Plus Konami revives SILENT HILL and Razer unveils it's own gaming handheld
NEWS THIS WEEK
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SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus, Daniel Ang & Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer. Thanks to Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER.
KYLE: Hi I’m Kyle Pauletto
ADAM: and I'm Adam Christou ,
KYLE: Welcome to Walkthrough, SIFTER’s weekly recap on the biggest news in video games.
ADAM: This week Bayonetta’s original voice actor calls for a boycott of Bayonetta 3, Silent Hill fans are treated to a heap of new game announcements, and Razer unveils their new handheld streaming console.
KYLE: Here is the news for Sunday 23rd of October. Let’s go
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KYLE: It surprised a lot of people that Bayonetta’s original voice actor Hellena Taylor wouldn’t be returning for the upcoming sequel, but this week Taylor took to twitter to explain why
"And I would like to explain to you why I didn't voice Bayonetta 3. The Bayonetta franchise made an approximated US$450million, that's not including merchandise." As an actor I trained for a total of seven and a half years, and what did they think this was worth? What did they offer to pay me? The final offer to do the whole game as a buyout, a flat fee was four thousand US dollars. This is an insult to me, the amount of time that I took to work on my talent, and everything that I've given to this game and the fans. I'm asking the fans to boycott this game, and instead spend the money you would have spent on this game donating it to charity."
It was a bit of a shock to hear that an actor who voiced such an iconic character would be offered such a low amount.
It incited a pretty big backlash against the developer Platinum Games and the new voice actor Jennifer Hale, but it turns out that wasn’t the full story.
Reporting from Jason Shreier at Bloomberg confirmed that Taylor was offered around three to four thousand US dollars for each recording session with around 4-5 sessions planned for the game which would bring her total fee to around $15,000US.
Taylor denies these claims.
Platinum Games issued a statement supporting Jennifer Hale and calling for an end to her harassment.
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ADAM: Fans of Silent Hill; rejoice! After years of silence from Konami, it looks like we’ll be returning to the beloved horror series in the not too distant future.
On Wednesday, Konami revealed their expansive plans for Silent Hill during a youtube presentation. Including a remake of the beloved ps2 game Silent Hill 2 and two more silent hill releases: Silent Hill Townfall and Silent Hill F.
There’ll also be a movie called ‘Return to Silent Hill’ and some sort of interactive live-stream narrative thing called ‘Silent Hill Ascension’.
Polish Devs Bloober Team are helming the Silent Hill 2 Remake, which has me breathing a sigh of relief.
Bloober team’s work on recent horror games The Medium and Blair Witch have cemented them as one of the best horror game developers out there and they’ll be working alongside core members of the original Silent Hill team: concept artist Masahiro Ito and composer Akira Yamaoka.
We’ll be sure to keep you in the loop of any more Silent Hill news as it develops.
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KYLE: Riot Games has announced their acquisition of Wargaming's Sydney Studio which will be called Riot Sydney.
Previously known as BigWorld, the studio was a major contributor to the development and infrastructure behind World of Tanks and other games under the Wargaming brand.
It's very likely these experienced devs will be lending their hand to Riot's highly anticipated League of Legends MMO as well as Riot's existing games so there's hope that one day League will have a functioning client! After closing their original Sydney offices and outsourcing the Oceanic Pro League to ESL back in 2020.
This comes as the latest move by the company to re-establish a presence in the region alongside the hiring of a new local community manager, a series of grassroots Valorant events and rumours of a major shakeup to the professional League of Legends circuit for Oceania and South East Asia.
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ADAM: Tech-company Razer has unveiled its new gaming handheld and it looks interesting.
It’s called the Razer Edge, has a 6.8” tablet, 144Hz AMOLED display, Snapdragon G3x G1 Processor and even a front facing camera for those who want to stream while gaming.
The handheld is designed to run android games - but this is really an emulation and streaming machine with support for Xbox Cloud Gaming, PS5 remote play and nvidia cloud streaming.
While the LTE variant of the Razer Edge doesn’t have a price tag just yet, the Razer Edge Wi-Fi version is set to cost roughly $643 Australian Dollars and will be out early 2023. That’s a lot of money, for what will primarily be a cloud streaming tablet - a very different product from what the steam deck and nintendo switch offer.
With the Steam Deck not available in Australia and Nintendo holding the monopoly on handhelds, it will be interesting to see how the Razer Edge performs.
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KYLE: Last week it was announced that the rebooted G4TV channel will be turning off its lights less than a year after it made a surprising return in 2021.
Chairman and CEO of Comcast Spectacor Dave Scott, broke the news last weekend in a memo citing low viewership and unsustainable financial results as the key reasons.
The announcement comes almost a month after a huge round of layoffs and departures within the company, and took many fans and even some employees by surprise.
ADAM: In fresh reporting from Nathan Grayson at the Washington Post, multiple former G4 staff members have alleged that a culture of mismanagement, high costs and lack of organisational direction led to the collapse of the company, with fingers pointed at squarely at Tucker Roberts - the son of billionaire comcast ceo Brian Roberts.
According to the allegations, Tucker was never in on set, was very hands off and constantly made last minute editorial decisions. It was even reported that Tucker had a large office that he had designed based around Emperor Palpatine’s throne room from the star wars films.
Yikes.
The Washington Post has also reported that the shuttering of G4 was so swift that several staff members were locked out of company Slack and Google Drive access with zero knowledge as to what was happening at the time.
Washington Post’s expose on G4 is a long and wild read, we’ve popped it in the show notes for you.
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KYLE: That’s it for news, here are the games arriving this week.
ADAM: Out on the 27th is Star Ocean: The Divine Force, the latest entry in the long running series of action RPGs. Divine force looks to a solid installment, with crisp visuals, a unique battle system and heaps of playable characters. Grab it on PC, Playstation four and five, Xbox Series S and X and Xbox one this Thursday.
KYLE: Also out this Thursday is Frog Detective 3: Corruption at Cowboy County by Aussie indie devs Worm Club. The Frog Detective series is just so much fun, and Corruption at Cowboy county brings the silly charm fans have come to expect. Pick it up on PC on the 27th.
ADAM: After eight years of waiting, and a couple weeks of controversy, the next instalment in the Bayonetta series will hit the shelves this week. Early reviews have been really positive, and it doesn’t look like voice actor concerns are going to stop this game being another hit for beat-em-up fans. It’s out on the 28th exclusive to the Switch.
KYLE: And finally, Call of Duty Modern Warfare two is out this Friday, and looks to be about what you expect from a new COD game. The campaign is already out and is looking great, Activision seem to have really stepped up their game with the visuals. Grab the full game on PC, Playstation four and five, Xbox series X and S, and Xbox One on the 28th.
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KYLE: This has been Walkthrough by Sifter, my name is Kyle Pauletto,
ADAM: And my name is Adam Christou, Thank you so much for listening.
KYLE: We know you love listening to SIFTER so if you’d like to support our work, we’ve got a Ko-Fi where you can contribute whatever our work is worth to you. Even a small amount makes a big difference to us. Head to sifter.com.au/support where even a couple of dollars makes a big difference and helps us keep making the shows you love.
ADAM: SIFTER is produced by Nicholas Kennedy, Kyle Pauletto, Fiona Bartholomaeus , Daniel Ang, Daniel Hynes and me! - Adam Christou. Mitch Loh is the Senior Producer and Gianni Di Giovanni is our Executive Producer.
KYLE: Thanks to Brian Fairbanks from Salty Dog Sounds for composing the Walkthrough theme tune.
ADAM: Thanks to both Audio Technica Australia and Omny Studio for their support of SIFTER’s three podcasts. Thanks again for listening, we’ll be back with more news next Sunday.
