Prior to the release of Borderlands 3, there was much talk about Troy Baker not coming back to voice Rhys from Telltale’s Tales from the Borderlands as his character was to be featured within Gearbox’s long-awaited sequel. While the CEO of Gearbox, Randy Pitchford stated that Troy said he turned it down, the popular voice actor, and one of the creative minds behind Retro Replay, fired back on Twitter indicated that wasn’t the case.
At the fan event this past week, Troy Baker was asked by VG247.com about what actually happened that resulted in his Rhys character being recast. During the interview, Troy Baker said this:
“So they came to me, and they were like, ‘Do you want to do this?’,” Baker continued. “Which I said, ‘Absolutely.’ And then they made it impossible for me to do the role. It had nothing to do with money, it had nothing to do with money. They just simply would not go about doing it the way that we needed it to be done. So then it was like, I never said no.”
When asked for further clarification, he added:
“No, it was simply a matter of they wouldn’t go union, and I can’t do a non-union gig. And without getting too deep into the weeds of that, we had long conversations about this. We always knew going into it, that this was going to be the thing. They were going to take these characters, and put them from the Tales from the Borderlands series from Telltale, into Borderlands proper. I’ve been waiting for this call. They were like, ‘Do you want to do this?’ And I said, ‘Yes’. They never, because they would never move from that position. I’m not mad. It’s invariably a completely different character, but it still stings.”
While the replacement actor used for Rhys can often hit the voice well enough, there are large gaps where he just doesn’t do the character’s voice justice. It’s sad to see that Troy and Gearbox were not able to come together again, and thankfully Ashly Burch was able somehow to reprise her role as Tiny Tina, so that’s at least something,
For more information on all things Borderlands 3, check back with ASG soon.