Members over at GTAForums think they may have stumbled across the actor bringing life to one of the playable characters of Rockstar's highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto V, repo man Franklin.
Unfortunately, this rumor begins on shakey ground, as it's built on the foundation of another rumor. Once upon a time, the same people who bring us this rumor, had pegged an actor named Ned Luke as providing the voice for the narrator in the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto V. His IMDB page would eventually list him as the voice for Albert DeSilva, a character we now know to be non-existent. With the disappearance of DeSilva, so too was Luke's credit for anything GTA related on his IMDB page. Fans now believe him to be the voice of Michael, though there's been no confirmation of that by Rockstar.
I tell you this story as a preface to the rumors behind the identity of Franklin's voice actor. Similarly once upon a time, Luke had a twitter, and among the people he followed included DJ Pooh, Young Maylay, and a third man named Shawn Fonteno. The first two have a history with the GTA franchise, as DJ Pooh is credited as a co-producer and writer for San Andreas, and Young Maylay gave voice to the same game's protagonist, CJ. But what of this third man?
According to his IMDB page, Fonteno had small roles in two of Pooh's movies, "The Wash," and "3 Strikes." Evidently, a fan who paid a lot more attention than most viewing audiences did noticed a similarity between Fonteno's characters, and GTA V's Franklin, and threw together a video comparing the two. See for yourself below.
With Grand Theft Auto as one of the most popular franchises in videogame history, it's managed to pull in some heavy hitters to bring voice to its sizeable cast, like Ray Liotta as Vice City's Tommy Vercetti, Sam Jackson as Officer Tenpenny in San Andreas, and Frank Vincent as Grand Theft Auto III's Don Salvatore Leon.
This makes for the supposed cast of virtual no-names (sorry, but it's true) behind the next game a bit difficult to swallow. It's a stretch, but anything's possible.
Featuring three playable characters, a first for the series, Grand Theft Auto V takes place in a re-imagined, present-day Southern California in the largest and most thriving game-world set in the sprawling city of Los Santos.
Not much is known about the story, but Rockstar has confirmed there will be multiple endings, and the story will be about the same length as Red Dead Redemption, at about 25 - 30 hours. Keep in mind, that's before the massive amount of secondary things to do, so this should be a monster of a game.
Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto V will release worldwide in the Spring of 2013 for Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3. A PC release hasn't been announced, (though a petition has been introduced) nor has a release been mentioned for the Wii U.
Rockstar is offering a free t-shirt for anyone who pre-orders the game from the Rockstar Warehouse.