How great of a voice actor Smith is outside of Sonic is something I really have no knowledge of, so I generally have to take people's word for it. The problem with that is every time I see someone say "the scripts and direction are to blame" they reference stuff like the Sonic Boom show and the fairly recent Puyo Puyo Tetris 2 voice lines, etc., but his Sonic voice is just as cringe-inducing in all those examples as it was in any of the mainline games of the past decade. If he's staying in the role for a while longer, I sincerely hope that better voice direction can make him shine as Sonic, but as of now I'm still convinced it's his actual voice that I dislike in this role. And I feel pretty much the exact same way about the recent voices of Amy, Shadow and Rouge. People say they're better in this or that, but their vocal performances always sound just as out of place for these characters.
if you've never liked the voices to begin with, I doubt a new direction would have changed your mind. People are kind of vocal about shit like this. All I can really say is hopefully you can just learn to tolerate it, or...just switch to the Japanese voices. For better or worse, Roger IS Sonic at this point.
There's no doubt that he's a talented voice actor. You know what? "Earnestly doing silly shit" is the best distillation for the direction I want the series to go in from here that I've heard in years.
I honestly think SA2 came the closest to hitting that "just right" zone between cartooniness and seriousness, at least for my taste anyway. Some things still feel a bit over-the-top to me (Sonic hijacking a car with the President in it), and sometimes it felt like it really needed to stay in its lane (Rouge probably shouldn't have had... physics), but I never felt like the events of SA2 were TOO big of a stretch. Or, at the very least, the game made it feel believable. It's silly to think Sonic fought his way out of a Gun helicopter and landed full-helicopter-spin atop a heavy metal door without breaking his legs. But the game just wanted to say "Sonic is cool as hell" and it succeeded in doing that.
I’m sorry, but I need to hard disagree on this. Sonic Adventure 2 is widely loved and referenced...within the fandom. Of course you can go to YouTube comments and get those replies because the places where you make those comments are likely already going to have other Sonic fans there. Mario Odyssey was also compared with Sonic 06 for its use of a cartoony mascot juxtaposed with realistic looking humans. People are going to quote Sonic Adventure 2 at GDQ because that’s the game being run. “No copyright law in the universe can stop me!” still sees appropriate usage as a meme. Do not tell me people do not remember His World when it was quickly discovered that Drake sampled it for one of his albums. And again, somebody like HBomberGuy is somebody who will have played a fair bit of Sonic, hence why he’s making that reference. Sure, SA2 has brought a bunch of great things to the franchise, but it’s silly to treat it like some pop culture touchstone that people just *know* about through osmosis. The series in general is that, sure, but SA2 in particular is not something you going to see widely referenced outside of Sonic and gaming circle in the way you’ll see people use a gif of Captain America saying “I understood that reference” without ever having seen Avengers Assemble. Anyway, dragging this back on topic: For those who want the VOD link for the stream, just DM me. I’ll be watching it live myself so I’ll be able to get that link to you all as soon as possible afterwards.
I exactly feel this way about SA2, it's a really good game with some good mechanics and a good story but we shouldn't forget about the other things that games like Heroes,Unleashed or even Shadow brought to the games. Story wise i think the sweet spot should be between SA2 and Sonic Unleashed. I also think that humans should do a comeback somethimes.
SA2 did have some development mostly, Amy and Tails.Heroes developed metal sonic quite well although that was his first appearance in a 3D title so would you call that development? IMO it does tie in to the CD arc quite well as now he wants to be more than a duplicate. I wouldn't class the chaotix though as they are new takes on the characters. Heroes did do shadow dirty. Who's idea was it to bring him back in the next game? at least leave it a bit so it actually feels like a climatic return instead of a "oh no we killed of that character people liked lets quickly add him back in and make more money" but eh, also Amy kinda backtracked a bit. So yeah heroes kinda sucked in that regard as well as shadow. 06 did nail team dark to the point where I want them to have a game to themselves.
Should be noted that SA2 has been referenced in modern cartoons such as Ok!Ko and Craig of the Creek. Both creators are self admitted Sonic fans and are roughly of millennial age like most of us. SA2 is gonna be 20, and SA1 is 20. At this point, the kids who came up on those games are adults in the industry now with influence.
I was sad about RCS leaving because it didn't seem to be by choice, and by now for a lot of people he IS Sonic but honestly? I got over it fairly quickly. The idea of another soft reboot with a new voice cast actually sounded fairly appealing. I think there's a Sonic voice out there that fits the character more than RCS, or even, Jason Griffith and Ryan Drummond. It would have been nice to see that. Glad he's back and all but this could have been a huge moment for the franchise that will just be a fun tidbit in a few years like that one summer Harry Shearer who played Ned Flanders and Mr. Burns and a bunch of other characters on the Simpsons quit for 2 months in 2014. Oh well.
I agree After SA2, Heroes felt like a poor attempt at a story, all the character development was thrown away (not to mention the engine). But as much as Sonic 06's writing was convoluted and weird, I thought Team Dark's story was great.
yea like, what I had in mind also was Amy's SA1 development -> SA2 -> "nope gonna chase Sonic" in Heroes, as well as Tails still being Sonic's sidekick despite the entire crux of his SA1 development being about doing things on his own. His entire personality in Heroes is "LOOK AT THOSE EGGMAN'S ROBOTS".
Yeah heroes is a bloody mess in some idle dialog sonic says "I never thought I would see shadow again" this is then followed by tails and knuckles saying some "EGGMAN ROBOTS" bolocks. Uggh like Sonic is here acknowledging shadows death and return that could have made for some neat character interaction between team sonic but no it's relegated to idle dialog 99% of players won't hear WITH tails and knuckles saying some generic crap after.
Not thrilled about RCS return, hopefully the new game provides a better voice direction than last one. Yeah, I don't like his Sonic. Drummond and Griffith were both better. And Drummond is my default Sonic voice.
Alright, so something interesting happened. Apparently a fellow by the name of Brian Matt who voiced the announcer in Super Monkey Ball 1, 2, Deluxe, and the soon to be released Banana Mania held a live stream recently where he talked about the Sonic voice actors, namely Roger Craig Smith, and explicitly said that Roger is returning to the role of Sonic for "one last job" among some other interesting things. What makes this more significant is that this is a fellow who actually works for Sega and not some random leaker. His comments are around the 47:46 part of the video.
He's talking about the "Sonic Narrator", not the voice of Sonic. He's probably referring to the Wisp announcer voice. I say this, since there's an unofficial "video game narrators" group of voice actors who are really good friends with each other. It's how Nick Robinson tracked down Brian Matt in the first place. Edit: Derp, I didn't realize that was Roger. Disregard. I didn't realize he did stuff for the Mario series too.
I’d take this with family pack of salt shakers. This just doesn’t add up to me. So first of all, this guy doesn’t seem to be a part of SEGA. Sure, he’s done a decent amount of work with them, but he’s also worked on things entirely unrelated to them - seems to me he’s freelance, like pretty much any given voice actor. So for starters, on what authority is he able to say what SEGA’s plans are or aren’t for Roger and Sonic? Second, why the big show of Roger coming back to Sonic if it’s just for one more job? If this is in fact true, then Roger would be aware of it if this guy is, and that point it’d make sense to specify in his Twitter announcement a while back that he’s just returning for one more job.
I dunno. It would line up with the fact that they even got Kate Higgins to return for Tails in Colors Ultimate/Rise of the Wisps, so that could be his "last job", but also you'd assume that voice work took place before January, when the news broke, so Roger's just "back" without being "back", right? I'd say I trust him just on the fact that you'd be a little more connected within the industry but Tara Strong is supposedly super close with Roger and went on a rant about how "replaceable" "legacy" VAs are and how it was so unfair and w/e, but Roger then said it was his own choice, making it seem like Roger isn't too open about his work itself. I also find it interesting that there's no word on who might fill the Amy role in the future. (if there's any role to fill in the near future, anyways.)
You simply can't trust Sega when it comes to Voice Actors. Maybe they couldn't find a suitable replacement in time, so they let him voice Sonic in current developed games? I don't think Roger can say any of this, due to his agreeements.
Roger has publically refuted the claim: Tweet It was in response to Sonic Stadium's article on the situation, and somewhat understandably he's a bit upset by a news site posting a rumor about his departure without contacting him for confirmation.
