Hyacine’s trailer points to Trailblazer VA change in Honkai: Star Rail

Honkai: Star Rail 3.3, which is set to be launched later today following its server maintenance period, might bring a controversial change: a replacement of Trailblazer’s voice actors.

In the trailer for upcoming character Hyacine, a male voice can be heard starting at 57 seconds, hysterically begging for Hyacine to come help him against Netherwing in Forgotten Hall, an endgame mode of HSR.

In contrast to Hyacine and Cipher’s voices, this one isn’t credited in the video description and it doesn’t sound like any of the characters we know. What’s more, the moment the voice appears in the trailer coincides with messages to Hyacine being displayed that come from a user called “Galactic Baseballer” with a trashcan avatar — a hallmark of the Trailblazer. This plus the meta nature of the comment about Forgotten Hall and the secrecy has led to fans believing that this might be the debut for the new voice of Caelus, as the male Trailblazer is called in canon.

In other languages, the character we hear at this point is indeed the male Trailblazer, though his – very much unchanged – VAs aren’t credited there either, providing arguments for and against the theory.

Everything shown in the trailer does point towards us hearing Caelus there, but it did not sound like Caleb Yen, his current VA — given that there is no official statement on the matter from any of the involved parties, that’s about all we can say for sure at the moment.

Both Caelus and Stelle have been mute for several months now due to the ongoing strike by SAG-AFTRA. Recording studios working with HoYoverse have been more aggressive about replacing voice actors who refuse to work this year, leading to swaps in Genshin Impact and Zenless Zone Zero.

Fans of HSR have both been scared and excited about similar measures. On the one hand, people love the original voices of the characters and would hate to see them replaced, but on the other hand it’s been very difficult to accept the undoubtedly worse playing experience with silent main characters, so having the Trailblazer voiced again – no matter by whom – has been on top of many people’s wishlists.

HoYoverse generally doesn’t make announcements regarding VA changes, but mentions them in an update’s patch notes whenever they happen, so we should have confirmation the moment HSR 3.3’s patch notes are posted.

More HSR on DBLTAP: