Graha Voice Actor Change?

[paradisea]

Jonathan Bailey should be graha tia. He is a fan favorite, he’s my personal favorite and it’s a lot to do with baileys performance. It’s extremely important to remain integrity with a game like this. And I agree if it was ABSOLUTELY nessesary to recast him, I’ll accept that but there should be some transparency.

It was also very insightful to see how contracts work and the possibility’s moving forward. While playing the patch I honestly felt like it could still have been Bailey. If they were gonna toy with a recast I feel like they would have also tried to re-record some battle lines. But they didn’t. It was still clearly Bailey’s. But who knows maybe that’s just because hoping and still not understanding.

Point being. People want Jonathan Bailey as graha tia. So I think it’s in their best interest to work to keep him on the game.

Ditto to all of this. And have to say the fact they haven't bothered to rerecord things like battle lines is what gives me a little hope this isn't permanent. I know even if Bailey gets recast (please no) they're not gonna go back to rerecord all of his voices from Stormblood to Dawntrail 7.3, but I figured they'd at least redo the battle lines since those are recurring.

But whatever. Nothing against whoever was the replacement for Bailey this patch, I have nothing against any potential replacement, permanent or not. But Bailey's voice is G'raha's to so many of us, after seven years of it. It'd be devastating to see him go, so I hope SE is doing whatever they can to work with him and keep him in the cast.

[TataniTani]

If it's a recast they could at least be upfront about it though! If there are contract negotations, say so. All EN fans have ever wanted is transparency, it's what Yoshi-P built his relationship with the players on.

[KthAura]

I’ve read a lot what people have been saying. It’s all be really insightful.

I had posted a small post earlier in the thread about my worry for the recast after finding out about it online. After finally playing the new msq I still have my worries and opinions. Jonathan Bailey should be graha tia. He is a fan favorite, he’s my personal favorite and it’s a lot to do with baileys performance. It’s extremely important to remain integrity with a game like this. And I agree if it was ABSOLUTELY nessesary to recast him, I’ll accept that but there should be some transparency.

It was also very insightful to see how contracts work and the possibility’s moving forward. While playing the patch I honestly felt like it could still have been Bailey. If they were gonna toy with a recast I feel like they would have also tried to re-record some battle lines. But they didn’t. It was still clearly Bailey’s. But who knows maybe that’s just because hoping and still not understanding.

Point being. People want Jonathan Bailey as graha tia. So I think it’s in their best interest to work to keep him on the game.

Ditto to all of this. And have to say the fact they haven't bothered to rerecord things like battle lines is what gives me a little hope this isn't permanent. I know even if Bailey gets recast (please no) they're not gonna go back to rerecord all of his voices from Stormblood to Dawntrail 7.3, but I figured they'd at least redo the battle lines since those are recurring.

But whatever. Nothing against whoever was the replacement for Bailey this patch, I have nothing against any potential replacement, permanent or not. But Bailey's voice is G'raha's to so many of us, after seven years of it. It'd be devastating to see him go, so I hope SE is doing whatever they can to work with him and keep him in the cast.

I agree WHOLEHEARTEDLY with both of y'all. It's just too brutal to literally replace him when us players have enjoyed his performance as Raha for over 7 years now. Even if now Raha's not speaking as much in MSQ, everyone enjoys the moments where he does. I'm expecting the worse but hoping the best, but I really do hope this is temporary or JB having a subpar setup and got sick or something. That or what this person on bluesky hilariously said.

I'm just glad everyone agrees that Squenix needs to sit down and give us an explanation about this. Even if they got a recast, the quality of the recording is NOT the same as others. Plus, there were just moments where it felt the person sounded tired in my opinion. It's too jarring of a difference compared to how the other characters sounded. It felt like they scrubbed the heck out of the audio so it could sound decent.

Again- if this happened with the voice of someone in JP, we'd already have a bunch of explanations PLUS an apology by now.

P.S.: Reading about how contracts work was very insightful!

[ZephyrMenodora]

Again- if this happened with the voice of someone in JP, we'd already have a bunch of explanations PLUS an apology by now.

I swear venturing off into other FFXIV social media communities is like the twilight zone - full of SquareEnix apologists who believe that we as concerned customers aren't owed the slightest thought.

[KthAura]

I swear venturing off into other FFXIV social media communities is like the twilight zone - full of SquareEnix apologists who believe that we as concerned customers aren't owed the slightest thought.

Dude I legit can't understand why people in other sites want to stomp others for wanting answers. Everything's been fine until now, where his voice not ONLY sounds odd, but even the quality of the audio is odd as well (at least to me).

Raha is quite frankly one of my favorite characters in FF14, and a character I relate to a whole bunch. JB's performance as him is one I adore for not only he's a talented actor, but he absolutely nails the vibe of the guy as well. It's only natural that big fans of the guy will start panicking if the VA got recast. Sure I can agree that the initial reaction was a bit much (I didn't appreciate people breaking etiquette on the spoiler embargo), but it's understandable.

I've praised the dev team of this game for their transparency and listening to their players. Hell, they did quick work with the Wuk Lamat situation with the voice lines folk had issues with. Those social media communities need to understand how weird it is that this sudden voice inconsistency happened and we haven't had ANY communication about it.

[HyonaCookie]

Maybe it would be best if they just write out G'raha, make him a side story only character or something. It's clear his ENG voice actor is busy and his character is very popular so changes in his voice is not gonna go well.

[RedLolly]

Maybe it would be best if they just write out G'raha, make him a side story only character or something. It's clear his ENG voice actor is busy and his character is very popular so changes in his voice is not gonna go well.

They won't write off a main character because one language has a voice actor change.

Japanese, German, French, Korean, and Chinese, and the multitudes of bilingual players shouldn't lose a fan favorite because us English only fans prefer one actor over another, anyway.

[paradisea]

People are gonna have a field day on certain social medias screenshotting/quoting that post and saying "those INSANE G'raha Tia fans would rather have their supposed favorite written off the story entirely than have his voice actor changed because they're obsessed and parasocial with Bailey!"

To be clear, I doubt even the most staunch fans of Bailey's performance would rather see G'raha written off than his actor changed. But everyone's ideal scenario is for Bailey to just stay. Again, seven years of work. Some may feel it way less than others—I've said myself that I'm one of those people that might quit entirely, because yeah, to me it's like seeing my favorite character die—but surely no one wants to see Bailey leave.

[Aco505]

And speaking of voice changes. Didn't a certain puppet sound different this time around compared to the previous two patches?

[KthAura]

To be clear, I doubt even the most staunch fans of Bailey's performance would rather see G'raha written off than his actor changed. But everyone's ideal scenario is for Bailey to just stay. Again, seven years of work. Some may feel it way less than others—I've said myself that I'm one of those people that might quit entirely, because yeah, to me it's like seeing my favorite character die—but surely no one wants to see Bailey leave.

This!! While I don't see myself quitting, I do see myself changing to the JP voices cuz I don't think I'd be happy to hear someone else as Raha in the ENG dub.

I want Bailey to stay- that would be my ideal scenario. I'm just hoping Squenix can hurry up with a statement already cuz guessing what may have happened and letting people speculate a whole bunch is just gonna make it a bigger mess if it ends up being a recast- (Even though I personally believe that it isn't and it's a mix between a bad audio recording setup, insane audio clean up and Bailey being sick/strained. Still expecting the worst but hoping for the best.)