The Writing and Mumbly Voices

[Tomasooie]

Does anyone else feel that the writing lacks the charm it had back in the old N64 games?
I feel that the only well done part was the intro - once they got into Showdown Town, the writing took a near-immediate dive. And then for the remainder of the game, the writing is nearly completely forgettable, with a few exceptions - most of them just being references to Rare's old games.

A lot of the writing is forgettable because of two things: it's always followed by the Choose Vehicle menu, and because it's always coming from the same characters, so you know what to expect. To elaborate - oh look, Jolly, we're gonna get some gay jokes and innuendo; Blubber - me hearties and all that; Bottles is a computer geek all of sudden just because he wears glasses, etc. And none of their personalities are consistent because supposedly they're just "acting" in every level. And is Humba really Mumbo's wife? How in the-? And don't even get me started on the ending.

Don't get me wrong, I am aware that Mr. Leigh Loveday, the writer for Rare's website, is behind all of it. I love what he does on Scribes, but I also don't think his sophisticated style really suits these characters. Part of it is too hard for me to explain, but there was a certain charm to the old writing that's lost in the new writing, and I think it was the simplicity of the writing combined with all of the wacky characters and situations that opened up all sorts of possibilities for the dialogue. They all speak way too elegantly for a game that looks like it's aimed at the younger crowd, not to mention the fact that none of these characters spoke that well in the old games. I'm not saying they should speak like characters straight out of Blue's Clues, but Leigh's style is too much for every character except L.O.G.. He does fine with Blubber and Pikelet - the ones most affected are Grunty, Bottles, Banjo, Kazooie, and Mumbo. Banjo and Mumbo used to be pretty slow, with the simplest dialogue in the past games. I suppose Mumbo's smartened up because he's the one who needs to explain all of the vehicle stuff to you. It just seems like most of the dialogue is coming from the same mouth, like most of the characters have the same style of speaking, which leads me to dialogue quirks.

Dialogue quirks help establish a character through their speech. Whenever you read "worm breath" or "goggle boy" you knew it was Kazooie mouthing off. And whenever you read "Mr. Mole" or "Mr. L.O.G." you knew it was Banjo. So some of the dialogue quirks were kept, but a lot of them were lost, thus killing the characters a little bit for me, with the whole act thing killing them even further.

Here are some of the dialogue quirks from the old games that were nowhere to be found in Nuts & Bolts.
Banjo used to yell "Kazooie!!" whenever she crossed the line while saying something.
Oomenacka and eekum-bokum were never in Mumbo's text, he never spoke those words after every freaking sentence - why can't they just play the sound effect when he opens a crate or something?
Humba no longer says "big heap," thus making her just a female Mumbo, dialogue-wise. And since Rare ruined her appearance-wise, Humba is destroyed as a character.
Grunty's rhymes are horrible and a lot of them don't flow well when read.
Her rhymes used to be simple and pleasant to read through, but now, for the most part, they're just too much
She may have barely rhymed in Tooie, but the ones they had were well done.

And now on to the voices and text boxes...
Rare decided that they were a huge part of the Banjo charm, so they kept them in, but they failed to bring them back respectfully.

First off, the text boxes. They are way too small, and so is the text, but that doesn't even matter and both will probably become bigger after the patch. The text moves along too quickly and though there is a way to slow it (hold LB), this wasn't mentioned anywhere in the game or in the manual.

But anyway, how cool was it in Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie that when a character was speaking, you saw a nicely rendered version of their face next to the text?
In this one they cheap out and just take the image from the character model standing in front of you. It looks horrible, it should just be the head, but now they have half the body in there and I dunno about you, but on my SDTV it looks awful and the full-body animations aren't interesting enough to even warrant them.

Now for the mumbling, the biggest part of all of this - the reason why there are still text boxes instead of proper voice acting in a modern game. They go on for only about one second, and though the text does scroll fast, it doesn't rush by as fast the mumbling does. It makes me wonder why they even went with the mumbling if it was going to end up being so poorly done. My guess is that they didn't want to waste development time on lip syncing and voice acting when Banjo fans would be happy enough with text and some silly noises, but then they forgot that the mumbling should be unique for each character. It's bad enough we only have ten characters to carry the dialogue throughout the whole game, but to have them all generically mumbling?
The voices lack uniquity, and now they actually do all just sound like a bunch of mumbling!
And they changed Captain Blubber's voice, for Christ's sake! WHY?! No wonder Loggo didn't make it back!

I've come to love the game for what it is, and not as a Banjo game.
As a Banjo game it fails. But they could've at least done a better job of bringing in the Banjo elements if they were going to attach this vehicle concept to the Banjo-Kazooie series.

Voice acting would've been better compared to what they've done here.
At least they wouldn't have to do the patch and I'm sure we'd all get a good laugh out of the voices. I'm sorry that you had to read all of this (if you did), but I just had to get it out of my system.

[square]

i agree with you and another thing is they only speak in their language for a second and stop and in the cutscenes theres a huge pause between dialogue.

[sim245]

Yeh same here they might make only one grunt for a big long sentence and it doesnt seem right. I understand trying to make the text work for this game, but the next should have voices. it would make the game a lot more enjoyable.

[Expiriment_Kow]

I don't know, I kinda like the models for the images because it just projects what the model is currently doing. It's pretty funny seeing Mumbo's eyes float back to his head after he's been juggling them. In the old games I don't think they were rendered all to well. They were very pixelly and jagged.

As for Mumbo's text, I have to agree. They should've just played the sound when he opened the crate instead of adding the lines in his text over and over again.

Anyone else get pissed off every time they hear Trophy Thomas' talking loop?

[Tomasooie]

Originally Posted by sim245

Yeh same here they might make only one grunt for a big long sentence and it doesnt seem right. I understand trying to make the text work for this game, but the next should have voices. it would make the game a lot more enjoyable.

I dunno about making a full-on move to voicing the dialogue...I just think they should have put a bit more effort into bringing back the old mumbling.
I mean, they only had to do it for around twenty characters this time around, and yet the voices all sound half-assed.
Banjo-Tooie had what - at least fifty, maybe even one-hundred - and the voices were all unique and funny.

Originally Posted by Expiriment_Kow

I don't know, I kinda like the models for the images because it just projects what the model is currently doing. It's pretty funny seeing Mumbo's eyes float back to his head after he's been juggling them.

I noticed that as well, but if I wanted to see what the character was doing I'd just look in front of me. Maybe in the next one they could have stylized hand-drawn animations there (head only), just something different is all I want.

[watkinzez]

Completely disagree with your evaluation of the script, but it's not really worth going over.

But anyway, how cool was it in Banjo-Kazooie and Tooie that when a character was speaking, you saw a nicely rendered version of their face next to the text?
In this one they cheap out and just take the image from the character model standing in front of you. It looks horrible, it should just be the head, but now they have half the body in there and it's all small and ugly and stupid!!

The reason why the original games had the talking heads was because they couldn't get much character and emotion out of the in-game models, given hardware limitations. Here, however, they're excellent, hence less emphasis on the former.

[pizza2004]

I disagree completely with the first post, I like the mumbling, it alarms my parents less when there isn't a belching noise coming from the television. I think in the next one they should give you a choice, voice acting or mumbling, that would make everyone happy. Mumbo does seem a little bit frustrating with the eekum bokum stuff but not really, plus this one just can't be exactly the same as the old one was. LIVE WITH IT! You people are comparing it too much with the original games and not enough with the games of these years. The old ones were good, that was then, this is now. It won't ever be the same again! Why can't people be happy we got a new Banjo game at all. And it is a Banjo game! It has a lot of good humor and a lot of awesome stuff in it, it is Banjo enough for me. Why don't you little sissy girls just play Barbie games, those won't ever change, and if they do you can't complain about them here!

[Doorstop]

Originally Posted by pizza2004

I disagree completely with the first post, I like the mumbling, it alarms my parents less when there isn't a belching noise coming from the television. I think in the next one they should give you a choice, voice acting or mumbling, that would make everyone happy. Mumbo does seem a little bit frustrating with the eekum bokum stuff but not really, plus this one just can't be exactly the same as the old one was. LIVE WITH IT! You people are comparing it too much with the original games and not enough with the games of these years. The old ones were good, that was then, this is now. It won't ever be the same again! Why can't people be happy we got a new Banjo game at all. And it is a Banjo game! It has a lot of good humor and a lot of awesome stuff in it, it is Banjo enough for me. Why don't you little sissy girls just play Barbie games, those won't ever change, and if they do you can't complain about them here!

Would you like me to fetch you some crackers and massage your back while I'm at it?

[DevilBanjo]

I 100% agree with tomasooie. No argument here.

[Rocco]

Tomasooie is my favorite user of the day

[CD Clock]

Yeah it's annoying how the mumbly loops only play for like half a second.

[Kaiser]

TBH I liked more the dialogue now and also the mumbling ,Trophy Tomas is hilarious, We needed an orgasmic voice character since sexy grunty, And the expresions are far better on this game.

But hey we are in the RWP, We need to ***** about anything, even stuff that appears for half second!!!!!.

[Dylan Yoshi]

-I can deal with Mumbo saying Eekumbokem instead of making the sound, but I'd MUCH prefer the old way.
-Humba Wumba isn't the same character as before. Most of the designs and personalities remained true to the original, but Humba they went overboard with. I agree that she should AT LEAST say Big Heap a lot.
-Grunty's rhymes... I have no problem with. Her rhymes take on the same style as before, rather than going for a Dr. Seuss style like most rhyming characters (Merlee from Super Paper Mario, for example). Hard to explain.
-Blubber's new voice sucks. Bring back the burps.
-I don't mind the new faces when they talk. It allows them to show what they're actually doing as they talk.
-Ugh the mumbles should NOT play for only a second. It makes it feel as though the characters aren't actually talking.

So for the most part, I agree. But none of this does anything to even come close to ruining the game. It's just small things that will irk the player.

[banjo kazooie]

Remember Jamjars the mole he wouldn't stop saying heh heh heh til he was done .

[Harryjames6978]

Ywp the large writing and the spped of the text even when sped up contributed to the comic timing of the old games, but this teribbly rushed speech with a second of mumbling sucks the humour out of it. Also what's with every character sounding the same, they took the mumbling idea far too literally.