Graha Voice Actor Change?

[paradisea]

I'm still in the camp of "new actor is trying to sound like Bailey's take on G'raha" since the line that sounds like a dead ringer to JB post edit was felt more like an inflection thing. So, acting. And I think that's where most of the issues are, the new actor is doing his dangdest to sound like G'raha as we've known him, and actually nails it on a few lines despite having a wildly different voice.

And it feels like an example of gaslighting on both sides on if it is or isn't a new actor.

I genuinely like him, I personally expected a change when JB's career took off earlier this year, and welcome it because, well, my concern is more on the actual writing continuing to improve, and I really think it has these last 2 patches. Which is why my issue is why hasn't SE just told us anything after days of asking, and the only two explanations I can think of are both really bad. Either they don't care, or they're protecting the new actor. Both look bad in different ways.

I'm sorry but JB's career took off long before "this year". Arguably he blew up with Bridgerton, and season 1 dropped in 2020, while season 2, in which he was the main male lead, dropped in 2022. He was cast in Wicked years ago, and even the second movie wrapped filming in Jan 2024. Jurassic Park wrapped filming in Sep 2024.

Plenty of us G'raha fans had been dreading a change long before this, but he stayed through the peak of his popularity. March of 2024 was when he gave the BAFTA interview where he expressed his love for G'raha and determination to stay on the role. What reason do we have to believe that he would choose to leave now? And don't mention his "break", he has literally said the break doesn't affect the fact he's happy and willing to return to his recurring roles such as Bridgerton.

I get you like the voice in 7.4 better than the original and you're trying your hardest to defend it, to the point you said earlier in the thread that it'd be good to cut budget on Bailey "when they can put that funding into hiring a small group of designers for more and better gameplay content is money better spent", and then you said fans were calling the new VA "trash" and that SE was "likely not announcing anything because he'd get dogpiled". I'm sorry you feel that way, but fans have the right to want their 7 year long voice actor to stay, and if he does leave, they deserve to hear a really good reason as to why it happened. And no, "budget" isn't a good reason coming from a multimillion dollar company when this is their most profitable franchise. People need to stop acting like SE would have to pay Bailey's entire Wicked salary to get him in a booth to record a dozen voice lines.

It's tiring to go in this back and forth of "Bailey is super busy with [projects that wrapped up last year at the latest], it's totally expected he was going to leave soon" when that's just plainly not true. Not on Bailey's part. If people are going to speculate I wish they'd do it with accurate information. But I'd rather we stop speculating and just focus on the one thing: G'raha sounds absurdly different, fans don't like it, we deserve an explanation — preferably with reassurance that he's not leaving.