14 DAY TRIAL // The team at Eidos Montreal working on the new Thief video game says that it has abandoned Stephen Russell, who voiced the main character for the original series, because motion capture techniques now require actors who can also perform their own stunts.
Steven Gallagher, the narrative director working on the reboot, tells the official site that, “Stephen was considered quite heavily. We actually had him in for some preliminary vocal recordings in fact.”
But some members of the team thought that his voice was no longer suited to the way Garrett would be portrayed in the new Thief game.
At the same time, Eidos wants to use a new motion capture technology that records voice and movement simultaneously, which means that actors need to be fit and capable of performing their own stunts while they deliver lines for the character they portray.
Jean-Christophe Verbert, the audio director working on Thief, says, “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.”
The team has not explained how exactly the new incarnation of Garrett will be different from the version of the character that fans have come to love.
The protagonist of Thief is still a master of stealth and will try to get around security and fool enemy guards rather than face them in close quarters battle.
Eidos Montreal has hinted after the official reveal that they will try to make the game more accessible to new players and will introduce more optional action elements.
The new Thief will be launched during 2014 on the PlayStation 4 and other next-gen devices.