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One Baldur's Gate 3 performance director has doubled down on her calls for game awards shows to introduce a motion capture category, saying that mocap performers historically "disappear."
Recently, Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 actor Charlie Cox commented on his best performance nomination at The Game Awards 2025, graciously saying "any credit I get" should instead go to Gustave's mocap actor, Maxence Cazorla. In turn, this had people coming out of the woodwork in support, including Red Dead actor Roger Clark and Baldur's Gate 3 performance director Aliona Baranova (also a motion capture performer in the RPG and voice of Corinna the squirrel), who called for a separate motion capture awards category.
Baranova elaborates on her thoughts in an interview with VGC: "It needs to happen. I posted about it online the other day, and some people were questioning like, 'how would we do it?'" And while Baranova doesn't have the answer, it's not really her job to decide how The Game Awards does it; "they can figure it out. We need to do it because there are these fantastic mocap performances going on."
She explains, "It's been decades of actors going in, doing the mocap, and then someone else's voice is popped on top, and those mocap performers just disappear… Nobody knows about them." Of course, some actors will take on both roles, with Clair Obscur and fellow Baldur's Gate 3 star Jennifer English saying she doesn't like being called a "voice actor" because of the mocap and everything else involved in developing a character.
This mirrors the Oscars, which had calls for years to implement an award for the best stunts, which – in a vein similar to motion capture – gets overlooked compared to the work from actors and directors. And after years of discussion, the Academy is implementing the best stunt design award in 2028.
While not motion capture, I'd recommend everyone to watch the live-action cutscene previs that was included as a bonus in Devil May Cry 5. It shows that so many people are involved in making a character come to life before any of the voice performers even step into the booth.
