Even after it was announced that WD2 side character Wrench would be the one appearing, seemingly killing off that idea, the messages kept coming. He tells me that he’s been receiving messages ever since, hopefully asking if Marcus might make a return the new game. After the announcement that the original Watch Dogs lead, Aiden Pearce, would be appearing in post-launch DLC for Legion, many naturally assumed Marcus would be back, too – and they made sure to tell Prentiss. Prentiss says the impact of the character and his performance has become particularly clear in recent weeks. I had people reach out that were studying coding and programming and say it was so cool to see someone who looks like them, and has a similar interest, be represented in video games.” So to see him be a hacker, I had people reach out that work in Silicon Valley. “But Marcus is different because we don't get to see Black characters who are doing something out of the norm for what pop culture says Black people are cool for. And as the player, you get to sympathize and empathize with those conditions – how do you get out and how do you find success? I'm not going to say it was stereotypical – with someone like CJ from GTA: San Andreas, it humanized that experience of having to be in that area or in those conditions. And then of course, there was the transition, where Grand Theft Auto came out, games got grittier, and the world expanded, and you saw Black representation.
WATCH DOGS 2 MARCUS PROFESSIONAL
You’ve got the guy with the afro in Ready 2 Rumble, or you're playing professional basketball players or football players. “You grow up playing games and the majority of Black representation in games is athletes or fighters. “I don't think I knew the magnitude of what a Black player-character could mean, especially in terms of video gaming,” Prentiss enthuses. I expected the answer to revolve mostly around the bizarre nature of being a piece of a huge video game production and the acting challenge that presents – but the real answer is far more meaningful. You’d think an actor auditioning amid a pandemic might be a little upset about that, but Prentiss’ reaction is almost nostalgic – his time bringing Marcus to life was clearly hugely important to him, and we spend the rest of our time together breaking down why. When I ask the inevitable question about whether he’d been contacted to bring Marcus back to life for Watch Dogs Legion, Prentiss is quick to tell me no – but that he’d still love to. Marcus is different because we don't get to see Black characters who are doing something out of the norm for what pop culture says Black people are cool for. Ruffin Prentiss was the actor giving Marcus that life, and while I was sad to learn during a recent conversation that he likely won’t return to the Watch Dogs universe anytime soon, we had a lot to discuss about how much a well-written video game character – and a Black character in particular – could mean to their actor and a community at large. Watch Dogs 2’s Marcus Holloway was a very different kind of lead, a character that displayed a consistently sympathetic flicker between brash confidence and nervousness, a passionately held personal philosophy, and a general friendliness missing from so many scripted protagonists.Īs with most AAA open worlds, that character could become veiled by gunfire and absurdity when you actually began to control him, but the Marcus Holloway of Watch Dogs 2’s cutscenes felt notably like a person, not just a collection of voice lines designed to string missions together. Game characters – and leading game characters in particular – are so often built as a vessel for players to fill out that they end up, paradoxically, lacking much character at all.
0 kommentar(er)
