The moment that inspired this question:
A long time ago I was playing an MMO called Voyage of the Century Online. A major part of the game was sailing around on a galleon ship and having naval battles in the 1600s.
The game basically allowed you to sail around all of the oceans of the 1600s world and explore. The game was populated with a lot of NPC ships that you could raid and pick up its cargo for loot.
One time, I was sailing around the western coast of Africa and I came across some slavers. This was shocking to me at the time, and I was like “oh, I’m gonna fuck these racist slavers up!”
I proceed to engage the slave ship in battle and win. As I approach the wreckage, I’m bummed out because there wasn’t any loot. Like every ship up until this point had at least some spare cannon balls or treasure, but this one had nothing.
… then it hit me. A slave ship’s cargo would be… people. I sunk this ship and the reason there wasn’t any loot was because I killed the cargo. I felt so bad.
I just sat there for a little while and felt guilty, but I always appreciated that the developers included that detail so I could be humbled in my own self-righteousness. Not all issues can be solved with force.
Keanu seems a nice enough guy, but he can’t act for shit. In all his most famous roles he plays a man with little emotion.
He’s a good body and face actor, but his speech is poor, but the Cyberpunk 2077 voice acting director clearly didn’t help, as many other characters suffer from weird speech pattern and slow speech.
In all fairness, I genuinely don’t think he’s bad for the sake of it. He suffers from the same issue I do, which is a voice VERY void of emotion (I tried voice acting myself, but I sound dead whatever I say, including on a daily basis, so it’s just how some people sound).
Maybe I’m just not discerning enough (entirely possible) but I was content with his voice acting in the game. Generally not wowed by it though, I’ll admit.
I think this also comes from Keanu being an actor and not a voice actor.
I’ve seen it time and time again, from movies to video games. They hire celebrity actors for the name recognition, but who have no experience in a vocal booth and it shows. Just because somebody is a great actor doesn’t mean they’re a great voice actor. Mark Hamill is an example of somebody who’s both, but he’s spent decades at this point working in voice acting.