Andy Serkis says ‘there has always been that snobbery’ when it comes to videogame acting, but the times are changing thanks to games like Expedition 33

Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 isn’t the first videogame to have a compelling story or an in-depth narrative—you and I both know this—it does, however, feel like an vital milestone on the road to getting everyone else to take the medium and (more importantly the people who make it, mocap actors included) as seriously as they deserve to be.

So agrees Andy Serkis, who voiced Renoir in Sandfall’s brilliant RPG, in an interview with Variety: “I’m so thrilled for these guys, because I love the idea of [Expedition 33], and I love the visual of it. I just thought it was beautiful.”

On the role itself, which was assisted by mocap acting from Sandfall’s own talent like Maxence Cazorla, Serkis says: “I don’t see any difference between that and acting in films or on stage or TV. It’s exactly the same. You approach the character and build a character in the same way.

“My first engagement with videogames was with a company called Ninja Theory, and we made a game called ‘Heavenly Sword’ for Playstation 3. At that point, actors looked down on videogames as like, ‘I wouldn’t get involved in a videogame’. Now, young actors are coming out of drama schools, and they’re like ‘I really wanna be in a videogame’.”

It’s not surprising to hear Serkis be so vocal, mind. Not just because he’s been in videogames before (most of them Lord of the Rings tie-ins, but hey) but also because he’s one of Hollywood’s most well-known mocap actors—a process a lot of videogame actors have to go through.

Gollum from Lord of the Rings is the obvious one, but he’s also returned to monkey around as Caesar from Planet of the Apes. The cycle of videogames adopting Hollywood’s special FX technology, then videogame tech becoming popular in films? That isn’t lost on him.

“The irony is that Hollywood is using videogame engines to drive all of the previews for all of the big action sequences in all of the movies, but also for cinematographers to use pre-vis and to be able to place light sources or moonlight or sunlight very specifically in a shot.

“It’s an essential tool of modern filmmaking. And there has always been that snobbery about videogames not being anywhere near filmmaking but that’s all changing. And certainly looking into the future when we have more immersive storytelling, which is what’s happening.”

Personally, there’s a little cynical old man in my heart that shakes his fist whenever the concept that videogames are suddenly art comes up—they’ve been art forever—but I’ll put that little guy in my soul’s retirement home where he belongs for now, given Serkis’s full-blooded enthusiasm for the medium.

It is nice to see that we’ve come a long way from the days of Neil Newbon, who received all the laurels he deserved for his role as Astarion in Baldur’s Gate 3, getting told he wasn’t a “real actor”. We’re not in a post-snobbery utopia yet, though. As recently as 2024, you had an Amazon Games CEO saying that “for games, we don’t really have acting”. Obviously untrue, but as long as folks with more money than sense believe it, they’ll act as if it is.

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