Remembering Ray Liotta Voice Of Tommy Vercetti. Who Is Your Fav Voice Actor?

[marvelvscapcom2]

Hello Everyone

I know i'm late in the mourning of the great Ray Liotta but I was shocked to find that nobody here payed memorium to him so I decided that it's better late than never   But also I feel voice actors in gaming are underappreciate so wanted everyone to share their memories with their favorite voices of gaming memory.

An Era Since Passed




This is Tommy Vercetti's reaction when he finds out that Rockstar will reduce themselves to selling shark cards to 12 year olds and only make 1 actual new entry every 2 decades because they don't value art or their legacy. But this wasn't the truth for the way we grew up with Rockstar. This wasn't our Rockstar. Our Rockstar was something special. Ray Liota defined our childhood and was cast during a time where Rockstar cared. Not only about the games but about those invloved in said games. It was the disney of bloody open world. It was a enterprise.


GTA 3 took the gaming world by storm like a big snow globe. Took it, shook it up and put it down for all of us to enjoy.  The 3rd person sandbox genre was maybe not born but mainstreamed, taking the ariel view of the 1st 2 games and just letting it blossom on the PS2 with better graphics.  It changed how we viewed gaming forever and the pressure was on Rockstar to follow it up. What could be done? Who could be casted? How can we take the voiceless Claude and make him even more cool?

And then it happened.



They made it sunsprawled, they redefined our childhood. The voice of Ray Liotta can still be rung through any gamers head with or without seeing his iconic movies which their are a lot to be had. They just did it all without even much time in between. They managed to get a new voice which actually gave the character depth.

The voice is distinctive so much so that watching goodfellas, I couldn't help but hear Tommy Vercetti.

With Ray Liotta's passing, I guess it didn't quite hit me that with him would go that chapter, the vice city memories that defined those days where the small city sun erupted like lotus plants over this Massachussetts sky. Rushing home to play vice city. The radio playing Toto's Affrica. 2000s becoming 80s.  This was gaming. And I want to thank Ray Liotta for making one of the best character voice overs in gaming. He didn't seem to half ass it because he was a big acclaimed actor dealing with video games. He sold it. And the character as well as the others was almost like a scarface type movie come to life.


Which leads to me my question.

Who is your video game voice actor Mt. Rushmore?


1. Charles Martinet voice of Mario - Goes Without Saying, He's literally Mario. I'm sure he's made more people smile than cheesecake and dentists.

2. Ray Liotta voice of Tommy Verceti - Just took the asignment and ran with it. You can feel the legendary 80s coke dealer vibe irradiate off the screen.

3. Nolan North Voice Of Many - Just for sheer scope. The man has voiced so much from uncharted to others.

4. Ikue Ōtani voice of pikachu - I'm not sure if she voices him in the video games like smash bros and modern pokemon games but her voice defined pokemon and who doesn't love pikachu?


Voice actors are often overlooked much more than regular actors even though we don't really have our favorite video game quotes, one liners or vibe without them. Who is your favorite VAs?

R.I.P Ray Liotta 1954-2022


Thanks for sharing

[Cartagia]

Ray Liotta is amazing as Tommy, but he was not a voice actor in the sense you are talking about.  He was a legitimate film star for years, that was just having a rough time when he was asked to do GTA - specifically because Vercetti is so close to many of the characters he played on the big screen.  He had no idea what it was or that it was a big deal (and reportedly got a little mad that he got paid so little when he found out how big it became).  I imagine that no one really posted about it here when he passed because GTA is probably not even the Top 5 projects I think about when I think about Liotta.

But it's definitely easy to point to Nolan, Troy Baker and Jennifer Hale are the majot names that I think of when I think video game voice acting, which is also way different than animation voice acting where I would have a completely different list.

This is probably also a good place to talk about Hellena Taylor being lowballed out of voicing Bayonetta for the third game.  She was offered essentially the bare minimum to voice the lead in a pretty big release, so she turned it down, and they hired Jennifer Hale, who was almost certainly more expensive.  Lots of rumors swirling around that one.

[undertakerprime]

If we’re talking strictly video games, I’d probably go with:

Troy Baker (Booker Dewitt in Bioshock Infinite, Joel in The Last of Us, Joker in Batman Arkham Origins, Snow in Final Fantasy XIII) - A true chameleon, he’s really good. His Mark Hamill Joker imitation in Arkham Origins is spot on.

Nolan North (Nathan Drake in the Uncharted series, Desmond Miles in the Assassin’s Creed series, David in The Last Of Us)

Jennifer Hale (FemShep in the Mass Effect series, Naomi Hunter in the Metal Gear Solid series, Rosalind Lutece in Bioshock Infinite)

I love meeting voice actors at cons. I’ve met Jennifer (got my ME3 Collector’s Edition signed) and Troy (autographed a Bioshock Infinite poster), not Nolan yet.

[aliensstudios]

This is probably also a good place to talk about Hellena Taylor being lowballed out of voicing Bayonetta for the third game.  She was offered essentially the bare minimum to voice the lead in a pretty big release, so she turned it down, and they hired Jennifer Hale, who was almost certainly more expensive.  Lots of rumors swirling around that one.

Wasn't that disproven or at the very least challenged?

[Cartagia]

This is probably also a good place to talk about Hellena Taylor being lowballed out of voicing Bayonetta for the third game.  She was offered essentially the bare minimum to voice the lead in a pretty big release, so she turned it down, and they hired Jennifer Hale, who was almost certainly more expensive.  Lots of rumors swirling around that one.

Wasn't that disproven or at the very least challenged?

Yeah, way more has come out since I posted this, and probably the most generous read of the situation is that she unintentionally understated the offer they made with poor phrasing.  I'll refrain from any further speculation just to say that voice actors are drastically underpaid in general.

[aliensstudios]

This is probably also a good place to talk about Hellena Taylor being lowballed out of voicing Bayonetta for the third game.  She was offered essentially the bare minimum to voice the lead in a pretty big release, so she turned it down, and they hired Jennifer Hale, who was almost certainly more expensive.  Lots of rumors swirling around that one.

Wasn't that disproven or at the very least challenged?

Yeah, way more has come out since I posted this, and probably the most generous read of the situation is that she unintentionally understated the offer they made with poor phrasing.  I'll refrain from any further speculation just to say that voice actors are drastically underpaid in general.

It sort of flashed a light on the whole situation for me in general. "How much is a voice actress / actor worth?" She wanted +100k for her role as Bayonetta. Ok.... Is that truly unreasonable? I love her voice in those games as well as Smash Brothers. Underperforming athletes make more than that in one day. The game will make that amount in sales on release day within a few hours. Hundreds of thousands if not millions of people have enjoyed Bayonetta in one which way or the other. The look of Bayonetta and her voice in the newest game don't look or feel like Bayonetta to me. It's like some money grubbing imposter.
Nintendo hasn't turned away from money grubbing practices over the last two decades, with ports and rereleases of older games for full or greater price (especially recently), is 100k or a bit more even a drop in the bucket to them?

[Cartagia]

There are a couple of things to keep in mind there, though.

First, Bayonetta is a historically underperforming franchise.  Platinum had to partner with Nintendo just get part 2 made, which did better than the first game, but was still originally a Wii U game which limited potential sales until the Switch re-release.

Second, she's not the only voice actress for the character, just the English one.  They still have to pay the entire Japanese (and any other translated language) cast.

Third, she was replaced by Jennifer Hale, one if the most prolific VAs in the business, who almost certainly cost more than they offered Taylor.  It's sounding more and more like the low offer was because they didn't want to work with her anymore.

[aliensstudios]

There are a couple of things to keep in mind there, though.

First, Bayonetta is a historically underperforming franchise.  Platinum had to partner with Nintendo just get part 2 made, which did better than the first game, but was still originally a Wii U game which limited potential sales until the Switch re-release.

Second, she's not the only voice actress for the character, just the English one.  They still have to pay the entire Japanese (and any other translated language) cast.

Third, she was replaced by Jennifer Hale, one if the most prolific VAs in the business, who almost certainly cost more than they offered Taylor.  It's sounding more and more like the low offer was because they didn't want to work with her anymore.

That's all speculation