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Akali, one of League of Legends' most popular champions, had a brand new voiceover (VO) along with the announcement of her Star Guardian skin. Ashly Burch, the new voice actress for Akali, is quite popular on the scene.
Originally, she was only supposed to provide a voiceover for Akali's Star Guardian skin, but Riot Games also decided to extend the change to her base skin in the PBE (Public Beta Environment). As expected, fans did not enjoy it, so the developers have decided to revert the voiceover of base Akali to the original version by Krizia Bajos.
In any case, the Star Guardian skin's voiceover will retain Ashly Burch's version as was originally intended. It is unknown, though, whether Akali's base version will ever get Ashly Burch's version of the voiceline or not in the future.
League of Legends fans felt Ashly Burch's Akali lacked the intended personality of the character
Ashly Burch is arguably one of the biggest voice actresses in the gaming industry. Therefore, it is understandable that League of Legends decided to include her in the latest Star Guardian project.
Fans had no issues as long as she was part of the Star Guardian skin. However, fans felt annoyed when Riot Games also changed the voiceover for Akali's base version.
Ashly Burch's voiceover has a heroic tone, which goes against Akali's personality. Akali is a young ninja who is extremely arrogant and proud. She also has a habit of disrespecting her opponents and taunting them with uncanny remarks.
Akali's personality was quite in line with Krizia Bajos's voiceover, who was the original voice actress for the fan-favorite champion's base version. Thus, fans took to Reddit to complain a lot regarding the same.
They feel that a character should not have its identity altered for the sake of skin. Apart from that, League of Legends doing this without prior information regarding the change also felt disrespectful towards the fans.
Even then, a developer by the name of Neo Lexical did attend to the fans and claimed that they would keep the voiceover in the PBE for a while. This is because they felt that the change might be welcome once fans get more attuned to the same.
Unfortunately, it seems that fans are anything but attuned and the feedback has been quite negative as of now. Therefore, the base version of Akali will get her voiceover reverted to its older self in the PBE, while keeping the Star Guardian version intact.
However, Neo Lexical did mention in that Reddit thread that they might look to change Akali's voiceover to Ashly Burch's version in the future, when the time is right. Therefore, the change might still come, though it will probably be kept on hold for the time being.
