The original voice actor for the character Bayonetta, Hellena Taylor, has openly criticized series developer Platinum and publisher Nintendo about their “immoral” offer to reprise her role as the titular character in the upcoming Bayonetta 3 game.
Per a series of tweets from Hellena Taylor, in which she openly acknowledges that she’s breaking non-disclosures agreements by speaking on the issue, she alleges that her final offer to do the entire game was only $4000.
Taylor says the Bayonetta franchise has made approximately $450 million and doesn’t even include merchandise. She claims that the offer made was “an insult to me, the amount of time that I took to work on my talent, and everything that I have given to this game and the fans.”
Taylor urged fans of the series to boycott the third installment and to take instead the money they would have spent on the game and donate it to charity. Taylor said that she broke an NDA, “I’m not afraid of a non-disclosure agreement. I can’t even afford to run a car, what are they going to do, take my clothes? Good luck to them.”
Her comments have already drawn a response from PlatinumGames vice president and Bayonetta series creator Hideki Kamiya. “Sad and deplorable about the attitude of untruth,” Kamiya wrote on Twitter. “That’s what all I can tell now. By the way, BEWARE OF MY RULES.”
Just a week before Taylor’s comments, Kamiya confirmed in an interview with Game Informer that the role of the voice of Bayonetta had been offered to well-known voice actor Jennifer Hale. In that interview, Kamiya said that “various overlapping circumstances made it difficult for Hellena Taylor to reprise her role.”
In response to Taylor’s comments, Josh Sawyer, Studio Design Director at Obsidian, said that a $4K offer to voice the protagonist of an entire game is “absolutely nuts,” and has never heard of such a lowball offer from a studio of Platinum’s size.
