Several Voice Actors Leave The Sonic Franchise

It would be cool if this meant that characters would just stop talking in the games... All the dialog I can remember from Sonic games (haven't played most of the recent ones, I admit) has been cringey as hell, so the games would maybe be better off using simple storylines that don't require much dialog, if any. This is obviously not gonna happen, but I can dream, right?

 

Depressing? Man I'm eating popcorn in here; shit's just getting interesting!

This will never happen and I vehemently disagree with the last bit, but I do think a middle ground could be met if only Sonic games would accept text dialogue for characters more often. Not having to hear characters talk constantly and instead interpret how they say things in your head is a way better route. If Mario had full VA-ed dialogue for everything in the games it'd be pretty annoying, and I know for a fact that I would've liked BoTW's voice acting a LOT less if it were as constant.

 

I actually wouldn't mind something like the grunts in the TSR and Chao in Space animations, which are clearly voiced by the character's VAs but aren't dialogue per-se.

 

Yeah, I don't mind the occasional voice clip, it's not like we need to pretend the characters are mute (which is actually a bit annoying when classic Sonic shows up in the 3D games), but we really don't need long sequences of dialog to tell the story or the same clips being played over and over to exhaustion during gameplay.

 

Describing this phenomenon as "constantly" swapping voices isn't even accurate. We've had only three English voices for Sonic in twenty years, the last of which was present for ten years. Of course Tails changed after Lost World, but I doubt many people even realized his voice was different.

Sonic and Amy have had terrible voices for ten freaking years (not a big fan of Tails' voices either), I'm excited that we have a chance at an English cast that doesn't make my ears bleed.

Also, the last time all the voices were replaced, Mike Pollock stayed, despite coming from the 4Kids cast that was being dropped at the time. I'm going to assume the same will happen this time.

 

If you think Sega/Sonic Team won't always choose a cocky sounding 'hip' voice for sonic, you're going to be disappointed.

 

Super mario sunshine has entered the chat

 

The only characters from the 2010 cast besides Eggman that I don't mind are Blaze, Omega, Big and the Chaotix VAs, and in all honesty they sound so similar to their past ones that I don't think it makes any difference.

Otherwise I kinda always disliked these guys. I'll never be able to get with Roger's deeper, gruffer Sonic; it just feels wrong when every other voice he's ever had was nasally and higher register, from Jaleel to Burke to Junichi to Ryan to Jason to even Ben. I feel like that consistency to his voice is an important part of his character that RCS never once hit for me. He also has this weird kinda "talking down to you" cadence in how he delivers lines that makes him seem like a less genuine character. He can't seem to not sound like he's being a smart-alec at any given moment. Granted Sonic being sassy is fine, but there's a point where relying on it so hard starts to feel one-note. S'weird.

Cindy's Amy was at best a kinda naggy pouty voice, at worst off-brand Minnie Mouse, so nah I'm good. Both of Tails's voices from this era reek of Jimmy Neutron in both how they sound like a smug brainiac and an older lady trying really hard to sound young; the latter being a recurring issue with Tails. Travis and the TSR guy just sound like bad impressions of Dan Green, which was already a pretty shoddy Knuckles compared to his predecessors. Shadow is.. bad. And Rouge just got worse with every entry, not even to mention her VA's own problems..

None of this is anything on these people's acting skills themselves, btw, but rather their voice direction. Again I think a lot of how they performed has to do with the internal direction Sonic was being pointed, and a lot of why they were picked I assume is tied to being really goofy basic cartoon characters. After all, they did shine the most in their roles on Sonic Boom, which was heavily attuned to be just that.

And GRANTED almost all of these voices are better than their 4Kids variants by far, but going from F tier voice acting to C tier is one hell of a rock and a hard place as far as options go. lol

 

I'm a bit late on this but the day after he announced he would be leaving the role, Roger thanked people for all the love on Twitter (https://twitter.com/i/status/1355260189272801282), and also confirmed that he is not retiring from voice acting as a whole.

 

True, but it was so much worse when they were casting actual children as Tails.

 

I quite like Tails in SA1. SA2 not as much and DEFINITELY not Heroes, but it wasn't all bad. lol

You could get someone like Alphonse's voice from FMA: Brotherhood and that'd work really well.

 

I couldn't disagree more. The only problem then was the awful direction they were given. Watch AOSTH or SatAM, both shows have an actual young boy voicing Tails and they both sound great. I honestly wish they would go back to hiring real kids for Tails. They'd have to replace him when his voice naturally changes, but a mild inconsistency of similar sounding kids would be preferable to Tails consistently sounding like a middle aged woman trying desperately to sound like a young boy and failing.

 

I like at least half of the kid performances as Tails, but I think it proves a problem to constantly rehire them lmao.

Again, would prefer just a VA who could voice a kid for once. Sonic casting has been... really bad at picking a good one.

 

This scrap and replace strategy is not only disrespectful to the current (now former) voice actors, it shows SEGA has learned nothing when it comes to revitalizing the franchise. We've been here before. Instead of building off of what has worked, they seem to be once again lurching in a new direction.

For example, the Sonic Mania Adventures shorts were charming, popular, featured emotive 2D animation, and were based on well established themes from the early days of Sonic. What's the logical next step? Announce a brand new 3D show 3 years after these shorts were released featuring yet another take on the franchise. I of course don't know enough to trash Sonic Prime, but it's so frustrating that SEGA didn't iterate on an already successful concept.

As for the VA's, I know not everyone is a fan of the current (now presumably former) voice cast, but I think they really did a great job in the Sonic Boom cartoon. In that show they were given actual content to work with involving interplay between characters. They had a chance to flex their talents and it showed. The games never had strong enough dialogue to display this, and now they won't get the chance to.

And then there are rumors about Pontac and Graff being replaced as well. I don't think they've been particularly strong writers for the Sonic series, though Sonic has never had very strong writing in my opinion. I'm open to a new writing direction, but Pontac and Graff being let go on top of voice talent being given the boot and the announcement of a new unrelated show is just, ugh.

I know Sonic desperately needs to do something fresh, and I can't see the future, but scrapping everything in favor of launching a new era of Sonic feels like the oldest play in the Sonic handbook.

 

Think how many characters who swap voice actors within the same series and notice how weird that is.

The Simpsons have had the same actors since they were on the Tracy Ullman show. Mario has always been Charles Martinet. And to say nothing od the fact of the Japanese actors staying the same since 1998.

I don't care how you feel about the voices themselves, but as I said, swapping them out like this is not a good thing for establishing who these characters are.



And the way some of you are speaking makes it seem like you would just prefer it if nobody talked at all lmao. But that kind of illustrating my point on how important dialogue and voice acting is to a character.

 

Yeah, it would be nice if the cast wasn't replaced back in 2003/2004. We can't do anything about that now. I agree that dialogue and voice acting is important to a character, and that's why I'm happy about the cast being replaced again. In my opinion the cast we've had for the past decade haven't been good for these characters, and that mixed with the poor writing has made me feel like they aren't even the same characters at all.

I see this take a lot and I'll never understand it. The modern voice cast is especially annoying in Sonic Boom. Their voices sound virtually the same in every Sonic media they're in, and I hate it in every one of them.

 

Mike Pollock just retweeted this, though he responded with "It's too soon to tell".

There's still hope.

 

So what happens if the next voice cast "don't fit"? Should we just replace them again? You see how this is a slippery slope?

This is why I've never been fond of this practice, because all its going to do is create more division; I already know for a fact that whoever they chose is going to get the same controversy that Jason and Roger got the people who grew up with them as their voice of Sonic, and Sega are setting themselves up for it by constantly doing this.

 

I think it's fair that if you don't like the way the VAs sound then you don't like the way they sound. You can't make someone miss the way the previous actors sounded just because you say they were good actors. They could be! But if someone still doesn't like them and is happy they get a chance to like different ones, that's valid.

It's not like they're replacing these guys because they just arbitrarily decided too btw, it's just another single-contract thing like Scarred Sun brought up.