Interview with YoshiP - PAX Aus 2024

[Kranel_San]

They're willing to bend over backwards to do anything and everything possible to give people more Wuk Lamat for months/years to come, but any Warriors of Light that play female hrothgar themselves aren't even allowed to have proper customization, chest & arm pieces that fit correctly, and had to beg to get a single cutscene fixed so they wouldn't fall through the floor.

That... that really says everything right there about Square-Enix's priorities right now when the playerbase is treated like the unfavorite.

YoshiP and SE have become allergic to money.

[kiotsukete]

People are way too caught on this VA somehow being the main evil of the expansion. Sure, they are a crummy person, but you can just switch to JP voice if you want to.

The VA couldve been an actual cat going meow meow into the mic, while subtitles rolled. Doesnt make the WRITING AND PACING any better from the horrendous disney slop it was.

So true. I play with JP voices and thought the JP VA did a great job with what was given. I still found the character of WL annoying and the DT MSQ poorly written overall, even by shonen anime standards. Comparing this to Disney writing is an insult to Disney.

Criticizing the EN VA instead of the character muddies the feedback and gives SE room to think that the issue is with packaging rather than content. Like, even if they replaced the EN VA for future patches but don’t change characterization or story beats would NA players actually accept WL better? I doubt it.

[Daralii]

So true. I play with JP voices and thought the JP VA did a great job with what was given. I still found the character of WL annoying and the DT MSQ poorly written overall, even by shonen anime standards. Comparing this to Disney writing is an insult to Disney.

Criticizing the EN VA instead of the character muddies the feedback and gives SE room to think that the issue is with packaging rather than content. Like, even if they replaced the EN VA for future patches but don’t change characterization or story beats would NA players actually accept WL better? I doubt it.

Both are bad. The writing is the more important issue, especially regarding the future of the game as a whole, but her EN VA also did a terrible job.

[AnimaAnimus]

Both are bad. The writing is the more important issue, especially regarding the future of the game as a whole, but her EN VA also did a terrible job.

Yeah but none of the VA was good this time around either. Sena was esp bad because Wuk would not shut up and her skills, or lack there of, were on full display with a bright spotlight shining down on them. But to be fair, there is also the fact that Sena herself said she cannot convey too much emotion of any yelling due to sounding like a man if she does, which just made her a doubly odd choice for a role that needed emotion and yelling. Couple lack of skill with lack of direction, like ppl are claiming was the only reason WL was voiced so poorly (press X for doubt) and it really just gets bad.

It also really feels like SE either didn't vet her (which we know by her social media didn't happen since they have fired ppl for much more minor things than the vileness shes been posting for years) or she was recommended for the role by a friend (cough kate cough) who just wanted to get their pal a major role to help get her va career off the ground by getting her the lead in a major company and the #2 biggest mmo on the market, thereby skipping the vetting part completely. Ah, nepotism, the entertainment industry's most current, largest and most detrimental blight.

[Valence]

The VA?
Before this Role she was very vocal about certain "trans-coded" characters needing to be voiced by trans people only and one year on trans day of visibility sicced her followers on the Guilty Gear VA who voices Bridget asking for her to step down and let a trans VA (implication here being Bryer would gladly take the role) voice her. She complains a lot about similar characters like Street Fighter's Poison needing to be only voiced by transwomen and so on.
When DT came out Bryer said that Smile was "Literally a Black Gospel song" and that it "said a lot that gamers didn't like it", obviously implying that people who didn't like the song or its strange inclusion were racist. She was called out on it and tried to turn it into a kafka-trap style trick where she said she tricked people who called her out into exposing themselves as bigots or whatever, but it's clear she made a bad take for attention and it backfired.

Now it's hard to check some of this stuff because she went private on twitter so pulling up the specifics quotes is going to be hard. Generally my read is she is a self-promoter who likes to whine her career is being handicapped instead of improving her work, and leads hate raids regularly against other people who disagree with her or actors who she thinks are not fit to voice characters she likes. Genuinely it seems like SE gave the role of Wuk Lamat to a rage baiting troll who cannot keep her personal opinions to herself.

Another example that came to me after submitting this is during the launch trolls would occasionally write something at her like "you suck they should recast you" and she would repost it saying that this was the harassment she faced every day. Her followers would then run to the person's account and brigade everything they post until they delete their posts or go private. Bryer made a statement about how she "doesn't condone harassment in her name" but what do you expect when you hold up some random in front of however many thousand of your fans and say "this is the guy who is harassing me"?

Regardless this is generally out of scope of the article and it only leads to mud slinging whenever the VA gets brought up and threads locked while moderators go through and clean it up so it's best to leave it here.

Alright, I think I'll need precisions on a lot of this because it can be construed in radically different perspectives. I feel like this is skirting around issues a lot and it leaves me with a very nebulous picture to figure out.

What did she say exactly about "trans coded" characters? Did she just express an opinion that it would be nice to have trans coded characters be voiced by trans people? Did she say it should ONLY be voiced by trans people? Did she go on her way to specifically attack the VAs behind and if so, what did she say exactly?

What was so bad exactly about comparing a song to black gospel? Why did people feel offended at the implication that a lot of actual racists do not like that kind of song? Why did they think it included them for just, you know, not especially liking the song? Or did she say something else specifically that warranted this? I have a hard time seeing the problem if that makes sense?

Secondly, are you holding her accountable for what her "followers", which I assume are people following her on social media, did? What would you have people do when they get harassed and get death threats, just shut the *** up?

Third, who can say what kind of harassment she faced every day? Is there a way on those social media platforms to actually get a full, detailed account of all the aggression that go through on a daily basis to check?

[Kohashi]

The funny thing is, SE bad decisions are across a lot of their titles and what they have been doing lately. You should just take a moment and google about it. Life is strange $80 garbage deal or Censoring Dragon Quest III HD-2D Remake just to name a couple huge flops. It's hardly limited to FF14, so yeah..

[VerdeLuck]

Alright, I think I'll need precisions on a lot of this because it can be construed in radically different perspectives. I feel like this is skirting around issues a lot and it leaves me with a very nebulous picture to figure out.

What did she say exactly about "trans coded" characters? Did she just express an opinion that it would be nice to have trans coded characters be voiced by trans people? Did she say it should ONLY be voiced by trans people? Did she go on her way to specifically attack the VAs behind and if so, what did she say exactly?

What was so bad exactly about comparing a song to black gospel? Why did people feel offended at the implication that a lot of actual racists do not like that kind of song? Why did they think it included them for just, you know, not especially liking the song? Or did she say something else specifically that warranted this? I have a hard time seeing the problem if that makes sense?

Secondly, are you holding her accountable for what her "followers", which I assume are people following her on social media, did? What would you have people do when they get harassed and get death threats, just shut the *** up?

Third, who can say what kind of harassment she faced every day? Is there a way on those social media platforms to actually get a full, detailed account of all the aggression that go through on a daily basis to check?

I was going to engage with this in good faith but as I read it, this became progessively more and more clear you're fishing for something to paint me as your ideological enemy, or that I support harassment, or any other number of things.
I'm not dealing with this. The VA talk was already bordering on off topic talk and starting a flame war about it is definitely going too far off topic.

[Kaseladen]

Jesus christ this response is tone deaf as hell.
They'd be better off just saying 'things are too far along to address fully but we hope you'll stick with us' or something.

There's no complexity to WL. You can argue that they didn't portray it well, but frankly it just wasn't there *at all*. And its too late to try adding any in, the damage is done.

[Scarby]

I've been with the game ever since the beta on PS3, given years to it and waaaaay more money than I'd ever care to admit, now I see them decide to double down on this trash with wuk lamat.
That's my sub lost. I pray they sack Yoshi P after this.

[kajv95]

Alright, I think I'll need precisions on a lot of this because it can be construed in radically different perspectives. I feel like this is skirting around issues a lot and it leaves me with a very nebulous picture to figure out.

What did she say exactly about "trans coded" characters? Did she just express an opinion that it would be nice to have trans coded characters be voiced by trans people? Did she say it should ONLY be voiced by trans people? Did she go on her way to specifically attack the VAs behind and if so, what did she say exactly?

What was so bad exactly about comparing a song to black gospel? Why did people feel offended at the implication that a lot of actual racists do not like that kind of song? Why did they think it included them for just, you know, not especially liking the song? Or did she say something else specifically that warranted this? I have a hard time seeing the problem if that makes sense?

Secondly, are you holding her accountable for what her "followers", which I assume are people following her on social media, did? What would you have people do when they get harassed and get death threats, just shut the *** up?

Third, who can say what kind of harassment she faced every day? Is there a way on those social media platforms to actually get a full, detailed account of all the aggression that go through on a daily basis to check?

I'm not who you're engaging with but even though her twitter became privated, it's thanks to these very forums that we still have a picture of the things said.

On Trans-coded characters:

On "Smile":

The song isn't "being compared to", it just *is* (allegedly) and the callout on "certain sections of gamers" is only ambiguously worded to have "a way out" as it were. Which it was used as in the long run. The intent is clearly to say "if you don't like Smile, you're a bad person." Because otherwise the post is saying "wow racist scumbags are being racist scumbags, that can't be a coincidence" and that's... I mean, yeah. Obviously.

I have no idea what her "followers" did or how much harassment she's reportedly undergone. But the fact is that she, like other VAs I won't name, will happily call for others to step down by some rules (trans actors in her case), yet this will not apply to, say, Wuk Lamat, who is not trans. Probably, anyway. Especially the "trans day of visibility" post, once again calling for Bridget's VA to step down, is the nail in the coffin on what type of person she is in my perspective, as she's doing this while likely already having the role of Wuk Lamat in 2023.

Anyway I thought her voice acting was fine for the most part with some bad deliveries here and there. I was glad to be away from Wuk at about the halfway point though. She really is the sequel to Lyse - I do not want to engage with her in the story ever again and would like to move on to greener pastures, thanks. No amount of saying "we should've depicted her better" is going to change how much I simply do not care about the sheltered cat who lives in a conflict-less world, and beats people she can't reasonably beat by learning of their culture. It's making me hate the concept of Dynamis, because my biggest fear with it was that it would be a plot-crutch to allow for bs like this to happen. It did.

Yoshi-P should not have brought up the harassment bomb in the interview either. It's like he's baiting the forums lol