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Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by MykonosFan, May 27, 2021.

  1. Snub-n0zeMunkey

    Snub-n0zeMunkey

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    I'm from that weird generation of people who were kids in the 2000's so I'm old enough to remember when Jaleel White voiced Sonic but young enough to have nostalgia for Roger. While Ryan Drummond will probably always be my favourite, I have a soft spot for Roger so I'm kinda interested to see how he handles a new direction. If I don't like it I can just change the audio to Japanese, at least they've managed to have almost 25 years of consistency :P

    I think another modern professional voice actor who'd be perfect as Sonic is Max Mittelman. Would love if he gets to take on the role one day.
     
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  2. RikohZX

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    Have to remember that Sega nearly or did seem to outright can him to move onto greener hills before rehiring, so they were probably prepping to try a new Sonic voice after all the Ben Schwarz popularity -- but now Sega of America's doubled down on him, so I guess we gotta see where this goes.

    We've only heard Roger in this one scene and the trailer, haven't we? He's groggy, tired, and clearly not in a good mood, so who knows, maybe he's got his brighter tone before he wakes up from Cyberspace or it comes through elsewhere. We gotta take more than a single scene for all of this at length.
     
  3. Josh

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    I say it all the time, I'd have taken any of Sonic's English VAs if we could've just had the consistency that Japan did. That said, RCS is my favorite of his game voices, and it's not even a contest. Cool to see fans starting to come in who actually have nostalgia for him... no previous English VA lasted long enough for that to happen while he was still in the role! xD

    Not that this'll stop anyone, but let's not be too quick to judge how he sounds based on a crappy second-hand audio recording taken off of TV speakers in a noisy convention hall. Those aren't exactly the ideal acoustics.
     
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  4. Here's a YouTube video of that same cutscene with the same audio - but with stabilized footage and some noise reduction applied to the audio:

     
  5. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Oh wow, that's low. Tbh for me it's not just that Sonic needs to sound high-pitched because he's a teenager (/young adult?), especially a lot of teenagers just don't sound like that. A higher voice was always just part of his character, it's a distinctly Sonic thing... even in the movies. The delivery is much improved though, so I don't really mind the tradeoff. If Ian is writing then we will definitely be seeing the other sides of Sonic as well.
     
  6. Kyro

    Kyro

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    I kinda like it, mostly because rogers coice is already so different from other sonics. I kinda like that it just sounds more like his natural voice, and I think the benefit of that will probably be that he will have more emotional range. Not that RCS was BAD at emotional range, per say, but the cadence he usually gave sonic didnt seem to lend itself very well, especially when he sounded upset or anything
     
  7. Its certainly...different from Roger's usual take on Sonic. At the very least, it doesn't feel like he has to strain his voice as much anymore, which is an improvement in every way.

    I wanna hear more tbh. I managed to get used to Roger's voice after a while, and honestly every Sonic voice sounding the same would start making them feel homogeneous imo. I feel like Sonic needs a different type of "voice" every couple of years to keep him feeling somewhat fresh.

    Even Charles Martinet does not sound exactly like he did in 1996 compared to recent Mario titles. Hell, Ryan Drummond does not sound at all like he did back in the 2000's from what I've heard of him in that radio drama


    People age and so do their voices. It's just a fact of life, so I don't exactly mind Roger giving Sonic a different take even if its gonna take some getting used to. I feel like we shouldn't be constantly changing voice actors.
     
  8. Josh

    Josh

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    upload_2022-8-27_4-11-45.png
     
  9. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    I don't recall such things around SA2 but yeah I definitely do remember that about Heroes, particularly with EGM commenting (or reporting?) on how the first level looked like Sonic again. And then the game came out :V

    Yeah, this. I played Generations earlier in the year and that was the first time I had touched a 3D Sonic since I played Heroes when it first came out - so, the former when I was thirty and the latter when I was fourteen. Mania was the first game I had bought since Heroes too, so in that timespan I had graduated high school, started college, dropped out of college, started a career, and had the disposable income to get it. :thumbsup: And in all that time I basically just...discussed Sonic, and the prototypes, read wikis, and looked at people's art. That allows me to have a lot of distance between myself and er. all of this.

    In case anyone is wondering, it's also why you generally have me bring up points about the Adventure and Classic games and stuff surrounding the games that come afterward, but never first-hand accounts of those games themselves. :ssh:

    The Chao canonically come from the shrine the Chaos Emeralds (and Master Emerald) were held at, and are guarded by the same being.

    Yeah, it's not necessarily a simple thing to change how a character handles and then try to make that work with stages from other games, even more so with a platformer and similar where the handling is the point. On the other hand, I kind of hate that it's even a thing they're doing though.

    I actually disagree with this, as we've seen what happens with Sonic Team in the past when they bite off more than they can chew: Sonic 06. And this doesn't remotely look as "oh god how do we do this" as Sonic 06.

    ahahahahaha, I'm on the fringe again it seems. The Divine Beasts can die in a fire, and I did all the Shrines.

    his pair of glasses is a dragonball Z scouter in 06 hahahaha

    SOOOOOLD

    ...I was never under the impression that Frontiers was ever meant to be a traditional Sonic game? The devs themselves seem pretty intent on differentiating (most of) this from prior titles...
     
  10. Starduster

    Starduster

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    Honestly I think the deeper pitch of Sonic’s voice is entirely a product of subpar recording here. Last year isn’t the last time we heard RCS as Sonic because he’s done TailsTube and was doing requests at a con recently (or at least he has done a request that I have heard).

    Regardless, it upsets me to see that people still hate on Roger like this and were dancing merry jigs when it seemed like he was done with the role. Having started with the series in 2005 and receiving the entirety of SatAM on DVD not long after, I had plenty of exposure to all of Sonic’s English language VAs before Roger came on the scene and I still reckon he’s the best of the bunch by a country mile (though Martin Burke works very well with Classic Sonic’s design specifically).

    At any rate, I feel compelled to caution against taking this recording at face value. Perhaps I’m wrong and the voice is in fact deeper but this isn’t a good way to confirm that. We really need SEGA to get a grip and release more relevant material for marketing (the opening cutscene and a full playthrough of a fully original cyberspace level would be the main things at this time), but given we’re just over two months out from release, I don’t see there being a drastic shift in the marketing, which is a damn shame because we could be looking at one of the best 3D games in the series’ history.
     
  11. Turbohog

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    I don't think anyone is "hating" on Roger. Some of us (including myself) just don't think his voice suits Sonic. It's nothing personal and I respect him as an actor. I just still think it's a miscast.
     
  12. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Anyone have a .gif of the "I'm gonna punch that fucking child" moment from the Gamescom trailer?
     
  13. Laura

    Laura

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    I think people are overlooking the fact that voice actors in the game industry do the voices that voice directors tell them to do. They don't really have much freedom to do their own thing. They predominantly deliver literally hundreds of lines with no context on their own in a booth. They are completely reliant on the voice director to deliver the lines in a way which fits the game. Sometimes they deliver the same line in multiple different emotions if the voice director isn't sure where the line is supposed to fit.

    In Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker, for example, David Hayter was told to use his old Snake voice from MGS4. It didn't make any sense but he was told to do it so he did. Another example is Vanille from Final Fantasy 13. Her voice actress has said that she was told to make the character's weird high pitch squeals and found it very hard to do. Otten she had to do many high pitch squeals and moans in a row. Fang from Final Fantasy 13 was told to put on an Australian accent for the role even though she had no idea why.

    It's why I've never liked the way people talked about Roger Craig Smith in the Sonic fandom. There's no question that he's a very talented voice actor. His resume speaks for itself. There's no problem with not liking his voice for Sonic, but his strained high pitched delivery was almost certainly the result of a voice director telling him to do that, and so he did. I often get the impression when people talked about his performance that he just couldn't care, had no talent, and just half assed this strained voice. Which is just wrong and not how it works.
     
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  14. Josh

    Josh

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    Well-said, the internet has always had trouble separating art they don't like from the artist who makes it. Heck, the first documented flamewar ever was 1993, when Mike replaced Joel on MST3K.

    More pertinently, remember that time Jason Griffith gave an interview where he said he wasn't actually a fan of Sonic, didn't play the games, and kinda just saw it as a gig, and part of the fandom (the part that was already mad at him for replacing Ryan Drummond even though he had no part in that decision) absolutely tore him to shreds over it and said he didn't "deserve" Sonic?

    As it was, so it is. xD
     
  15. JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Jason was shit. Any game that had JP voices during his run is what I went with.
     
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  16. Plorpus

    Plorpus

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    Jason sounded pretty decent in Black Knight but that was about it. I liked his take on Shadow though!
     
  17. Snowbound

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    In a lot of the frontiers footage sonic did seem to either be at “top speed or a dead stop.” It will be interesting to see what slider combinations people come up with. To some degree this is probably putting a square peg in a round hole but your suggestion, in conjunction with the drop dash, could add a small feeling of momentum that could greatly increase my enjoyment. Assuming these sliders remain in the final product, I think I’ll wait to purchase the game to see what folks think and what configurations they come up with.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2022
  18. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

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    This, but him continuing to be the voice also puts a sour taste in my mouth based on the way he acts on Twitter (he's not alone in this, Mike Pollock is even worse). So at least for me, there was a little bit of personal bias for hoping Ben Schwartz was replacing him.

    It also bothers me because having spoken to a friend of a friend of a friend, there apparently WERE internal talks about bringing in Ben Schwartz, and Sega only backed out after the intense public backlash because oh god, Sonic fans get vicious about voice actors.
     
    Last edited: Aug 27, 2022
  19. Snub-n0zeMunkey

    Snub-n0zeMunkey

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    I really doubt there were ever any serious plans to bring Ben Schwartz into the games. SEGA already pay their voice actors in peanuts as is, what makes people think they would shell out enough money to hire Schwartz for the games?

    back when Generations was coming out I remember Aaron Webber made a tongue-in-cheek joke about getting Jaleel White to voice classic Sonic and people took that as some kind of literal confirmation that White was originally supposed to be in the game. Maybe it was an idea floating around that immediately got shot down, but I don't think there were ever any serious plans
     
  20. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

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    It was an idea that made it far enough that Roger (along with a whole bunch of people in the voice acting community) caught wind of it and thought enough of it to go on Twitter and announce his retirement.