At this year's Game Awards season, one of the most talked-about nominations does not actually belong to the person whose name is on the ballot. 
Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 star Charlie Cox, best known as Daredevil, has been quietly trying to redirect the spotlight away from himself and toward the French performer who physically brought his in-game alter ego Gustave to life. While fans celebrate his nod for Best Performance, Cox keeps insisting that the real honour belongs to motion capture actor Maxence Cazorla.
Speaking at a fan event in Mexico, Cox said he was thrilled to see Clair Obscur racking up nominations, but felt uneasy taking a victory lap for work he considers only one piece of a much larger puzzle. He reminded the crowd that Cazorla handled almost all of the motion capture, shaping Gustave's walk, posture, temper and tiny physical tics long before Cox ever stepped into a recording booth. In Cox's own words on previous occasions, his contribution was a voice layered on top of someone else's performance, not the sole reason the character resonates.
For many players, that honesty fits perfectly with the kind of hero Gustave is on screen: grounded, likeable and quietly determined rather than flashy or bombastic. Comment sections are full of people calling Cox a good and humble guy and arguing that he should still give himself a bit more credit, because the warmth and vulnerability in his delivery helped make Gustave a character you instinctively want to see succeed. Others point out that it is possible to praise Cox while still recognising that the physical acting and stunt work deserve equal billing.
The nomination arrives in the middle of a historic run for Clair Obscur: Expedition 33, which has become an awards-season juggernaut. The RPG has not only broken records with a dozen Game Awards nods, it is also competing in heavyweight categories like Best Direction, Best Narrative, Best Art Direction, Best Score and Music, Best Audio Design, Best RPG, Best Independent Game and Best Debut Indie Game, capped off by a serious push for the coveted Game of the Year trophy. Some fans even joke that it is the second-best game of the last decade, sitting just behind Baldur's Gate 3, which is about as high as praise gets in modern RPG circles.
Cox's own category is fiercely competitive. He is up against two of his Expedition 33 co-stars, including Final Fantasy XVI alumnus Ben Starr and fan-favourite Jennifer English, whose intense performances have already built cult followings online. Other players argue that Andy Serkis, long considered the face of performance capture, deserved a nomination as well, and that the medium is overdue for a dedicated award recognising mocap work specifically. After all, if voice acting is the art of carrying emotion with nothing but sound, motion capture is essentially stage acting translated into polygons and shaders.
That conversation is exactly why Cox keeps name-checking Maxence Cazorla. In an industry where marketing cycles often lean on recognisable Hollywood faces, he is using his star power to highlight a colleague whose name is rarely printed on posters. One popular fan take is that award shows want someone like Cox on the ballot because he is the biggest star in the ensemble and helps draw mainstream attention to an indie game. Cox seems determined to subvert that logic, repeatedly framing Expedition 33 as a team effort rather than a celebrity vehicle.
His humility is not a new talking point. Back in June, shortly after previews began to circulate, Cox admitted he sometimes felt like a total fraud when players gushed about his work in Clair Obscur. He revealed that he had recorded his entire script in roughly four hours, far removed from the years of iteration and experimentation that went into the game's design, art and animation. In another interview he cheerfully confessed that he still needed to buy a new console before he could actually play the finished game, joking that the last time he seriously played anything was back in the Mario 64 era.
Meanwhile, the audience is busy forming its own relationship with Expedition 33. Some players bounce off the demanding parry-centric combat at first, only to come back later after hearing friends call it a modern RPG classic that oozes style from every frame. Others sing the praises of its painterly art direction, haunting score and elegant blend of classic and contemporary RPG influences. Even fans who prefer performances like Jennifer English's or who think other games deserve the big trophies tend to agree that Clair Obscur is something special and that Gustave is one of its beating hearts.
All of this feeds into a broader shift in how we talk about acting in games. As performance capture becomes standard, the line between voice actor and screen actor keeps blurring, and more players are learning to recognise the invisible teams behind a single on-screen face. Commenters regularly argue that award shows should separate purely vocal work from full performance capture, because the physical craft of embodying a role for hours in a mocap volume is so different from reading lines in a booth. Cox, by singling out Cazorla again and again, is effectively making that same case from inside the system.
Whether or not Cox takes home the statue on the night, his stance has already struck a chord. In a year stacked with standout performances and blockbuster releases, here is a star using his nomination not to inflate his own legend but to point at the colleagues who made him look good. If Clair Obscur: Expedition 33 does end up sweeping the Game Awards, it will not just be a win for a stylish RPG; it will also be a small victory for everyone who believes that credit in games should be shared as generously as the work it celebrates.