•Will de Renzy-Martin, the actor who voices lead character Coen in the English-language version of The Blood of Dawnwalker, has spoken about what humans bring to a performance that generative artificial intelligence cannot reproduce.
In a TikTok teaser for an upcoming episode of the My Perfect Console Podcast, de Renzy-Martin argued that the spoken words themselves account for only “half – if that” of an actor’s contribution. “I think the least interesting thing about what I do is the way my voice sounds,” he said. “That is really all that generative AI is able to replicate.”
“It’s not replicating my personality and the things that I do when I’m in the room, and the choices that I make, which is all the reasons that a director or a producer would want to work with me,” he added. He acknowledged that some directors and producers might prefer AI, but said they would then need to be “really good at getting performances out of something” and must bring their own ideas.
The topic recalled remarks de Renzy-Martin says he made four or five years ago: “Actors are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. And if you end up with an AI that can produce the right noises, you’re going to need somebody who can interact with it and get the performance that you want attached to those noises – and they’re going to be much more expensive than an actor is.”
The Blood of Dawnwalker itself drew controversy when developer Rebel Wolves revealed it had used text-to-speech AI tools while planning cinematics, before hiring actors to perform the roles. Game director Konrad Tomazkiewicz has spoken openly about potential AI use in development, mostly referring to tedious tasks such as bug fixing. According to de Renzy-Martin, nothing in The Blood of Dawnwalker was created with AI.
Other gaming companies have taken AI further: Embark Studios, creator of The Finals and Arc Raiders, used AI to generate voice lines in both games. Meanwhile, companies like Elevenlabs have built large businesses around licensing the voices of famous actors and generating lines from those samples. Actor Matthew McConaughey is an investor in Elevenlabs; he is set to appear in his first video game next year, Exodus, a Mass Effect-like sci-fi RPG.
I awarded The Blood of Dawnwalker four stars in my Eurogamer review. “CD Projekt Red alumni create a familiar dark fantasy adventure, but one with bold and provocative ideas of its own, that’s mostly, enormously successful.”
Gamer24h
Will de Renzy-Martin has appeared in several games this year, including The Sinking City 2 (as Corentin de Grandemange), 007 First लाइट (Henry Bancroft) and Star Wars: Galactic Racer (Shade). But he will be best known for his starring role as Coen, described as a very accomplished performance delivered in a calm, velvety voice.
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