It is a fine line for video games to walk, that paper-thin rope, high in the air separating video games and movies. Ever since a third dimension has been added to video games, there has been a natural inclination for designers to ape ideas from the world of cinema. The visual language of film has long had it claws in many games, whether it is Naughty Dog’s Uncharted or Kojima’s Metal Gear Solid.
The ability to add human voices into a game opened the door for voice actors to lend their talents to the interactive medium, then came motion capture which added more performance pay dirt to mine in video games. Soon, voice actors started to grow in prominence; actors like Ray Liotta, Samuel L Jackson, Liam Neeson, Patrick Stewart, and others quickly jumped into recording studio and paved the way to more traditional actors. Video games have also inspired their own celebrity voices like Nolan North or Troy Baker who, while voicing characters in many mediums, have become notable video game personalities.
Riding the momentum of the celebrity voice over was David Cage with his recent game Beyond: Two Souls. While history will prove that Cage is far from the first designer to use celebrity voice actors, no one has pushed their involvement quite like his latest effort. If you buy a copy of Oblivion, Sean Bean’s name is nowhere to be found until the ending credits roll, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City boasted a roster that included the previously mentioned Liotta, Dennis Hopper, Tom Sizemore, and Burt Reynolds but never made light of it. However, Cage has taken a new step by shoving Ellen Page and Willem Dafoe to the spotlight of his game. Unfortunately, Beyond: Two Souls has received mixed reviews at best, being docked for a wandering, unimpressive narrative and clunky gameplay. While the game itself is unimpressive, the work of Page and Dafoe has been silently building praise.
The trouble is that acting is not as important for video games as it is for other visual mediums. Gameplay is the primary way that a video game communicates to its audience, the way that it relates what you should feel and experience. Actors are merely a supplement to the environment, they can add to a game’s narrative and create more believable characters, but a well acted game is little more than a bonus. Oftentimes, voice acting feels like a no-win scenario, when done well it is often dismissed and when done poorly it can derail a game. For actors, voice acting also fails to do accomplish one of their most important objectives, which getting your face in front of an audience. It is possible that players are familiar with some of the more high profile names in voice acting, but if a great voice actor is doing their job correctly the audience is most likely unaware of the actors involvement.
Voice acting is also a very exclusionary profession. High profile work is limited and many of the same actors soak up leading roles, this year alone Troy Baker has absorbed three of the biggest male roles into this rapidly-expanding resume. Baker should feel great about his success and his rise to fame this year has been an amazing story to watch, it will be especially sweet if it can inspire more appreciation for voice actors. However, Baker’s story is incredibly rare, and proof of how voice acting is almost incestuous in its casting. The stories of voice acting success often drive more actors off, than intrigue them.
It seems like voice acting is at a crossroad. As the skill progresses, developers might seek to drag more Hollywood talent to the microphone, shoving name in front of their games to help ramp up sales. The other option is that voice acting remains a self-contained, small community of extremely talented individuals, making its barrier of entry extremely difficult. With such a pessimistic future, why would one ever want to get into this odd, eclectic business? Why would an actor who has spent years studying Stanislavski and Brecht, reading Shakespeare and Shepherd, want to be shoved in an empty room, costumed in black spandex with ping-pong balls, have a camera hung in front of their face, and then try to demonstrate their craft?
Games, when done right, can engage players in a way that no other medium can and the technology to improve human animation in them is improving every day. While Beyond: Two Souls was a mediocre game, I was blown away by what Page and Dafoe could do with motion capture technology. Their performances were subtle, they conveyed so much weight without needing to go over-the-top. Games are slowly approaching a point where the medium doesn’t violently reject actors, but gives them a conduit to express themselves. Page didn’t need makeup to try and look like a teenager, Dafoe’s aging wasn’t altered with cheap tricks that make audiences roll their eyes. The game jumped through time and the actors were able to age naturally.
Another recent success story for video game acting and motion capture was The Last of Us. Unlike Beyond: Two Souls which played out almost like an interactive drama, The Last of Us was far more traditional, telling the majority of its story in cutscenes. These scenes were animated, acted, and voiced in such a grounded manner that the performances felt on par with any other medium. It is easy to emotionally connect with Joel and Ellie because they feel like real people. Troy Baker never would be cast as Joel for film, television, or theatre, but video games gave him a chance in a way nothing else could, and he nailed it.
It is unlikely, to say the least, that video games would ever be considered a traditional or common way for people to break into acting. While great leaps have been made in the last decade alone, most actors are still finding their roots in theatrical training. That being said, hopefully someday video games will be acknowledged in the same way television is today. Hopefully video games can continue to create their own stars organically, and we can see many more people enjoy the success that so few have gotten to experience. Let’s hope that these actors can find their way into other mediums and that games can continue to attract interested top-paid talent. Let’s hope that soon people won’t balk when they hear an oscar-winning actor is doing a game or that a well-known actor got their start in the games’ voice-acting scene. While acting pales in importance next to gameplay and design, creating authentic characters and stories is an important part in the evolution of video games. I know the acting world is tough for games, there are stigmas attached to such work and no one ever played King Lear in hopes of someday getting to voice an Elder Scrolls king, but maybe someday there won’t be a difference between the two roles.
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