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Comment on Idris Elba: Actors in video games like Phantom Liberty is 'sign of the times'

Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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 similar. 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.

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Cylusthevirus@kbin.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.

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- captainlezbian@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Leonard Nimoy did civ 4
  
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  - Mnemnosyne@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.
    
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    CodeInvasion@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    “Beep… Beep… Beep…” -Sputnik
    
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- Granite@kbin.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.
  
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nyahlathotep@sh.itjust.works ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
For some reason I often see people shit on Keanu Reeves for wooden acting, but I honestly thought he was great as Johnny. Knocked it out of the park imo

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- Puzzle_Sluts_4Ever@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  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.
  
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  - ante@lemmy.world ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ 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.
    
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- Cylusthevirus@kbin.social ⁨8⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Really? I thought he nailed it too.
  
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