The reasoning behind replacing Jason Liebrecht is pathetic

[Baklavah]

Stop playing the woke politics game. No one cares. Grow a thicker skin. Since when did humanity become sensitive little children? Hell, even as a child I had tougher skin than these people.

Part of Lo Wang's charm was the way he was written. He was a dbag, he was racy and sexist. That was the point of his character. This "changing of established characters" nonsense needs to stop.

Thank you for killing Shadow Warrior's rough and hilarious exterior. Congrats on losing a customer. I know that doesn't mean much to you people, but it should.

[PootisMayo]

Humanity became sensitive little children because civility committed suicide. I didn't buy SW3 not only because of the VA change, but because of some of the negative reception on the gameplay I've been hearing about.

[Baklavah]

Originally posted by PootisMayo:

Humanity became sensitive little children because civility committed suicide. I didn't buy SW3 not only because of the VA change, but because of some of the negative reception on the gameplay I've been hearing about.

I've seen videos. It's extremely bland compared to SW 1 and 2.

*sigh* guess I'm putting this development studio on the blacklist, too.

[Zaxx]

I'm genuinely very interested in the reasons behind this stuff. I'm a cynical person, I think it can't be "we're very sorry that we gave the role of an asian character to a white person", like I'm pretty sure that publishers just have some market research or maybe a bunch of advisors who concluded that if you go "woke" you sell more copies.

The idea of that is just baffling to me, I'm actually very supportive of diversity in voice acting and I don't think that the new actor for Wang was a bad choice but you know what? I didn't buy the game and I bought SW2 on launch. Now I was very disappointed by SW2 but I absolutely believed everything they said about SW3 being a return to what the first game was and based on the reviews I've seen I absolutely believe that they succeeded... but still, I'm absolutely able to contain my excitement until a good sale.

I was thinking about why that is and yep, I kind of don't see this game as a "true sequel" because of the voice actor change and the rather obvious tonal shift, I don't get that sense of "brand continuity" that I had even with SW2. SW2 didn't play like a Shadow Warrior game but it looks like one and Jason Liebrecht's Wang was always a treaure to me, it was just such a good performance that it turned the honestly rather bad writing to gold. Somehow his portrayal of Wang still resembled the old Wang too, just without the blatant racism and sexism, his Wang was just fun. That's an aspect Mike Moh's portrayal loses a bit, it's still there but it feels watered down like some other elements of the game.

So yeah, overall I think that pointless changes like this lead to the audience losing some excitement, that leads to lost sales and then a franchise just dies. Whoever thought these changes would lead to more copies sold clearly didn't know anything and I just don't think this stuff is worth to kill long running franchises for.

The same happened with the remasters of the Telltale Sam & Max games where they changed the voice of a beloved character for similar reasons: the first season kinda sold okay even with the backlash but it was fairly noticeable that things should have gone better when compared to other high profile adventure game remasters, then the second season came and nobody bought it.

I actually can't come up with an example where a change that was made for diversity reasons didn't lead to at least that being a possible explanation for lost sales. I guess the solution is to just reboot or make new stuff that way instead of replacing something that was already established. And hey, this might actually lead to voice actors getting a bit more respect in a way, like it seems pretty obvious that there is a relation between the idea of a lead actor in a movie and the person who's voicing the starring character of a video game. They aren't easy to replace and people care more about that than what the engine is or who the lead designer is.

[Sugam]

look on the bright side. Woke is getting punished this month quite well. CNN+ and Disney just to name a few.

Its going to be a while still but just need to weather the storm and these woke studios/entities will get what they deserve eventually. In other words, go woke go broke. Just keep a hold of your wallet and morals compass as theirs is broken and eventually new studio's will come around to replace these garbage studio's/people.

[Tayzor Azul]

Originally posted by Baklavah:

Stop playing the woke politics game. No one cares. Grow a thicker skin. Since when did humanity become sensitive little children? Hell, even as a child I had tougher skin than these people.

Part of Lo Wang's charm was the way he was written. He was a dbag, he was racy and sexist. That was the point of his character. This "changing of established characters" nonsense needs to stop.

Thank you for killing Shadow Warrior's rough and hilarious exterior. Congrats on losing a customer. I know that doesn't mean much to you people, but it should.

Watch how they will bring the old voice actor back as DLC or make a big QoL update that adds in New Game + and a harder difficulty.

[Mister Torgue Flexington]

Originally posted by Tayzor Azul:

Originally posted by Baklavah:

Stop playing the woke politics game. No one cares. Grow a thicker skin. Since when did humanity become sensitive little children? Hell, even as a child I had tougher skin than these people.

Part of Lo Wang's charm was the way he was written. He was a dbag, he was racy and sexist. That was the point of his character. This "changing of established characters" nonsense needs to stop.

Thank you for killing Shadow Warrior's rough and hilarious exterior. Congrats on losing a customer. I know that doesn't mean much to you people, but it should.

Watch how they will bring the old voice actor back as DLC or make a big QoL update that adds in New Game + and a harder difficulty.

I wouldn't be a bit surprised if they actually did that

[Eon]

It's really weird because the new VA can do almost the same exact voice Jason Liebrecht could, as you can see in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he played Bruce Lee. The devs replaced him because they're all of a sudden worried about racial consistency between the character and the actor, which sure, whatever, but Shadow Warrior has always played up racial stereotypes, because it's fun. The biggest issue however is that the writing is terrible and the characters are dull. Forget racial consistency, how about character consistency? FWH really just decided to set themselves up for failure, makes no sense.

[Baklavah]

Originally posted by Eon:

It's really weird because the new VA can do almost the same exact voice Jason Liebrecht could, as you can see in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he played Bruce Lee. The devs replaced him because they're all of a sudden worried about racial consistency between the character and the actor, which sure, whatever, but Shadow Warrior has always played up racial stereotypes, because it's fun. The biggest issue however is that the writing is terrible and the characters are dull. Forget racial consistency, how about character consistency? FWH really just decided to set themselves up for failure, makes no sense.

Everyone's GOTTA be "woke" these days in one fashion or another. Whatever. They're saving me money.

[PootisMayo]

Originally posted by Baklavah:

Originally posted by Eon:

It's really weird because the new VA can do almost the same exact voice Jason Liebrecht could, as you can see in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he played Bruce Lee. The devs replaced him because they're all of a sudden worried about racial consistency between the character and the actor, which sure, whatever, but Shadow Warrior has always played up racial stereotypes, because it's fun. The biggest issue however is that the writing is terrible and the characters are dull. Forget racial consistency, how about character consistency? FWH really just decided to set themselves up for failure, makes no sense.

Everyone's GOTTA be "woke" these days in one fashion or another. Whatever. They're saving me money.

Yeah, first Ion Fury and now this game.

Edit: I wanted to mention Serious Sam 4, but to me that seemed dumber in comparison.

[Mister Torgue Flexington]

Originally posted by Eon:

It's really weird because the new VA can do almost the same exact voice Jason Liebrecht could, as you can see in Once Upon a Time in Hollywood when he played Bruce Lee. The devs replaced him because they're all of a sudden worried about racial consistency between the character and the actor, which sure, whatever, but Shadow Warrior has always played up racial stereotypes, because it's fun. The biggest issue however is that the writing is terrible and the characters are dull. Forget racial consistency, how about character consistency? FWH really just decided to set themselves up for failure, makes no sense.

which is a shame, because I really wanted to get this game if Jason had stayed on and not gotten replaced the way he did

[jV]

stop calling it woke. just call it racism. that's what it is

[PootisMayo]

Let’s ban the word “woke” already.

[Visceral]

It was a stupid decision and they're now reaping what they sow because of it. People are finally waking up and getting tired of this bull$hit as it bleeds so much now into our shows, movies, video games and even life. Adhering to this mental disorder is just baffling to me and I hope their reputation suffered as well as their total sold units. Maybe they'll realize how utterly insane their decision was to drop the original VA and learn from this while their foot is in their mouth.

Only time will tell, I guess...

[Baklavah]

Originally posted by Feed Me-Unruly22:

stop calling it woke. just call it racism. that's what it is

I'm just using their own jargon. But yes, it is racism.

Originally posted by PootisMayo:

Let’s ban the word “woke” already.

Agreed.

Originally posted by Visceral:

It was a stupid decision and they're now reaping what they sow because of it. People are finally waking up and getting tired of this bull$hit as it bleeds so much now into our shows, movies, video games and even life. Adhering to this mental disorder is just baffling to me and I hope their reputation suffered as well as their total sold units. Maybe they'll realize how utterly insane their decision was to drop the original VA and learn from this while their foot is in their mouth.

Only time will tell, I guess...

Whatever they thought was going to happen has clearly gone in the other direction. tbh, I have no sympathy for them.

[Zaxx]

Originally posted by Feed Me-Unruly22:

stop calling it woke. just call it racism. that's what it is

It's not racism though. Every developer can decide on what they base their casting decision around and hiring an asian actor for an asian character is not racial bias. Sure, you can argue that it's racist to replace a white actor because he doesn't fit the race of the protagonist but racism would be "we hate white people so we'll replace the guy".

I don't like the word "woke" either but I think using it is the best way to express what happened. Or let's just say "dumb", that word works in any context. :D