Sad news for French video games: José Luccioni is dead

Yesterday, Thursday June 2, 2021 a voice died out. That of Jose Luccioni. If you don’t know the guy as a game player, you necessarily know his voice for the games he took part in and the actors he dubbed.

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Jose Luccioni

Little is known about the man’s private life. But he is the witness of a fact of which we, French, are the only ones to be able to pride ourselves.
Indeed, no offense to the purists of the VA (and not the VO, since unlike a film, video games often do not have actors and therefore no truly original voices) in France we have the best dubbing in the world qualitatively speaking, to a point where it is sometimes much better than the basic English version of the studios.
From head, I could quote you the trilogy Mass Effect, cyberpunk Where Assassin’s Creed Odyssey where respectively people like Boris Rehlinger and Gilles Morvan, Julie Dray Where Audrey Deaf really bring life to the people they double for a much better result than in the game in its initial version.

No other country can boast of such quality, to such an extent that in France there are actors entirely specialized in dubbing, supported by companies whose only job is to adapt works in VF by making a meticulous work of lip synchronization for example.

Even better, most of these actors demonstrate an obvious talent for interpretation when you realize that they generally have no visual support on which to rely to know the tone to give to their lines, nor the lines of others. characters involved in the dialogue they dub.

It’s a blind interpretation most of the time and that’s why I say we have the most qualitative dubbing in the world considering the general intrinsic quality of the dubbing, and the conditions under which it is produced.

Jose LuccioniI first heard his voice when I was 14, playing Gears of War first of the name. A scratchy and gravelly voice, drawling and hoarse. A voice that marks.
Afterwards, it was like a game to find his voice, then that of others that I got to know. So, without even consulting any search engine, I can tell you that Luccioni to double grunt in Mass Effect, Marcus Fenix in Gears of War, Victor Sullivan in Uncharted, Törbjorn in Overwatch or Ian McShane in American Gods Where John Wick but also Al Pacino by being his recurring voice actor…

I feel like I’m living in a very sad time. Born in 1994, I grew up in the era of the flamboyant and immoderate glory of Hollywoodlulled by its stars but also their French voices.
Marc Alfos (Russell Crowe), Daniel Beretta (Arnold Schwarzenegger), Alain Dorval (Sylvester Stallone), Patrick Poivey (Bruce Willis), Jean-Pierre Michael (Keanu Reeves), Richard Darbois (Harrison Ford)… All these names are those of the voices that you often hear on a daily basis without even recognizing them, both a vestige of another era and the flames of candles that go out over time.

And it’s a sad time to see all those emblematic voices that often make us love the characters slowly die out, like the dying embers of a great era, of a golden age forever gone. As if we had to go from the dreaming child to the pragmatic adult. Except that I always want to dream…

Maybe a bit of nostalgia?