*** April 16, 2013 - Reached 2700+ signatures *** (+400, so far today)...:thumb:

To all of you who have taken the time to post here and elsewhere over the last few days, I wanted to finally come out from the shadows and express to you how truly overwhelmed and astonished I am by the appreciation so many people have shown. The fact that people all over the world have responded so positively to the work I was fortunate enough to be able to do means the world to me. Creating Garrett's voice (and Benny and Karras) and working closely with the incredibly talented and encouraging audio team at Looking Glass, particularly those geniuses Eric Brosius and Kemal Amarasingham, was one of the highlights of my life and I'm extremely grateful to them for the opportunity. I'm also more grateful than I can ever express that so many fans responded so enthusiastically over the years and continue to do so even now. Anyone who's been involved in the performing arts for any length of time knows full well the vagaries of the business, that there will be good times and there will be not so good times and one always hopes that the former will outweigh the latter. I consider myself very fortunate that I'm still working and enjoying what I'm doing even if the winds have change have once again brought new directions.
With sincere thanks and all best wishes.
Stephen

Wow! It's really taking off.

My problem isn't that they're replacing Russell, my problem is that they're doing it for about the worst reason in the world. They're doing it because they need a voice actor who can perform stunts for their lavishly animated cutscenes. The idea is that they're using some sort of super-capture system that will motion-capture the performer's body, while at the same time doing some kind of facial capture and voice-recording.

This. Is. Bonkers.

This is a game about a loner who sneaks around in the dark and takes things that don't belong to him. You don't need many supporting characters, they don't need to say much, and they can spend most of the time in shadows. Garrett is stoic and deadpan most of the time, so his face doesn't need a great deal of emotional range. And since the unpopular redesign, Garrett now wears a ninja mask anyway. Also, this is a first-person game. So what is it that these cutscenes need to show that requires unified body, face, and voice acting? Are we going to get a cutscene where Garrett pulls down the mask and enacts the "I could have done more" speech from Schindler's List in a teary-eyed closeup? How does this extravagance help this game?

I'm sure full-performance capture is an impressive and interesting bit of technology. I'm sure it will look lovely. But it's a feature you can't afford, for fans that don't want it, in service of a game that would be just fine without it.

That last sentence says it all right there:
But it's a feature you can't afford, for fans that don't want it, in service of a game that would be just fine without it.