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Awoo.

Oh God, I had forgotten how horrid the cutscenes in Adventure were...


johnboy3434

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2 minutes ago, CleverSonicUsername said:

That was a typo on my behalf, I meant more "oh no!" as in Knuckles shouting "oh no!" but ok

Oops. Sorry. Thought you were critiquing my grammar.

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Just now, johnboy3434 said:

Oops. Sorry. Thought you were critiquing my grammar.

Nah your grammar is fine, I just goofed somehow. Oopsie doodles.

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1 hour ago, Meta77 said:

By today's standards they are bad. Back then no one complained most were just excited for a 3d sonic

Erm... can only speak for myself, but I was laughing at some of them.

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Really, though, it's not the acting that bothers me so much, nor is it the facial animations. It's the pauses that kill me. You can have several seconds of dead air where the characters are just looking at each other (and bobbing up and down with their super-overexaggerated idle animations) before a simple question is answered. I know that silence can play a bigger role in Japanese screenwriting than it normally does in English, but even by those standards it's excessive as Hell.

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A scene where Knuckles is walking for a good 7 seconds without any dialogue in the DX version. That's terrible.

 

A scene where Dr. Eggman is walking in place for 3-5 seconds before his turning around animation triggers. That's terrible.

 

These are the worst scenes in the game.

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On 2/2/2017 at 0:56 PM, Burning Finger said:

This. The acting is atrocious in both SA games, and Sonic Shuffle, it only got mildly better in Heroes. Its so bad I can't believe anyone was up in arms when 4Kids opted not to use those actors in Sonic X, and got even angrier when Sega later made the X cast the official cast of the games. Think what you want, but the 4Kids cast were far better actors than anyone in the SA cast. Even when the acting was bad it still wasn't nearly as bad as any of those guys. I still think its a shame we lost the 4Kids cast, as they really improved as it went along, and the voices are still the voices I associate with the characters to this very day. I miss them, but at least we still have Mike.

The only decent actors out of the SA cast were Ryan Drummond and David Humphrey, and thats become even more apparent to me since I just recently started to replay both games. Everyone else is terrible.

So, um...ahem. Hi. Well, as one of those people that you can't believe exists, allow me to defend my position.

The Dreamcast era voice actors, yes, did suffer from some notoriously bad direction in SA1 and Shuffle. This is well-documented and not a point of contention. Where I will take issue with you is with your statement that both SA games suffer from poor acting, as SA2, in my opinion, has some excellent acting and direction. Allow me to present some evidence.

 

Barring Tails' one line of "We all did it together!", I honestly fail to see how the acting and direction in these scenes can be seen as anything less than B-grade work. Deem Bristow, Lani Minella, and Scott Dreier all do a fantastic job of carrying their characters in a believable but simultaneously cinematic manner. These are the renditions of the Sonic cast that made me fall in love with these characters in the first place. Rouge, when confronting Shadow's apparent death for example, has this wavering tremor that skirts between disbelief and shock that feels very relatable to me. Eggman, who's portrayed as a larger than life villain, still shows some trepidation and internal conflict regarding his grandfather's true intentions. That, "Did he really mean to destroy us...?" line still kinda tugs at me (which is then immediately ruined by Tails' followup line, but that's neither here nor there) that manages to humanize Eggman a little after all the hammy, intimidating lines preceding throughout SA2. Even Amy, who might be one of the lesser skilled actresses, manages to find a nice niche role between being an innocent child and trying to act like the age of her peers when she feels the need to. Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying the cast was absolutely perfect and could do no wrong, but they brought the Sonic cast to life, and made Sonic's large repertoire of friends honestly likable.

Which is to say, that upon the cast change to the 4Kids voice actors, even as the ten year old child I was at the time, I immediately noticed the switch and downgrade in acting quality. Case in point:

This was my first impression of the 4Kids cast. I don't know how bad you consider the direction and acting in SA1 to be, but from my perspective, even with zero direction, it's still leagues ahead of what's on display here. Almost every word out of Sonic's mouth sounds incredibly stilted and doesn't have direction at all. I was never a fan of Griffith's wavering up-and-down voice that seemed to make fun of Sonic more than make him seem cool, so my opinions on the 4Kids cast were incredibly negative for a while. It wasn't until Unleashed and Black Knight that the direction finally had an increase in quality and had some thematic weight behind it. Even with the improved acting though, I preferred, and still prefer the original Dreamcast cast. With proper direction, a new game with the original cast would likely sound great (at least on par with the stuff from Unleashed). So yeah, that's my little tirade there. Feel free to call me a delusional nostalgiafag if you must.

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I learned when I was playing it to just stop taking it seriously and watch as knuckles jaw sinks to the center of the earth

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In my personal opinion, I think the cutscenes in Adventure are a perfect example of why Sonic games shouldn't have stories. I'm really sorry if I offended anyone with this comment, but I think that Sonic games usually have cringey dialogue and deliveries. 

Of course, if you like stories then I'm happy for you!

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That's a terrible deduction...it's literally the first attempt. The first attempt is almost never a good standard to judge something by.

 

Also that's just a crack at the dialogue...which a story isn't necessarily required to have. 

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While it might be favouritism I thought Steve Broadie's mellow delivery as Gamma was pretty good, and despite the cliched robotic dialogue, he rarely had many cringeworthy lines, some were actually pretty powerful ("Units remaining.....Gamma..."). Hell that one side story boosted SA1's a good amount.

Hell considering even John St Jon supposedly hated voicing Big, I thought he interpreted him pretty well for what his character was. He remains my favourite voice for the character. This one little scene (which is surprisingly of the English translation's creation) is surprisingly poignant:

tumblr_inline_obcp1bGhkO1ruhtsl_500.png

tumblr_inline_obcp1q1sxK1ruhtsl_500.png

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