Fire Emblem: Three Houses Update Replaces Byleth's Male Voice Actor

This is all so stupid. Scrubbing someone's existence out of everything they're ever worked on... absolutely ridiculous.

Being a jerk to others and breaking NDA agreements can have serious consequences that can endanger your present and future job opportunities. Who would have thought?

Oh so the additional difficulty is just a small footnote huh, almost missed that. That's the update I've been waiting for, the standard hard difficulty is WAY too easy for anyone with prior experience in the series.

I don't know the all the details on this man's past, but it seems like he's admitted it himself. First step is better than no step, I guess.

But my 2 cents: Re-doing all the voice work is a little extreme, but it's not my money, AND I've played female Byleth for 2 out of 3 save files lol.

I get why they recast, but I feel like they should've made the replacement an optional download instead of forcing it on everyone. Let the player decide which voice to hear.

[edit] This update actually concerns A LOT MORE than just the voice actor issues and I am actually kind of annoyed that NintendoLife focused on the drama and left the update details to Nintendo's website.
[edit2] never mind, they did make a separate post about the full update later on.

Given what I have heard of what this man did, I absolutely agree with punishing him harshly. But I don't like the idea of scrubbing people from things they worked on. Terrible people have made useful things all throughout history. From ground breaking to mundane. I think it's okay to acknowledge that people are not all bad or all good.

All that said - Byleth basically doesn't speak throughout the entire game. Only the voice clips from battle sequences.

Also as far as I am concerned, female Byleth is canon. (Or she is in my head canon anyway.) I actually really dislike the male design. And from a story perspective, I just feel like Byleth being a girl makes more sense. But I know male Byleth has at least some fans too and that's fine, I suppose.

Kinda makes me want to get a physical copy so I have the option to use the original voice acting.

In before the new guy is discovered to have allegedly done something bad in the past.

I think Chris did the right thing by finally admitting to the awful things he did, and I think he very well could turn things around and be better.

Nintendo is just reacting how any big company would here, and they really should. I hope people aren't reading this as "censorship" or anything.

@Heavyarms55 I would imagine a lot of males would not be comfortable flirting (to a light degree) with a male character in some support dialogues as female Byleth. Plus most of the S support dialogues for females would be gone.

@Heavyarms55 I'd be way more inclined to play male byleth in a route if the game had more (better) m/m romance options, I think. Otherwise, female Byleth just...works better. (And is also CANONICALLY a big lesbian.)

Man this is going to feel weird

Welp, what's done is done!

Still no update to fix the small text that no one can read, they can re-record a whole new series of voice but can’t enlarge text that every review complains about, wow!

Don’t matter to me, I’ll still enjoy the game the same(when I get back to it.. too deep into astral chain).

I actually much prefer the new voice actor. He sounds younger but much less flat.

Eh, I'll update when my current playthrough is done. I'll enjoy this small slice of Lost Media pie while I can, then try out the new guy in my next playthrough...

I don't think I'll update beyond 1.0.1.

Oh cool, new difficulty.

@SleepyShivers Oh trust me, I only refrained from mentioning that because of spoilers! BylethXEdelgard and that route is, in my opinion, the closest thing we have to a true ending!

@ReWane That's understandable, but I consider the above spoiler to be a big part of why I prefer the female route and consider it my head canon.

Reminds me of the Stalin days where photographs had people edited out of them after they were purged.

@SleepyShivers why do you care?

He was pretty good, geez how dumb is this.

@Trajan
I completely agree. This is horrible.

I'm like 30h into the game, but honestly I haven't heard a single line coming out of the main character... What are they replacing, silence?

Gees, I really hope my current employer never finds out that I once said something really mean to a close friend in highschool.

This is nothing new for Nintendo, what with the whole Mike Tyson thing back in the day, but actively reconfiguring a game you already sold people throuh a patch?

I'd be upset if this kind of update wasn't fully optional in a game I had bought. Rewriting the past is one thing, but this is dragging established players that might not know or care into it, and forcing them to adopt your position.

Probably done in an hour or so since byleth is practically a blank canvas that doesn't speak. More drastic was as Sega completely remodelled and redubbed a Japanese actor from Judgment because he did some coke.

@mateq Byleth speaks during the fights. For example, when female Byleth gets a bad level up she says "I'm not setting a very good example" and the line is voiced.

@Sac_instead I will just repeat the same here. Text is way too small and the font is very thin and almost caligraphic which makes reading even harder from afar.

Sure tempts you to quip that the game did its best not to launch with this frankly sad and shameful change on board, although it probably wouldn't work if I assume the Japanese patch also bricked things back then. RIP original FETH dub direction, 2018-2018. No, it's not as "impactful" as the Judgment crisis in Japan, but messed up still.

And yes, breaking NDAs is serious business with serious consequences. But normally for the industry members involved, not for the complete fiction work at hand.

At least the guy admitted it, unlike Vic Mignogna who has done tons of anime voice overs and some game work. Is there really much point trying to punish him in such a silly way? He clearly already got paid from the job, anyway.

But how does he sound though? Maybe a before and after video? Hmm?

A lot of you seem to think he just out of the blue admitted to being a horrible person, and that he wasn’t ousted by an ex-girlfriend’s blog that was corroborated by others. Yeah, what a hero. I feel so badly that his work was cut from a high profile project, woe is him. The easy dismissal of such behavior is abhorrent.

I don't recall male Byleth saying anything in the game, aside from maybe some grunts or other noises in battle. Isn't he mostly mute just like Link?

@King-X
"This is even more extreme than when they removed a few meme lines from the Mor Ardain soldiers in Xenoblade Chronicles 2 for no real reason."
Meme lines? What were they? First I've heard of lines being changed in XC2. They still sound like idiots when you beat them senseless anyways, lol.

So the moral here is: don’t admit your mistakes, don’t apologise, don’t try to be a better person. Um ok, seems like a misguided punishment.

And for the record, I’ve not been great with everyone in my past, and have certainly been sub-par as a person in relationships, but I matured and learnt from my failings

The only difference between this and Kevin Spacey being fires from All The Money In The World is that this has already launched. People need to see that actions such as abusive behaviour and breaking NDAs has serious consequences so there’s always going to be extreme punishments, to set an example.

@JayJ and never update it at all(by disabling auto-updates).

@Retron Well looks like somebody has to drag Polanski's keister back to the US if he is to face justice.
P.S.: One of those somebodies is not going to be me or you.

@Heavyarms55 she's NOT canon at all any gender is canon from every player preference there's alot that play male not only to play as their gender but the many romance options available for them (myself included)....also "dislike the design?!, other make sense?!" definitely YOUR opinion which is definitely unpopular but what are you on?!....

Just to put some perspective on things for people who don't want to read all the details for themselves, this is NOT some guy who one time said a mean thing to a coworker, and it's not unproven allegations, and he didn't step forward and confess under his own free will. He literally confesses to being a serial abuser towards multiple women and hints in one place that he may have sexually coerced at least one of them. And he only admitted all these things after one of his victims made it public knowledge.

This is not a guy with a couple of minor character flaws or a man who lost his temper once. This is not a dude heroically trying to make amends of his own free will. This guy systematically wrecked people's lives for years, and didn't do a single thing to make things better until he was publicly called out.

Those are the facts.

@Heavyarms55 your the only one starting something which has nothing to do with the main topic at hand you stated an opinion which isn't popular and all I did was state a fact no one was "triggered" here.....

A Brave New World where moral liberal purity is paramount, and anything less is memory holed. To be clear, I liked Byleth's voice. How so many people haven't heard it after playing the game for hours is really peculiar to me - have they never leveled him up or scored a critical hit?

I'll give the new VA a fair shot.

@mateq only level up/when you battle really xD

@AlternateButtons I mean you would have a point... if he didn't violate the an NDA. That's got serious consequences.

@Bondi_Surfer I mean if that's all he did I would be more in support of him.

@shinesprites Nobody is defending the actions of whatever this guy did or didn't do. Even as far as breaking NDAs. Arrest him, fire him, eviscerate him in a public square and hang his intestines upon the lampposts for the crows to eat for 100 days. I really don't care.

Nothing he could have done is more dangerous than the precedent being set by this. Individuals can do bad things. Individuals can be caught, or not. Individuals can be punished, or not. But absolutely nothing can fix an accepted standard where the establishment can declare someone an un-person, to borrow Orwell's term which was simply applied to existing Soviet policy, based on either the person's actions, or simply "sedition" and it's blank canvas meaning toward unacceptable positions to the establishment - in the modern landscape, having a public opinion contrary to the acceptably defined standard - and quite literally erase them and all they have accomplished or contributed as though they never existed at all.

An abusive person can abuse someone. They can hurt someone. They can even kill someone. They can be reported. They can be caught. They can be punished.

A system of corporations and governments with such an accepted policy can erase you from having ever existed at all - the world they tell you existed, is the only world that ever existed, even if a different one existed before. They can create truth from air and reality from fiction. And they can enforce it's acceptance by force. They can not be reported, caught or punished short of violent revolt and overthrow, presumably with death tolls in the hundreds of millions.

It may be natural to want to delete bad people from reality....but are you truly sure you actually want to create an environment in which a faceless bureaucracy actually has the power to do so for reasons of their own desire? They can erase your abuser from existence, but not from your own memory. And they can also erase you from having ever existed should you ever displease them knowingly or otherwise. And nobody will defend you. Because we'll all know you never existed at all.

I mean- Niosi still exists. He hasn't been banished to the phantom zone. He just doesn't get to be the main voice in one of Nintendo's biggest games right now. Nintendo would rather not be associated with him, and I can't say I blame them. If they need to record any additional lines for Byleth or feature him/her in any future games, they're sure not gonna call him back in to do the recording now, so better to head it off at the pass and rerecord.

@King-X
This....
This is beautiful!
Why would they remove something like this?
How'd it get past QA if they didn't like it?
Man, I missed out.
Wondered why they kept yelling 'Don't forget!'
But at least we still have 'Behave!'
As well as their wincing.

@Pak-Man The problem, as is the problem with a lot of things today, is that what technology allows is altering the past. That's a slippery slope into a danger beyond compare.

It's not a question of "Nintendo doesn't want someone with a questionable history to continue representing a main character in a major franchise." That's not a problem. End his contract. Never have him record lines for DLC, sequels, spinoffs. Fine. That makes sense.

But here were talking about actively editing the past so that he never recorded it at all. It's someone else there. The existing work is actively deleted for everyone that bought it and a replacement work is inserted as though it was there all along.

If a columnist in Time magazine turns out he was a murderer in the past, they don't go around confiscating every magazine ever printed, cut out any pages with his columns, and replacing it with alternate pages.

For that matter, Mein Kampf didn't suddenly vanish from existence simply because it was (ghost) penned by Hitler. In fact that kind of vanishing of the past is precisely the things he himself did that would be terrible to emulate.

It's the erasure of past works that is extremely extremely worrisome about this. Are they going to recall all movies Kevin Spacey was previously in and use modern technology to edit him out of them and replace them with another actor superimposed to "correct" the past? Or simply stop all circulation of all those movies?

We - WE - need to be the ones monitoring how technology and what it allows is used and what it's implications are. The ability to edit the past, and edit people out of the actions they performed is an obvious absolute line in the sand WE have to ensure is drawn. That isn't acceptable. It's not about what this guy did or didn't do. It's not about punishing him or having him represent a company. It's that there is no place in our society to retroactively edit people out of their work because it's been decided they do not warrant to be in it after the fact. The long term implications of that being considered acceptable are utterly horrific and a recall to the very worst elements of the mid 20th century, enabled now by technology they only dreamed of back then.

@nimnio Not at all. You can't compartmentalize it to just "oh it's just a video game, it's just a few lines" - you have to think broader of what exactly it is, what precedent it sets, what the broader societal effect is if it's allowed in any small doses. Not sure about CA, but US law operates on "case law" - which is to say previous precedents determine future rulings unless challenged explicitly (which is always an uphill battle.) At some point in the future when "removing a person" from their own past works, for whatever reason can come into scrutiny this can be used as a non-legal precedent to assist in ruling. From there it becomes legal precedent in future rulings. Those that would shape our society for us tend to use that to dip a little toe in here and there into what otherwise would be controversial, limit backlash by saying "oh it was only this one specific thing" knowing over time that grows into an established norm and eventually legal precedent. With that system, if you don't say "no" and challenge the little incidents, like a few video game lines, you effectively forfeit the ability to say "no" and challenge bigger things.

Technology now allows editing people's actions out of the past. that is VERY dangerous to allow. Business may not be governments, but in our semi fascist system, business and government are fare more connected than citizenry and government and both operate as establishment over the population.

Again, punishment, even financial reparations, are one thing. Editing the past....removing people's prior work....that crosses a horrifying line. And I'm very sad to see Nintendo be the first case I've heard of to attempt to do so. Fueled by the lawyers no doubt, but still disheartening.

I really don't like this, I quite liked some of his critical lines. Just because someone did something bad doesn't mean they should be nuked from everything they did. It concerns me because this is an edit being literally forced upon us, and I fear it will set a precedent where any modern media can get a drastic change because someone was not a very nice person at some point in their lives. I get that the guy did some terrible stuff, but still. I just don't know about this. What happens if Charles Martinet admits to being an abuser of some kind later on, is Nintendo going to go back and start patching his voice of every game they can? It's just weird to me to handle the situation this way, but whatever.

@NEStalgia So you don't care if we set a principle of eviscerating people or hanging their guts, but god forbid we change a voice actor? I liked the original voice better but it's not a game breaking change or anything. And Nintendo is fully within their rights to change their own product. Just because we pay to play it doesn't mean we necessarily own or control every aspect of it.

@Blainely123 Lol okay dude, whatever you say. Remember, you replied to my comment, I didn't single you out.

@King-X DON'T FORGET ME!

@NEStalgia I agree with your objection. Terrible people are everywhere - they might build monuments, become political leaders or discover diseases. We should call these people out and hold them accountable. What we shouldn't do is retrospectively erase their work. There's nothing wrong with saying: "Hey, you know that guy who voiced Byleth? Apparently was a terrible person", or "Hey, nice car. Did you know Henry Ford was a raging anti-Semite?", or "I see you're born in July. Julius Caesar was a brutal dictator, wasn't he?". We should keep the work and learn from it. The only caveat I could accept here was if the planned FE3H DLC required more voice acting and mixing the voice-work within game was undesirable.

@NEStalgia I agree to a point. If something came out about Charles Martinet and they went back and redid every Mario game ever made, that would be problematic. Fire Emblem is a game that's still in development. (Yeah, it's released, but these days games are still actively being worked on until the last patch rolls out.) I don't have a problem with them changing this game because it's not "done" yet and there are still further changes that will need to be made.

@Aquamine-Amarine I'm with you there, personal matters and professional matters are two separate things.

I don't see the professor glasses anywhere, is it accessible later on in the game or what??

im confused, isnt the first VA breaking the NDA another key aspect to getting replaced? cause that seems reasonable for a replacement, he broke the contract