Topic: Bayonetta 3 - Obligatory "Nintendo's Witch" Subject Edit

[Adrock]

Just a teaser, no release date. Probably 2019.

Bayonetta 1 and 2 bundle are also coming to Switch in February, only Bayonetta 2 is physical. I'm getting really tired of that. Yay Bayonetta. Boo/hiss split physical/digital release. I'd buy them separately if I could get both physical.

[azeke]

Excited.

There was 2 year delay between official announcement of Bayo 2 and it's release, so that should make Bayonetta 3 2019 release.

Yay!

[nickmitch]

Reminds me of the Metroid Prime 4 announcement.  I'll be excited to hear about this game again in 10 months.

Not even being sarcastic. I got enough Switch games to buy/play for a while.

[Luigi Dude]

I put over 100 hours into both Bayo 1 and 2 so my body is ready for another.  Keep the crazy enemy and weapon variety of 2, but make the combat more like 1.  Bayo 2 was great on the normal settings but Infinite Climax was bullshit since requiring Witch Time just to hurt the bosses and weakening Wicked Weaves made that mode way too cheap.  While in Bayo 1, Infinite Climax was the best part of the game since it really tested your skills but gave you so many ways to fight all the enemies and bosses. 

If they can combine the best aspects of both games then this is going to be insanely mind blowing. 

[Soren]

Pump this into my veins.

[Lemonade]

I need this. Its probably going to be a long wait though

[Enner]

Darn good get. Also, nice to see Platinum having a project lined up after Scalebound fell through.

[Stratos]

Pity I bought the dual pack on Wii U, I'd much rather have all three on Switch. It is still sitting unopened on my shelf, so maybe I can sell for a profit to fund getting all three on Switch. Hopefully we get physical versions of 1 & 2.

[BranDonk Kong]

Exchange it for store credit at Walmart or something...if yours still sells Wii U games.

[Adrock]

Time to finally dust this thread off

First Look at Bayonetta 3 Gameplay - Nintendo Switch

Yep, looks like Bayonetta which is exactly what I want.

Recasting Bayonetta is some darkest timeline ****. Helena Taylor is Bayonetta, you cowards.

[Luigi Dude]

Recasting Bayonetta is some darkest timeline ****. Helena Taylor is Bayonetta, you cowards.

I do wonder if maybe the game is dealing with alternate timelines itself?  The first teaser in 2017 made it look like the normal Bayonetta was killed now we get this Bayonetta who without spoiling the first game too much, looks like she might have grown up differently which is why her voice and personality could be different.

So maybe Helena Taylor could still be voicing Bayonetta but she needs to be saved by an alternate timeline one first?  I mean that wouldn't be that far out there considering what the story for the first 2 games did.

[Adrock]

Reposting this here as I plan on using this thread when Bayonetta 3 releases and not have to track down the Talkback thread:

I don't know enough about the voice acting industry, union vs non-union rates etc. to have an informed opinion on this. Per some cursory googling:

From Video Game Voice Actors: How Much Do They Get Paid?

Experienced video game voice actors will receive $200 to $350 an hour or $50 to $200 per 100 words for their video game voice acting work.

...

However, typically, video game voice actors will receive between $200 and $350 per hour, with a minimum of two to four hours guaranteed per job.

From the "Video Games / Toys, Games, & Mobile Game Apps" section on Global Voice Academy (I cleaned this up because the info is in a table on the website)

Video Games Non-union: $200-$350/hr (2 or 4 hour min)
Full Buyout Rate. Vocally stressful sessions should be limited to 2-hour sessions. Common per session rate you may see is $500 for 1hr max session.

Video Games Union: $825.50/session (up to 4hr session)
Vocally stressful sessions should be limited to 2-hour sessions.

Both websites above track with the rate mentioned in the article.

I couldn't find any info on whether Taylor is a union actress, but the offered rate appears to be on the low end of the non-union rate. Minimum, $4000 is 20 hours of work. I also don't have enough information regarding whether an entire character, especially the main, can be recorded in 20 hours or less.

From what I have gathered (which again, may be missing some critical info due to my limited knowledge on the subject), $4000 is insulting for an actress of Taylor's experience and pedigree who had voiced Bayonetta in four games and a movie. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate likely reused Taylor's recordings from For Wii U/3DS. I digress.

Nickel and diming gig industry workers is nothing new. I support Taylor breaking NDA to shine a spotlight on a problem that has persisted for decades. This likely blacklists her from voicing the character ever again and potentially from the voice acting industry as a whole. Not sure of the impact on her live action performances on stage and screen. Taylor's last credit on IMDB is from 2014. If you take low-ball offers, that will be the expectation moving forward. She may be struggling financially, but she'd be struggling with that $4000 so might as well fight the good fight.

My dilemma with boycotting Bayonetta 3 is that it punishes the actors (and everyone else) who worked on the game without actually doing the thing we want it to do: Tell Nintendo/PlatinumGames to treat their actors better. I fear the message conveyed will be "Oh, people don't want Bayonetta" which is total bullshit, but here we are.

Not sure who gets final say. Nintendo, as the publisher, foots the bill, but PlatinumGames may simply submit a budget over that Nintendo then approves/denies. Either way, PlatinumGames' statement that Taylor was unavailable is colossally fucked up in hindsight. Y'all just straight up lying to people now? It likely wasn't even that much considering how much money the game will make...

This is sad and bizarre. Sad because of such a dirt-ball offer for the main character in the third game. Bizarre because I can't imagine that freaking Jennifer Hale would take that pay. Then again, I don't know anything, so maybe Hale was okay with that pay and can knock out the job quick.

Jennifer Hale is a more prolific voice actor so I can't imagine she'd take a pay cut. I wonder if Nintendo/PlatinumGames was willing to pay Hale her asking price due to her industry standing but not Taylor (which would be gross).

EDIT: Included PlatinumGames in accountability.

[Adrock]

I've been following this (weird) story all day so here are some additional bits I've come across:

• Hellena Taylor is a union actress, and Bayonetta 3 would have been union work. Jennifer Hale is a SAG-AFTRA actress so she wouldn't have worked on this game had it been a non-union job. She literally went on strike over the compensation for voice work.
• There's speculation that Hale was cast as Fauxyonetta(s), and PlatinumGames wanted to bring Taylor back in a much smaller role as OG Bayonetta. This may explain the $4000 offer. The union rate for a single four-hour session is apparently $975 (according to a voice actor on The Twitter). If Taylor did one session for grunts, screams, one-liners, and a few lines of dialogue for cutscenes, she'd be paid over four times as much as she normally would.
• $975 (and change) is the union rate for a single four hour session of up to three characters.
• In an interview from 2018, Taylor stated she completed her work on Bayonetta 1 in 16 hours (four, four-hour sessions).

On that second note, it'd be hard for me to side with Taylor, if true. However, here's the part I don't understand: Why even cast Hale? Bayonetta, like Taylor, has a British accent. Taylor is British; Hale is not. Nintendo/PlatinumGames essentially would have paid a different actress (possibly a higher rate) to work harder than the one they already had. Just cast Taylor in the main role she's done for 13 years, FFS. Taylor is a seasoned actress (who by her account, passed the Bayonetta 3 audition and was offered the role). Ask her to adjust her voice for every multiverse Bayonetta. That's like the most basic skill for any actor...

[M.K.Ultra]

This whole thing has made me less excited to play the game. Like Adrock said, I don't that boycotting the game would really have the best effect. I am glad I did not order the special edition now, but I am not cancelling my pre-order. I think I will use the Japanese audio track like Luigi Dude said.

[BeautifulShy]

Hale tweeted this past afternoon about the situation.


https://twitter.com/jhaletweets/status/1582084319677644801

Basically she supported every actor's right to be paid well and she has advocated for this for years.
Respect for peers and she advocates for everyone within the voice acting community.
She is under an NDA but her reputation speaks for itself.
Keep in mind the game was created by a full team of hardworking people and keep an open mind about what they created.
She hopes that everyone involved resolves their differences  in an amicable and respectful way.

[lolmonade]

Pure speculation, but in my line of work, when a business doesn't want to outright reject our request but has no interest, they'll quote us a price that's incredibly out of bounds for what the material cost & labor being done.  My guess is that they didn't really want her, let her audition, then offered her that $4k that'd force her to decline. 

Not any less unsavory than other speculation, but just an educated guess about the inner workings of what actually happened in the process.

[Adrock]

We've reached the inevitable point where people scoured Hellena Taylor's social media and found some unfortunate personal views so now they're using that to rescind their pledge to boycott. Y'all didn't even have to get that far. And if you chose to boycott but were looking for reasons not to, the original choice seems performative.

We shouldn't make exceptions about things like worker pay because of someone's personal views. If we go down that road, it's so easy to find something. While someone may be a miserable piece of **** on their own time, they should still be offered fair pay for the work they do. Just because an entity can legally pay someone as little as possible, doesn't make it right. In my view, Taylor's original point about the treatment of voice actors stands. If people still want to call out her TERF nonsense, they should do so but, you know, separately. They're not mutually exclusive, and attempting to address them at the same time clouds the messaging.

Keep in mind the game was created by a full team of hardworking people and keep an open mind about what they created.

Yep. This is largely why I wasn't boycotting the game. The developers can get paid bonuses based on sales performance though I don't believe voice actors in the US get paid residuals for work in video games (which is ridiculous). The whole boycott became this weird trolley problem. Ultimately, it feels like there are no winners here.

My guess is that they didn't really want her, let her audition, then offered her that $4k that'd force her to decline.

It just seems so unnecessary. There's already an audition, a perfectly built in out if the producers didn't want to hire Taylor. And what if she accepted the offer? Would they feel stuck with an actor they didn't want?

I've spoken to enough gig industry workers to understand the prevailing attitude from clients is "Why pay someone more when I can pay them less?" so it's also possible PlatinumGames simply overplayed its hand. Kamiya gave Taylor a final offer instead of simply asking what she wanted to be paid.

[Luigi Dude]

We've reached the inevitable point where people scoured Hellena Taylor's social media and found some unfortunate personal views so now they're using that to rescind their pledge to boycott. Y'all didn't even have to do that. And if you chose to boycott but were looking for reasons not, the original choice seems performative.

We shouldn't make exceptions about things like worker pay because someone has certain personal views. While someone may be a miserable piece of **** on their own time, they should still be offered fair pay for the work they do. Just because an entity can legally pay someone as little as possible, doesn't make it right. In my view, Taylor's original point about the treatment of voice actors stands. If people still want to call out her TERF nonsense, they should do so but, you know, separately. They're not mutually exclusive, and attempting to address them at the same time clouds the messaging.

Yeah even though I was never going to boycott the game anyway, what people are doing now is just disgusting.  So because she has different political views, we can't even have a debate on this subject anymore, that's just terrible.  The Reset Era topic in particular shows how much of a joke that site it.  Here's a woman asking for something most liberals on that site were in favor of but as soon as it turns out she has some non-liberal views suddenly you can't even talk about it anymore or else you get banned.  Even people who weren't even defending her as a person but trying to still talk about this issue got banned.

It's like come on, people can walk and chew gum at the same time.  Talking about one issue doesn't mean you don't care about the other, it just means it has nothing to do with this particular issue.  Unless it's revealed that Platinum intentionally low-balled her because of her views on trans people, then these two issue's are separate things that need to be treated as such.

[Adrock]

Just putting this this here for posterity.

For anyone who is not going to click into the article, here are the important bits:

• Jason Schreier spoke to two people who asked not to be identified (which is normal).
• Claim #1: Platinum Games sought to hire Taylor for at least five sessions, each paying $3,000 to $4,000 for four hours in the studio.
• Claim #2: Taylor asked for a six-figure sum as well as residuals on the game which PlatinumGames declined.
• Claim #3: PlatinumGames then offered Taylor a cameo for one session which she also turned down.
• Schreier contacted Taylor by email who denied this account.

It's important to note that Schreier spoke to two people who were willing to corroborate each other's story. This is still one side's word against the other.

Taylor absolutely could be lying. This would be both stupid and hilarious considering how easy her account would be to disprove. Obviously, I'm pro-worker which is why I was more willing to side with the actor. I'm definitely more skeptical of her account than before. As stated earlier, I'm more than willing to hear different perspectives, and I reserve the right to change my opinion as more information is presented. I encourage others to do the same.

Also, it should be reiterated that it is still true that gig industry workers are frequently mistreated and given lowball offers. Regardless of who is lying, don't let that distract you from this fact. It has been known well before this story blew up.

Full Disclosure: If you're wondering why I'm so gung-ho about gig industry worker rights, I dated an arts writer, her father was a voice actor, and I've met numerous actors, directors, musicians, singers etc. etc. I've seen countless forms of clownery such as clients offering "exposure" in lieu of actual payment.

[Stratos]

Yeah there is more going on and I'm instinctively leaning away from Taylor because she jumped so wildly to a boycott. People should be paid properly, but sure sounds like there is more than just pay going on here.

[Adrock]

I pre-ordered Bayonetta 3 almost five years ago to lock in the 20% off new games promotion that Amazon has long since retired. Existing pre-orders were grandfathered in. I set the shipping address as my employer since I don't like having any small and expensive deliveries sitting outside my door while I'm at work. One pandemic later, and I'm driving to the office to pick up this game. Amazon requires you to cancel an order to change the shipping address. I wasn't going to do that out of principle; $12 is $12, yo.

Anyway, I'll probably boot this up later and play the intro. I'm committed to completing Spirit Tracks first.

Anyone else pick this up?

[M.K.Ultra]

I ordered through Best Buy and they can't seem to ever get on time deliveries with new games now. Unsurprisingly, my delivery date was pushed back to Sunday. I am hoping to finish Alien Isolation today and start Bayonetta Sunday (Bloody Sunday  )

[Kairon]

I pre-ordered Bayonetta 3 almost five years ago to lock in the 20% off new games promotion that Amazon has long since retired. Existing pre-orders were grandfathered in. I set the shipping address as my employer since I don't like having any small and expensive deliveries sitting outside my door while I'm at work. One pandemic later, and I'm driving to the office to pick up this game. Amazon requires you to cancel an order to change the shipping address. I wasn't going to do that out of principle; $12 is $12, yo.

Anyway, I'll probably boot this up later and play the intro. I'm committed to completing Spirit Tracks first.

Anyone else pick this up?

This was almost my absolute last Amazon 20% off new games promotion that I've been carrying for years! Ahhh... finally that "open order" screen can be empty once again.

[Mop it up]

Wait, the person who voiced Bayonetta was named Hellena? What a funny coincidence!