Warning: some big spoilers ahead, including the destiny of at least one major characters. Proceed at your discretion!
Actor Michael Madsen died this past week, at the age of 67. The Illinois-born thespian was known for his tough guy persona that allowed him to deliver some of the most iconic acting across his 43-year career. And much of that came from video games.
You see, Madsen was mostly known for his portrayal of broody assassin-turned betrayer Doud in the Dishonored franchise (as PC Gamer pointed out), but to me, his coolest gaming role was that of Italian mafioso Tony Cipriani, in Grand Theft Auto III and its HD trilogy relaunch.
But I’ll tell you why a little further down in this article. For now, let us remember the importance Michael Madsen was in video games:
From brooding tough guy to comedic mobster: Michael Madsen best roles in gaming
- Crime Boss: Rockay City – Travis Baker
- Yakuza – Futoshi Shimano
- The Walking Dead – William Carver
- Call of Duty: Black Ops II – Michael “Finn” O’Leary
- True Crime: Streets of LA – Don Rafferty
- NARC – Jack Forzenski
- Driver 3 – John Tanner
- Reservoir Dogs – Vic Vega / Mr. Blonde
- Dishonored – Daud
- Grand Theft Auto – Toni Cipriani
- Final thoughts: “All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain’t gonna get”
Crime Boss: Rockay City – Travis Baker
To quote Madsen’s own words, “you can’t always pick the greatest script”. The two are unrelated, but it bears some weight considering the fact that Crime Boss: Rockay City wasn’t the most well-liked game.
This was the final work of Michael Madsen in gaming and, as sad as it is to see the great actor depart with a bad game as his goodbye to the industry, his character, Travis Barker, was the lead on the plot—and its entire development was based on Mr. Blonde, an iconic character from the cult classic Reservoir Dogs which, maybe unironically, was played by…Michael Madsen.
Although the end result was subpar, it’s nice to know that he had a character written with his legacy in mind.
Yakuza – Futoshi Shimano
The one thing I didn’t like about Yakuza’s Shimano was his shallow delivery. Not by Michael Madsen, of course, but the overall dialog and presentation of this character felt…lacking. Shimano’s attempt at being ruthless just makes him come off as an asshole. Yakuza 0 tried to remedy that by showing his more cunning, strategy-oriented mobster, but considering we knew how the character would end up, I personally can’t say it worked.
Still, Michael Madsen’s portrayal of a Japanese crime boss did manage to power through even though his character was badly written—and that’s saying something in a game full of great acting, such as Darryll Kurylo’s Kazuma Kiryu and Mark Hamill’s Goro Majima.
The Walking Dead – William Carver
This. This is what Shimano should’ve been. Michael Madsen’s take on Willian Carver would be, in my opinion, an Academy Award nomination if the Academy knew what they were doing had a gaming category.
Carver is cunningly ruthless, justifying his villainy on his twisted perception of a greater good, and that speaks volumes when you consider his interactions with lead character’s Clementine, by then an forced-to-grow-beyond-her-age child of 11 years old. As the primary antagonist of Season 2’s first half, Carver is one of a very dangerous personality: he nurtures the idea of growing strength through generations, seeing emotional displays as potential weaknesses and, worse, a threat to his community.
Not many actors would be able to pull of this type of personality with the just right emotional range: in Madsen’s voice, Carver was full of rage, but not a berserk-type of anger. More like a man who was so conformed to live in a world ruined by zombies, he was willing and able to do anything and everything to get his views—and only his— across.
Call of Duty: Black Ops II – Michael “Finn” O’Leary
As another role semi-inspired by Michael Madsen’s career playing possibly-redeemable criminals, Finn O’Leary was a gambling mobster that ended up on Alcatraz during the Zombies mode of Black Ops II. Although his role didn’t quite pan out as expansively as other characters, Madsen’s portrayal helped add some gravitas to O’Leary’s troubled background plot.
As a man who ended up in the worst possible prison, at the worst possible time, to know that he was only there because he refused to consent to his wife’s divorce attempt, and his subsequent regret in his ending and further appearances, makes this role somewhat bittersweet, but still very enjoyable.
True Crime: Streets of LA – Don Rafferty
As corrupt police officers go, Don Rafferty’s plotline is a very standard one: high-profile detective who serves a the protagonist’s father’s former partner, while he himself is initially portrayed as a fatherly figure, only for a plot twist reveal him as a bad guy who was actually partly responsible for said protagonist’s father’s disappearance.
True to form, Michael Madsen’s portrayal of Rafferty is a tame one, but also one that’s done well. Too bad the game itself didn’t invest in its writing so everything could be expanded a little more, and Madsen’s acting chops would get some more time for proper appreciation.
NARC – Jack Forzenski
Possibly one of the earliest instances of moral choice mechanics in gameplay, 2005’s NARC was actually a sequel to a 1988 original of the same game. Given the 20-year gap of technology between both titles, the latter benefited from higher resolution, a proper plotline…and Michael Madsen as lead character Jack Forzenski.
Not that this was any Oscar-worthy portrayal—after all, the reins of the story is given to the player, who chooses to apprehend drugs and surrendering them to the evidence room, or engage in drug dealing themselves and becoming corrupt.
Not the most well-known of Madsen’s titles, but still a decent shooter.
Driver 3 – John Tanner
Despite the undercover cop John Tanner being the lead character in every Driver game, it was only on the third installment (the grammatically nightmare named “Driv3r”) that Madsen’s voice work came around.
Although not much can be said about his work in this game—Driver isn’t a franchise particularly known for its incredible plot, shall we say— it does come with a few, funny easter eggs: in GTA 3, one of the missions is called “Two-Faced Tanner”, which involves the killing of an undercover cop who’s “useless outside of his car”.
This is a callback to Driver’s lack of on-foot animation for the first games (which Madsen wasn’t in) within the realms of GTA 3 (which Madsen was in). To counter that, Driver 3 had a mission where Tanner (Madsen) had to off “Timmy Vermicelli”, a character based on GTA Vice City’s protagonist, Tommy Vercetti.
Reservoir Dogs – Vic Vega / Mr. Blonde
Reservoir Dogs—the movie—came out in 1993, marking the first of many, many times Michael Madsen would collaborate with director Quentin Tarantino. Thirteen years later, in 2006, a game that recreates the plot of the movie and adds some contextual details came out and, as the iconic deranged psychopath Vic Vega (a.k.a. “Mr. Blonde”), Madsen reprised his role with the same majestic delivery as the movie.
Like we said, the game and the movie follow the exact same plot: a bank heist is executed, somebody is a traitor, cops get tipped off, some people die, some people might die, some people don’t die…all in all, the main difference is that the game has three different endings.
If you see the movie, then you know how Madsen was in the game: tit-for-tat, there was no difference between movie Blond and game Blonde, which is itself a testament: you’d be forgiven to think that, after 13 years, the actor would approach his already done role with less enthusiasm, but not in this case. Madsen owns the role, once again, just like he did in ‘93.
And we applaud him for it.
Dishonored – Daud
An assassin who kills without qualms but suddenly encounters grief in what’s arguably the most important job in his life is, admittedly, not really suitable for an actor who was known for playing tough guys, mafia types and run-of-the-mill criminals.
But as we’ve already established, Michael Madsen was much more than that in his gaming jobs. The man was a fluid thespian, and Daud was probably one of his greatest roles: in one of the few opportunities where we can see Madsen have an entire backstory developed for his character, Daud was a gift that kept on giving: so cold and merciless, and yet so charismatic, the developers at Arkane just had to give him more screentime than the regular game.
Thus, The Knife of Dunwall came to be, as a story-expanding DLC focusing on Daud as the main character, running in parallel with the main title’s plot, slowly tying itself up to hero Corvo Attano’s progress and delivering one, concise, unblemished narrative.
You can take any road you want with its ending—there is, of course, a canonical event—but regardless of your choice, Dad is by far one of the best characters on the entire Dishonored franchise.
Grand Theft Auto – Toni Cipriani
Call me easy to please, but I’m a sucker for duality in acting, and while our previous entry show that in buckets, it is with GTA III’s Tony Cipriani that I personally felt more connected with that perception.
You see, in Michael Madsen’s delivery, Cipriani hides a lot of personality: under that stereotypical guise of an easy-to-irritate-to-the-point-of-unbriddled-violence Italian mafioso, Toni is duality made (digital) flesh: on one hand, he’s what mobsters call a caporegime—a sort of boss within the ranks of the Leon Crime Family in Liberty City.
On the other hand, Toni has this comedic allure, partly brought upon the player by his mother constantly berating him, to the point of him calling the local radio show, Chatterbox, just to vent off on DJ Laslow Jones (a random tidbit that the player might listen if the radio is on said station during the driving portions of the game).
Granted, Cipriani’s lead character stint had another actor’s voice (also pretty good Danny Mastrgiorgio), but this bit of backstory helped us understand Toni a little more, making even more sense out of Madsen’s run.
Definitely, my favorite of the whole list.
Final thoughts: “All you can do is pray for a quick death, which you ain’t gonna get”
Luckily, if all the information available is to be believed, Michael Madsen didn’t have to live up to the above quote from his Mr. Blonde days. According to his family on Instagram, it was a cardiac arrest that did him in, but not one of those fulminating types.
Far from us at PRG to get all “shrinky” on our good readers, but we like to believe that his departure was akin to a man getting home after a long working day and finally…resting? Well, we don’t really have to dwell that much on it.
As for his legacy, this list alone does not do justice to it, but the good thing about movies and video games is that they remain around, to be enjoyed time and time again.
I think I’ll just download GTA 3 again, just because…