I do look to be immersed in movies, and yes, massive actors are immersion breaking.
Tom Cruise, Idris Elba, Meryl Streep, Leonardo Dicaprio, Bruce Willis, Arnold Schwarzenegger (except Terminator 2), and Hugh Jackman. Can you actually watch these movies without thinking to yourself 99% of the time “wow, Tom Cruise looks cool af in that jacket”?
He didn’t. CDPR just knew that he had a lot of memes about how he’s a really nice and down to earth person, and they figured that that was the kind of good will they needed for their oft-delayed title that was earning them a lot of fury even before it launched.
Mark Hamill is an accomplished VA in his own right. It makes sense that he’d eventually be in games. No one really cares that he used to be Luke Skywalker.
Ehhh. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn’t. Case in point: everyone loves Patrick Stewart. He played a small yet memorable role in Oblivion. No issues. Everyone loves Keanu Reeves, but as soon as CDPR wheeled him out to hype up CP2077 in 2019, I rolled my eyes because it was an obvious attempt to capitalize on the meme-able goodwill that Keanu had from all of the posts about him riding the subway and his wife dying and how he’s a genuinely nice person.
Idris Elba on the other hand, he’s a great actor, but he has the marketability of a tuna sandwich.
Put famous actors in games when it makes sense to do so. Otherwise it comes off as hacky and you run the risk of severely dating your game in 10 years. Idris Elba is just in too many things these days to take him seriously.
Xbox games are on PC. Playstation games are on PC. Nintendo is Nintendo. If Microsoft ever bought out Nintendo, Nintendo would disappear, effectively making consoles obsolete. People will still buy consoles, but they would be pissing away their money.
Cool! You know it’s just going to be an AI upscale job, so there will still be the amazingly terrible brokenness that Oblivion offered. Tying major skills to a 1-10 level up system seems to make sense initially, until you wanted to be a potion making wizard, and then it’s “OOPS! you made too many potions, now you’re not strong enough to fight a rat”. Also, Bethesda could have made the Skill Bonus you get on levelling up more balanced, as it forces you to literally not attack any more until levelling up. If you attack too much, you might level up your weapon ability (One Handed, 2 Handed, etc) beyond the points required to level up, in which case you just wasted extra Skill Bonus points by levelling up too much before sleeping. Exploration-wise though, Oblivion is a master class in open world design. It doesn’t overstay its welcome and every corner of the map is a joy to visit.