Granblue Fantasy Pauses Voiceover Recording due to Coronavirus

Players of the mobile game Granblue Fantasy will be in for a slightly more silent time. CyGames has announced it will temporarily suspend voiceover recording sessions in light of the ongoing COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. The announcement was made on the Granblue Fantasy official Twitter account, and a translated version was posted in the game itself. With over 12,000 positive cases of COVID-19, Japan is currently under a nationwide state of emergency. Social distancing and stay-at-home measures are being implemented, making it tougher to bring actors and staff to studios for recording sessions.

As such, in the interest of safety, some upcoming Granblue Fantasy content will feature pre-recorded generic voice clips in place of fully voice-acted lines. Cygames has promised that the placeholder clips will be replaced with proper voiceovers once circumstances are safer. 

Granblue Fantasy has over the years featured contributions from a vast swathe of Japan’s extensive voice actor community. Famous names like Miyuki Sawashiro (Katalina), Takahiro Sakurai (Lucio), Hikaru Midorikawa (Albert), and Nao Toyama (Lyria), Rie Kugimiya (Vyrn) and the late Keiji Fujiwara, who passed away on April 12, have voiced characters in the game. And that’s not counting multiple crossovers with properties like Street Fighter, The Idolm@ster, Detective Conan, and Attack on Titan, further expanding Granblue Fantasy‘s reach.

Cygames didn’t give a specific timetable for when full voice acting would make a return, but the currently running event features it. It’s a rerun of Granblue Fantasy‘s 2019 event 000: What Makes the Sky Blue III. The event features the angelic primarch characters, and was the last appearance of Belial and the Granblue Fantasy Versus character Chaos Bringer (aka Beelzebub).

Granblue Fantasy is available for Android and Apple iOS devices.