True Crime’s True Cast
Activision finally spills the beans on who’s voicing their latest anti-crime epic.
Published: September 19, 2005
These days, if you don’t have at least one celebrity voicing a character in your Upcoming Soon-to-be-Blockbuster AAA Title Offering Innovation and Action Galore, you must not have be fully committed to the experience. Okay, so that’s what it sounds like at times, what with games left and right tapping Hollywood talent to give their characters instant aural identification.
It’s not a new practice, but Rockstar probably led the charge with the release of GTA3, and when Activision countered with their own free-roaming wanna-be sandbox effort, True Crime: Streets of LA, they lined up a fair number of their own Tinseltown vocals.
Still, the game was knocked by most gamers for not locking down a specific tone (and hey, let’s face it, that storyline was a little out there towards the end), and even we couldn’t get behind some of the better elements. There’s hope, though, and it lies in New York. The second True Crime effort seems to have more of a decidedly gritty approach to things, and the voice cast signed up seems to match.
The new cast includes (and yes, we’re totally pasting this in here) “Christopher Walken as FBI field agent Gabriel Whitting; Laurence Fishburne as drug kingpin Isaiah “The King” Reed; Mariska Hargitay as New York Police Lieutenant Deena Dixon; Mickey Rourke as New York Police Detective Terrence Higgins; Esai Morales as New York Police Organized Crime Unit chief Victor Navarro; Traci Lords as madam Cassandra Hartz; and up and coming actor Avery Waddell as former gangster turned cop Marcus Reed, the game’s main character and Isaiah Reed’s son.”
Now up until the first True Crime, you would have caught most us saying the inclusion of Christopher Walken would negate any of the bad from a game, but, well, he can’t. But hey, there’s no way he can be in two bad games, right? Right? We’ll soon know.
It’s not a new practice, but Rockstar probably led the charge with the release of GTA3, and when Activision countered with their own free-roaming wanna-be sandbox effort, True Crime: Streets of LA, they lined up a fair number of their own Tinseltown vocals.
Still, the game was knocked by most gamers for not locking down a specific tone (and hey, let’s face it, that storyline was a little out there towards the end), and even we couldn’t get behind some of the better elements. There’s hope, though, and it lies in New York. The second True Crime effort seems to have more of a decidedly gritty approach to things, and the voice cast signed up seems to match.
The new cast includes (and yes, we’re totally pasting this in here) “Christopher Walken as FBI field agent Gabriel Whitting; Laurence Fishburne as drug kingpin Isaiah “The King” Reed; Mariska Hargitay as New York Police Lieutenant Deena Dixon; Mickey Rourke as New York Police Detective Terrence Higgins; Esai Morales as New York Police Organized Crime Unit chief Victor Navarro; Traci Lords as madam Cassandra Hartz; and up and coming actor Avery Waddell as former gangster turned cop Marcus Reed, the game’s main character and Isaiah Reed’s son.”
Now up until the first True Crime, you would have caught most us saying the inclusion of Christopher Walken would negate any of the bad from a game, but, well, he can’t. But hey, there’s no way he can be in two bad games, right? Right? We’ll soon know.