Need a little help from CoD and Battlefield players, please!

Hi!

First off a small introduction: For my Bachelor degree in Drama, Theatre and Performance I'm writing a dissertation on a topic of my own choice. I decided to write about acting in new media, focusing on voice acting and motion capture for games and animation. This 'new' form of acting is not known outside of a few specific communities, and I hope to educate some of my own lecturers on the art as they know very little about it.

I'd like to write a bit about how the border between 'voice ator' and 'screen actor' is starting to blur as some newer games project a digital 'copy' of the actors in the games. I'll be mentioning L.A. Noire, of course, with their groundbreaking technology. I was also planning on mentioning Battlefield 3 as the game have digital doubles of their actors for many characters, including the main character Blackburn played by Gideon Emery.

Today I saw the trailer for CoD: Black Ops 2 and was surprised to see Tony Todd lending his apperance and voice to the game. My question is: was Battlefield or CoD using this approach first? I don't play either series, som I'm not familiar with their history. Keep in mind that 'celebrity voices' doesn't count (I now that Gary Oldman and Sam Worthington did voice work for Black Ops, but i don't know if their apperances were in the game as well).

The reason I would like to know is that CoD and Battlefield are two very high profile franchises and it would be interesting to examine if two 'rivals' could provoke this reaction from each other ("They have screen actors' apperances! We should do that too!") and what that means for the industry and the actors.

I don't want this to be a fanboy argument of who did what first. I just need some information I can use in my dissertation.

Thank you very much for reading!

Hi!

First off a small introduction: For my Bachelor degree in Drama, Theatre and Performance I'm writing a dissertation on a topic of my own choice. I decided to write about acting in new media, focusing on voice acting and motion capture for games and animation. This 'new' form of acting is not known outside of a few specific communities, and I hope to educate some of my own lecturers on the art as they know very little about it.

I'd like to write a bit about how the border between 'voice ator' and 'screen actor' is starting to blur as some newer games project a digital 'copy' of the actors in the games. I'll be mentioning L.A. Noire, of course, with their groundbreaking technology. I was also planning on mentioning Battlefield 3 as the game have digital doubles of their actors for many characters, including the main character Blackburn played by Gideon Emery.

Today I saw the trailer for CoD: Black Ops 2 and was surprised to see Tony Todd lending his apperance and voice to the game. My question is: was Battlefield or CoD using this approach first? I don't play either series, som I'm not familiar with their history. Keep in mind that 'celebrity voices' doesn't count (I now that Gary Oldman and Sam Worthington did voice work for Black Ops, but i don't know if their apperances were in the game as well).

The reason I would like to know is that CoD and Battlefield are two very high profile franchises and it would be interesting to examine if two 'rivals' could provoke this reaction from each other ("They have screen actors' apperances! We should do that too!") and what that means for the industry and the actors.

I don't want this to be a fanboy argument of who did what first. I just need some information I can use in my dissertation.

Thank you very much for reading!

This is the first I've see. Of cod doing this. I don't know for sure but this would be the first time Cod would've done it.

Pierce Brosnan's face was scanned in for 007 Nightfire, though I hardly remember if the full motion capture was used or even if he voice acted in it; still this technology isn't entirely a new thing in video games.

Anyway, Battlefield probably did it first. I don't think any CoD game has done it before. And, it should be noted that games have done it long before Battlefield - you may want to find the first example instead of the most popular.

Thanks for the feedback and tips everyone!

It's interesting that CoD chose to do this in their game now if they haven't before.

The part about these new games is just a small part of a 12 000 word dissertation, and I have plans for mentioning earlier games that have done this as well. Onimusha 3 featured Jean Reno and even had his name on the box as a sales pitch. Games based on films often, if not always, use the likeness of actors but often only feature voice actors that immitate the screen actor. This is because the pay is too low to be 'worth the Hollywood actor's time' in most cases. The voice actor Crispin Freeman has imitated Orlando Bloom on numerous occasions, both in games and for audio loops in films (like the Pirates films).

And I will use Uncharted as an example for the technique of recording movement and audio at the same time. I even plan on using Nolan North's book about the making of Uncharted 3 as a source in my Bibliography.