Resident Evil’s recurring corporate spy Ada Wong has been portrayed by multiple voice actors over the years, and in the recent RE4 remake was played by Lily Gao, who previously had a cameo as Ada in the live-action movie Welcome to Raccoon City. Her performance in RE4 hasn’t been well-received by fans, who filled her Instagram comments with insults. Gao disabled comments on her account, and then either hid or deleted all of her posts except one.
You can see screenshots of some of those over-the-top comments on Twitter, tantrums in text form like, “You ruined the remake, i feel like i just wasted my money” and “Your voice acting was horrible in the re4remake… it sounded super stiff and there was nothing seductive about it? It didnt fit at all omfg i hope they dont hire you as adas voice actor for another game”.
Fans have said her performance sounds “bored” and “lifeless”, but whatever you think about someone’s acting, the idea of tracking down a voice actor on social media to tell her she pissed in your cornflakes is completely baffling to everyone outside the echo chamber of fandom.
It’s not as if someone at Capcom chose Gao by accident or forgot to direct her during the recording. In previous Resident Evil games, Ada’s lines were delivered with exaggerated seductiveness that crossed the line into camp, while in the RE4 remake she sounds detached and professional as part of its overall shift toward more grounded protagonists. It’s there in the script: when Leon asks who her employer is, remake Ada says “I never work and tell,” a phrase you cannot possibly purr seductively like the original’s “I never kiss and tell.”
More worthy of criticism is the way the audio quality drops noticeably on her lines in the cinematics. Ada generally comes off better in radio conversations, which have layers of static over the top, making any difference in recording quality unnoticeable. Again, it’s not Gao’s fault that Capcom cheaped out and chose not to re-record her with a better mic.
Anyway, time to reset the clock on how many days it’s been since fandom harassed a woman off social media. Well done, everybody.
Resident Evil 4’s PlayStation 2, PC, and Wii versions included a bonus mode called Separate Ways, a side story that let us play as Ada and see the game’s events from her point of view. While it’s yet to be announced for the remake, dataminers have found references to the mode in the game’s files under its Japanese name, “Another Order”.