RobertoOrtiz
03-18-2004, 10:35 PM
Quote from the Editorial:
"Now A-list actors have taken notice of games, and it's not hard to see why. They're a quick route to digital-age street cred. Appearing in a game gives an actor a sense of being on the cutting edge of technological "convergence" (whatever that is), as well as a vague whiff of indie flava. More important, it keeps a star current among young men. Any canny star—or, more likely, any star with a canny agent—eventually winds up looking enviously at a hot video game like the Grand Theft Auto series, which is objectively cooler than almost anything that's come out of Hollywood in years. The list of voice actors for the GTA titles reads like a deranged Who's Who of '70s celebrities so out-of-date—Debbie Harry, Burt Reynolds, Lee Majors—that they are newly ironically famous.
The trend isn't just amongst has-beens, though. Christopher Walken voiced a character for True Crime: Streets of L.A., Ving Rhames' magnificent baritone graces two games, and hot-young-thing Michelle Rodriguez has dipped into game acting. Even Ed Asner decided to play a Jedi in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And these stars are not, as with the Bond game, merely translating on-screen roles. They're developing entirely fresh characters specifically for games.
Does the quality of the voice work in a game matter? Yes and no: Good voice acting can't save a bad game, but talented actors can imbue a game script with genuine emotional freight. Some of the best in-game voice work is not the long bits of dialogue in boring cut-scenes, but tiny, subtle bits of atmosphere. In Tomb Raider, Lara Croft's quiet, voluptuous moans as she hurled herself off ledges were half of what made the character so erotically charged. In Super Mario 64, Charles Martinet—a longtime voice actor who has done dozens of Nintendo titles—does almost nothing but grunt, sigh, giggle, and gasp, yet he gives the tiny anime plumber a surprisingly human quality. "
>>Link<< (http://slate.msn.com/id/2097296/)
-R
"Now A-list actors have taken notice of games, and it's not hard to see why. They're a quick route to digital-age street cred. Appearing in a game gives an actor a sense of being on the cutting edge of technological "convergence" (whatever that is), as well as a vague whiff of indie flava. More important, it keeps a star current among young men. Any canny star—or, more likely, any star with a canny agent—eventually winds up looking enviously at a hot video game like the Grand Theft Auto series, which is objectively cooler than almost anything that's come out of Hollywood in years. The list of voice actors for the GTA titles reads like a deranged Who's Who of '70s celebrities so out-of-date—Debbie Harry, Burt Reynolds, Lee Majors—that they are newly ironically famous.
The trend isn't just amongst has-beens, though. Christopher Walken voiced a character for True Crime: Streets of L.A., Ving Rhames' magnificent baritone graces two games, and hot-young-thing Michelle Rodriguez has dipped into game acting. Even Ed Asner decided to play a Jedi in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. And these stars are not, as with the Bond game, merely translating on-screen roles. They're developing entirely fresh characters specifically for games.
Does the quality of the voice work in a game matter? Yes and no: Good voice acting can't save a bad game, but talented actors can imbue a game script with genuine emotional freight. Some of the best in-game voice work is not the long bits of dialogue in boring cut-scenes, but tiny, subtle bits of atmosphere. In Tomb Raider, Lara Croft's quiet, voluptuous moans as she hurled herself off ledges were half of what made the character so erotically charged. In Super Mario 64, Charles Martinet—a longtime voice actor who has done dozens of Nintendo titles—does almost nothing but grunt, sigh, giggle, and gasp, yet he gives the tiny anime plumber a surprisingly human quality. "
>>Link<< (http://slate.msn.com/id/2097296/)
-R