These days, the nigh omnipresent Keanu Reeves steals any show he attends, and Microsoft’s E3 conference on Sunday was no exception. Immediately following the debut of a new trailer for CD PROJEKT RED’s upcoming RPG, Cyberpunk 2077, Reeves took to the stage to introduce a second batch of footage along with the highly anticipated game’s release date (April 16, 2020). Just after the show, EW caught up with Reeves for a chat about his Cyberpunk character Johnny Silverhand, his introduction to gaming as a storytelling medium, the future of John Wick, and the Keanaissance in general.

ENTERTAINMENT WEEKLY: That Microsoft conference was very exciting!

KEANU REEVES: Yeah, the people were so nice.

You were the highlight of the show.

Well, it’s CD PROJEKT RED too, right? They’re pretty renowned, and I think there’s a lot of excitement for the people who knew that this title [Cyberpunk 2077] was going to be there. It’s cool to be part of launch that actually gives a release date, you know?

What was your experience with previous CD PROJEKT RED games? Have you played The Witcher series?

No, I haven’t played any video games. When I grew up, in my era it was more arcade stuff, so it was pinball and, you know, Pac-Man. Yeah, so I never played any games.

So this is all sort of a new experience for you then, coming into this industry?

Yeah. I met with CD PROJEKT RED in July of last year, and they had a bit of a demonstration, and they walked me through the character, and what they knew of the game. I had mo-cap experience through The Matrix, so that idea wasn’t foreign to me, in terms of being able to play a role, and being able to embody a role and then do the voice. The game, and the world and the story they were talking about is really cool. Especially as an open world role-playing game, I think as far as those games go, they do it really well. I could see from the quality and from the depth of the storytelling.

What can you say about your character in Cyberpunk 2077?

I can’t tell you too much about what the ultimate thing is, but the character I play is a rebel, and he’s a cool character.

He’s described as a “rockerboy.”

Yeah, he has this kind of corporate para-military background and got injured, and he has this kind of bionic arm now. He started a band called Samurai that he’s the lead singer of, and, you know, he’s kind of a rebel leader against the corporate-ocracy.

In the trailer, the protagonist, V, has a Samurai logo on his jacket. Is he a fan of Johnny Silverhand?

Yeah, and what that group represents. The voice of what Silverhand was singing about.

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You mentioned that you’ve done motion capture before for The Matrix. How did the acting part compare doing that for a video game as opposed to a movie?

There was more of it. We did the gestural library, face capture and then played some scenes. For me, it was fun just because, you know, there are certain things in games that you have to do that you don’t do in movies. Like, how do you stand there and wait and prompt people like you’re impatient? So you have to do these gestures of impatience, and like, what’s Johnny’s? So I had this kind of head tilt to the side, like “come on,” basically a “come on, man.”

So you had to think a little bit more about how your character spends idle time.

Yeah, stuff that was in between moments and not just kind of playing the drama of a scene. That’s an example of the super specific kind of thing that’s unique to a game. Like, while the character is making a decision, you’re in the shot and you’ve got to be like, [heavy sigh].