{"id":2191591,"date":"2026-10-12T09:41:30","date_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:41:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2191591"},"modified":"2026-10-12T09:41:30","modified_gmt":"2026-10-12T06:41:30","slug":"the-blood-of-dawnwalkers-lead-actor-reminds-us-why-ai-will-always-struggle-to-replicate-a-human-performance","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=2191591","title":{"rendered":"The Blood of Dawnwalker&#8217;s lead actor reminds us why AI will always struggle to replicate a human performance"},"content":{"rendered":"<article class=\"article \" data-ads=\"true\" data-article-type=\"news\" data-article-group=\"news\" data-paywalled=\"false\" data-premium=\"false\" data-sponsored=\"false\" data-type=\"article\">\n<header class=\"article_header\" data-component=\"article-header\">\n<div class=\"breadcrumbs\">\n<nav class=\"nav_breadcrumbs\" data-component=\"nav-breadcrumbs\" aria-label=\"Breadcrumb\">\n<ul class=\"nav-links\">\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      Home<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/news\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      News<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<li>\n                <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/dawnwalker\" data-active=\"false\"><br \/>\n                      The Blood of Dawnwalker<br \/>\n                <\/a>\n            <\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/nav><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_details\" id=\"main-content\">\n<h1 class=\"title\">The Blood of Dawnwalker&#8217;s lead actor reminds us why AI will always struggle to replicate a human performance<\/h1>\n<p class=\"strapline\">&#8220;The least interesting thing about what I do is the way my voice sounds.&#8221;<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"headline_asset\">\n<figure class=\"headline_image_wrapper\">\n<p>        <img fetchpriority=\"high\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"headline_image\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/unnamed-(1)_roiopFw.webp?width=570&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;dpr=3&amp;auto=webp\" alt=\"Two images side by side. One is key art showing Blood of Dawnwalker game character Coen, who&apos;s part vampire, holding a sword and showing a scarred arm, looking ready for action. On the other side of the image is a photo - a headshot - of the male actor who played him. He has white skin, slightly greying shortish hair, blue eyes, and a coy smile. It&apos;s Will de Renzy Martin.\" loading=\"eager\" data-uri=\"unnamed-(1)_roiopFw.webp\" data-lightbox width=\"570\" height=\"321\"><figcaption>\n          <span class=\"attribution\">Image credit: <cite>Eurogamer \/ Rebel Wolves \/ Will de Renzy Martin<\/cite><\/span><br \/>\n        <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"metadata\">\n<div class=\"avatar\">\n<p>    <img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" alt=\"Robert Purchese avatar\" src=\"https:\/\/assetsio.gnwcdn.com\/user-9946-originalxoriginal-14-03-23.jpg?width=2048&amp;height=2048&amp;fit=bounds&amp;quality=85&amp;format=jpg&amp;auto=webp\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1017\"><\/p>\n<p>  <img alt=\"Robert Purchese avatar\" data-autosize=\"crop_lossy\" data-uri=\"user-9946-originalxoriginal-14-03-23.jpg\" loading=\"lazy\" style=\"aspect-ratio: 1\" width=\"1024\" height=\"1017\">\n<\/div>\n<div class=\"text\">\n<div class=\"byline\">\n                  <span class=\"article_type\" data-slug=\"news\"><br \/>\n                    News<br \/>\n                  <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"by\">by<\/span> <span class=\"author\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/authors\/robert-purchese\">Robert Purchese<\/a><\/span>                    <span class=\"job_title\"><br \/>\n                      Associate Editor<br \/>\n                    <\/span>\n            <\/div>\n<div class=\"published_at\">\n<p>Published on   <time datetime=\"2026-10-12T09:41:30+00:00\" data-auto-time-zone=\"true\" data-year=\"numeric\" data-month=\"short\" data-day=\"numeric\" data-hour=\"numeric\" data-minute=\"numeric\">Oct. 12, 2026, 9:41 a.m.<\/time>\n              <\/div>\n<div class=\"comments\">\n      <a class=\"comments__link comments-bubble\" href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-lead-actor-will-de-renzy-martin-ai-voiceover?view=comments\" rel=\"nofollow\"><br \/>\n          2 comments<br \/>\n      <\/a>\n    <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<div class=\"header_actions\">\n<p><button class=\"mypop-button button wide\" data-state=\"follow\" data-type=\"tag\" data-uuid=\"e7789384-9df1-48f6-8ae4-d1182c849deb\" data-name=\"The Blood of Dawnwalker\" data-follow-text=\"Follow The Blood of Dawnwalker\" data-unfollow-text=\"Following The Blood of Dawnwalker\" data-aria-follow-text=\"Follow The Blood of Dawnwalker\" data-aria-unfollow-text=\"Following The Blood of Dawnwalker\" data-popup=\"true\" data-force-login=\"true\" aria-label=\"Follow The Blood of Dawnwalker\" title=\"Follow The Blood of Dawnwalker\"><br \/>\n  Follow The Blood of Dawnwalker<br \/>\n<\/button><br \/>\n  <a class=\"button outline wide preferred_source_button\" data-component=\"preferred-source-button\" href=\"https:\/\/www.google.com\/preferences\/source?q=eurogamer.net\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\"><br \/>\n    <span class=\"logo\" aria-hidden=\"true\"><\/span><br \/>\nPrioritise us on Google  <\/a>\n          <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/header>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\" data-autopogo>\n<p>Will de Renzy-Martin, the actor who plays lead character Coen in the English language version of The Blood of Dawnwalker, has reminded us of the value humans bring to a performance, versus AIs generating voice lines.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@myperfectconsole\/video\/7695446039028944150?_r=1&amp;_t=ZN-9ATg1tIdBZe\">a TikTok teaser for an upcoming episode of the My Perfect Console Podcast<\/a>, de Renzy-Martin highlighted how the spoken lines themselves are only half &#8211; if that &#8211; of what an actor brings. &#8220;I think the least interesting thing about what I do is the way my voice sounds,&#8221; de Renzy-Martin said. &#8220;That is really all that generative AI is able to replicate.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"primis_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"primis_video\">\n<p><span class=\"embed_placeholder\" data-type=\"targeting\" style=\"display: none\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"message\">To see this content please enable targeting cookies.<\/span><br \/>\n<button class=\"optanon-show-settings link\"><br \/>\nManage cookie settings<\/button><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p><a class=\"button video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1O6ACnSA0DE\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not replicating my personality and the things that I do when I&#8217;m in the room, and the choices that I make, which is all the reasons that a director or a producer would want to work with me. And there might be directors and producers who don&#8217;t want to do those things [and to use AI], but then they&#8217;ve got to get really good at getting performances out of something &#8211; they need to have their own ideas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The discussion reminded de Renzy-Martin of something he apparently said four or five years ago: &#8220;Actors are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. And if you end up with an AI that can produce the right noises, you&#8217;re going to need somebody who can interact with it and get the performance that you want attached to those noises &#8211; and they&#8217;re going to be much more expensive than an actor is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Blood of Dawnwalker project itself caused some controversy when developer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/i-dont-feel-that-games-created-with-only-ai-will-have-soul-the-blood-of-dawnwalker-director-doesnt-think-ai-can-replace-human-creativity-but-the-studio-is-using-it-in-reasonable-ways\">Rebel Wolves revealed it had used text-to-speech AI tools while making the game<\/a> in order to plan cinematics, before hiring actors to become the characters and perform the roles. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-ai\">Game director Konrad Tomazkiewicz has talked quite openly about potential AI use<\/a> in game development as well, mostly referring to helping with laborious work such as bug fixing. Nothing in The Blood of Dawnwalker was created with AI.<\/p>\n<p>Other gaming companies have taken AI&#8217;s use further, such as Embark Studios, creator of The Finals and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/arc-raiders-ceo-says-studio-has-re-recorded-ai-lines-a-real-professional-actor-is-better-than-ai-thats-just-how-it-is\">Arc Raiders, which controversially used AI to generate voice lines<\/a> in both of those games.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, companies like Elevenlabs have established large businesses around licensing the voices of famous actors and then generating lines based upon those samples. Actor <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/blog\/elevenlabs-welcomes-matthew-mcconaughey-as-new-investor\">Matthew McConaughey is an investor in Elevenlabs<\/a> &#8211; he who is set to appear in his first video game next year: Exodus, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/mass-effect\">Mass Effect<\/a>-like sci-fi RPG. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/matthew-mcconaughey-ai-voice-generation-but-sci-fi-rpg-exodus-authentically-him\">McConaughey&#8217;s voice lines for Exodus have not been AI-generated<\/a>, though.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Will de Renzy-Martin has appeared in a number of video games this year, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/the-sinking-city-2\">The Sinking City 2<\/a> (as Corentin de Grandemange), 007 First Light (Henry Bancroft), and Star Wars: Galactic Racer (Shade). However, it&#8217;s his starring role as Coen he&#8217;ll be best known for. And it&#8217;s a very accomplished performance; his calm, velvety voice makes Coen a very easy and enjoyable character to be around, which is perfect for someone you spend so much time with in the game.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review-rebel-wolves\">I awarded The Blood of Dawnwalker four stars in my Eurogamer review<\/a>. &#8220;CD Projekt Red alumni create a familiar dark fantasy adventure, but one with bold and provocative ideas of its own, that&#8217;s mostly, enormously successful,&#8221; I wrote.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/article>\n<div class=\"article_body\" data-component=\"article-content\">\n<div class=\"article_body_content article-styling\" data-autopogo>\n<p>Will de Renzy-Martin, the actor who plays lead character Coen in the English language version of The Blood of Dawnwalker, has reminded us of the value humans bring to a performance, versus AIs generating voice lines.<\/p>\n<p>Speaking in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.tiktok.com\/@myperfectconsole\/video\/7695446039028944150?_r=1&amp;_t=ZN-9ATg1tIdBZe\">a TikTok teaser for an upcoming episode of the My Perfect Console Podcast<\/a>, de Renzy-Martin highlighted how the spoken lines themselves are only half &#8211; if that &#8211; of what an actor brings. &#8220;I think the least interesting thing about what I do is the way my voice sounds,&#8221; de Renzy-Martin said. &#8220;That is really all that generative AI is able to replicate.<\/p>\n<figure>\n<div class=\"primis_wrapper\">\n<div class=\"primis_video\">\n<p><span class=\"embed_placeholder\" data-type=\"targeting\" style=\"display: none\"><br \/>\n<span class=\"message\">To see this content please enable targeting cookies.<\/span><br \/>\n<button class=\"optanon-show-settings link\"><br \/>\nManage cookie settings<\/button><\/span> <\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/figure>\n<p><a class=\"button video\" href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=1O6ACnSA0DE\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Watch on YouTube<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;It&#8217;s not replicating my personality and the things that I do when I&#8217;m in the room, and the choices that I make, which is all the reasons that a director or a producer would want to work with me. And there might be directors and producers who don&#8217;t want to do those things [and to use AI], but then they&#8217;ve got to get really good at getting performances out of something &#8211; they need to have their own ideas.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"1\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>The discussion reminded de Renzy-Martin of something he apparently said four or five years ago: &#8220;Actors are pretty cheap in the grand scheme of things. And if you end up with an AI that can produce the right noises, you&#8217;re going to need somebody who can interact with it and get the performance that you want attached to those noises &#8211; and they&#8217;re going to be much more expensive than an actor is.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>The Blood of Dawnwalker project itself caused some controversy when developer <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/i-dont-feel-that-games-created-with-only-ai-will-have-soul-the-blood-of-dawnwalker-director-doesnt-think-ai-can-replace-human-creativity-but-the-studio-is-using-it-in-reasonable-ways\">Rebel Wolves revealed it had used text-to-speech AI tools while making the game<\/a> in order to plan cinematics, before hiring actors to become the characters and perform the roles. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-ai\">Game director Konrad Tomazkiewicz has talked quite openly about potential AI use<\/a> in game development as well, mostly referring to helping with laborious work such as bug fixing. Nothing in The Blood of Dawnwalker was created with AI.<\/p>\n<p>Other gaming companies have taken AI&#8217;s use further, such as Embark Studios, creator of The Finals and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/arc-raiders-ceo-says-studio-has-re-recorded-ai-lines-a-real-professional-actor-is-better-than-ai-thats-just-how-it-is\">Arc Raiders, which controversially used AI to generate voice lines<\/a> in both of those games.<\/p>\n<p>Elsewhere, companies like Elevenlabs have established large businesses around licensing the voices of famous actors and then generating lines based upon those samples. Actor <a href=\"https:\/\/elevenlabs.io\/blog\/elevenlabs-welcomes-matthew-mcconaughey-as-new-investor\">Matthew McConaughey is an investor in Elevenlabs<\/a> &#8211; he who is set to appear in his first video game next year: Exodus, the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/mass-effect\">Mass Effect<\/a>-like sci-fi RPG. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/matthew-mcconaughey-ai-voice-generation-but-sci-fi-rpg-exodus-authentically-him\">McConaughey&#8217;s voice lines for Exodus have not been AI-generated<\/a>, though.<\/p>\n<p><span class=\"injection_placeholder\" data-position=\"2\"><\/span><\/p>\n<p>Will de Renzy-Martin has appeared in a number of video games this year, including <a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/games\/the-sinking-city-2\">The Sinking City 2<\/a> (as Corentin de Grandemange), 007 First Light (Henry Bancroft), and Star Wars: Galactic Racer (Shade). However, it&#8217;s his starring role as Coen he&#8217;ll be best known for. And it&#8217;s a very accomplished performance; his calm, velvety voice makes Coen a very easy and enjoyable character to be around, which is perfect for someone you spend so much time with in the game.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.eurogamer.net\/the-blood-of-dawnwalker-review-rebel-wolves\">I awarded The Blood of Dawnwalker four stars in my Eurogamer review<\/a>. &#8220;CD Projekt Red alumni create a familiar dark fantasy adventure, but one with bold and provocative ideas of its own, that&#8217;s mostly, enormously successful,&#8221; I wrote.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Home News The Blood of Dawnwalker The Blood of Dawnwalker&#8217;s lead actor reminds us why AI will always struggle to replicate a human performance &#8220;The least interesting thing about what I do is the way my voice sounds.&#8221; Image credit: Eurogamer \/ Rebel Wolves \/ Will de Renzy Martin News by Robert Purchese Associate Editor [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[226,253],"class_list":["post-2191591","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crawlmanager","tag-eurogamer-net"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191591","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2191591"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2191591\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2191591"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2191591"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2191591"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}