Phantom Blade Zero Swaps Its Lead Voice at the Last Minute

Players who started Phantom Blade Zero this week may have heard a different voice behind the lead character. Game Informer reports that Roger Craig Smith, best known to many fans as the voice of Sonic the Hedgehog, now voices Soul, taking over from Jay Maksenuk, who previously voiced V in Once Human.

The recast appears to have happened late in the process. Game Informer noted that Maksenuk was replaced shortly after the review period began, and the game launched earlier this week with Smith in the role. Maksenuk's lines can still be heard in the trailers released before launch. Developer S-Game has not explained why it brought Smith in as a last-minute replacement.

Smith has a deep résumé of his own. Beyond Sonic and Batman, he has played Ezio Auditore across several Assassin's Creed games, voiced Daigo Dojima in Yakuza Kiwami 3, and played Alden Dorne in Call of Duty: Black Ops 7. Maksenuk also has several video game credits, so both performers come in with real experience. The swap is less about a performer's track record and more about the timing, which left the trailers and the final release sounding noticeably different.

The change lands during a strong launch. Phantom Blade Zero reached more than 730,000 concurrent players on Steam at the time of writing, and the soulslike-inspired action game is drawing plenty of attention. Anyone comparing the trailers to the finished game will hear the difference right away, so expect the casting switch to be a talking point among fans for a while.