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Bayonetta 3 (28th October)


Hero-of-Time

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10 hours ago, bob said:

Really? Another female character? More woke SJW political bullshit.

I know, right?

They should make Bayonetta into a man to balance it out. They could call him, I dunno… Dante! And rename the game into something more edgy, like, uhhhh… Devil May Cry.

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The skin and clothes look very plastic-ish, don't they? Shame that this game doesn't come out on the successor to the Switch, it could benefit from extra horse powers, it seems. 

Still looks fun, though. Will get it later on. 

Edited by MindFreak
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That looks sooo smooth, and very impressive for a Switch game! I actually really love how Viola looks and play. Going to be a good counter to Bayonetta and Jean. Also, what was with that scene with Jar-head Luca? Hopefully they'll implement more of the cast into the world in this way. Looks fun.

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Yeah, that's pretty disgusting. It really seems like they just wanted to hire someone else so offered her a pathetic amount knowing she would never accept it. 

I know voice actors aren't compensated as well as they should be but $4000 for the main role in a big franchise really is insultingly low - a slap in the face considering the excellent work Hellena has done in the previous games, I can totally understand why she's speaking up. Hopefully this makes Nintendo and Platinum rethink their behaviour in future but I can see it being more likely for them to pursue a legal case against her for breaking the NDA.

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Wait, in theory. Wouldn't Jennifer Hale, Bayo's new voice, command far more money due to being far more well known? I thought it was a MGSV situation when her replacement was revealed, but this is just odd.

Seems very bizarre to ditch someone because you didn't want to pay them anything more then peanuts, only to then hire someone more expensive.

Still sucks for Hellena, she was perfect in the first two games and Smash.

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That's really unfortunate... but I'd also be very surprised if Jennifer Hale was earning less than that; considering that she's much better known and generally commands a higher profile within the VA industry.  So I can't imagine that money was the sole deciding factor here (though it's very well known that non-celebrity VAs get paid absolutely shit money for non-Japanese language video game and anime voice work in general).

The whole situation really sucks all around though.  Nobody wins here.

Edited by Dcubed
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I think the biggest question here is how much time is spent on that job. 4k for a week, that's absolutely fine. A month? Seems a bit low. I don't know that, so I can't really comment on the story.

But Kamiya has also replied and that gives a bit more depth to the story. 

Though it is expected it seems that they didn't get along well. So the perhaps low pay could be a way to end a contract early or something. 

 

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Apparently its common in Japan that you can't just sack someone because that would be disrespectful so the practise instead is to force them out by offering them terms which they won't accept so that they can get who they want.

 

Still, it does blow the lid on the video game VA industry, especially on the triple A side. Its gotten other VAs talking, including the voice of Revail from Breath of the Wild who revealed some interesting facts about his voicework for Zelda:

 

 

You can get royalties for voicework in indie games but no triple A games, Sean made more money doing the former!

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It sucks that voiceover work doesn't get paid more but calling for a boycott of the game just because you personally didn't like the terms of your contract? Puhlease. And even worse...

"[Jeniffer Hale] has no right to say she is the voice of Bayonetta" ... err, yes she does. She literally is the voice of Bayonetta, along with yourself. Fictional characters can be portrayed by more than one person. It happens often.

"she has no right to sign merchandise as Bayonetta" :blank:

Back to the boycott, what about the hard working devs who spent 100x+ more hours working on the game and who may be entitled to bonuses based on sales numbers? Why should they suffer because you ludicrously call for a boycott?

Edited by Ronnie
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Bloomberg has another take on what happened.

https://www.resetera.com/threads/bloomberg-a-tense-pay-dispute-overshadows-nintendo’s-upcoming-bayonetta-3.644811/

Platinum is saying one thing and she is saying another. Someone is lying and unless this goes to court or a paper trail is found, then who knows what the hell has gone on behind closed doors.

Hilariously, apparently the preorders of the game have shot up since this fiasco started. It's had the opposite effect of what Hellena wanted.

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To be honest, a lot of this is painting Hellena Taylor in a bad light. Her attitude seemed somewhat overblown and if some tweets are to believe she is also a TERF, supporting stuff like Blue Lives Matter. The fact that she asked for a six figure salary? Yeah... no wonder they turned that down.

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Pasting this from Reddit, which made a lot of sense in my opinion:

Quote

Plenty of motivation. 

She lets ego get the best of her thinking she's some irreplaceable Hollywood A-lister and makes unreasonable demands. Company hires someone else. Fast forward to 2 weeks before release. Previews are glowing, fans excited, and suddenly she realizes she goofed- the series can AND WILL go on without her. She wasn't as indispensable as she thought. Now she wants retribution, and in a fit of rage uploads a series of videos spinning the facts in an attempt to sabotage the game.

No matter the outcome, this will only go bad for her future career as a VA, probably won't see many jobs with an attitude like this.

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She gets caught and goes from "Jennifer Hale has no right to say she is the voice of Bayonetta" to "I want to put this whole franchise behind me now".

I can see the game selling even greater numbers than it would have before all this started. 

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I hadn't watched Taylor's videos or read much beyond a brief overview when I posted my initial reaction so I wasn't aware of her comments about Jennifer Hale, which definitely seem out of line. I was mostly appalled because by how under valued voice actors have become, if the star of an established franchise is only offered $4k to voice an entire game (that seems a genuinely criminal rate thats against all union regulations), but I think the headlines were misleading - it seems as if the $4k may have been another form of compensation rather than her absolute take home pay but I'm not exactly an expert on voice acting contracts and I don't think we'll get much more detail on the matter considering all the NDA's people have to sign.

It definitely doesn't seem as black and white as it first seemed, and I think Jennifer Hale's statement about the matter was very respectful, Hellena Taylor's dubious social media activity certainly raises some red flags, but whatever transpired voice actors are certainly not as respected as much as they deserve to be and its an industry wide problem that needs to be rectified. 

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If it is indeed the case where Hellena Taylor asked for residuals? I can totally understand why Platinum turned her down.  Almost nobody actually earns residuals within the VG industry, and I'm talking about the developers themselves; forget VA!

Yes, VAs should earn residuals in an ideal world, but so should the developers themselves (much moreso in fact).  And if even the developers aren't getting any? There is no way that they're gonna be willing to give them to VAs.

And that's on top of what appears to be a pretty outrageous flat payment as well that is well above the norm for the industry? Yeah, I can totally understand the decision to go with someone else.

Edited by Dcubed
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She just stepped on her own foot:

It seems se was actually offered $15,000 for the lines, refused then got offered $4,000 to do some cameo lines, and refused that as well.

Again, this depends on how much work it takes to record the lines but $15,000 seems a much more reasonable amount.

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