Idris Elba, who stars in Cyberpunk 2077: Phantom Liberty, sees a future where films and games converge.

  • Mantis_Toboggan@lemmy.world
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    1 year ago

    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

    • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      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.

      • Cylusthevirus@kbin.social
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        1 year ago

        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.

          • Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works
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            1 year ago

            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.

        • Granite@kbin.social
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          1 year ago

          Patrick Stewart and Sean Bean were both in Oblivion. here’s the thing for me, they were playing characters who were not meant to look like the actors.

      • nyahlathotep@sh.itjust.works
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        1 year ago

        I often see people shit on Keanu Reeves for wooden acting in Cyberpunk, but I honestly thought he was great as Johnny. Knocked it out of the park imo

        • Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world
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          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.

          • ante@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            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.

      • leftzero@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        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.

      • d3Xt3r@lemmy.nz
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        1 year ago

        Batman Begins (2005) had an all-star voice cast from the movies:

        • Christian Bale as Bruce Wayne/Batman
        • Michael Caine as Alfred Pennyworth
        • Liam Neeson as Henri Ducard/Ra’s al Ghul
        • Katie Holmes as Rachel Dawes
        • Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane/The Scarecrow
        • Tom Wilkinson as Carmine Falcone
        • Morgan Freeman as Lucius Fox
        • Tim Booth as Victor Zsasz
        • Mark Boone Junior as Detective Arnold Flass
        • Ken Watanabe as Ra’s al Ghul (decoy)
      • Paradox@lemdro.id
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        1 year ago

        Bruce Lee was in Bruce Lee in 1984, if you really want to get down to it. And he wasn’t even the first.

      • usualsuspect191@lemmy.ca
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        1 year ago

        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

        • emptyother@programming.dev
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          1 year ago

          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.

            • emptyother@programming.dev
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              1 year ago

              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.

              • Flying Squid@lemmy.world
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                1 year ago

                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.

      • beefcat@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        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.

    • Davel23@kbin.social
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      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.