When you’re an actor, there’s always the possibility that you might be auditioning for something you didn’t intend to do. In the case of Abubakar Salim, Bayek’s voice actor in Assassin’s Creed Origins, you might be auditioning for a video game instead of an animated series with motion capture, like he was told.
According to Salim, he was originally contacted for the audition under the impression it was a computer-generated animated series that involved motion capture. However, when he actually came into the audition room and began the audition, it quickly became apparent to him that it was actually for an Assassin’s Creed game.
While true in that it will require animation and motion-capture, that’s definitely not an animated series. However, you’d probably be hard-pressed to find someone else that could be Bayek’s voice actor and seem like such a natural fit. With Bayek’s deep voice, something of a departure from previous Assassin’s Creed protagonists who were often younger or (infamously in Altair’s case) not even really fitting the region they were supposedly born in, it’s definitely a welcome change.
Abubakar, like many actors these days, thinks of voice acting for a video game series as a dream come true. He’s not the only voice actor to enjoy video games, either; for instance, Vin Diesel is an avid Dungeons and Dragons player, while Terry Crews from Brooklyn 99 is such a big fan of Overwatch that he wanted to play the role of Doomfist (which unfortunately didn’t pan out.)
Various other actors, both in video game voice acting and full-on TV or movie acting, have also expressed their love of video games on multiple occasions, only strengthening how many people have
We’ll be able to see how Bayek’s voice actor sounds in his role as the progenitor of the Assassin Brotherhood when Assassin’s Creed Origins comes out on the Xbox One, Playstation 4, and PC on October 27 of this year.
