10 Video Game Acting Performances Worthy Of An Oscar

1. Rob Wiethoff - John Marston (Red Dead Redemption)

John Marston is probably one of the most popular video game characters in recent years, due to the depth and complexity so often missing from video game characters. It’s quite an achievement especially when you consider that he is actually a potentially unsympathetic character; he is, after all, a cowboy who used to steal and murder with a posse of fellow crims. Of course, when we join Marston at the beginning of Red Dead he has left this life behind and is living as a family man, until he is forced by the government to take up his Smith & Wesson and bring his old leader to justice.

Rob Wiethoff does an outstanding job of conveying a sense of regret mixed with wisdom as he makes his way across the old west. He injects Marston with a sense of pathos as he meets the colourful characters scattered throughout the game and, perhaps most impressively, is able to switch from sincere, caring father figure to relentless, bloodthirsty killer in the blink of an eye.

It was important that Red Dead portrayed Marston in the right way; after all this was not simply GTA in the old west so the over the top caricatures from that series would not have worked with the mature story Rockstar are telling. In Wiethoff, they have an actor who was able to deliver the emotional intelligence of the character without losing the sense of fun that is obviously required in a game.

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Are there any performances we have forgotten? Shout them out in the comments below!