Thanks to his lead role in Christopher Nolan’s adaptation of The Odyssey, which hits theaters this week, a Matt Damon skin has come to Fortnite.
The news led us to wonder if Damon had ever appeared in a videogame before. No, as far as I can tell, but he did get close-ish when he was asked to lend his likeness to The Bourne Conspiracy, a 2008 console game based on the novels behind the film series he starred in.
Damon rejected the offer for the endearing reason that they wouldn’t make the violent action game—which is what you’d expect from a Bourne game—more like classic puzzle-adventure game Myst.
“I lobbied hard to not make a first-person shooter game but to make it more like Myst, which was a great interesting puzzle you tried to solve—you know, to play with his amnesia or his memory,” Damon said in a 2008 interview with The Boston Globe. “They weren’t interested. They made the video[game] anyway, without my likeness.”
Damon also recounted the story with a laugh on an episode of Hot Ones in 2021.
“They offered me a bunch of money,” the actor said. “But it was like, a little more thought had to go into it. You know, like Myst, I love that game. So I was like, ‘You know, more like Myst.’ And they were like, ‘no,’ and just went and made it without me.”
I couldn’t find any examples of Damon’s likeness appearing in a videogame before his new Fortnite skin, though he did say he was interested in the medium during a 2016 Reddit AMA, when he was asked if he’d ever consider doing voice acting or motion capture work for a game.
“I’ve never been approached to do that, I’d totally be into it,” Damon said. “I’m really interested to see where entertainment heads as these videogames, the graphics are getting so good, and VR is getting so good, and you know, what’s going to happen to movies? What are the implications for movies, and does this morph into a new kind of storytelling, and what is that, and can I be a part of it? You know, ultimately those of us who make movies are storytellers and we want to gather you around and tell you stories. If gaming is the way to do that I’m all for looking into it, but nobody has asked me as of yet.”
How things have changed in just 10 years. Damon’s 2016 comment would come across as out-of-touch today, when the industry’s biggest players have mostly moved on from discussions that center authors, actors, storytelling, or competition with Hollywood.
Instead, execs and investors are excited about things like user-generated content, AI, and “the metaverse.” Genres focused on emergent storytelling, such as multiplayer survival and comedy co-op, have boomed, while story-focused RPG hits like Baldur’s Gate 3 and Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 tend to be viewed as anomalies (even if it seems just as hard to release a live service hit). A new Fallout game is reportedly in development, but the biggest new Fallout thing of the 2020s has so far been a TV show.
That shift is perfectly encapsulated by Damon’s first videogame role: Rather than a prestige console exclusive action adventure game or Kojima epic, he’s a Fortnite skin promoting an old-fashioned Hollywood blockbuster.
In another universe, we might be prepping to review a big Odyssey tie-in game right now. No such game exists, but our Chris Livingston did dig up an old adventure game based on the epic poem, which saw him spend an hour trying to figure out a loom.