Guh-Huzzah!
what are your thoughts on the current Sonic voice cast?
Honest to goodness just curious 'cause I know a decent portion of the current fanbase doesn't like them and never makes voice pack mods for them. Heck, half of why I learned how to do it in SA2 (and probably other games soon here TBH) is because I wanted to finally make a modern cast voice pack for games that don't have 'em. Still blows my mind that after all these years, all modders fixate on is Jason's voices, no one even does stuff for Mike apart from one really old mod.
...My time has come.
Honestly, I really dig the cast! I have some issues with the games' VO, but they stem from other factors, not the cast itself. Overall, I'd say the VO leaves a bit to be desired at times, and there's multiple things that could be attributed to. Maybe the actors weren't provided enough context for a scene, maybe the director could have done more to immerse or help them, maybe they could've benefitted from one or two more takes, etc. Again, the VO isn't bad by ANY means, but I think it could be better at times.
And since you mentioned the fixation on Jason's performance, I'm gonna address that debate! Both Jason and Roger's Sonic performances are good, haha. It absolutely does not need to be a competition, they can both be good for their own reasons. You can have a preference, of course (I have mine, lmao) but ya don't need to go online and diss the other actor because of it. Roger especially seems to get a lot of crap for reasons I can't really place my finger on. Again, I don't think the VO in Sonic is flawless, but it's not a bad performance by any means. And I know for a fact Roger is a great actor, I've seen other roles he's portrayed for other projects (Same goes with a lot of the Sonic cast) and he does a great job. His work for Arcane and Bugsnax is especially nice, haha. And honestly, a lot of Roger's work as Sonic for stuff outside the games, such as LEGO Dimensions, TailsTube, OK K.O., etc., is amazing!
At the end of the day, I think the Sonic cast is great, but ultimately they're getting paid to deliver what the studio and directors want. What's going on behind the scenes that's making the performances sound a tad stilted at times? Not 100% sure. (Also, the quality of the scripts could be a factor, as I know Sonic scripts have been a bit mixed reception-wise, but Ian Flynn writing Frontiers gives me high hopes, haha.)