3. A New Character Means a New Performance
For GTA, a brand new character means a brand new personality, and by extension a brand new performance. Whereas Vercetti was wise-cracking and aggressive; Niko was introspective and much slower to anger. While both were career criminals, they both had different emotional reactions to the events that took place in their respective games. In short, they both had different roles to play and were cast accordingly (I mean, Liotta wouldnt have worked as Bellic and visa-versa). Lets imagine for a second that GTA V featured Tommy Vercetti as its main protagonist but he
wasnt voiced by Ray Liotta (Liottas manager
told IGN that he is definitely not involved in the upcoming GTA title). Would the character still work? If Liotta isnt involved, then Im sorry, that completely kills the Vercetti idea for me. And yes, technically Claude from GTA III has no corresponding voice actor, so I suppose technically the voice we hear in the reveal trailer
could be him, but would you really want R* to spoil the core of this character by giving him a sudden bout of verbal diarrhoea? Wouldnt you rather this mysterious voce in GTA Vs trailer represented the first bars of an entirely new performance, one which soon, well all be able to delve into to discover whats at the core?