Apologies if has already been brought to light, but today I was disappointed to learn that Eidos Montreal has decided not to use the immensely talented Stephen Russell to reprise his role as Garrett because he is too old to do the motion capture work.

That to me is a lazy excuse and a cop out, if you would like to join me in voicing your disapproval the petition is here:

https://www.change.org/petitions/eidos-montreal-square-enix-bring-back-stephen-russell-for-thief-4

I know some may be sceptical of petitions in general, but I like to think they may have had some influence on bringing back David Bateson as Agent 47 in Hitman Absolution and James McAffrey as Max Payne in Max Payne 3 after they were initially left out.

So if you want Stephen back for Garrett the link is up above.

GG... the same thing that Ubisoft did with Splinter Cell...

Well, I guess they may have a good reason for th... wait, what? The hell does motion capture have to do with voice acting? O_o

The reason they did it for Splinter Cell was for facial motion capture during full performance motion capture (they wanted actor playing the new version of Sam Fisher facial expressions to match the actors)... To give that 'cinematic' realism experience. It's actually one of the reasons I won't be buying the new Splinter Cell at least not at release, and will will wait until its dirt cheap. I may not buy it at all, ever (I didn't like the direction the games were taking anyways with certain game mechanic features removed).

But I don't know why they can't just use an actors facial expressions and dub the voice in later. Or do two separate motion captures on both the body actor, and the voice actor.

http://gamerant.com/thief-4-voice-actor-petition/

http://www.gameinformer.com/b/features/archive/2013/03/11/watch-the-creation-of-a-scene-from-thief.aspx

Not much hope on this. It's a good effort though, but a corporation gon' do what a corporation gon' do.

On the one hand, at least the new actor is trying to impersonate Russel's voice...

That's one step better than they did with Splinter Cell, where there wasn't even an attempt to try to sound like the original character.

http://www.gog.com/forum/thief_series/petition_bring_stephen_russell_back_to_thief_4

The new Sam Fisher still looks more or less like an old guy, but his voice sounds like a 20-30 year old... The voice doesn't even match the appearance...

Thank you for the information. I have added my voice to the petition. Has there been any news since? How many people have signed the petition to have Stephen Russell reprise the role as Garrett?

Meh! I won't be going anywhere near that, so the only petition I'd like to sign is that they don't call it Thief.

I´ve singed it as well, but if I´d have to believe the informations about this game so far, It will suck hard. Opposing visions for game inside studio already resulted in pretty un-Thief gameplay video (experience for killings, experience for head shots, fight sequences resembling Assasins Creed from first person) - seriously, I would be happy if this project would die out. It would be much more lesser blemish than releasing that atrocity.

The fight sequences look more like Dishonored than AC series.

BTW, how close is Stephen Russel to the fan community? Any possibility that he would as a labor of love be willing or able to be convinced to lend his voice to a voice mod? In other words replace new Garret's voice overs with recordings from Stephen Russell after the game is released?

Not suggesting fans start flooding him with letters, on the issue.

...nor do I understand all the legal ramifications and hoops it might cause.

Stephen Russell is aware of the fan community and has personally thanked the fans for their support over at the TTLG forums. I'm sure he would love to reprise his role, if his schedule permits it. However, I doubt EM will ever hire Russell, since they have no incentive to please the fans. They want first and foremost to appeal to the modern mass market, the casual couch players, not the small community of hardcore enthusiasts.

People begged EM for years to take down that Thi4f logo, even made replacement logos for them, but they just dismissed it. I very much doubt they will start listening to fans now.

EM? Eidos Media?

I was just hopelessly making the suggestion that the fans mod the next game after its release; creating a completely unofficial voice mod; that replaces the voice files with Stephen Russell. It would only work if Stephen would be willing to volunteer the time and his talents. Obviously fans couldn't pay him for it. Of course fans aren't necessarily going to have high quality recording studio and might have to improvise but still...

Similar to how several fan communities to Josh Mandel to do voice overs for their King's Quest fan games.

But like I said there would be certain 'legal issues" that would be a consideration. I'm not sure if EM would let a fan community 'mod' their game In that way?

On a related note are we also losing the Benny type characters as well?

EM -- Eidos Montreal (all that's left of Eidos after the Squeenix merger).

The character of Garrett is copyrighted and Russell would likely face additional repercussions as a Union actor.

Also, Daniel Thron does not look to be a part of Thiaf either (he voiced various characters in the series, most notably the straight man opposite to Benny).

Bah, no Benny and the other guy? Abomination!