Graha Voice Actor Change?

[paradisea]

Ive been listening every single line for any resemblance to JB and .. its just missing? maybe my sound is broken for me not to be able to hear it which others are saying?

folks have said krile and yshtola sound off also and whilst some lines seem odd i can still hear their characters within them. with graha its missing.

im also a little unsure why folks have said there are so few lines? hes had more VA lines in this patch than 7.1-7.3. this has been a MSQ movie so far with so much VA. (explains why the new DPS food is caramel popcorn XD)

his very last lines in 7.3 were JB but a very exhausted JB. and it matched graha at the time as graha was about falling asleep on his reports. his tone was quieter. his voice in mahjong is also slightly off as hes whisper speaking to you and we never got that in msq (recommend to do that btw) but still definitely him. this is what i expected at the least when i went through it and i just cant hear it.

Have the same feelings as you. Everything about Bailey is missing in his lines. His cadence, intonation, accent, inflection, pronunciation. It's all different. I feel crazy anyone thinks otherwise unless they're a real casual fan.

I think you don't hear Bailey because it isn't Bailey. Contrasting the lines from the end of 7.3 to the ones in 7.4 just makes it more glaring. That beautiful monologue from Raha at the end of 7.3 in Living Memory — I invite anyone to listen to that and then listen to the scene in 7.4 where he talks about Treno and tell me that's the same person speaking the lines. It's an abyss of difference in delivery.

[Optee]

I'm a primarily JP language user so honestly I have no input to add to the is he or isn't he debate, however it's gotten to the point that multiple of my circles keep commenting on G'raha's English voice acting. At this point it honestly doesn't matter if it is or isn't Jonathan Bailey or any of the numerous 'what ifs' that people are coming up with but about transparency and respect to the NA playerbase in general. If this happened to a JP VA YoshiP would have already written out one of his infamous Dad letters as well as explaining what happened before the patch release. The Western playerbase shouldn't be having to question these things in the first place.

[peachsyder]

I want clarity from Square Enix but I'm gonna be real, I also absolutely want Bailey to stay (a sentiment shared by many here, and clearly the reason for the uproar). So I'm hoping we get transparency on why Bailey wasn't here for this patch (because I can't bring myself to believe that's him) and reassurance that he will be in the future. This is a major character with a widely loved voice actor. Square Enix has the means to keep him, and he clearly wants to stay.

Once again: Jonathan Bailey makes G'raha Tia for me. G'raha without Bailey's voice, to me, is even worse than just writing him off—it's like him becoming someone else I'm supposed to pretend is him. If Square Enix gives up on doing everything they can to keep Bailey in the cast, after all the effort he's put in for seven years in the role, including recording while sick and at the peak of his packed schedule, I'll be absolutely heartbroken, to the point I doubt I'll ever enjoy this game the same way again, if at all. Yeah, it's that serious for me.

Here's hoping for good news.

[ChrisCryst0l10]

Honestly I’m a little upset and worried about the lack of transparency about this. Part of it give me the impression that it’s still Jonathan Bailey but given how different it is I’m not so sure. Regardless we should know if it is or isn’t. Personally I think it should still be Jonathan Bailey. Even if he is more famous now I can’t think of anyone else being graha.

[paradisea]

I want clarity from Square Enix but I'm gonna be real, I also absolutely want Bailey to stay (a sentiment shared by many here, and clearly the reason for the uproar). So I'm hoping we get transparency on why Bailey wasn't here for this patch (because I can't bring myself to believe that's him) and reassurance that he will be in the future. This is a major character with a widely loved voice actor. Square Enix has the means to keep him, and he clearly wants to stay.

Once again: Jonathan Bailey makes G'raha Tia for me. G'raha without Bailey's voice, to me, is even worse than just writing him off—it's like him becoming someone else I'm supposed to pretend is him. If Square Enix gives up on doing everything they can to keep Bailey in the cast, after all the effort he's put in for seven years in the role, including recording while sick and at the peak of his packed schedule, I'll be absolutely heartbroken, to the point I doubt I'll ever enjoy this game the same way again, if at all. Yeah, it's that serious for me.

Here's hoping for good news.

Yeah. Obviously we deserve clarity, but above all, unless it was JB's choice to leave (doubtful, as we've all seen that interview and mentioned it here time and time again), we deserve to not lose the voice actor for a main character of seven years.

The pleas for clarity are obviously warranted, but I don't want SE to get the skewed view that player sentiment is "it's fine if it's a permanent recast as long as you tell us about it". Many of us don't just want clarity, we want JB. We want the voice that has been with us for seven years of our journey, the guy who has delivered what's one of the best, if not arguably the best English language voice performance in this entire game. Losing him would be an immense blow to the quality of this game, because voice acting is a major part of what makes the game so good. "The game" and "voice actors" aren't separate things, the actors are an intrinsic and crucial part of what makes this game what is is. They should not be recasting any character, let alone such an important, beloved, and popular one, unless there's absolutely no other choice left.

Again: you know they wouldn't ever, ever, ever consider recasting a Japanese voice actor unless there were extreme circumstances. The English cast deserves the same level of regard and respect.

[Bantochan]

I have the same feelings as you. It's upsetting to me that they (SE) made this big of a change and haven't clarified anything - it feels cheap. The difference in voice also took me way out of the story and I felt like I couldn't enjoy it as much as I was anticipating to. The new VA didn't do a bad job in the slightest, so this isn't shade towards them. I just think transparency is owed for something like this, especially when it would have been given for a change in the JP voices. Not to sound super crazy, but I also found some dialogue lines in the game and think their timing seems interesting. Go talk to G'raha after the 7.4 MSQ is finished in Solution Nine and see if you feel the same as way I do about the lines.

[RedLolly]

Some fans have done edits (fixing the lack of base, in particular) and it sounds closer to standard G'raha. I'm not sure if I can link a video from X, but it's there.

So the theory is a VERY sick JB with a VERY bad mic and recording set-up crunching the lines in at the last second has a lot more merit if it's possible to edit things to get some of his quirks back.

[SKAshe]

I'm inclined to believe he was just sick and/or exhausted from filming other things, and was likely recording at home. Cid and many of the other characters have sounded very different in patches. I'm having flashbacks to patch 5.4, which was recorded at home during covid, and everyone freaking out because they thought voice actors changed.

[paradisea]

Some fans have done edits (fixing the lack of base, in particular) and it sounds closer to standard G'raha. I'm not sure if I can link a video from X, but it's there.

So the theory is a VERY sick JB with a VERY bad mic and recording set-up crunching the lines in at the last second has a lot more merit if it's possible to edit things to get some of his quirks back.

I've listened to this edit and to be perfectly frank, even the increased bass hardly makes it sounds like Bailey. Plenty of replies and quotes to the video echo the same sentiment. Sorry, but I think it's just a coping mechanism from fans who are really scared of the possibility of a permanent recast and want to find any excuse to believe it's Bailey in order to soothe themselves. Listen to the way he says "used to make" in that bass edited video — it's nothing like Bailey's voice or intonation. A poor mic setup wouldn't change that.

There was a point in 7.0 where Y'shtola sounded like she was recording from inside a muffled bathroom, but she still sounded like herself, just on a super low quality mic. People keep trying to find and cling to a thousand different excuses to convince themselves it's Bailey because nobody wants a recast to happen, when it'd be more productive to be here voicing concerns directly where Square Enix actually (supposedly) reads the player feedback. If people are scrambling to do sound editing to make G'raha sound remotely like himself, no matter the reason behind it, we clearly have a major quality check issue at hand. If it was so simple as to increase bass on his voice lines, why wasn't it done by the sound editing team instead of desperate fans clinging to scraps of hope that they're not losing their favorite character's voice actor?

This "is it him or is it not him" debate is tiring and irrelevant. The fact is one simple thing: he sounds completely different, and nobody likes it. Fans want G'raha to sound like he always has — fans want Bailey. And fans deserve to know what happened to Bailey and what they can expect from G'raha in the future. That's it. That's what Square Enix owes us, and that's what they would have already given their JP fanbase if this had happened on their side.

[Bantochan]

I've listened to this edit and to be perfectly frank, even the increased bass hardly makes it sounds like Bailey. Plenty of replies and quotes to the video echo the same sentiment. Sorry, but I think it's just a coping mechanism from fans who are really scared of the possibility of a permanent recast and want to find any excuse to believe it's Bailey in order to soothe themselves. Listen to the way he says "used to make" in that bass edited video — it's nothing like Bailey's voice or intonation. A poor mic setup wouldn't change that.

There was a point in 7.0 where Y'shtola sounded like she was recording from inside a muffled bathroom, but she still sounded like herself, just on a super low quality mic. People keep trying to find and cling to a thousand different excuses to convince themselves it's Bailey because nobody wants a recast to happen, when it'd be more productive to be here voicing concerns directly where Square Enix actually (supposedly) reads the player feedback. If people are scrambling to do sound editing to make G'raha sound remotely like himself, no matter the reason behind it, we clearly have a major quality check issue at hand. If it was so simple as to increase bass on his voice lines, why wasn't it done by the sound editing team instead of desperate fans clinging to scraps of hope that they're not losing their favorite character's voice actor?

This "is it him or is it not him" debate is tiring and irrelevant. The fact is one simple thing: he sounds completely different, and nobody likes it. Fans want G'raha to sound like he always has — fans want Bailey. And fans deserve to know what happened to Bailey and what they can expect from G'raha in the future. That's it. That's what Square Enix owes us, and that's what they would have already given their JP fanbase if this had happened on their side.

This. The voice doesn't sound the same, regardless of what people want to believe happened. No one should have to speculate or argue over it.