The voice of the character Barbara from Genshin Impact has received an adjustment. However, this was not well received by many fans, leading them to harass the voice actress.
This is what happened: Since February 3rd, Genshin Impact has had Update 1.3 active. It brought fresh content like the new character Xiao, the photo event, and the buff of the character Zhongli.
However, there was a change that was not well received by a part of the fans. The healer character Barbara has a different voice in the English version of Genshin Impact.
Laura Stahl remains the voice actress, but she received different directive instructions during the recordings. Therefore, her voice for Barbara sounds different than what fans were used to.
“Like a grandma at Bingo night”
These are reactions on reddit: In several large reddit threads, the change in Barbara’s voice was discussed in detail. In one thread (9284 Upvotes), the user angrybob16 made a video comparing the two versions of the voice side by side.
Many of the comments in the thread expressed that they do not like the new change. They miss the lively and cute way of the old voice of Barbara and feel that she now sounds tired and drained.
You don’t realize how much you’ll miss something until it’s gone.
reddit user jarell108 (4093 Upvotes)
No! My Barbara!
The voice of the old Barbara is rough, but energetic, and I find that it’s the rough voice that makes her so charming […]
The new Barbara is just a typical quiet Moe anime girl. It’s just… unremarkable? Boring? […]
reddit user Nameless497 (1067 Upvotes)
One of the players addressed the developer miHoYo in his thread and even compared Barbara’s new voice to “a grandma at Bingo night.”
The voice actress speaks out on Twitter
This is what the voice actress says: After the change, voice actress Laura Stahl spoke out on Twitter. In a tweet, she asked fans to leave her alone, as she apparently received many requests for her to revert the voice change.
She wrote:
I can’t ask them [miHoYo] to change it [the voice] back.
I don’t know why the change was made. And if I had known, I couldn’t have revealed it.
Please just enjoy the game and stop asking me.
Thank you.
While Stahl did not say what kind of messages she received from the upset fans. So whether there were insults or even death threats, as was the case with the actor of Spider-Man. However, there were obviously enough messages that she felt compelled to release an official statement regarding this.
Subsequently, there was also a call in the official Genshin Impact reddit forum for players not to harass the voice actress. Another part of the players defended the actress and explained that she has no influence over the directive decisions and that it’s not her fault that the change occurred.
What do you think of the adjustment of Barbara’s voice? Which of the two versions do you like more? Or do you use a different language setting? Let us know in the comments.
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