In April of this year, Troy Baker stated that hewouldn’t be returningto his role as Rhys fromBorderlands 3even though we witnessed the character would indeed be part of the cast during the trailer at the PAX East Gearbox panel leaving fans confused. This news then lead to a bit of a commotion which saw Gearbox CEO Randy Pitchford taking toTwitter in reply to a questionabout why Troy wasn’t returning to the much-loved character. âYouâll have to ask Troy,â Pitchford said. âI was told by the audio director that he turned it down.âPitchford continued to state that he didn’t think it mattered that much if Troy played Rhys and to play the game to find out âFortunately, with how Rhys appears in the game, I donât think it actually matters at all. Youâll see for yourself when the game comes out and you may disagree with me on that or not,â Pitchford explained.
After what seemed like a lifetime of drama, Troy had enough and said duringÂan interview withOnlySP âI said Iâd love to come back. They said I wasnât coming back. Their timeline tells an interesting story. I think itâs interesting that Randy Pitchford tweeted out that I turned it down and then said he heard that I turned it down. So maybeâ¦I would fact-check before I tweeted out to the internet.â If you think that it ends here, think again.
Kirk McKeand,Deputy Editor atVG 24/7, got the opportunity to talk with Troy Baker during a fan event forRetro Replaywhere they discussed the real reason why he didn’t come back to play the character of Rhys again inBorderlands 3.ÂâSo they came to me, and they were like, âDo you want to do this? which I said, âAbsolutely.â Baker expressed “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.â
With Kirk wanting to probe deeper to understand what he meant by this and if it was due to scheduling conflicts, Baker responded âNo, it was simply a matter of they wouldnât go union,â he replied. âAnd I canât 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. Iâve been waiting for this call. They were like, âDo you want to do this?â And I said, âYesâ. They never, because they would never move from that position. Iâm not mad. Itâs invariably a completely different character, but it still stings.â
Unionization in video games is a hot topic and rightly so. After years of studio closures, mass layoffs, and long, unpaid crunchtime like we’ve seen atRockStar, to name a few, it’s absolutely critical that companies within the gaming world come together tounionizeso this news by Troy is a surprising, if not an unfamiliar occurrence. We will, of course, bring you more on this story as it unfolds.
Borderlands 3Âis available now on Xbox One, PS4, andPC exclusively on the Epic Games Store.
Cover picture courtesy ofOSP
