Recasting voice actors/actresses

After Frank West's voice actor was replaced by some no-name guy for absolutely no reason in Dead Rising 4, it made me think back to other times game companies would do this, like with Sam Fisher in Splinter Cell, David Hayter in MGSV, the original actors in the Silent Hill HD Collection, Claire Redfield in REvelations 2, and for games like Hitman Absolution and the Thief reboot. Why do they love this practice so much?

That's actually a good question. Wouldn't be easier to recycle the voices in the cases of remasters?

Absolution had a different VA?

I never followed the Hitman series so I don't know much, but I heard originally that the original actor was replaced early on. I don't know if they brought him back or not though.


Plus it wouldn't be that expensive to pay the original actors, would it? In DR4 they apparently replaced Frank with some dude called Victor Nosslo who apparently was an alias for Ty Olsson, and looking at his IMDB he's probably more expensive than just bringing back TJ Rotolo.

Maybe the original actors were pissed and didn't want to voice act anymore?

No, Bateson has been the Agent 47 in all games

Maybe David Hayter stopped caring at some point, but there are many actors who love their roles and probably would do it cheap.

Weird coming from a guy whose willing to take a paycut so they can bring everyone from MGS 1 to redo their lines for Twin Snakes.

Hayter got fired for not looking after his voice.
Kojima had a whole autistic fit and made half the cutscenes involving people telling snake to stop smoking.

They were planning to, but a shitstorm brewed over that considering Bateson could do 47 just fine, so to appease the fans they kept Bateson

He didn't stop caring. What happened was that Kojima was with Avi Arad, who recommended Jack Bauer to be Snake instead of Hayter. I think Kojima did this to get his foot in the door to work with Hollywood actors for future games. Look at all the high profile actors that are now appearing in Death Stranding. I don't think it's a coincidence. Hayter was a casualty so Kojima could get closer to his beloved movie industry. I don't feel too bad though since Hayter now worships at the altar of Anita, but it was a backstabbing move for someone who did give a shit about MGS enough to do things like

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His voice was starting to turn dogshite by MGS4, by Peace Walker, it became fucking laughable.

Wasn't he forced by the team to make his voice deeper like that?

That's what I keep hearing. He did some interview around the time Keifer was announced as Snake and sounded about MGS1-2, no gravel. I don't get why they wanted him to sound like that for PW, maybe to show how broken he was over the boss or something like that?

Kojima forced him to fucking audition again for PW, Kojima is a fucking westaboo with a fetish for voice acting, and there was really some respect lost between the two

Let's make no mistake here, Kiefer was an awful replacement that ate into the budget and added nothing to the game, but Hayter not only lost his touch but is a fucking asshole, there's a reason no one has said a word about it other than hayter and the fans, Kojima quite obviously realized what a fucking hassle working with a prima donna like hayer is.

It's entirely because of mocap

It's popular in the industry right now mostly because of Rockstar to do everything the actor says in mocap. It's why a lot of video game protagonists are often modelled after the voice actor

This was the stated reason as to why they got rid of Garrett's voice actor in Thief. Because they wanted the new guy to also do the mocap for the cutscenes.

With David Hayter it's a bit different since Kojima never really liked him. Hayter had to actually reaudition for every Metal Gear Solid game. In fact Kojima wanted to replace him with Kurt Russell when they were creating MGS3 but he didn't want to do it. Replacing him in MGS5 was a long time coming in Kojima's eyes, since he always wanted Snake to be played by a major Hollywood star.

At least Hayter is an actual fan of the series

He's the only voice actor in the franchise who has actually played the games he's been in to completion. The only other one who has done something similar is the guy who voiced Otacon saying he completed the original Metal Gear Solid.

Not only that Hayter had actual opinions on the series. Like he said his favorite gameplay moment was The End's fight in MGS3.

This is false. Kiefer is a part of an actor's union, who negotiate fixed rates for things like voice-over work, while Hayter isn't and wanted more shekels than what Kiefer ended up getting paid.
What's the matter, you didn't like Venom "Won't-Even-Respond-To-Direct-Yes-Or-No-Question" Snake?

Sam Fisher was changed in Blacklist because Ironside didn't like they took the character in so he left.

Claire sounded fine in Rev 2 so I really didn't give a shit.

How much do you want to bet Kojima will stick a knife in del Taco's back the second he gets a chance to work with Spielberg?

I can't and never will forgive Kojima.

If Spielberg doesn't die of old age or retire soon, everything. Del Taco isn't exactly the best director to have your back either, half the reason the Hobbit films sucked was due to him backing out at the last minute, fucking everything up. The other half was the studio. I wouldn't trust him after that.

will someone pull up the picture of gayter retweeting sarkeesian

Hayter's voice was fucking up anyway, I'm fine with them changing him for 5, its not like Kiefer's contribution was that huge anyway.

The funny thing about that is everyone was questioning for Blacklist why didn't they just put Sam in a mission control role and you played as a new Splinter Cell?

In the older frogware Sherlock games, Sherlock was voiced by some nerd with a slight wisp. They eventually replaced him and only him with a professional VA, who is 1000x 'better', but somehow lost all the charm in the process.

lisp*

Man, when it comes to making shitty decisions current year devs/publishers really put their backs into it.

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The hobbit films sucked because they took a 300 page book and turned it into three fucking movies. I don't know much about Del Toro but having enough sense to walk away from that catastrophe isn't a bad thing.

That's why I said the studio was responsible for the other half in that post. Del Taco shouldn't have signed on, he's been making movies long enough to know the studio was going to pull some shit after lotrs' success.

If I recall correctly they changed the VA of Ratchet from the first game to the next ones because they "developed" the character into something less irreverent

The halflings here won't stop sucking gayters dick.

TJ put a statement out on his facebook page saying that he was asked by Capcom, but because he was both a SAG-AFTRA actor and Stuntman (He does a lot of motion capture). He had to decline when they needed him for recording/Mocap because the strike action was out against all companies. By the time the final list was put out and Capcom wouldn't be targeted. The production was completed on DR4 so there was no chance of him being brought on at the end of the project.

There are many, many ways DR4 fucked up and was not the DR we wanted. But Frank's voice was pretty much a victim of circumstance. DR4 is getting a re-release at the end of this year for the PS4 version and Complete edition. So there might be a chance Capcom could bring him in and re-record everything with him. But I don't think it would save the game.

Hopefully if Frank is in MvC Infinite they have it sorted out, though.

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This one pisses me off the most, and I'm not even a huge SH fan. Konami was basically lazy in wanting to pay residuals to the original actors (which they had to since despite being English the the acting was done in Japan where contracts are negotiated differently and royalties are dispensed differently compared to US), so they used your ho-hum unionized LA actors phoning it in for the HD collection. And then best of all when fans asked why can't they just pay Guy Cihi his royalties, Mary McGlynn at a convention basically talked shit about him and saying he wasn't entitled to his cut.

Fast forward to today and you have Mary and these other washed up cunt actors pissing and moaning that they want muh money because muh hours and muh union

Hayter's tweet whining made me like him even less.

Anything with Ashly Burch in it should be burned to the ground and start over from scratch.

It's sad that the strike was the reason Rotolo couldn't return as Frank West when they probably planned it from the get-go. Ty Olsson probably would work as any other DR protagonist but not Frank West.


Oh man I forgot about Mary. Its insane how she claimed she "loved" Silent Hill but shit talked the original actors and was apparently "too chicken" to play them