Graha Voice Actor Change?

[CosmosNovaRose]

1/3 On patch day, I was among the first to log in when servers went live, and the first thing I did was start MSQ. I was joking to a friend about JB being replaced with circumstantial evidence being that the EN trailer for 7.4 omitted his speaking line. I was joking about the doomposters claiming he was recast, literally seconds before I heard his first line. I had a severe double-take, expecting Bailey's voice, and I did not hear it. I leaned in and tried to listen closer, maybe I misheard.

I had watched EN cutscenes on repeat that include G'raha Tia. I had watched Wicked, Jurassic World Rebirth, and Wicked for Good just because I wanted to support Bailey's career. I checked out some of his press tour footage and watched some of his interviews. Hell, I've even listened to one of Bailey's narrated sleep stories. I'm quite confident that I can pick out his voice- his natural speaking voice is how he delivers G'raha in FFXIV.

I did not hear his voice the second time, or the third. To me, it sounded egregiously like someone else. The accent was all wrong. The delivery was not congruent with the delivery that Bailey usually puts out. The audio quality was egregiously lower than the other speaking characters. Whether it was the audio quality responsible or not, Bailey's signature velvety, breathy, bass-y tone was absent. In its place was a performance that made me fully believe Bailey had left FFXIV.

So, as one rabid fan does amidst panic, I logged out of the game, took to Bluesky, and shouted to the void that G'raha Tia was recast. I may have unintentionally kickstarted some amount of the panic in the fanbase, as people who had yet to play the patch had read my post there and started parroting my fears. I was sleep deprived from an all nighter and an 8 hour shift, and went to bed without playing further. For jumping to an early conclusion and inciting fear, I apologize sincerely- it was disrespectful of me on multiple fronts, from the spoiler embargo on social media, to whoever actually voiced G'raha in 7.4. It insinuated that whoever is behind the microphone did horribly, and I don't believe so in the slightest, and it's not fair on them to have the fans tear their audio apart to compare it to prior recordings. I was just entirely surprised and disappointed that we had no idea beforehand that he would sound different.

[shoebilldreams]

Edit: I'm not sure my reading comprehension is up to scratch tonight so I'm deleting this rather than look like I was arguing!

[CosmosNovaRose]

2/3

On Bsky, some remained hopeful and posted an outdated article from March 2024 (nearly 2 years ago) that shows Bailey loves acting for G'raha Tia, and will do what he can to keep the role. In that stated interview, he even praises the writing for being 'Shakespearian' and admits that a few years prior, recording for Shadowbringers, he had been working on Company and injured his tongue. He still performed with a lisp, was how much he was dedicated.

Some also tried to assuage the fears by claiming that it sounds closer to Bailey the deeper into 7.4 you go. While I was unable to play until the following day, I tried to remain hopeful that maybe I was wrong, maybe it is just Bailey with a nasty illness, and maybe the fans are just insane (we are.)

So I gave it another day before coming back and resumed MSQ. And after considering that prior feedback, I tried to remain keen-eared. But I am sad to say that after finishing the patch, I remain skeptical that it is Bailey, and sit in the camp that it is a stealth recast. I've listened to some of the 7.4 dialogue on repeat, and someone was even diligent enough to provide a back to back audio clip of G'raha in 7.0 against 7.4. The more I listen, the more I am convinced it is not him. I hate having nothing to go off of outside of what we do have, and I repeat, it is awful that we are left scrambling for answers amidst this confusion, and it is awful that we are doing this to begin with, judging something that may have been performed by a temporary fill-in.

[CosmosNovaRose]

3/3

Whether or not fans should have reached out to Kotaku, they reached out to Kotaku. Kotaku gave the update from his representative that he "won't be commenting or participating in any interviews regarding FF XIV at this time.". This to me doesn't clear anything up, and makes the situation even stranger to people like myself who aren't familiar with how contracts or NDA's operate in this. If it's a contract issue, wouldn't it have been resolved *before* the patch dropped to prevent this entire discourse from happening? If there's a negotiation to keep Bailey for 7.4 and onwards, were his managers involved in gatekeeping Bailey with a price tag? Was Bailey genuinely sick, and didn't want to comment on it? Is Bailey parting ways from FFXIV to focus on his charity, and under an NDA to not disclose this? Is Square Enix, currently under fire from investors and having mass layoffs, trying to silently recast him and pull a Troy Baker on Bailey and the community? Or maybe Bailey was sick and recorded with a subpar set (highest grossing actor of 2025, recording in a subpar set, when his at-home recording sounded fine enough to use previously? I don't think that's likely, but goes to show what I know of the industry.)

There are so many things this could be, with stranger circumstances, which is why it's got the community gripped. EN actors have not been recast since 3.0 barring actual literal death. And I believe others when they say that Square would *never* have done something like this to their JP cast and community. G'raha's JP actor, Yuma Uchida, is also a star singer in Japan who has MANY roles. I don't buy the argument that Bailey is too expensive, if they have an all-star cast in JP.

All of this to say, I will be more than happy to be wrong when we eventually find out what happened this patch. If Bailey reprises G'raha going forward, I will be glad- just take care of yourself Bailey!! I will also be happy for Bailey if he decides to move on from FFXIV and focus on his career and his charity. He gave us the best performance we probably could have gotten for G'raha Tia. Hell, he's one of the big reasons why G'raha is my favorite character in this game. What I *don't* want is some corporate technicality being the reason we can't have Bailey return, and Square disrespecting the fans and whoever picks up the role by not announcing his departure and not introducing us to the new one. I *don't* want this to be about Square cutting corners and replacing more expensive actors with cheaper ones to appease their investors.

[paradisea]

In the US, the biggest stars can basically set their fee however high they like. You're super super famous now because of some movies you've done? Name your price.

In the UK, we don't have that setup. We can barely get studios to pay what our union is suggesting is the minimum rate for AAA studios to pay a voice actor. Bigger actors can't generally demand much more than that fee - the game studio can simply turn them down and hire someone who'll take the guideline fee.

No matter how famous JB gets, there's an upper limit to how much he - or anyone else - can ask for as a voice actor in the UK without the studio just laughing in their face. JB's agent would know that, and wouldn't demand an unreasonable fee on his behalf because they'd know he'd be recast instead, and would start getting a reputation for being a bit of a diva/having an ego.

All this to say - it's unlikely he asked for such a large fee that SE had to recast him for budget reasons.

(For what it's worth, I'm on team "it's not JB" - I don't think it sounds like him, and it fits that he'd be extremely busy round about the time they were recording this patch - but not because I think he asked for too much money.)

Incredibly insightful perspective, thank you for posting this. Something else I've heard people who are involved in the industry say in other places is that most reasonable actors know they can't afford to arbitrarily turn down work: popularity comes and goes, and the day may come where you're not as on demand as you once were, and it's always good to have steady roles to fall back on.

Obviously I don't actually know the guy, but Bailey has always come across as a reasonable, down to earth man who genuinely loves art for art. Even if he was particularly haughty and convinced he's just above FF14 now, considering he has stuck by the role even when he was extremely busy with major projects, I doubt he'd suddenly turn and decide to turn down some steady pay, even if modest, to schedule a day or two of recording to keep going as G'raha.

I just don't really find myself able to reason Bailey himself choosing to step away now of all times. I've said this multiple times, but if he were to go, there were much busier times of his career that could reasonably justify why. And if he had to go, I think he would be willing to negotiate a more apt time with SE for his departure.

I know 7.4 is the moving into the pre-next-expac era of the story, but it's still Dawntrail itself. Considering that when SE changed studios between ARR and HW, the old VAs stuck until 2.58 even though VAs from the new studio were already in the project (see: Aymeric), I don't think it'd happen until DT as an expansion is fully concluded with its patches. I imagine any contract renewal he signed covered all 7.x content.

But again, my personal speculation. Which is all we can do, since SE won't talk to us.

[shoebilldreams]

As the person who overreacted to everyone thinking JB was Nald'thal by starting a video series identifying just about every uncredited voice from 3.0 to 6.55... I don't think it's JB.

And I say that as someone who was there in the dark of the night, listening to individual lines from TV shows and voice reels and old insta lives, trying to match individual syllables or the way people even breathed between words to confirm identities in some cases.

I'm not some great authority on JB, but I did dedicate far too much of my life to the project, enough to have known in one line of 7.4 that I wasn't hearing him.

[shoebilldreams]

I know 7.4 is the moving into the pre-next-expac era of the story, but it's still Dawntrail itself. Considering that when SE changed studios between ARR and HW, the old VAs stuck until 2.58 even though VAs from the new studio were already in the project (see: Aymeric), I don't think it'd happen until DT as an expansion is fully concluded with its patches. I imagine any contract renewal he signed covered all 7.x content.[/I]

My experience from the voice project (in the comment right above this one unless someone got a reply in) is that they record/plan in blocks. x.0 is a block, x.1 to x.3 is a block, and x.4 to x.55 is a block. It was a tremendous help in identifying "random Ishgardian soldier with one line" sort of characters when I could rule out a bunch of lads who otherwise weren't present in that block!

Who's to say if they've done exactly that in DT patches - Metem for example may have been recorded all at once in the 7.0 block - but it's how they usually operate.

[peachsyder]

If it's a contract issue, wouldn't it have been resolved *before* the patch dropped to prevent this entire discourse from happening? If there's a negotiation to keep Bailey for 7.4 and onwards, were his managers involved in gatekeeping Bailey with a price tag? Was Bailey genuinely sick, and didn't want to comment on it? Is Bailey parting ways from FFXIV to focus on his charity, and under an NDA to not disclose this? Is Square Enix, currently under fire from investors and having mass layoffs, trying to silently recast him and pull a Troy Baker on Bailey and the community? Or maybe Bailey was sick and recorded with a subpar set (highest grossing actor of 2025, recording in a subpar set, when his at-home recording sounded fine enough to use previously? I don't think that's likely, but goes to show what I know of the industry.)

There are so many things this could be, with stranger circumstances, which is why it's got the community gripped. EN actors have not been recast since 3.0 barring actual literal death. And I believe others when they say that Square would *never* have done something like this to their JP cast and community. G'raha's JP actor, Yuma Uchida, is also a star singer in Japan who has MANY roles. I don't buy the argument that Bailey is too expensive, if they have an all-star cast in JP.

All of this to say, I will be more than happy to be wrong when we eventually find out what happened this patch. If Bailey reprises G'raha going forward, I will be glad. I will also be happy for Bailey if he decides to move on from FFXIV and focus on his career and his charity. He gave us the best performance we probably could have gotten for G'raha Tia. Hell, he's one of the big reasons why G'raha is my favorite character in this game. What I *don't* want is some corporate technicality being the reason we can't have Bailey return, and Square disrespecting the fans and whoever picks up the role by not announcing his departure and not introducing us to the new one. I *don't* want this to be about Square cutting corners and replacing more expensive actors with cheaper ones to appease their investors.

Just want to say I agree with you on all counts, especially that last paragraph. And most especially the part I bolded for emphasis. Imagine the reaction of the JP side if SE were to replace a major voice actor because they're too expensive now and they'd rather cut corners and replace them with actors willing to charge less. I joke—you don't even have to imagine it, because it'd never happen. They'd have to protect their headquarters from the molotov cocktails that'd be thrown at them, and we'd have a 12-paragraph long letter of apology from Yoshi-P himself the day patch dropped and a hotfix with the original VA yesterday.

[paradisea]

My experience from the voice project (in the comment right above this one unless someone got a reply in) is that they record/plan in blocks. x.0 is a block, x.1 to x.3 is a block, and x.4 to x.55 is a block. It was a tremendous help in identifying "random Ishgardian soldier with one line" sort of characters when I could rule out a bunch of lads who otherwise weren't present in that block!

Who's to say if they've done exactly that in DT patches - Metem for example may have been recorded all at once in the 7.0 block - but it's how they usually operate.

I understand this as I've used the good old "who was in the booth this cycle of patches" to figure out who's voiced some random minor character or a voiced boss fight. I, of course, also understand this because patches are recorded in advance but not years far in advance.

However, I would doubt that the way they record is necessarily the way contracts are written, otherwise there'd be way to many renewals to deal with every cycle and they'd be much more at risk of losing people between contracts, let alone dealing with delays in renegotiations when they need to keep the patch schedule going. What I personally imagine, which is of course speculation, is that they sign actors for full expansions, with the caveat that they'll be asked to come record in the established cycles. That would allow them to have steady contracts for roughly 2 year periods, which is much more stable.

That's my personal speculation based on my own area of work, but I'm not British and not familiar with British law or unions in the entertainment area.

[shoebilldreams]

However, I would doubt that the way they record is necessarily the way contracts are written, otherwise there'd be way to many renewals to deal with every cycle and they'd be much more at risk of losing people between contracts, let alone dealing with delays in renegotiations when they need to keep the patch schedule going. What I personally imagine, which is of course speculation, is that they sign actors for full expansions, with the caveat that they'll be asked to come record in the established cycles. That would allow them to have steady contracts for roughly 2 year periods, which is much more stable.

Voice acting for a one-off game? Yeah, it's possible to see a 2 year contract - you'd expect Ben Starr might have had a longer contract for FF16 because they knew the scope was going to run into the hundreds of hours.

But for something like this, the contract will be for the exact amount of studio time. So they'll know it's roughly 4 sessions of 4hrs for that character in X Expansion, for example, and they'll make a contract for that for the, say, one week those four sessions will take place. There'd usually be some stipulation for additional time, with a per hour rate, but we're talking a single extra session or running over by an hour or something. If they need the actor again, they'll set up a new contract when it's time.

A rolling contract would be considered too restrictive if it was challenged in court, because it would prevent the actor from taking other work (non-compete clauses are largely meaningless here, as are overly restrictive contracts that could prevent someone working) - being tied in to some maybe-date in 18 months' time for a single VO session preventing them from taking a six-month gig filming for TV or being in a play, for example.

Anyway that's probably far more detail than anybody needs, I just either know nothing about a subject or everything