Yeah, this is the millionth article with the same sort of headline these last 7 years, and we have yet to see just the slightest hint of any actual repercussions for his life of crime.
There have been a lot of borderline stunt castings over the years. Patrick Stewart was in like 30 seconds of TES4 and Sean Bean was in about 10 minutes of it. Hell, Bruce Campbell was in all of Tachyon: The Fringe (which is like the fifth best space dogfighting game ever).
But they were largely wasted. Kristen Bell… she is spectacular within a narrow range and “generic girl in the chair” is not it. And then there was the (alleged?) contract dispute that led to her being a baddy that gets killed off real fast. And that was largely the case. It was “get a b/c-tier actor/actress and find out that voice acting is very different than camera acting”
In more recent years we started to see a big emphasis on VAs doing the motion cap as well and Christopher “Teal’c” Judge made Kratos “I moved to a non-extradition treaty pantheon” of Sparta into a woobie. And people very much underrate how good of a job Camilla Luddington and a few other performers have done over the years.
But… we still have shit like Rosario Dawson in Dying Light 2 where “okay… she was there?”.
For its many many many many many flaws and problematic aspects, I think CDPR did an amazing job with their “stunt casting” for Cyberpunk. Because Keanu knocked it out of the park (when he wasn’t just talking about his magnificent cock) and everything I have seen of Idris Elba’s performance is similarly good.
And it kind of does mark a paradigm shift. Because it is no longer getting David Hyde Pierce to do a cameo as a camp gay counselor or a snooty over the top version of Niles. It is more like getting Ted Danson because you need a character who can simultaneously be a sleazy asshole and also the kind of person you just want to open up to and tell all your problems. It isn’t the kind of performance that you get for a single episode of sweeps week or to make people tune in even after your lead actor fucked off. It is the kind of performance you build a show/movie around.
The problem is that he really IS wooden and obnoxious for basically the entire first two acts or so. It isn’t until you have that conversation outside the motel (?) that he is allowed any range.
And… that is also around the time the game falls off massively in terms of quality. It isn’t quite Obsidian levels of “We ran out of money” but it definitely shows what they spent time on and what they just had to get working to release.
Which sucks because that is actually when they delve into the character of Johnny (particularly WHY he hates Arasaka so much) and you start having actual conversations with him… unless it is a side mission where they all default to antagonistic first hour mode.
I mostly agree with this. I really enjoyed the more insightful, introspective Johnny and there wasn’t enough of it. With that being said, I’m a few hours into Phantom Liberty and it seems that we get a lot more of the meaningful conversations with Johnny.
Sean Bean also voices most of Civ 6 and it's glorious. Say what you will about it from a mechanical perspective but I can't find fault with his voice lines. He gets to read some of the greatest quotations from history and for the most part he nails it.
Might just be me enjoying Nimoy in most everything, or maybe ta just that Civ 4 is still the best of the series, but I really liked his lines in that one.
Lots of memorable ones but “the bureaucracy is expanding to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy” always sticks out as one of my favorites.
TESIV Oblivion is 2006, Tachyon The Fringe is 2000… 1994’s Wing Commander III: Heart of the Tiger has a whole IMDB page, with the likes of Mark Hamill, John Rhys-Davies, and Malcolm McDowell playing main characters.
And there’s earlier games with less stellar casts, like 1991’s Tex Murphy: Martian Memorandum. Actors in games have been a thing for quite a while.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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 like 4 or 5 times and released a year and a half later then it was intended.
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.
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.
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
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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