Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag star Matt Ryan says the term ‘voice actor’ is outdated: ‘You see the performances in the eyes, it blows me away’

Fully motion-captured performance for games “was in its infancy at the time, when I got the job,” remembers Matt Ryan, who starred as swashbuckler Edward Kenway in 2013’s Assassin’s Creed: Black Flag.

Forms of motion capture have been used to make games for decades, of course: in the 1980s Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner filmed his brother galavanting around the woods to create the prince’s rotoscoped animations; in the 2000s, Capcom was capturing stunt performers in tight bodysuits for Devil May Cry 3’s cutscenes. But it’s only much more recently that actors for games have been delivering all-encompassing performances within the confines of a motion-capture stage, their voices, movements, and minute facial expressions all making their way into a game.

“When I got the job, I didn’t know it was going to be mocap—I thought it would just be voice,” Ryan said in an interview with PC Gamer. “But I loved that it was mocap. I found another medium to work in: I love theater, and I love doing TV, but I like to change it up as well.”

Ryan is amazed by just how much more detail big-budget games have been able to convey in the decade since he played Kenway, and called out Troy Baker’s performance as Indiana Jones as “fucking awesome.”

“I think in terms of the vernacular that the media uses these days, they haven’t quite caught up,” he said. “They still say ‘the voice actor,’ and no, there’s a whole medium out there. The games that I play, you see the performances, and it’s good, man. Just how the performance can come through even after they’ve painted over you with the [game character’s] skin. The eyes, the details in the eyes, it blows me away. With the technology they’ve got today, it allows me to come through even more.”

Perhaps that increase in fidelity is part of the reason that game actors are more closely associated with their characters these days, and have attracted far more attention in recent years—Final Fantasy 16’s Ben Starr, Baldur’s Gate 3’s Neil Newbon, and Resident Evil 8’s Maggie Robertson, just to name a few. Improvements to the technology have also made it at least a little easier on actors to get themselves into the headspace of a character, despite being suited up in full-body lycra. Ryan mentioned that returning to do some fresh mocap work for Black Flag Resynced, his helmet was much more comfortable than the one he wore in 2013, which felt like “having your head in a vice.”

“I think because [games] are becoming more actor-driven and story-driven, the actor is bringing a lot more of himself to the game,” Ryan said. “The players and the audience, they get to engage with that, and they recognize that. And they spend more time with you than they do in a TV show or theater or any of that. They’re with you for a long time. I really love the fact that it’s become an actor’s medium. We need to rejig the vernacular—something that really describes what the medium has become now.”