Way back in 2022, there was quite a controversy going on around Bayonetta 3 and the loss of voice actor Hellena Taylor in the leading role. After voicing the titular Bayonetta in the first two entries, she was no longer featured in the third game, instead being replaced entirely by Jennifer Hale voicing gaming’s most iconic witch. Many felt that Nintendo were being unfair to Taylor, with her explicitly calling for a boycott before launch, but then the situation got clearer and truths were brought to light.
Taylor initially claimed she was offered only $4,000 for the lead role, which was revealed to be untrue – she instead was offered a minimum of $15,00 for the leading role and the $4,000 offer was for a single cameo appearance. This soured many fans opinions on Taylor as a voice actress, and the controversy also affected some of the hype for Bayonetta 3 as the game was building up to its October launch. Despite being relatively tight-lipped at the time, the creator and director of the Bayonetta franchise Hideki Kamiya has now spoken about his feelings during the scandal.
On his YouTube channel where he responds to social media comments, today he chose to discuss the Bayonetta 3 situation in hindsight. To briefly cover his extensive response, he says that he was overwhelmed by the negativity that was targeted towards him, especially over something that wasn’t true. As we reported at the time, this even led him to deactivate his account at one point.
He talks about how even famous people known in the industry targeted him over Taylor’s lies, and never apologized afterwards, despite catching some of them deleting their posts once the truth was revealed. He feels these people should’ve owned up to that mistake, and still feels disappointed to this day that they didn’t own up to the fact they were wrong – to sum it up in his own words, “that’s some real coward sh*t”.
You can check out Kamiya’s fully dubbed and subtitled response for yourself over on his YouTube channel. How do you feel about how the Bayonetta 3 voice acting situation was handled across social media? Let us know your thoughts in the comments down below, and keep your eyes on GameLuster for more breaking gaming news.
