u/Kirbyfan45

I still remember when we first heard that SpongeBob was going to be in the game because of Paramount having literally 0 leak security. ngl it was super surprising and I was super excited about it all. Then cut to when we saw gameplay. "Hm, he and Patrick are silent, but hey, they'll add voice lines later." Cut to now, 7 months later, where our 70 dollar game with a 30 dollar season pass still can't voice all the new characters. This was such a hot debate when SEGA first was like "the guests won't interact with the main roster." People were pissed. Then it was fully confirmed that the guests were completely silent and everyone was even more pissed. I remember so many people expressing their disappointment and making fun of SEGA for this backwards decision and their honestly lackluster reasoning. But now, not a lot of people seem to be talking about it as much, which feels kinda... Lame. And I have seen some reasons why, and lemme just get my two cents in on why I don't agree with it

First off is the licensing stuff. Mainly when SEGA said that it would take too long for the approval process... Even though they had no problem getting the approval back for SART, which included the real life people they added to the game. On top of that, the people who originally leaked SpongeBob confirmed that he was in the game as far back as 2024. And that was just for him, who knows when they got the deals in to add the rest of the guests. So... I THINK THEY HAD PLENTY OF TIME TO FIGURE THAT OUT! It's just very hard to believe, and that's not even mentioning the characters SEGA themselves own or literal other Sonic characters. Said characters who were just given a voice and were even involved with promoting their addition to the game. You're saying they couldn't get them to voice lines for the game too?! And what about Sonic appearing in other games? He was in CookieRun Kingdom and different Sonic characters were added to KartRider Rush+, and both times, there was voice acting (Even if it was all recycled lines).

Next, people say it would have cost them too much. Look, SEGA (Technically SEGA Sammy) is a multi million dollar company who is charging, again, 70 dollars for this game and 30 dollars for the season pass. I think they can afford it. Especially since they had no problem getting Keanu Reeves to voice Movie Shadow in one stage of Shadow Generations. Do you really think voice actors like Tom Kenny, Martin T Sherman, or Erica Mendez are more expensive than Keanu? I mean have you seen how expensive he can get?

Finally, people say to just use mods and forget it, like the Speak DLC mod. Look, I don't wanna put down the hard work done to make those mods work, especially with the Speak DLC mod and getting new voice actors for characters like Mega Man and Protoman, but what about console players? They can't mod (Even if it should technically be possible), so they can't access these mods. Hell, the Switch 2 so far can't be modded so even if these mods come to console, Switch 2 players would still be out of the running, and there are some things voice mods won't be able to fix like the lack of attack interactions or proper rival cutscenes in Grand Prix.

It really feels like people were too eager to brush this behind them, especially after the voice mods, which is kinda weird since Nick Brawl 1 launched with no voice acting. Yet, despite the much smaller community and the miniscule budget they had, the community for that game was able to stay vocal enough for that game to get voice acting, even with multiple voice acting mods already around. Look, it's insanely disappointing that the state of the guests and DLC are like this, and it makes me unexcited for what characters will be added knowing how much they'll be, frankly, half assed by a really stupid decision from SEGA.