TGL: So Troy, I have to ask you about Silent Hill 2 HD because it emerged a couple of days ago that you are taking over from Mr. Guy Cihi as the voice of leading character James Sunderland. The new voices and the decision to re-voice the original characters have ignited a lot of controversy among fans of the original game. Tell us a little about how you first got involved in the new HD version and what do you make of the controversy that surrounds the re-voicing of the characters?

TB: Well, we found out last year that Konami were going to be doing this HD release and we weren’t sure exactly how it would go down or if Konami was simply going to an HD treatment of the game or redo the voices. It was all in deliberation for a time. Then it just emerged really quickly that they were going to recast and use new voices and we didn’t really know why. They just decided that they were going to do this. So we didn’t know if they wanted us to just voice match or if they wanted us to do something different. For the tenth year anniversary, they wanted to do something different that was new. They told us that obviously they don’t want to change the story or the gameplay or anything else but that they just kind of want to give it a fresh face.

But the fact that he’s talking about residuals being in videogames shows you just how out of the loop he is because residuals don’t happen. They don’t exist. Don’t think for a second that I don’t wish that I had a fraction of a penny for every unit sold of Call of Duty: Black Ops or Modern Warfare 2 or Modern Warfare 3 that we’re finishing up right now. I would love to see that. But that’s not how the system works right now. So it’s not that Konami wasn’t willing to pay them, he (Guy) wanted residuals, he wanted non-existent money that he felt that he was owed. So Konami has no fault in this whatsoever. And they wanted to use him again. Guy was the one who was outspoken about it and said that unless this happens he wouldn’t do it, so he forced Konami’s hands. So if anybody wants to blame anybody for why they chose new voices, they can go back to the original James and he’s the one to blame.

The problem with Konami is that there were never any agreements for reuses of my performance. In fact… there aren’t any written agreements at all. It was an oversight on Konami’s part. Once Sony picked up the theatrical rights for the SH2 title, I guess Konami figured it would spark interest for a yet another re-release. So after many years of no contact, Konami asks me to sign a back-dated release. I said that I was open to discussing reuses of my performance. I never heard back from them. Instead of talking to me, Konami decided to create new voice tracks.