Thousands of Blizzard fans interested in the development of StarCraft 2 are up in arms over the developer's decision to change the voice actors of their two favourite characters from the original game. Even since it was first mentioned that the original actors might not return (at least not Robert Clotworthy, the voice of Jim Raynor), both critical and indifferent voices were raised by fans the StarCraft community, and the issue escalated slightly with the announcement that Blizzard started auditions for the voices of Jim Raynor and Sarah Kerrigan.


These auditions came as a bit of a surprise for Glynnis Talken, the voice of Sarah Kerigan, who had already been confirmed to be involved with further voice acting, and can actually be heard in the sneak peek cinematics recorded for StarCraft 2 pre-Alpha, shown below. More fans reacted, and fansite polls popped up.


As the time for the auditions came and went, it became clear that even though Robert and Glynnis had both expressed an interest in returning for StarCraft 2, neither of them would. Possibly too late to do anything about it, the fan reactions have now increased tenfold, with internet petitions, vocal reactions and polls on Blizzard's official forums, as well as more fansite reactions and even videos urging the community to ask Blizzard to bring back the original authors.


Even though many feel strongly about this issue, most of the fans have also clearly stated that it's not a "deal breaker": They will still buy and play StarCraft 2 even without their favourite actors, but they still want their favourite characters to sound the same. Fans with less interest in the actual story line don't care at all: StarCraft is primarily a multiplayer RTS game. In the end we'll just have to wait and see what Blizzard chooses to do.



This is Glynnis Talken voice acting Kerrigan in the BlizzCon sneak peek cinematic for StarCraft 2:

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