but few things force me back to reality than seeing Hollywood megastar multimillionaires in my fantasy world.
I have to agree. I always preferred an A class voice actor for a character that isn't of celebrity likeness. Honestly hope this doesn't become the norm.
Edit: I'd also like to add that Idris Elba is a phenomenal actor and I'm excited to play the expansion.
Pretty much this is how the metal gear series ended up losing my interest. I want a good voice actor rather than just celebrities. It's enshittification.
Yeah, what I've always liked about voice acting is that how the person looks or even what their original voice is like doesn't matter. It's purely about the voice which makes it much easier for the voice to take center stage, and it allows people to voice other genders, races, species, objects, etc.
This real life person being present as themselves is not a trend I've liked. Good voice acting to me has been one where I am emotionally moved by the performance but don't automatically recognize the voice due to how well and unique the performance is. Plus, I don't like more regular voice actors being pushed aside by a listers.
I know what you mean. I love JK Simmons voice, and he's a great VA. But if I compare his role as Omni-Man in Invincible to Ketheric Thorm in Baldur's Gate 3, I definitely enjoy Omni-Man more, even though Ketheric is modelled after his real face.
I'm curious if you feel the same way watching movies? It's not as if Idris Elba's live-action movie roles depict "reality". What is it about the presence of a real actor which breaks your immersion in games but not movies, or do you just feel similarly about both?
When it comes to live action I do greatly prefer it when a great performance is from an individual I don't recognize from previous works. So I don't see oh it's blank from X. I only have the reference of seeing only the character, which sells the immersion so much more.
And voice acting when it comes to animation and games has been an area like that where if a woman is voicing a boy, but the voice acting is good I only see the boy. Or someone voices a lovecraftian monster I only see that monster. Or someone who is a different race voices a different race it doesn't matter because I only see the character and how well the voice suits the sculpted character like Kratos.
The best voice acting performances to me have been ones where I don't recognize the voice actor. I only see the character, and due to voice acting providing the opportunity where how you look or what your original voice is doesn't matter. It gives actors the chance to really disappear into a role, but then just showing up as themselves it feels like a lost opportunity.
Like one I think of is Kiefer Sutherland voicing Snake was something I like much more than Norman Reedus in Death Stranding. In MGSV I only saw the character of Snake not Kiefer Sutherland. In Death Stranding I just kept thinking oh hey it's Daryl from Walking Dead, and I had to actively keep trying to disassociate the actor from the character.
It's not unusual to have big stars in movies. There are movies full of nothing but A-listers. It's been the norm since before any of us were born. However, I find there are some big actors where their presence overshadows their character (if that makes sense). I do tend to enjoy movies with smaller actors that I haven't seen quite as many times already.
Not op, but I don't look to be immersed in movies, they're just something to pass time.
I do look to be immersed in movies, and yes, massive actors are immersion breaking.
Tom Cruise, Idris Elba, Meryl Streep, Leonardo Dicaprio, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger (except Terminator 2), and Hugh Jackman. Can you actually watch these movies without thinking to yourself 99% of the time "wow, Tom Cruise looks cool af in that jacket"?
It's also pretty big immersion break when the va changes between installments, so the character model changes. Between Halo War 1 and 2, Professor Anders changed not only the specific person, but the ethnicity of the character.
For me it depends, if the game is a big bombastic hollywood esque block buster then cool, but I don't see how Keanu benefitted 2077's story in any way, no matter how much I love him
He didn't. CDPR just knew that he had a lot of memes about how he's a really nice and down to earth person, and they figured that that was the kind of good will they needed for their oft-delayed title that was earning them a lot of fury even before it launched.
I feel like it generates interest and helps the medium gain more mainstream acceptance at a minimum.
That union vote came at just the right time then, huh.
all of his work for the game would have been finished months ago by now
Started a fresh playthrough on the 21st and man the time they put in shows. Really wish companies like CDPR would go the Larian route of funding big projects like this instead of going public. Shareholders ruined CP2077 launch. It should have been delayed a year or two from its original launch. Instead it was rushed and then after launch they had to fix the rushed product before making/finishing the game they wanted to make. If CP2077 released as it is now or even slightly less polished, it would be considered a top 5 game of all time.
Lessons are there to be learned by other studios. Hopefully they are paying attention. Gamers will wait for a great game.
All that being said, I'm excited to hand over $30 now that I've seen the game perform. Stoked to see Elba.
I like how people still try to blame investors to this day
Despite numerous accounts and evidence clearly saying cdpr fucking lied to them too
Dont give them even a single microinch
Just because they were lied to doesn’t mean investors don’t have demands.
their demands was based on what they where told by cdpr, and they said to the investors everything was going swimmingly just look it up, you have the information at your fingertips
You know what's really funny? CDPR only had one big AAA game release without any major problems, the Witcher 3. Thronebreaker was a small scale game based on something already made and I don't feel that one counts.
The Witcher 1 and the Witcher 2 were bad enough at launch that they had to release an "enhanced edition" of both games to fix the problems. If you don't believe me, then just look at the piss poor Linux "port" of the Witcher 2.
The only reason the Witcher 3 wasn't in such a bad state was because it was delayed like 4 or 5 times and released a year and a half later then it was intended. Cyberpunk 2077 has followed the same development path as the Witcher 1 and 2, but for some stupid reason people thought CDPR was immune to bad releases.
WAIT WHAT??? have you been around during launch? does everyone keep forgetting how shit actually was? like i said in a previous comment, it astounds me how people still think they should give these hacks even a microinch. witcher 3 launched in an AWFUL state literally, and i do mean LITERALLY as bad as c2077, it ran like absolute ass, ai was funny as best it took them months to fix the awful state the game run as, the ui also had a serious overhaul, just to name a few youd be lucky to reach a maximum of 60fps on a highend machine of the time. oh and
it was delayed once, not 4 to 5 times
this rotating door of a company never had a single release that didnt launch like ass
Were you around during the Witcher 1 and 2 launches? Compared to them them Witcher 3 was a godsend. The Witcher 1 had terrible performance, bad loading times, just bad in general, the Witcher 2 had horrible performance, bad AI pathing, broken quests etc. Both had to have big overhauls.
The Witcher 3 was delayed at least twice, was originally to launch in 2014, then pushed back to February 2015, then again to may 19th 2015, 4 or 5 times is incorrect .The next-gen patches were then delayed a couple times as well. The Witcher 3 was a decent launch outside the garbage nvidia hairworks nonsense.
sooo like i said, all their games at launch are a dumpsterfire of varying itnensity
Yes, I'm agreeing with you. I don't understand why you're being argumentative about this subject.
Were you around during the Witcher 1 and 2 launches? Compared to them them Witcher 3 was a godsend. The Witcher 1 had terrible performance, bad loading times, just bad in general, the Witcher 2 had horrible performance, bad AI pathing, broken quests etc. Both had to have big overhauls.
The Witcher 3 was delayed at least twice, was originally to launch in 2014, then pushed back to February 2015, then again to may 19th 2015, 4 or 5 times is incorrect .The next-gen patches were then delayed a couple times as well. The Witcher 3 was a decent launch outside the garbage nvidia hairworks nonsense.
I mean, it would be nice of course, but lets not forget Larian almost went bankrupt in the process. I mean this as in Larian is the exception. And they made a gigantic gamble which could've been their ruin had it not turned out so good.
We've had actors in videogames for as long as there's been the ability to play samples at a high enough quality. Hell, the 90s FMJ era was full of them. Some good, some not so good.
Who starred in a 90s FMV game that was anywhere near as big as Keanu or Idris?
Shatner for one, who at the time was arguably still the most-recognizable name in sci-fi TV and movies.
Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, and Malcolm McDowell (among others) in Wing Commander III Heart of the Tiger (1994), for instance..?
Big, well known actors in video games have been a thing for a long time now? I remember games from the 90's that had actors like James Earl Jones, Tim Curry, Bill Paxton, Randy Quaid, and so many more growing up.
What's interesting is, it doesn't seem like it's expanded or shrunk. Most games don't hire big actors, but a handful of huge budget, AAA things do. There's also big range in how good these actors are in the game... JK Simmons, for example, was awesome as Cave Johnson in Portal; but his performance in Baldur's Gate 3 is, by far, the worst in the entire game IMO.
Exqueese me? I thought he was great in bg3.
His just felt a bit flat compared to all the other performances.
It makes sense for those who are big enough in the Game Industry (which is now several times the size of the Movie Industry in terms of revenue) to try and do the same as movies and leverage that sweet brand recognition of celebrity actors to sell more copies of the game.
However I suspect it doesn't work quite the same in practice as the "main character in the story" in games is almost invariably the player him/herself and those famous names will never be more than secondary characters with limited interaction possibilities.
They could do the cyberpunk or fallout 4 thing. Have Keanu Reeves in your head, or get someone known to voice the protagonist (only unlike fo4 in that the PC VAs are otherwise unknown afaik).
I'm playing Toonstruck at the moment. Christopher Lloyd was one of the early pioneers acting in computer games, and he gives everything! The game is so much fun!
Tim Curry in Red Alert
23 will always be the classic thoughSPACE
SBPASE
3*
Liam Neeson was in Fallout 3
Patrick Stewart was in Oblivion. And Sean Bean, too.
Luke Skywalker, Biff Tannen, Caligula, Sark, Gimli, and Ginger Lynn were in Wing Commander 3.
James Earl Jones and Tim Curry have both worked on Command & Conquer games.
I'd prefer them to converge from Baldur's Gate 3 direction. Cast more or less established voice actors and give them the hype and marketing space usually found among movie/tv stars. "films and games converge" yea, when we treat a 200hour computer game the way we treat a long tv series and acknowledge the actors' contribution on the same level.
I absolutely agree. Every single voice actor from the main party of BG3 was stellar (including the narrator), while J.K. Simmons seemed to be bored while recording his lines and Jason Isaacs was good but nothing extraordinary.
Mark Hamill in Wing Commander III, released in 1994.
With Malcolm McDowell and John Rhys-Davies.
Popular actors in cyberpunk 2077 are the worst part of it IMO, I'd much rather have those characters sport a face I haven't seen a thousand times.
I personally wouldn't put much stock in his opinion since he seems to know very little about video games.
He knows a fair bit about acting for big budget movies and acting for (AAA) videogames though.
Idk if I like this. Wouldn’t having big famous Hollywood actors and actresses screw over the industry for a lot of people? Which sucks because just because they’re actors, it doesn’t mean they can voice act - Megan Fox did a character in the new Mortal Kombat and she gave the most wooden performance in recent memory; Keanu Reeves in Cyberpunk 2077 was kind of odd at times, but it was still okay.
I just don’t want these big names invading a space that’s already hard to compete in, and then taking all the jobs because of star power and not their actual talent.
I think Keanu Reeves is great in Cyberpunk 2077
Yeah for real. I think Johnny Silverhand is my favorite Keanu role of all time
Eh, actors and actresses have been in games foe decades just like they have done voices in animated films for decades. Both cases tend to only attract big names to a few games and this reads like the usual ebb and flow of interest from a limited number of people and gaming companies.
Yes, but usually not as themselves, so they were hired on the quality of their voice performance. So lot of times you don't recognize it is them, which is really what you want from a performance where you really just see the character and not the actor performing.
But, with more of their actual likeness being put in games instead of an opportunity to truly disappear into a role it can lead to their presence overshadowing the character they are playing. Which is a shame to me since it's a medium where an actors actual voice or appearance doesn't have to matter like live action does.
E.G. the newfound celebrity of the BG3 VAs as they run around on social media. If it was some Hollywood big shot, the likelihood that we'd have the High Rollers one-shot from them in nill.
Then we wouldn't have the glory that is Shadowheart and Bing-Bong, or Astarion lapping blood from a glass like a cat.
I agree with your point but imo Johnny Silverhand is Keanu's best work.
I agree. Plus it will make them even more expensive if they're full of star studded casts like all animation movies nowadays. Just let normal voice actors act.
Back in 2007 Marina Sirtis (Deanna Troi from Star Trek TNG) did the most phoned-in performance for Mass Effect, meanwhile other VA's were running circles around her.
It's been around for a bit.
Seeing as the games industry makes more than movies I wouldn’t be surprised if more actors don’t exclusively go towards acting in games. It pays well I think and typically the work schedule is better I believe(someone confirm or deny this?). I’d love to see more actors on the games side and not as PR stunts.
Nah man, having to act every time someone starts playing the game must get pretty old fast.
Could you imagine getting the alert that someone just installed your game fifty years later?
Ehhh. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. Case in point: everyone loves Patrick Stewart. He played a small yet memorable role in Oblivion. No issues. Everyone loves Keanu Reeves, but as soon as CDPR wheeled him out to hype up CP2077 in 2019, I rolled my eyes because it was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the meme-able goodwill that Keanu had from all of the posts about him riding the subway and his wife dying and how he's a genuinely nice person.
Idris Elba on the other hand, he's a great actor, but he has the marketability of a tuna sandwich.
Put famous actors in games when it makes sense to do so. Otherwise it comes off as hacky and you run the risk of severely dating your game in 10 years. Idris Elba is just in too many things these days to take him seriously.
It's no different than putting famous people in movie voice acting roles. If they can voice act well it works (Eartha Kitt as Yzma) but often it's just a sad attempt at generating hype (Chris Pratt as Mario).
Speaking of aging, does anyone remember Kevin Spacey in Call of Duty? That aged well right gang!
Stop trying to be movies already for fucks sake, you where supposed to be better, hell the multitudes if days one can interact should make them so but nooooo All we got is this shit from the big guys
Agreed. Fuck these famous actors and keep these incestuous little shits out of games.
Gotta monetise to the max that personal brand recognition!
(Whilst in a video game like that I do expect his work was proper acting rather than merelly being famous, he's still the one there doing it for the big $$$ rather than somebody else because of brand recognition: as in my personal experience there are tons of just as good actors in Britain who simply are not widelly known, as Britain has a massive thing for Theatre thus good acting schools and lots of people going into performing arts).
Still can't afford the damn base game 😅
It's currently on sale on GoG (at least in the UK).
I'm on PS4 😅😭
RIP
As long as they are good voice actors too, sure. Otherwise, we have a Mortal Kombat situation on our hands.
If anything could be said about that is that's most probably an event that happened in time.
This was already a thing back in the ‘90s. Several games had actors in them, it was a sign of the times because it hadn’t been done before. After the exuberance wore off we got more professional voice actors to do parts. Guess it’s back in style again.
Tim curry did his best work in red-alert 2
Bruh this is nothing new. We had the legend Patrick Stewart and the captain of gondor in Oblivion.
Yeah, but that was just the voice. This (and Keanu silverhand) are trying to be the actors straight up playing characters in the game.
this reeks like Keanu's unwashed hair; an exec's "great idea: what if we put the famous dude in our game, AGAIN?" because we are so thoroughly unconfident in our game's gameplay that flavor of the month/year/decade will surely make up for it.
Yeah game companies are using an actor's credibility to shill their rushed trash. See Cyberpunk
Games aren't supposed to be films. Set up a setting where your game is taking place and a reason for you to do what you're doing and then shut the fuck up. Original Doom. Old Mario games. So many classic, real games only care about the gameplay and not all this damn story that is a diversion these days from the actual gameplay. No wonder modern gaming is trash.
You want a game that's a movie? Just make a damn movie. Problem solved. Get overblown, intrusive story trash out of videogames. Do you want to stop playing chess after every other move and be forced to watch part of some medieval war drama unfold before continuing? No? Then why the fuck do you want story in videogames?
This is such a weirdo position to take it really is. "Real games" bullshit. Gatekeeping crap has no place here.
I swear, people use "gatekeeping" as a weasel word to mean "THIS KIND OF RATIONAL THOUGHT GOES AGAINST MY PROGRAMMED VIEW OF THE WORLD BOOOHOOO!" You don't "gatekeep" videogames by saying gaming is about actual gaming and not some horrible amalgamation of a poorly done game and some failed writer's self-insert fantasy power trip forced on people every five steps you make in a "game".
Take a deep breath and re-think your position. Games aren't meant to have overblown, intrusive stories. They suffer from them.
legitimately funny, thank you
I mean, games can be more than one thing. It's not like putting actors in AAA games is gonna delete Factorio or something.
It has negatively affected games for years by creating a world where "games" are style over substance trash that care more about gimmicks and story and other trash than the game itself. There is a very tiny pool of actual gaming left, but when you compare that to games back when games were, you know, actually games, when nearly every single game that came out was an actual game and not 5000 hours of boring, who the fuck cares story, gaming was better. That's right, it was. And maybe, just maybe, if you go back in your gaming history and play actual games with actual effort made into making the game part fun and next to zero effort put on stupid, worthless, pointless, waste of time story, you'd understand this.
Yes, that sounds amazing actually
Didn't we get little scenes like that in the old Lego Chess game on PC or am I not remembering correctly?
We absolutely did and it was amazing
In all fairness it makes more sense for a film, same kind of setup as the animation films we've been having of late about what's going on inside people's minds and such.
…role playing games - y’know, the ones where you play a character and a story happens around them - are older than video games and, in fact, are some of the oldest video games. Saying story doesn’t belong in games is a disservice to the medium of games, both video and tabletop.
A "story" can happen around a character as long as it's contained within the context of the game itself (show, don't tell). But when you bring the game to a screeching halt and have a bunch of flapping mouths spouting exposition for hours on end, THAT DOES NOT BELONG IN A VIDEOGAME.
Don't yuck my yum
Video games are a combination of all other traditional artistic mediums. As such, they can express their different mediums in different amounts and are the most flexible in their execution.
You like the kind that are heavier on the gameplay side, individual personalities or even mood will dictate what game you might enjoy most at any given time. You may one day find a more story driven game that connects with you on a personal level more than Mario could, unless you're counting nostalgia.
Why couldn't they just make that story driven game into a book, or movie, or TV show? THREE TYPES OF MEDIA exists for story and people want to push that into videogames. How does that make any fucking sense?
I play games to PLAY A GAME, not have something "connect with [me] on a personal level". Maybe you should re-think why you play videogames in the first place.
As a video game you control it, you can explore the world, you can increase or decrease the pace, you can blow through for a surface level casual experience, or you could find collectibles or logs that may expand on world lore, the type of stuff that is either wholesale more thoroughly expected from a book, or cut from a movie for pacing, these things can now be in a player's control on a case by case and player by player basis.
Parts of a story can be affected by choice, even when heavily scripted. Spoilers for The Last of Us, but near the end Joel is required by by the story to get Ellie back from the Fireflies, and you can justify his motivations for what he has to do to yourself or not, but at the peak moment where he actually finds her, after killing endless soldiers that fired upon him, he encounters surgeons who were about to work on Ellie. The player can decide for themselves whether they kill the surgeons or let them live, and not in a dialogue option way, but just based on whether you actually shoot them or not, and that choice can say things about both the player or possibly the player's mental image of Joel.
That's a relatively small example, but only video games can provide these sorts of small divergences in experience affected by player choice, and of course that experience is altered in the tv show version of that game, because its not possible to deliver it in the same way.
You play games to experience a mechanical challenge or expression of your intent and skill, but that doesn't mean other people don't go to games to experience story, whether that's a mostly pre-written experience like The Last of Us, or a story told by the player's statiscal build and gameplay choices, like Mount & Blade.
Even something you'd expect to be heavily pre-written, like a visual novel, can break the normal flow of time and events to allow or even require you to revisit previous sections and allow new choices that change the path and ending of the game, like 999.
What you consider the ideal video game just isn't what everybody does, and that's awesome because video games are such a massive and malleable medium that they can accommodate for all of that. You can enjoy Doom and Super Meat Boy, and other people can enjoy Phoenix Wright and Dear Esther. There's no art police that said three types of mediums are enough or ideal to express everything, the market and humanity decide that, and we decided collectively that video games can do story in new and interesting ways, too.
I find that I can connect with characters more in a video game than a movie. It's interaction on a different level.
I agree that some games want you to overlook poor game play for their story, but many people enjoy games with stories so I don't see that going away any time soon.