Roger Craig Smith and Kate Higgins are the new Sonic and Tails VAs

They're not dropping voice-actors. You don't hire "writers," much less writers of something like Madworld and whatever else that bunch has done, and then not have dialogue in games.

Unless you go the Nintendo route of showing all dialogue as subtitles, but nobody likes the Nintendo route—it's just a marginally lesser evil when compared to Bowser's voice in Sunshine.

They're not going to drop voice-acting after the increasingly positive response they've been getting on that point in Unleashed. What would strike me as odd if the VAs change now, actually, is that the actors have been getting a lot better. I'd have welcomed a change four years or so ago, but now it just seems like an "Oi, the voices are getting good again, are we REALLY going to risk another Shadow/'06 performance?" That said, the only voice I'd really rage over if they changed it is Eggman. Granted, I'd have raged when Mike Pollock took over, too, except that the original actor, well, died. But Pollock is a spectacular Eggman. I can't really imagine anyone else among the living voicing the character now.

That also said, I hope whoever did that commercial isn't voicing Sonic. He sounds like the kind of bad Jason Griffith impersonator you'd find in a random YouTube video.

 

I do. I would be happy to see SEGA follow a similar pattern, it would definitely bring more charm to Sonic and co, and it would make them more approachable for people who can't stand the horrible scripts and lines.

Only VA I'm gonna miss is Mike Pollock, he's fucking awesome as Robotnik.

 

The cutscene itself is AWESOME, but seriously, I can't help but hear an evil Pumbaa trying to kill Sonic. It's unsettling.

 

I thought it was too.

 

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If we do end up with new VA's, I hope none of them are from 4kids. Why can't SEGA stop being cheap and actually look for suitable replacements?

 

I agree. Sorry to say but I didn't grow up with classic sonic as much as I did with modern and its always been nice to hear sonic in some form of voice.

Having him silent rips away that part of his personality that makes him cocky and a smartass. although classic did show that a few times, most of the time he was just a silent serious hedgehog.

But from what SL said, its looks like were going to have a return of the shitstorm of 2005 aka the 4kids vs the original voice actor wars. I remember how that started (damned sonic riders trailer...)

 

Of course I'm bias as I grew up with the old generation of Sonic, and have a hard time of accepting the newer Sonic still, but I always liked the simplicity of things back in the days (of course, technologically speaking, there wasn't much option for in-depthness).

I like Sonic silent because I found it enjoyable for things to be left to the imagination. When I hear him speak and talk, it kinda washes away how I thought and imagined Sonic back in the early 90s.

 

There've been a few voice-actors in Sonic games that came from places outside 4Kids, haven't there? Elise and King Arthur spring to mind, anyway.

I was under the impression that the main reason for the actors being the 4Kids actors is that they wanted to have the actors from Sonic X, rather than there being any particular intention to use 4Kids specificially.

 

I really do think going the silent route would be the best thing for Sonic, or at least making him grunt/short one liners like Mario and other characters. People generally find Sonic pretty annoying, getting rid of that element and leaving it to the imagination of the player of who Sonic is would do nothing but good, and it would probably bring back his universal appeal.

Exactly this, everyone had their own idea of who Sonic was back then. Bring back that charm, and the popularity of the character will skyrocket again. Leave the cheesy lines and what not to the cartoons and comics.

 

Because the only thing writers write in games is dialogue, right? Though, no doubt in my mind that there'll be speaking in Colors.

 

You consider having to constantly read subtitles instead of watching the cutscenes going on behind them "charming?"

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No. Just, no. Fucking hell, the only way that even works with cinematic cutscenes is if the goddamn player has two sets of eyes that can simultanously focus on two different places at once.

 

That's usually never a problem since the text is usually very short sentences, and when there is a larger amount of text you have to tap A to scroll through text to progress through the event/cutscene. It's a pretty simple formula a lot of games still follow, so why can't Sonic? It worked just fine in the handheld games like Rush.

 

Apparently I have two sets of eyes because I can watch the subtitles and watch the cutscene too. Anime with English subs (Jap VAs though) have trained me well. :specialed:

edit: hahaha typo city

 

See, I had a pretty equal dose of both, and never noticed the character design changes (yes, even Amy and Eggman). Voices just work with the Sonic games so well.

Either way, I really can't see them dropping voices/cutscenes from future games. S4 is the obvious exception.

 

Well, the story already seems to be settled.
Why else would they hire Madworld writers.

Besides, I want to see how Sonic sounds when people actually write a decent script. Sure other characters have decent lines (Robotnik being the perfect example in Unleashed), but Sonic always ends up having the cheesiest lines. Maybe an experienced crew of writers can actually make the dialogue interesting. That and if they actually hire a decent Voice director to help the actors, things can only get better.

Anyway, Mario literally doesn't say anything at all in cutscenes (Except in Sunshine, but lets not go into that). In Galaxy all he says is "Super Mario Galaxy" and a few other grunts and "yahoos"
Even in cutscenes he just stares at the other characters. The other characters don't really show emotion either...except Bowser, but he's always pissed off.
Sonic Unleashed's cutscenes were really well animated, and voices tended to match the character movements. You can really have the character move as if he's talking if only a speech bubble pops up. It wouldn't feel right if you know what I mean.

Having no text at all would make no sense at all. Despite how convoluted they tend to be, Sonic games actually have a plot, so you need dialogue in order to progress the story Properly.
Mario again doesn't have this issue because there is no story.

That having been said, Night of the Werehog was awesome, but it didn't really have much of a story though either.

Arghh! Whatever, I guess we'll have to see.

 

The more reserved you use that cocky attitude, the cockier it seems. Currently, Sonic is pushing it way too hard.

A story fit for a hedgehog.

 

This. Learn to not have tunnel vision guys.

 

I admit, that was a pretty lame thought on my part. I blame it on lack of sleep.

...Rush? You seriously didn't just use a paragon example of what makes storytelling in DS games so damned lazy to defend a storytelling method, did you? Please say I didn't just read that.

You misunderstand my meaning. I can "watch" the cutscenes, what I can't do is "focus" on them. In a cinematic cutscene, there's a lot going on. Epic camera sweeps, animation subtleties, the kind of thing you can't rightly keep track of while reading text—which both draws the eye reflexively to a certain point on the screen, and in fact requires you to focus the bulk of your attention on words to read them.

This means that the actual animation going on while the text is on-screen either draws your attention away and causes you to miss pieces of dialogue, or go unappreciated because you didn't want to miss that dialogue. With voiced dialogue, your ears handle the dialogue, freeing your eyes to wander and let other, more worthwhile eye-catchers catch them.

 

He wasn't even talking about the plot of Rush, he was talking about how the player controlled the cutscenes and how they were presented.

You not being able to focus on all the action in order to read subs is a personal problem. :v:

 

I don't take the story seriously in Sonic games so it doesn't matter to me. Sonic was never a series meant to have serious storylines anyway.

Then how about we just get rid of all that noise and go back to Zone transitioned cutscenes from S3&K. No one really ever asked for that over the top nonsense anyway.

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