PlatinumGames has confirmed that veteran Mass Effect voice actress Jennifer Hale is the English voice actress behind the Umbra Witch in Bayonetta 3, replacing series staple Hellena Taylor.
According to a report from Game Informer, Taylor hinted to fans on Twitter last year that she would not be reprising her roleas Bayonetta in the upcoming sequel, but couldn’t elaborate on the reason when asked as she was bound by a confidentiality agreement. Game director Yusuke Miyata said PlatinumGames held auditions to replace Taylor as the voice behind the titular character, and eventually offered the role to Hale.
“Various overlapping circumstances made it difficult for Hellena Taylor to reprise her role,” Miyata said. “We held auditions to cast the new voice of Bayonetta, and offered the role to Jennifer Hale, whom we felt was a good match for the character. I understand the concerns some fans have about the voice change at this point in the series, but Jennifer’s performance was way beyond what we could have imagined. I’m confident that her portrayal of Bayonetta will exceed fans’ expectations.”
Hale is the most prolific video game voice actor, earning the title from Guinness World Records in 2015. She’s most notable for voicing Commander Shepard in the original Mass Effect trilogy, but also voiced Samus in Metroid Prime, Naomi Hunter in Metal Gear Solid, Rosalind Lutese in BioShock Infinite, Bastila Shan in Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and more recently, Rivet in Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart. Based on her nearly 30 years of experience in the games industry, Hale sounds like the fitting choice to voice Bayonetta.
Bayonetta 3 releases October 27 on the Nintendo Switch.
Acer’s Predator Atlas 8 finally has a US release date and price, several months after the company first showed off the handheld in May. The highlight is the Intel Arc G3 Extreme chip inside, which has been adopted by only a couple of other consoles besides the Atlas 8. This version will go on sale exclusively at Best Buy on November 1 for $1,299.99.
Acer originally said the Atlas 8 would arrive in North America in October, but left pricing open at the time. The launch came amid the ongoing DRAM crunch, which has made memory more expensive across the PC industry and complicated pricing for hardware makers.
Gaming laptops and I have a complicated relationship. One of my first gaming rigs was an Acer Predator that was already outdated when I bought it. I was a broke college kid, and that was the best I could afford. So trying out high-end gaming laptops is always fun. But ASUS' ROG Zephyrus G14 is a lot more than a laptop that can run AAA games. It is portable, so you're not lugging around a 2.5kg machine everywhere you go. It is built well, none of that plastic chassis, and can even function as a normal laptop outside of just gaming.
Google Play is borrowing one of the Nintendo Switch’s most useful little tricks. A new Sidekick tool called Playbacks captures a short clip after something interesting has already happened, sparing players from running a screen recorder throughout an entire game.
Playbacks is part of Google Play Store v53.8 and keeps saved clips on the phone. Google first announced it earlier this month, but the new Play Store update marks its arrival for players. Anyone who has watched a perfect win vanish because the record button came too late already understands the appeal.