Live Transmission: Force Unleashed II

What’s your take on actors in videogames and storytelling?

It’s not all going to become one thing; there are going to be various arenas. Videogames and movies and stuff like that, but what is becoming apparent is the need for compelling storytelling in videogames. I’ve felt the reason for that is that when I was six years old, videogames were for six-year-olds. When I was 16, videogames evolved along with my generation, when I was 20 they had evolved again and so on and so forth. It’s an art form that’s growing up with the people that invented it and so, for that reason, now that we’re all grown up and have much more sophisticated tastes and we are demanding we have videogames that reflect it. That’s why more adult themes, more complicated stories and more believable performances.

Red Dead Redemption had awesome performances and I’d like to think TFU did fairly well on this as well, but that’s because, for example, when videogames first came out the technology wasn’t there to really go into complicated stories. But, there was no real need for it just yet, maybe there would have been a demand for it if it was possible but it was such a new thing that older adults just couldn’t relate to it. Like what’s going on with the Australian classification board at the moment, that’s going to evolve and in terms of there being a controversy about it, that’s going to go away. There will be law makers at some point, seventy year old legislators who grew up playing videogames, who totally get it, totally understand it, aren’t intimidated or afraid of it and they will get it.
Storytelling is going to continue to evolve and change but it’s the attention to detail from the artisans and craftsman who make these things that will bring better and better performances. I don’t think they will ever replace movies, I think there will always be a place for an absolutely directed experience that tells a direct story and has a very specific view point. However, videogames aren’t going anywhere either, because there is also that need to literally walk around in the skin of another character and experience a story that way. There’s a place for all these things, but the cool thing is, watching the skill sets of the people who make these things merge. There are people at LucasArts right now that would be just as useful on a $200 million movie as they would they would be on the production on The Force Unleashed II.

The cool thing about the how incredible the technology has progressed is getting recognised – that’s a lot of fun.

What’s next on your horizon?

I’m not heading back to Smallville – are you aware of a show called Being Human? I’m the vampire in the American version of Being Human and we’re starting shooting next month. Just accepted that role and was blown away by the scripts. I am huge genre fan. I love Star Wars and all that stuff – vampires are iffy for me (laughs). I don’t know how much I should be saying, so I’ll just say that I don’t necessarily have a particular love of vampires, but my God, the scripts completely blew me away.

I saw part of the original, but once I had the idea that I might want to be part of it I stopped watching it because I want to come up with my own thing. I don’t want to inadvertently copy what the original actor did, Aidan Turner is a wonderful actor but I really want to be able to put my own spin on it. Once that’s established I’ll have a lot of fun going back and watching what they did. I watched enough of it to really see what an accomplishment it was.

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