It really is pretty dumb considering how butthurt all the fans (myself included :P) were about SH2 not having the original VA. You'd think they would have learned and kept the original VA's for SH3 in tact as well rather than face yet another uproar about it.

Seriously, this thing has been going for months, is it really that hard to contact the actors and get this crap squared away?

I'd imagine it must be. Everybody has lives!

Well, I don't quite get the whole thing anyway. When you make a movie, whether you are in it or you lend your vocal talents to a character, YOU ARE in it. So basically for Pete's sake they extracted the original dialogue in exchange for new voices, when they could have just made a no frills transfer to HD, but no. They had to do that...

To what point?

Well with voice acting, the screen actors guild (Which pretty much anyone who is serious about VA'ing is a member of and the majority of big name companies only hire from) pretty much requires payment to be made to the VA's for each and every subsequent use of their voice. So if Joe Bob Jean records his voice for Resident Evil BioWarfare, he gets payed $100 let's say. Now Capcom decides to release Resident Evil Biowarfare FPS edition which is a new game using the assets of Biowafare. Joe Bob is entitled to another $100 or so if Capcom wants to use his voice overs again.

Basically anytime a 'new' version of something is made that uses the asset, the actor has to get payed for it.

So even though they recorded the lines for SH2/3 years and years ago, Konami isn't allowed to simply port it over and make money off of that port and jip the actors.

So they have the choice of tracking down all the old actors, paying them all off and getting them to agree to let Konami use their voice again, or just hire all brand new actors and re-record the lines. It was probably cheaper and more convenient for them to do the latter. However, obviously it created a huge fan backlash.

And considering all the backlash 2 received from it and the fact Konami went through the trouble to contact and pay off all of 2's actors to make fans happy, I really don't see why they didn't do the same for 3 because it was obviously only going to get the same amount of backlash.

The only way anyone can just port something without all of that red tape is if it was done with random in-house under the table kinda voice acting like when developers literally have family members or people in the office doing the lines which quite a few games have done before. If they weren't members of the SAG and didn't have any kind of contract prohibiting it, or had a contract that allows exclusive rights to the producers to take and use the material whenever, wherever, which a lot of older older games may have. But, yeah, most stuff is through SAG and there's strict rules to prevent VA's from getting shafted, much like the Writer's Guild of America does for Writers to prevent hollywood from buying a script for a $100 from some nobody and then making millions off of it and the writer getting jack.

Actually they kinda are allowed (although can be opposed), which is the whole point.

What you've stated is entirely true... just however in America. It is however not true in Japan, which is half of the issue as to why the problem exists. There is no guild or union (much like there aren't in most places in the world).

The actors for Silent Hill and Silent Hill 2 all did their work in Japan, and the work doesn't give them official rights unless they have a contract that said this was for a single release. There wasn't anything like this, and even according to some of the actors there was no contract at all.

Therefore the default rights applied to Konami to re-issue the game as much as they wanted. This was the issue Guy had problems with when he found out the game was ported to the XBox and PC and re-released on the PS2.

What brought it to a head as a real issue for Konami is actually something from Silent Hill 3, in that they reused Thessley Learner's voice from Silent Hill as a sample without her original knowledge. While she had no direct contact saying otherwise, the fact she didn't get a further payment meant she took some legal action and Konami ended up deciding it was easier just to pay and get it out of the way.

This is why Konami got very unsure about reusing any of the actors without getting the agreements and probably figured it was just cheaper overall to replace/recast all the work not expecting the fans would be too upset about it (however wrong that obviously was).

Maybe post links to where I can hear the new voice talents, cos I do not have a PS3.

So all the upcoming Silent Hill games all release in March in the USA, so Konami can get them out the door before the end of the FY2011-2012 (along with MGS3DS).

HD collection on March 6th, Downpour a week later on the 13th, and Book of Memories for the Vita on the 27th.

Seems like a bad idea to me to cram them all into one month, especially the HD set and Downpour because you'll split the sales. Don't expect high sales on them I'd say.

Yeah, Konami are being really stupid on this one. But my guess is either they aren't thinking or they're trying a new sales scheme to see if this will affect sales or not. Still, very risky business if you ask me. Downpour has a lot of potential, and the HD collection is also something that should be selling in massive quantities.

Anyone know if the HD collection has to be downloaded & installed to the system like the Biohazard Revival collection? (talking about the retail version, of course)

Just wanted to post this up....
Maybe just to be a braggart... maybe not...

Guy Cihi is a really cool, Down to Earth guy...