Graha Voice Actor Change?

[BeoCat]

I dont think he was recasted, i think he recorded his lines from his home or just a bad setup. Something similar happened to Y'shtola a few patches ago where her lines sounded like they were recorded with a phone.

[GrizzlyTank]

I dont think he was recasted, i think he recorded his lines from his home or just a bad setup. Something similar happened to Y'shtola a few patches ago where her lines sounded like they were recorded with a phone.

Could also be that he's bit stuck in a different cadence/dialect after acting session, and weren't given appropriate feedback for a sound director when recording the lines.

[BeoCat]

Could also be that he's bit stuck in a different cadence/dialect after acting session, and weren't given appropriate feedback for a sound director when recording the lines.

Possible yeah, voice directing in general has been pretty bad in DT

[TaleraRistain]

Early in the patch he sounded really weird but toward the end he started just sounding like G'raha with a cold. I saw Twitter mention he may have been doing this at the same time as Wicked and may have had vocal strain.

[mildlymoonstruck]

I truly hope that they haven't permanently recast G'raha's ENG voice actor, but having heard his lines throughout the patch, it's clear to me that whoever was voicing G'raha in 7.4 is not Jonathan Bailey, though whoever they had step in admittedly sounds like they are doing their best impression of him. That said, it's pretty egregious that they would recast a major character, whether temporarily or permanently, and not publicly address it at all. I understand that the ENG side of the player base is not their priority compared to JP, but it's not like G'raha is a minor character from several expansions ago. G'raha has been a major character for over 6 years now, and it's not as if they don't know that he is arguably one of the most popular on both sides of the aisle, or that Jonathan Bailey is an absolute star among the ENG voice performances. Whatever the circumstances - budget, contracts, wonky scheduling, etc. - that led to his recast, and whether or not they are permanent, not affording even the slightest degree of transparency about it to their players is pretty dishonest. Especially since they made a conscious choice to swap out a voice line spoken by G'raha in the JP trailer for a line spoken by a completely separate character in the ENG trailer.

[concernedcitizen]

Would love even just any clarification from official sources. It just feels insulting as a player to hear this jarring difference from the localization that goes on and on about what high standards they have.

This is pretty much unacceptable from any angle of it, if it is indeed Jonathan Bailey it is so flawed it needs a rerecording and if it is not him then why haven't we been informed of this change? They don't even have any plausible deniability about this quality difference since they purposefully excluded his line from the english trailer.

We should not have to be arguing about who it is, if a change happens to the performance of a major character who appears in like almost all merch and collab SE does for the game these days I think it should be announced in advance in official capacity. If this happened with one of the JP voices would they not announce a change either? Doubt it.

Please respect the players. I don't care if the answer they have is that JB was sick, that they are still negotiating contracts or they replaced him. I just want any kind of answer so we don't have to go full sound analysis on a beloved character because we can never be sure! Its disrespectful to the players and honestly to the voice actors too. Very disappointed in the localization team for this huge miss.

[Vespar]

If he was sick/voice strained, I hope they'll consider a re-record. It really does sound jarring.

[Armethalieh]

Square staying silent about this matter is disrespectful to their players, as there is clearly something different about G'raha's voice this patch. If JB has been recast then we deserve to be updated. Cutting G'raha's line beign excluded from the english trailer is not a good look and feels like it was purposely obfuscated from us.

I personally love JB acting as G'raha and would rather than SE do their best to keep him. Changing a beloved main character after six years is not at all respectful to their players.

[RedLolly]

Honestly I'm only disappointed people are saying the VA we had is trash because it sounds like a different actor. Not actually any critique on sound quality or skill, literally just "It's different so it sucks."

But then this is likely exactly why SE hasn't made any announcement about a change. Some of y'all would dogpile the guy before he could even break into the role.

[peachsyder]

Honestly I'm only disappointed people are saying the VA we had is trash because it sounds like a different actor. Not actually any critique on sound quality or skill, literally just "It's different so it sucks."

But then this is likely exactly why SE hasn't made any announcement about a change. Some of y'all would dogpile the guy before he could even break into the role.

I have yet to see anyone use the word "trash". Even so, people have every right to be disappointed with this change, even if "just" because it's different, considering it's a character that has been a major part of the story for nearly seven years now and Bailey happens to deliver an absolutely stellar performance that is the very reason many enjoy the character so much.

Like KiraRavens said before, seeing a character be changed into someone that feels completely different is not much better than seeing the character retired for good or killed off—in a lot of ways it's even worse. It's entirely understandable to see people have strong reactions to a potential recast like this.

In matters of proper critique, G'raha's voice lines in 7.4 lack the cadence and inflection that were so characteristic to him. His intonation is noticeably lispy, his accent is inconsistent, and the pitch of his voice is noticeably higher. Moreover, the voice just lacks the bassy tone and, for lack of a better descriptor, smokey-ness of Bailey's voice, and it is *fine* to be disappointed by that.

Glad you liked the performance, genuinely wish I could say the same, but defending SE's lack of respect for the players by making a hypothetical strawman that fans would "dogpile" a new VA is what's really unfair here. Replacing a 6+ year long voice actor of a major character with no announcement while intentionally obscuring the replacement (i.e. omitting G'raha's voice line in the trailer) is entirely unethical and disrespectful not just to players but to the voice actors themselves. Especially because they would never do this to a JP voice actor.