How was it like to come back to Leon’s origins, playing him as a rookie?
You ask the tough questions for me to answer! When I got the call for Darkside Chronicles, I got really excited. Actually, I had to audition to play the role. They wanted to make sure that I could still not only handle Leon’s adventures, but also be good at sounding young and scared and like a typical rookie. WTF this is Leon’s FIRST day on the job! One of the richer details of this game is how Leon switches between recalling the story as it unfolds and all the action of first day on the force, right in the middle of Raccoon City. So once I was cast and saw what this world looked like, I was stoked. It’s one of an actor’s exercises to imagine the entire life of a character he plays, so to get a chance to play out some of the early life of Leon was awesome. I came up through the theater, so my preparation is based on discovering everything about the character revealed in the words, whether concealed or revealed starting on page 1. An actor’s job is to bring those elements together into a complex tridimensional people that the audience can relate to. Some of the games are translated and meticulously localized culturally, because just literal translations don’t work at all. So sometimes it’s like flying by the seat of your pants!
I did learn a lot about Leon that was either contrary to what I had initially thought or was actually congruent with what I had worked on before. The early scenes with Claire were extremely interesting because, when you play the game, you expect to see Leon as before, able to handle everything not even blinking an eye. And here he is, literally dropped in the middle of chaos, immediately life threatening to him as well as everyone that he believes is still alive. What happens is a frigging zombie surprise party! You’re thinking you’re looking for where your locker is and blammo, it gets blown to hell. He has to rely on his instinct to get to safety and to figure out solutions. And what you see is Leon developing his ability to react clearly with exactly the right energy and attitude for the situation. That’s intense, because you get to see close up what it was that gave Leon the ’I’ve seen it all’ attitude like he is at the end of RE4.
How is the relationship between Leon and Claire on TDC, now that they spend the whole Raccoon City incident together?
This relationship is complicated in many ways. First, Leon knows not to trust anyone. Some of the deepest national secrets are revealed between the sheets! He also knows that mixing work and anything else can be deadly. However, he is 100% male, and working so close to the hot ladies of Resident Evil can be very distracting to say the least! You didn’t ask about Ada. What is happening in Leon’s life that he would actually be drawn to that mysterious avatar? Or what is in Leon’s life to prevent him from being with Claire? That being said, they do work very well as a team, and even if he doesn’t trust her, she has bailed him out and he knows she’s got his back.
In this new game, the dialogs seem much more natural than in the rest of the series. How were the recording sections like?
You’ve seen more than I have! I’m glad you feel a natural pace to the cut scenes. There was an effort to approach the “Cloverfield feel.” I think we are still a while away from ‘standard’ production procedures when it comes to games. This is kinda cool. We have global creative teams coming together, some from features, some from TV animation and some who never leave their computer. We are only beginning to see what’s possible. Right now, people bring to games workflows from what they know best. Filmmakers bring the cinematic realism; anime directors bring in their sense of immediacy and excitement. Game production is still so young it’s exciting to see so many different fields of entertainment coming together. There are time constraints as well. Most games have hundreds of characters and thousands of lines, so although it would be fun to record dialogue with the whole cast playing their roles, it’s not practical. So we usually bash around non-linearly between scenes and gameplay in no chronological order most of the time, which is also part of the challenge.
Will we see Leon in moments other than the Raccoon City / Resident Evil 2 scenario?
I will have to stick to my NDA on that and not say anything more about what will be revealed. The scenes on Youtube aren’t even the best parts. I will say though, that some of these fights and stunts are among the best I’ve ever seen, they are outrageous! And the coop feature to play Claire and Leon along with each other will be frigging awesome.
SC und DS:E liegt darin, dass die Monster in Dead Space viel weniger menschlich wirken als die Zombies in Resident Evil. Solange man nicht auf Menschen losgeht, wird die Gewalt in Videospielen in DE einigermaßen geduldet. Deswegen ist Dead Space auf den HD-Konsolen auch ganz normal hier käuflich.
