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Keeping Thief’s original voice actor for the upcoming reboot “wouldn’t make sense for anything else other than nostalgia”, Eidos Montreal has claimed, while explaining the reasons why it chose to go with a new actor for next year’s game.
Stephen Russell, who played the role of Garrett in the previous games, “was considered quite heavily” to return in the reboot, narrative director Steven Gallagher told the game’s official blog, but with the redesigned character, Eidos Montreal felt “that there was a disconnect that we couldn’t ignore between the concepted character and Stephen’s voice today.”
“We’re absolutely huge fans of Stephen’s work on the classic Thief games. But when it came down to it, we ultimately realised that holding onto Steven as the voice of Garrett just for the sake of our nostalgia would be like wanting to cast Sean Connery again in the new 007 movies…
“It’s a nice thought, but honestly, it wouldn’t make sense for anything else other than nostalgia.”
Besides the changes made to the character, Eidos Montreal cites the need to record full performance capture – a method in which the actor records his lines while performing the character’s actions – as another reason to go with a new voice actor.
“Being able to capture the voice at the same time as the actors’ movements and facial expressions, all while the actors play off each other, delivers a much more convincing experience than traditional techniques of recording each characters’ dialogue separately and then animating everything by hand afterwards,” explained audio director Jean-Christophe Verbert.
“The actor playing Garrett needed to be able to perform his own stunts,” he continued. “Garrett’s a really athletic guy. We could have pasted Stephen’s voice on top of the actions and stunts of someone else, but this wouldn’t appear natural. It really wouldn’t make any sense to capture the full performance for our other characters, but not for our star.”
Full performance capture is also the reason why Ubisoft chose a new voice actor for its next Splinter Cell title, Blacklist.
Thief launches next year on PC and next-generation consoles.
Source: Thief Community
