It’s fair to say that before Red Dead Redemption 2 came out in 2018, most gamers hadn’t heard of Roger Clark. Six years, 61 million sales, and numerous awards later, the 45-year-old Irish-American actor can afford to be picky with roles. His performance as Arthur Morgan, the protagonist of Rockstar’s Wild West epic, is considered by some as one of the greatest in video game history. But Roger’s overnight stardom came after five grueling years in Rockstar’s New York motion capture studio and a contract that gave him the kind of financial security most jobbing actors only dream of. In truth, Arthur Morgan has remained part of Roger’s life ever since. Indeed, he is set to (kind of) reprise the role by narrating the upcoming audiobook of ‘Red Dead's History,’ an exploration of America’s violent past through the lens of the Red Dead Redemption games written by American history professor Tore Olsson. Olsson, by the way, teaches the world’s first Red Dead American history class at the University of Tennessee.
As Roger tells IGN in an interview to discuss the project, what it was like to work on Red Dead Redemption 2, and the threat of AI on the video game acting profession, “there’s no doubt that Arthur’s going to stay with me for the rest of my career.” But Roger is okay with that. And, he teases, if Rockstar ever were to give him a call to officially star as Arthur Morgan once again… well, he’d certainly pick up the phone.
Why were you interested in narrating Red Dead's History as Arthur Morgan?
I was fascinated by this because when we were working on Red Dead, I know how much research went into it by the writers and a great number of people. I know historical accuracy to a certain point was very important so they could get stuff thematically correct. Obviously the map isn’t completely identical to America’s history, but within the Red Dead world, the cultural historical accuracy is something that was very important. It’s just awesome to see someone else enjoying and exploring that work, and we get to share it.
I don’t know of any other video game that’s used to teach American history or any history.
Me either. I know they teach Klingon in some universities! That’s the only other thing that really compares to my mind. It’s an absolute honor that this is even possible in the first place, that someone has delved into it with this much academic interest. It’s mind-blowing. It took a large village to make Red Dead. I often get a lot of glory because I’m the voice of the main character — and the face, in a weird way too, but nobody really knows that. But the fact so many other people are now acknowledging and addressing the work of other people on the team, such as all the researchers and writers, I just think is awesome. My contribution to Red Dead 2 is genuinely a pretty small piece of the pie. There are literally thousands of unsung heroes who were able to bring this to the fans. I’m just thrilled to be a part of something that spotlights them.
Did you learn about American history through playing the role? Was it like a history lesson for you?
Sometimes. Some things, yeah. I was always a huge fan of westerns and I’ve always been pretty good at history. But there were some things I’ve learnt. For example, the f-word wasn’t really popular back then. That’s why you don’t really hear the f-bomb dropped that much in the game, because it wasn’t really in the common vernacular back then. And if it was, it was used mostly as a verb. People didn’t really use it as a noun. We have so many uses for that word now! Back then it was used nowhere near as much. They did pay a lot of attention to some of the linguistics. Funnily enough, stuff the Brits and many people from Ireland still say today, they more suit 19th century America. People say ‘reckon’ and ‘you lot’ and all that stuff. Sometimes I would look at the page and think, this is British, this has actually got a British twang to it. It was less removed from British culture back then than it is now, so it stands to reason that there would be a lot more similarities. Speaking purely from a language basis, that sort of stuff I learned a lot about.
I learned a lot about some certain firearms, too. I learned about the Pinkertons, which was a legitimate agency back then. Some of them were really good guys, apparently. A lot of them weren’t. They were glorified mercenaries in most of their application. It was a crazy time in the Wild West and it was literally lawless, so they were what was needed I guess to punish bad boys like Arthur Morgan. I learned an extensive amount, absolutely. Most of it would be language based.
When did you start working on Red Dead Redemption 2?
I started working on August 2013, and I finished almost to the day, five years later.
That’s very long isn’t it? Most video game actors wouldn’t work on a video game that long.
If it was exclusively voice acting I’m sure we would have got it done a lot faster, but most of it was performance capture. I find that in many ways it can enhance the performance. It helps the animators come up with more accurate and idiosyncratic data for the movement. But it did take exceptionally longer to do. A lot of people don’t realize what we did was similar to film and TV, at least in the way it was captured. We would learn our lines and we would rehearse the scene and we would perform the scene until the director was happy with it. The only difference is we were wearing lycra while we did it and we didn’t have to change locations, it was always in the same studio. The animators were integral because they would help explain our environment.
But yeah, it took a long time. We’re starting to see more and more games take forever to get made. We were lucky in a lot of ways because the success of GTA Online really took the pressure off. Rockstar was so committed to quality we were able to focus on that. I’m not sure how many other triple-A titles we’re going to see with a five or six-year cycle. There are not that many of them because the cost of making a game is getting more and more expensive now. And fans are demanding. They want sequels within a year or two. It was an unprecedented length of time for Rockstar and I’m not sure we’ll ever see a production time like that again.
Rockstar might be the only game company that can afford to take 10 years to make a game. Obviously it pays off for them. Every game they release is an astonishing success. Over that five years, was it a full-time job for you? Or was it that over a five year period you would go in every now and then?
For the most part it was full-time. For the first year I was in infrequently, maybe once every other month I would go into the studio. But once we got really into, from the second year onwards, the typical schedule would be three weeks on, and those three weeks would be done in the mo-cap studio, and those would be 12-14 hour days. Three weeks of that, and then it would be two weeks off. But in those two weeks off, there would be a couple of days in the booth doing voice acting. The voice acting took up a much smaller part of my entire work anyway, but it was still a substantial part. Maybe about 10% of everything I did was in the booth. But that was typically the schedule for about four years: three weeks on full-time, two weeks off, but within that two weeks there would still be a lot of time done in the booth.
Can you remember how you got the part?
I had done mo-cap for gaming before and I was fascinated by it. I thought it was a really fascinating medium. My agent knew this. She saw the breakdown. There was very vague information but it did say it was for a video game and there would be motion capture. So I went to that audition. It was unique in a lot of ways because I didn’t get the sides [a small section of the script actors are given before an audition] in advance, which is very unusual for an audition. Looking back on it now, I guess they wanted to see how quickly you could learn copy, because that could be quite important with last-minute rewrites and what have you.
But I did that audition and then I went down to Florida to do some theater. They checked my availability and I wasn’t available so I thought, oh well, that’s the end of that. By this point now, I only have a suspicion it’s Rockstar Games.
You didn’t even know what company it was for?
I knew it was for Take-Two. I was pretty sure it was Rockstar, but I couldn’t confirm that at that point. I had a feeling it might have been Red Dead because I had finished the first one. I wasn’t much of a gamer throughout my thirties, but I did just happen to play Red Dead Redemption a month before all this happened. And I was like, I wonder if it’s Red Dead, because they obviously were specific in their dialects and what they wanted.
But I wasn’t available and I thought okay, that’s the end of it. But about a month or two later they checked my availability again, and this time I was available. And that was my second audition, and that was at the Rockstar head office in New York. And that’s when I knew, okay, it’s definitely Rockstar Games. And I was 99% sure what the title was. But they didn’t tell me, they didn’t confirm it until maybe my fourth or fifth session in the studio. And then I wasn’t offered a contract until maybe five or six months after my first day at work.
You started work before you got a contract?
Correct.
Is that normal?
I have since discovered it to be normal. It’s easier to replace an actor. All you need to do is get someone who has a similar movement, build, size, and you just get them to ADR [Automated Dialogue Replacement] their lines in the booth, and then the animators can do the rest. I mean, it’s not ideal, but it is much easier to replace an actor in gaming and in motion capture than it would be on film.
So when you got that contract, you knew, this is for the long haul?
The boys on GTA 5 worked on it three years, so I thought it was going to be something similar to that. I hoped it was going to be similar to that! But it turned out to be a little longer, which is even better. It’s the longest contract I ever had. To this day it’s probably the best one. It’s changed my life, irrevocably, for the better. It was a great gig. Great gig.
How would you say it’s changed your life?
A lot more opportunities for work. It’s given me the financial freedom to be able to provide for my family. Before Rockstar, I was just a jobbing actor off Broadway. I was just starting to make a living exclusively from acting after what had been a dozen years of bartending and doing everything else to supplement that. I was just starting to be able to cover the bills just from acting. But Rockstar changed all that. They gave me security, which is unheard of for an actor these days, and it was unheard of then too, which was 10 years ago now.
It was great to be able to work for such a high-quality studio, and to have basically a 9-5 job. The amount of stuff we put in the can, I’m told it’s similar to maybe five or six seasons of a TV show. I guess that’s accurate, as far as the amount of work that went into it.
To get any contract for that length of time is mind-blowing. It’s very unusual. I was thrilled. Not to get into numbers of anything — I don’t think I’m even allowed to, you know? But I was happy to sign the contract at the time and the place I was in. I don’t think it’s any secret that residuals are not provided for video game contracts. I happily signed the contract and I don’t regret the decision, that’s for sure.
Were you able to buy a house?
Yeah! I got a mortgage, but yeah!
You don’t get residuals, but as you say you still benefit from it.
Opportunities like this. Indirectly I am still benefiting from it. I get to work on really interesting pieces of academia like this that I never thought I would. Never in a million years.
What else are you up to these days? What else do you have in the pipeline people would be interested to hear about?
I’m still working on games. Thrilled to do that. A lot of it’s voice acting. Some of it’s still performance capture. Fort Solis came out last summer. That was me and Troy Baker. You can get it on PS5 and Steam, it’s about a four or five-hour walking sim, sci-fi thriller. That was a lot of fun. There are a few things in the pipeline now. We’ve got a project called Rosewood, where I play a lot of fun characters. If I could compare that, it reminds me of Monkey Island but in a western setting. And then there’s this cyberpunk thing that I got to do with Bryan Dechart and Amelia Blaire — she does an amazing job as the lead. I play this bloating nightclub owner, which was a lot of fun. And then there are a lot of other things I can’t talk about! I’ve been trusted recently with a very well-known, beloved character and I’m really excited about that and I can’t wait to show that to everyone when I can talk about it. And I’m producing a lot of short films. The audiobooks are still going on strong, despite AI’s best efforts, thank god. I’m just grateful I can still work, you know?
Would you say Arthur Morgan has given you the financial security to be picky with roles and projects?
I usually say yes to anything anyway. But it has definitely provided a lot more opportunities. Opportunities in areas I did not anticipate, either. I had worked in gaming before Red Dead 2, but obviously nothing on that level before. So I really did not know how it was going to pan out, you know? The whole time we were making the game, I was just hoping it would do as well as its predecessor. That’s what I was aiming for. Thankfully we achieved that and then some.
The things that came along post-Red Dead were unanticipated. I didn’t know what to expect. I certainly know what I hoped. But I didn’t know what to expect. Very rarely do I say no, because I love to work, and most of the things that come my way are cool and I want to give them a go. But there’s no doubt that Arthur’s going to stay with me for the rest of my career. That’s the way it seems to be going now, and I’m okay with that. I’m still getting opportunities to do completely different things. Fort Solis, you wouldn’t even recognise him as being Arthur. But to be able to explore new characters is something I’m very grateful for, too.
Isn’t there going to be a Fort Solis movie?
It’s been picked up by a Swedish studio. I’ve had chats with them. They’re currently in the funding process right now. They picked up the rights from Fallen Leaf. I think they’re thinking of a feature, yeah.
That you would be involved with?
In some capacity, perhaps. You’ll have to wait and see. They’re definitely big fans of the game, which is awesome. It ‘aint nothing until it’s something!
Now, you’ve tweeted you’re certain Rockstar will make Red Dead Redemption 3, or another Red Dead, at some point.
Yeah, that got really picked up! I would have thought that was obvious though. Wouldn’t you? And it’s not like I have any insider information whatsoever, but of course there’s going to be another Red Dead. It sold over 60 million copies!
You say that, but GTA is all-encompassing for them. And as you’ve said, the success of GTA Online and the revenue it brought in meant Rockstar was able to change its plans.
Strauss Zelnick, the CEO of Take-Two said it himself. He said GTA and Red Dead are prominent franchises for Rockstar Games and that they will be returning to them in the future. So there’s no doubt there will be another Red Dead. But if Arthur Morgan will be involved? I highly doubt it, to be honest. And I think it’s going to be quite some time before we even see a snifter of anything new Red Dead related. I have no idea how it would pan out, but I wouldn’t bet on Arthur being a part of it.
Well there’s an obvious reason why he wouldn’t be a part of it! But if Rockstar asked you to reprise the role in another capacity, let’s say they wanted to make a prequel or a game set in a different time period in which Arthur would be alive, presumably you would be well up for it?
If they called me I would pick up the phone!
I wanted to ask you about the threat of AI to video game actors. Do you feel video game companies will extensively use AI to replace video game actors, or is there still hope to prevent that from happening contractually?
It is going to replace some. I think that's unavoidable. I don't think it will completely replace actors, but I think it's here to stay and I think it's going to be used as a tool from here on out. I think the audience and customers still have a little more respect and regard for human performances, but there's a lot of them that don't really care at the same time. So, AI is here to stay. That is unarguable.
What I have a problem with is when it's being used to copy what's already been done before. If you can't hire Troy Baker and you just get an AI program to have him say whatever you want to say, I find that incredibly immoral. But there are many, many applications for AI that I know can and probably will help this industry. It pains me to say it but I think it's an unavoidable truth. For selfish reasons, I just want to keep working, you know?
Is there anything stopping Rockstar from, let's say, doing an AI you for Arthur Morgan returning in some fashion, whether that's a video game or an animation or whatever? There would be nothing, I presume, contractually that could stop them from doing that?
To the best of my knowledge there would be nothing stopping Rockstar from doing it. But if anyone else were to do it I'm sure Rockstar would have a problem with that because they own Arthur Morgan. But yeah, Rockstar own the performance. They own Arthur Morgan. I own my voice. But they own Arthur.
I still think the humanity aspect that people bring to the table is superior, especially when it comes to something new. AI is getting better by the day, but it's still just recreating. It's just doing what's been done before in a different version. The human aspect actors can bring to the table is still a resource and is still a valuable one. Also for the fans, too. If deep down if you know this was felt by a real person, I think that might, for some stories anyway, bring a little bit more gravity to the narrative than if you know this is just randonly generated by some clever AI program.
And although gaming has nowhere near the same star structure as film or TV, there are still a lot of people who really do... oh, gosh, Troy Baker is in a new game, let's check it out. Or, Yuri Lowenthal is awesome, let's see what he's doing this time. I still think there is something for that.
The audiobook edition of Red Dead’s History will be published by Macmillan Audio on August 6, 2024 and will be available at Audible, Apple Books, or wherever audiobooks are sold.
Image credit: Photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images
Wesley is the UK News Editor for IGN. Find him on Twitter at @wyp100. You can reach Wesley at wesley_yinpoole@ign.com or confidentially at wyp100@proton.me.
