Sega recasting voice actors for main characters(Sonic, Tails Amy etc)

[Gotta Go Rational]

Not entirely convinced from Ben's response that he still won’t end up getting it, I think there’s a little too many “I wonder?” and “Who knows?” in his answer that makes me curious if he knows a little more than he’s letting on. But maybe not. Like he said, who knows? 

Also, if the rumours regarding Prime are true with regards to Sonic meeting different multiverse versions of himself, is it possible that Prime will feature several different actors voicing various incarnations of Sonic? And perhaps the same with other characters too?

[Rabbitearsblog]

52 minutes ago, Gotta Go Rational said:

Not entirely convinced from Ben's response that he still won’t end up getting it, I think there’s a little too many “I wonder”s and “Who knows” in his answer that makes me curious to whether or not he perhaps knows a little more than he’s letting on. But maybe not. Like he said, who knows? 

Also, if the rumours regarding Prime are true with regards to Sonic meeting different multiverse versions of himself, is it possible that Prime will feature several different actors voicing various incarnations of Sonic? And perhaps the same with other characters too?

I still don't think that Ben will be voicing Sonic in the games because I'm assuming that SEGA will have to make a deal with Paramount to let Ben voice Sonic in the games.

[sassytassie]

This has me so sad. Roger really grew on me over the years. Are we sure the entire main cast is getting replaced though? I've only heard that Cindy (Amy) was leaving as well. If Colleen no longer voices Tails I'll be so disappointed. :c

[Razule]

3 minutes ago, sassytassie said:

This has me so sad. Roger really grew on me over the years. Are we sure the entire main cast is getting replaced though? I've only heard that Cindy (Amy) was leaving as well. If Colleen no longer voices Tails I'll be so disappointed. :c

At the least, Mike Pollock is confirmed to be staying. If they replaced Sonic's and Amy's voice actors it'd be weird if they weren't also changing the rest of the cast, but at the moment, it's mostly an assumption based on what's happened the past two times. 

[sassytassie]

6 minutes ago, Razule said:

At the least, Mike Pollock is confirmed to be staying. If they replaced Sonic's and Amy's voice actors it'd be weird if they weren't also changing the rest of the cast, but at the moment, it's mostly an assumption based on what's happened the past two times. 

Agreed, that would make sense. I'm just not sure why 2 of the VAs would come out and say they're leaving and not the others? I read somewhere that Colleen said she would not be in the 2nd Sonic movie... but why not just say you're leaving period if that's the case? I'm sad regardless. Amy's VA really grew on me after the Sonic Boom show also. Glad Mike's staying though, he's perfect.

[Marcello]

2 hours ago, SBR2 said:

It's possible that the next game could have the previous cast. Everything about this makes it sound like it's a recent development so I'd bet they already recorded dialogue for the new game and Prime will debut the new cast. 

I don't think Roger would announce moving on from the series if he was in the next game. 

[Kuzu]

5 hours ago, Marcello said:

I don't think Roger would announce moving on from the series if he was in the next game. 

Then that means the next game might not even be finished yet if its supposed to be out this year.

[Jango]

33 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Then that means the next game might not even be finished yet if its supposed to be out this year.

I think SEGA / Sonic Team usually does the VA work when the game is close to be finished, ain't it?

[caitash]

7 hours ago, sassytassie said:

Agreed, that would make sense. I'm just not sure why 2 of the VAs would come out and say they're leaving and not the others? I read somewhere that Colleen said she would not be in the 2nd Sonic movie... but why not just say you're leaving period if that's the case? I'm sad regardless. Amy's VA really grew on me after the Sonic Boom show also. Glad Mike's staying though, he's perfect.

I know she said she would not be voicing Tails in the Prime series, I don’t think she has said yet whether or not she has been cast for the Sonic 2 movie. She still uses language like ‘hope so’ and ‘crosses fingers’ which means she either hasn’t auditioned yet OR has auditioned but hasn’t yet been told either way if she has the part or not.

[Razule]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Then that means the next game might not even be finished yet if its supposed to be out this year.

I'd be very worried if they considered a game coming out in the holidays finished this early in the year.

[Muscles Maximum]

Hold on, is it confirmed there's a game coming out this year? 

I feel like I've missed something.

[Marcello]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Then that means the next game might not even be finished yet if its supposed to be out this year.

Could also simply mean he was under an NDA until the day he announced it. 

[Razule]

1 hour ago, Strong Guy said:

Hold on, is it confirmed there's a game coming out this year? 

I feel like I've missed something.

New games.

[SBR2]

12 hours ago, Marcello said:

I don't think Roger would announce moving on from the series if he was in the next game. 

I'm just going off the fact Sega had this big SXSW thing planned for last year and then didn't do it because of Covid. I'm just guessing that it isn't totally impossible that the voice work was at least finished mostly because it seems really odd to have wanted to announce a new game last year and only now start casting the replacements.

I will be honest I don't fully know how long voice acting sessions take but I can't imagine they'd save the voice acting for a game until a few months before it comes out.

[sassytassie]

9 hours ago, caitash said:

I know she said she would not be voicing Tails in the Prime series, I don’t think she has said yet whether or not she has been cast for the Sonic 2 movie. She still uses language like ‘hope so’ and ‘crosses fingers’ which means she either hasn’t auditioned yet OR has auditioned but hasn’t yet been told either way if she has the part or not.

Oops ya I think I had it wrong! I'm ok with that then honestly, I'd really like to see her as Tails in the movie.

[Razule]

On 2/10/2021 at 12:38 PM, SBR2 said:

I'm just going off the fact Sega had this big SXSW thing planned for last year and then didn't do it because of Covid. I'm just guessing that it isn't totally impossible that the voice work was at least finished mostly because it seems really odd to have wanted to announce a new game last year and only now start casting the replacements.

I will be honest I don't fully know how long voice acting sessions take but I can't imagine they'd save the voice acting for a game until a few months before it comes out.

We didn't see any voice over in Forces promotion until IGN posted gameplay footage in June 2017. Between July 2016 and June 2017. I have no way of knowing if that means anything or not, just looking for patterns.

[Gotta Go Rational]

Many, many eons ago (around the time of Secret Rings’ release.) I had a couple of back and forth messages with Jason Griffith on Myspace, and I remember asking how long prior to a Sonic games’ release that voice work on a project began. I recall he said that he sometimes started recording as early as a year beforehand, but that he would often be called back months later and record some more, whether that be due to rewrites or some pickup lines etc. Keep in mind this was said in early 2007, so we have no idea if or how SEGA’s production schedules have changed since then. It’s also not unheard of that actors would be brought on board just to voice material for the marketing too, as opposed to the main recording sessions for the game’s dialogue. And keep in mind that as of Sonic Heroes, the developers sync the character’s mouths to the English dialogue, so the recordings would have to exist first for the animators to then use for reference when working on the character’s mouth-flappery.

Something I find fairly curious about this recasting is that back in November, Roger had tweeted about the fact he’d been voicing Sonic for 10 years, thanking Sonic fans for their kind words over the years and he ended his message with “Much more to come!” Now he clearly didn’t know at this point that a recasting was imminent, so it could be construed he simply assumed he would be voicing Sonic in future games, but at the time of that tweet I thought it was more likely that he had already worked on, or was at least aware of, upcoming Sonic projects through his contacts at SEGA. I wonder if it’s possible that Roger had already voiced lines for Sonic in upcoming games (Beyond Puyo Puyo Tetris 2), but a decision to recast voice actors was made late on, and so the lines will now be re-recorded by the new actor? I don’t think there’s much chance that Roger will be heard as Sonic in any future games from now, (I don't think SEGA would have sent out a tweet about Roger's departure if he was still going to be featured in upcoming games) but it’s not inconceivable that he had recorded lines for Sonic in something yet to be released, but will now be replaced by the new guy.

#ReleasetheRogerCut

(I’m kidding with that hashtag. As much as I liked Roger, please don’t make it a thing. )

[thumbs13]

Roger confirmed in an interview that he chose to leave the Sonic role. He wasn't fired.

https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/part-2-roger-craig-smith-on-creating-voices-sonic-batman/id1497054975?i=1000509998332

[Kuzu]

But its none of my business; I just wish this series could have some fucking consistency for once. It feels like something about it is changing every couple of years and that's super annoying. 

[SBR2]

I believe him. He's under no obligation to stick up for Sega now why would he lie? 

[Kuzu]

15 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

I believe him. He's under no obligation to stick up for Sega now why would he lie? 

Because its very unprofessional to throw your former employer under the bus and could impact his future work. 

But the actual situation is probably that they tried to negotiate a new contract, and Roger didn't accept the terms, so he left.

 

[Blue Blood]

If you don't use Apple Podcasts, you can find the Web version here.

He talks about leaving Sonic from 24:44 onwards. Specifically he says:

Quote

[when asked about circumstances surrounding his departure and if SEGA wanted to go in a different direction]

No. And without wanting to divulge too much... It's just one of those things. It's a time when looking at the way things are being handled and the way that you are and where you're at and what you kind of want to deal with and do... And I just found myself saying "I think it's time to kinda be done". And so that's what that was.

I know people were kind of surprised and shocked by it and it's like "yeah" and I've seen all the speculation of "well voice actors don't walk away from roles, he was fired and I just replied to someone and said "you have absolutely no idea how this industry works".

It's interesting the perception that people have, but we get this all the time. I mean is amazing all these 'experts' that have nothing to do with the industry that make all these assumptions.

You start seeing how the industry works. Nobody wants to see how the sausage is made. After a while you start seeing things and you say "I'm very pleased and I'm very proud and I'm very happy with what's happened there and I think it's time to say I don't want to keep doing this.

It's worth listening to the whole thing after the 20 minutes mark. Smith also suggests how the job didn't fit into where he wanted to take his life, which is fair enough. But I'm definitely feeling some undertones of him not being entirely happy with the role. Based on everything we know such as Tara Strong's Twitter post, the rather rapid replacement of other actors in recent games, the departure of Cindy Robinson as Amy and the fact that Colleen Villard won't be voicing Tails in Prime... I'm fairly convinced that SEGA and Smith went their separate ways because they couldn't reach an agreement. With Smith's comments about where he's living, it could even be that Prime didn't fit into his plans and so that's why he had to leave the series as a whole. So the gears were already in motion, and things played out in a way that lead to him choosing to walk away.

Just speculation. We likely won't ever know for sure.

[Kuzu]

Kind of bums me out if Roger wasn't really satisfied with the role, always seemed like he was enjoying himself.

[Blue Blood]

4 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Kind of bums me out if Roger wasn't really satisfied with the role, always seemed like he was enjoying himself.

He probably was enjoying himself, but he just wanted to move on with his life. And keeping this role, under whatever circumstances that would entail, didn't fit into what he wants moving forwards.

[Kuzu]

42 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

He probably was enjoying himself, but he just wanted to move on with his life. And keeping this role, under whatever circumstances that would entail, didn't fit into what he wants moving forwards.

Sonic is cursed obviously :V