Jon Bernthal's Theater Background Helped Him the Most in Ghost Recon Breakpoint

If you're planning on picking up Ubisoft's new Ghost Recon Breakpoint game now that it's been fully released, you're going to be seeing a lot of Jon Bernthal. The actor plays the main Breakpoint antagonist named Cole D. Walker, but if you were already a fan of his, you'll know him better for his roles such as Shane in The Walking Dead and The Punisher in Marvel's Netflix series of the same name. Bernthal's been in many different mediums including TV and movie appearances, but he credits his time in live theater as the part of his career that helped him most in Breakpoint.

Bernthal spoke to ComicBook.com over the phone about his role in Breakpoint and the challenges associated with being a character in a video game as opposed to one on TV or elsewhere. When asked which part of his professional background was most helpful when adjusting to being in games, he looked back on his time in the theater before he was known for those aforementioned roles.

"I would say, in this capacity, definitely theater," Bernthal said. "You're not playing to a single camera. Just like when you're in the theater, you're in the room and you've got all those eyes on you. That's how it's like when you've got 800 cameras on you. You're not playing to any single one of them."

We've seen Bernthal talk about his Breakpoint character in videos like the one at the top where we also caught a glimpse of him all dotted up in motion capture attire to lend his movements to the role. Bernthal said it was moments like those and the fact that the "stakes are enormously high" that made him equate the process most similarly to being on a stage for a live theater performance.

"They're shooting the entire room by every angle at once," Bernthal said. "You definitely don't get to start over and get another take in the theater. There's nowhere to hide, and I love that aspect of it. The stakes are enormously high. It's vital. If you make a mistake, you gotta keep going and power through, and there was that same sort of level of intensity to this because there were so many cameras in the room all working at once. I really dug that. I definitely found it closest to live theater."

Ghost Recon Breakpoint is now available for the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC platforms.