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Post by Pitch on Oct 22, 2010 14:25:15 GMT -5
Or, you know, because you only run into the Bonnes like three times in Legends 2. But seriously, just take a look at how much he actually says to any of them in Legends 1. It's not very much at all. I'd be surprised if he even knows their names. Some examples since I know you won't look it up yourself. Before Feldynaught MegaMan: Oh! ... Tron dialog ... MegaMan: Huh? Aren't you the girl that's being chased by that dog? ... Tron dialog ... MegaMan: Huh? ... Tron dialog ... MegaMan: Join up with pirates? I don't think so! Forget it!\ ... More Tron dialog ... ---
After Feldynaught MegaMan: Ummm, I'm s...I mean... ... ALL Tron Dialog. ... ---
Before Bruno Megaman: You're alive! That's wonderful! .... Tron and Teisel dialog ... MegaMan: W-wait! ... etc ... MegaMan: It-It's powering up! ---
After Bruno ... Tron/Teisel/etc ... MegaMan: Me? My name is...MegaMan! MegaMan Volnutt! ... Teisel/Tron dialog etc.... MegaMan: W-wait! ... Teisel/Tron dialog etc. --- It's not that he does/doesn't have an interesting personality, it's that Keiji at least intended to give him one. There's very little reason in intentionally make a boring protagonist, especially if you want to keep the players interested in the story. IMO, MegaMan — not just MegaMan Volnutt, all of them — has always been a character without an interesting personality.
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Post by Blues on Oct 22, 2010 14:29:08 GMT -5
Hey, regardless it's still a great game, right? It's interesting though, because some people prefer the MML series more for the story and characters and others like it just for the gameplay. General opinion is split pretty even actually.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 22, 2010 14:31:03 GMT -5
I dunno, he sure seemed a lot more serious about saving all the people on Kattelox from Juno's carbon reinitialization than he ever did about saving the entire world from Sera. Juno even had to physically restrain hiim. With Sera, he barely even reacted. :17: Except, of course, when you, the player, go and physically kick the tar out of her afterward.
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Post by HalcyonDays on Oct 22, 2010 14:36:32 GMT -5
@green- Alright, that's true I suppose, there were more characters and villains added in the second that took away time from the Bonnes. But with that said, I do still think that his personality in the first one was much more defined and easier to pick out.
As for all the Megamen being characters without interesting personalities...
Honestly, how many other Megamen do you know that wish to look at dirty magazines, walk in on their roommates naked, and then react to it, (In the first, he was quite flustered, it was all over his face and then later he gives an honest apology. In the second, he does a fist pump...A FIST PUMP! TO VICTORY MUSIC! ...Ahem.) wink, give a wide smile all across their face as they lay eyes on lost treasure, glare and stare down their enemies, and then after beating them, further threatening them by waving a buster in their face and demanding them to "STOP IT!"
He's practically reeking of personality compared to the other Megamen, in my opinion anyway. And it was an interesting personality at that, in my opinion, again. Both are equally important, I'd say.
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Post by Pitch on Oct 22, 2010 14:49:15 GMT -5
Honestly, how many other Megamen do you know that wish to look at dirty magazines This is not in any cutscene, and it's completely optional; and there are things like this you can do in Legends 2. That Reaverbot fossil you buy from the shady Saul Kada guy? Guess what that really is. Right, the victory fist pump is in Legends 2. Where MegaMan has no personality apparently. o__o; That doesn't take much eh. Even if he has a personality, it's not as dynamic as the other characters'. Compared to other MegaMans he's brimming with personality; compared to other characters in his own series, he's a flat, one-dimensional character. Again, I have to suggest actually reading some of his lines.. It's interesting though, because some people prefer the MML series more for the story and characters and others like it just for the gameplay. I like it for the characters that aren't MegaMan. Don't get me wrong, I loved the style of the first Legends game 1,000,000× more than the sequel, I just think it's silly to be attributing any of the awesomeness to MegaMan, apart from maybe the voice of Corey Sevier vs. Susan Roman.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 22, 2010 15:05:39 GMT -5
@green:
You've forgotten... Downtown, by the lamppost Mega Man: Hey, cut it out! Don't you know you can't treat girls that way? (in reference to Tron) (Paprika "dialogue") Mega Man: ...Are you alright?
Before battling Juno (Tron Dialogue) Mega Man: ...Uh...thanks...for your help... (Tron Dialogue) Mega Man: Right... (Tron Dialogue) Mega Man: Right! See you later!
In defense of Legends 1, in Legends 2, especially when Yuna was explaining to Mega Man that he had to decide to give the Master's DNA to Geetz or to fight him, and right before he went to the library when she "presented" him with the choice to either reactivate the system or destroy it, from Mega Man's reactions, both verbally (in terms of line delivery and line scripting) and physically (through body language and facial expressions) like the choice would actually wind up in the player's hands. If he'd had a bit more reaction the way he did when Juno was trying to explain the Carbon Reinitialization program back on Kattelox, Mega Man as a character would have been more believable. He just sort of sat there as the game forced you to "choose" for him. There really wasn't much of a way to determine how he actually felt about stopping Geetz and Sera from restoring the System aside from actions that you as the player take...or have to take, because of the way the game was designed. If Mega Man himself had actually made that decision more clearly and more overtly, it would have felt a lot more like it was his decision (like when he refused to join up with Tron back on Kattelox and when he decided to stop Juno from purging the carbons on the island).
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Post by HalcyonDays on Oct 22, 2010 15:08:31 GMT -5
Optional doesn't necessarily mean it isn't canon, right? After all, it isn't like if you ignore it, he all of a sudden has a different opinion about it, it's still Megaman talking. Now for other activities and subquests that require more player input, like kicking pigs, turning into "Bad Megaman" and such, those are more based on player decision, unlike the dirty magazines example where it's merely Megaman voicing his thoughts. I'm glad you pointed this out, I addressed it over at the Devroom actually. In observation, there seems to be two aspects/methods that allow the player to see into Megaman's thoughts. The first would be through cutscenes, and the second being through the dialogue boxes that Megaman gives (representing his thoughts) whenever you examine something, with the exception being of when the player makes decisions, like how to respond to the Art Curator about opinions on her painting, those are more of player-input rather than part of Megaman's set personality. Now, as for the two aspects of cutscenes and dialogue boxes, this is where I feel that Legends 2 lacked, in the cutscene department, although the dialogue boxes that you read through examining objects are still there. And this is all your own opinion, which is fine. I still feel like he has a very definable personality, and a likeable one at that. Once again, there's a major difference between reading them, and hearing them. Hearing them while watching his movements and facial expressions, actually. Merely reading them gives you only a one-sided view of things. Like Yuna, right?
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Post by Pitch on Oct 22, 2010 15:14:33 GMT -5
@miss Dashe I'll give you the lamp-post scene, but in the other scene his lines are incredibly boring and without any real personality. I'm not sure why you mentioned that one. o__O (Tron's lines on the other hand, are awesome in that scene) Just for phun “It's not over between you and me! I won't forgive you if you die or do anything stupid like that, so be careful in there, OK!?” (awesome lines are awesome) | | | kthxbai |
^ This is how I feel about 90% of MegaMan's lines, whether it's in Legends 1 or Legends 2 >___< Any illusion that it's the player's choice to save the world or not is misguided. Your only real option at that point is to stop playing the game all together. >__< I'll admit he seems far less concerned or emotional about it at all, but still. HalcyonDays You were citing examples of his personality and I was saying that they were in Legends 2. Most of your complaints about Legends 2's lack of personality involved cut-scenes. I wasn't mentioning it because it is or isn't canon, just that it happens in both games and not in the part of the game you seem to be most interested in. As for the lines, I know it's more than just the words, but I think the majority of the difference is in the voice actors. Read his Legends 2 lines in Sevier's voice; they're a lot better that way. Read his Legends 1 lines in Roman's voice; they're a lot worse. You can see more or less personality in either game by ignoring the voice actors all together. Also, yes, like Yuna.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 22, 2010 15:34:39 GMT -5
The difference is also in the character's facial expressions and animation. If you recall correctly, the first time I sat through The Big Scene in Legends 2, my mother was vacuuming, so I couldn't hear very much, admittedly, and eventually had to wind up watching it again on Youtube later on just so I could really discern what went down. However, despite the garbled audio and predominately having to focus on Mega Man's reactionary animation and little clips of Yuna's speech, I wound up getting out of the scene yelling at my mom because now I--not Mega Man--had to make an important decision and I didn't know what it was. There was no indication from Mega Man's body language or facial expressions the way there was in Legends 1 that he had ever made the choice for himself, voice actor swap notwithstanding.
From George Masswohl's interview, when they recorded the dialogue for Mega Man Legends, he really made it seem like they just got to see clips of their character in action and based their vocal decisions from what they saw. If you look at Mega Man's facial expressions in Legends 1 without the sound (the Juno introductory scene, in particular) and then looked at them in Legends 2, especially during that big cutscene about Mega Man's past, it's no wonder Susan Roman's performance fell flat! In fact, in the specific shot where Mega Man was reacting to Yuna's declaration that the Carbon Reinitialization program was about to be activated again, he isn't even facing the camera! You don't even see any physical movement as he reacts.
I mean, Yuna's lines in that scene...they make a pretty serious, "It's up to you now" impact, but none of the characters at all show any sign of movement throughout the shot where she delivers them. There's no real indication of where Mega Man's heart's leading him at all. Animator faux pas, FTL. Where was the camera in that scene focused? On Mega Man! When you animate, you've got to be a bit of an actor yourself, even if you're not an actor by trade, and since Mega Man was the focus of that particular shot from the finalized storyboards onward, his animator and texturer should have been reacting to Yuna's script cues at least a little bit during that dialogue clip.
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Post by Pitch on Oct 22, 2010 15:46:20 GMT -5
Well... There was MegaMan's reaction to seeing the Master again. I think there was a bit of emotion in that. (That is the scene we're talking about, right?) But I'll give you the rest of it. Especially seeing as one of the things Legends was really well known for from the first game was having a wide variety of facial expressions.
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Post by Dashe on Oct 22, 2010 16:00:21 GMT -5
Yeah, that's the one. That and the one that happened right before the Geetz battle. I watched it again. Boy, the Master's voice actor is really emotionless for the last remaining human in existence. :17: It's times like these when I wish I were a guy just so I could redub the thing myself. Too much stuff going on in the script, not enough emotion showing through in the visuals. :15:
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Post by Pitch on Oct 22, 2010 16:05:27 GMT -5
Whoa now.
Give the Master a break. He's 3,000+ years old and spent the majority of those years in Elysium which is by nature an emotionless place. If his voice actor doesn't show any emotion, that's just fitting. :17:
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Post by Dashe on Oct 22, 2010 16:13:00 GMT -5
But the English script is begging for emotion in that monologue. Both of them. If he didn't have any emotion whatsoever, he wouldn't have been able to make the decision to destroy his own System and die on Terra. :-\ Plus, if he was supposed to be a sympathetic character, the least they could've done was give him some subtle facial tweaks during his dialogue and had him show a tiiiiiiiiiny twinge of regret visually, so the voice actor would have had some direction. If we as an audience are supposed to like the Master the way Mega Man does, they ought to have given him something besides static poses and facial expressions. Subtle? Yes, I'm not saying he should've been Campy McDramaman like Glyde or completely over-the-top like Teisel over here, but he is human, even if he's a couple of milennia old.
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Post by Pitch on Oct 22, 2010 16:22:46 GMT -5
Having just listened to that scene again myself, I don't really see any complaints with the Master's lines. Seemed pretty straight forward and fine to me. Maybe he's not wrecked with guilt, or bursting into tears, but he's got that thoughtful/profound tone going on, and it seems to work just fine.
God, though, I forgot how much I hate Susan Roman's voice for MegaMan. ∗cringe∗ But if anything I only believe more that the main problem with MegaMan in Legends 2 is his terrible voice acting. >.<
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Post by HalcyonDays on Oct 22, 2010 16:23:36 GMT -5
Well, it's somewhat off-topic, but I also agree that the emotional drama that occurred with the Master could've been pulled off so much better, for both the reasons that Miss Dashe gave, as well as the actual writing for the character in terms of plot itself.
I mean, how can they expect the audience to fully relate to what's going on? They practically introduced the Master, and then had him taken out of the story in basically, one giant scene. We only had one scene to be able to try and relate to the Master. Mix that in with the less-than-effective voice acting and lack of facial expressions and body language, and it downplayed the drama factor from it's full potential.
@green- Well, I was only citing examples because you claimed that Megaman Volnutt, in general, lacked an interesting personality. So I cited general examples from both games saying otherwise, and showing that he indeed had an interesting personality. But I guess in the end, it's all opinion.
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