Keanu Reeves says that videogames don’t need legitimising, even in the face of potential competition from cinema. In an interview with the BBC, Reeves, who is lending his likeness to Cyberpunk 2077’s Johnny Silverhand, suggested that if anything, Hollywood has borrowed from the games industry.
When asked if having mainstream film stars appear in games lends them increased legitimacy, Reeves said “I don’t think they need legitimising. If anything it’s gone the other way, it’s more of the influence gaming’s had on Hollywood. Certainly with the Marvel Universe, right? But then gaming probably started in the beginning with Hollywood.”
“I think these technologies have probably been talking to each other. That idea of the technology of image capture and performance – we’re seeing in Hollywood now so many performances where they’re aging or making performers younger. The elasticity of performance and time and what you look like and who you are, it’s getting more complex.”
After his time with Cyberpunk 2077, Reeves is certainly no stranger to the effects of mo-cap. Marcin Iwinski, CEO of developer CD Projekt Red, said that the actor had spent 15 days doing performance capture at the studio, and had more lines than any other NPC – only just behind the amount of dialogue spoken by protagonist V.
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Reeves was revealed as one of the game’s major players during Microsoft’s E3 conference last week, and it’s fair to say that his introduction has made some significant waves – including CDPR pledging to donate a go-kart to a children’s hospital as a direct result of his on-stage appearance.
Sadly, we’ll have to wait until the Cyberpunk 2077 release date to meet Johnny Silverhand for ourselves, but it looks like it’s shaping up to be worth the wait.