I made these playlists for myself but I hope they can be of help to somebody else! Sadly not all dates and ASMR's are on youtube, so some of the content is missing. Enjoy :) Also thanks to all the kind souls that uploaded the videos on yt <3
From the very recent change of the official character profiles, I predicted that they would introduce the new voices soon, but I didn't expect it to be this soon- what a surprise! But I'm super excited to share some thoughts on the new cast.
Kiro
Andrew Bates' voice as Kiro is quite fitting because as Kiro has a voice that's a tad higher than the rest of the guys, Bates' voice range and flexibility allow the execution of the little signature switches in tones that Kiro has, especially with the huskiness that we can hear that appears with his Helios persona. From the first line, I thought this was done really well, and it's nice to see that both men- previous VA Sean Chiplock and Andrew Bates are from Los Angeles, CA!
Lucien
The first impression that I got straight away was that his accent was slightly different from previous VA Bill Rogers' one. Anthony Hansen also comes from Los Angeles, while Rogers was born in New York. Hansen had to demonstrate a voice register much lower than his normal voice to fit Lucien's character. It's also much more softer-sounding, and I can't wait to hear more of Lucien's lines!
Gavin
Alan Adelberg did a fantastic job with Gavin's voice. It's a bit lower than previous VA Joe Zieja's voice, but I guess we can say that Gavin matured and now sounds like this!
Zieja had revealed that they don't listen to the Chinese dub before recording and additionally, when casting for the first time, the production crew don't know exactly what voices they're looking for. But in this case, the production crew probably did, and the new VAs may have used the old voice samples as a guide for the characters’ ideal voices to appeal to existing expectations from players. This could be said for why they may sound very similar in terms of character voice styles.
Victor
The one I was most excited about when the new crew got released! Eliah Mountjoy's sounds less deep at first than previous VAs, but it also gives a more 'natural' sound to his voice. His second line is lower-sounding, much closer to Victor's deep voice we are accustomed to.
Another point I want to stress again from a previous post is that the voices aren’t supposed to be an exact copy of the previous VAs, but to achieve the ideal voices in mind as they make up a lot of our perception of the characters. Old voice samples may have been beneficial in achieving this!
Overall, I am super excited for all of them to grow more comfortable in their character personality and voices in the future. They’re already doing a great job from the few lines we received from the PV!