• Hello everybody! We have tons of new awards for the new year that can be requested through our Awards System thanks to Antifa Lockhart! Some are limited-time awards so go claim them before they are gone forever...

    CLICK HERE FOR AWARDS

Sora's voice actor in CoM



REGISTER TO REMOVE ADS
Status
Not open for further replies.

Guernsey

Active member
Joined
Apr 27, 2006
Messages
873
Awards
4
Age
36
I like Haley Joel Osment as much as the next person but I always wondered why couldn't hire another fourteen year old to voice Young Sora in the game?
 

Ruran

Flesh by mother, soul by father
Joined
Sep 22, 2009
Messages
4,650
Awards
4
VA consistency/Osment really likes playing Sora. It's kind of odd, but I just brush it off as Sora going through puberty. Boys can go through some pretty quick changes at that age.
 

Oracle Spockanort

written in the stars
Staff member
Joined
Jul 13, 2008
Messages
35,552
Awards
96
Age
32
Location
California
Website
twitter.com
Because they wanted Haley Joel Osment because he was the one Nomura chose to be Sora all those years ago.

I always figured they could have hired his sister if they really cared about Sora sounding young, but they clearly didn't care. This is why it is best to just to pretend Sora's voice cracked between the end of KH1 and the start of CoM (they were on that road for awhile).

Hiring 14 year olds doesn't solve the problem. They get older then Sora appears as a 14 year old again years later in another game, so then what? What do they do then? They have to hire yet another 14 year old because the other 14 year old is now 16 and has a deep voice. It's not wise and nobody would appreciate it. This is why it is bad to hire children & prepubescent teens to voice characters in general. They can provide the authenticity of a child or teen voice, but once they hit puberty there is no guarantee they can maintain that voice when they get older.

People get angry when voice actors are replaced anyways, so why would they replace the main character's voice actor who is well known for his role as said character with somebody else?

HJO enjoys playing Sora, and why take that away from him? I thought he sounded perfectly fine. If anything, I was more upset the voices weren't lip-synced. That was much more distracting than KH2!Sora's voice coming from KH1!Sora's model.
 

Guernsey

Active member
Joined
Apr 27, 2006
Messages
873
Awards
4
Age
36
Point Taken.

Still, it is kind of weird to see Post KH1!Sora/ReCoM!Sora especially since the GBA version of CoM had voice clips from the first game.
 

Rydgea

keeps leaving X-mas decor up year-round.
Joined
Oct 21, 2011
Messages
2,775
Awards
13
Website
backloggery.com
It's even wierder when you change voice actors though (see: Ansem SoD, Aerith, Disney characters not reprising their roles, etc), because you can get a completely different sound coming from them. Also, Haley knows Sora inside and out at this point, no guesswork has to be made about his character when doing the acting. He can play Sora til he croaks for all I care. He's earned that much. <3
 

Beardman

New member
Joined
Feb 11, 2012
Messages
69
I too like to pretend. That Ansem SOD took a side trip during his time travels, and went and beat Sora with the puberty stick whilst he was sleeping in the grasslands during one of those nights between I and COM.
 

Magnus

Silver Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2010
Messages
3,141
Awards
16
What I don't get is why they didn't just alter his voice digitally. They could easily have raised the pitch to make him sound closer to his pre-puberty days (without sounding like a chipmunk).
 

Solo

Silver Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2013
Messages
4,606
Awards
15
Age
34
Location
Indonesia
Human voice isn't something that can be altered that easily. Sometimes, the drop in vocal frequency after puberty can be really great (which is why we have basses in a choir) and no amount of alteration will "correct" it to approach and emulate the pre-puberty voice. Had they done it, HJO's voice might have not sounded natural and lost the quality that makes it Sora.
 

Magnus

Silver Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2010
Messages
3,141
Awards
16
I didn't say it was easy, but the technology to do a decent job is there. They wouldn't even have had to try to aim for his pre-puberty pitch, but just make it slightly lighter, which would have made the transition between the games less awkward.

And let's not act like he's a bass ;) He's more likely to be a baritone.
 

Rydgea

keeps leaving X-mas decor up year-round.
Joined
Oct 21, 2011
Messages
2,775
Awards
13
Website
backloggery.com
What I don't get is why they didn't just alter his voice digitally.

It's really not necessary. There are plenty of 14 year olds with much deeper voices. Like Solosis said, you lose a LOT when you digitally alter a voice, and the ear picks up on these things. Haley sounds natural, and so we don't need anything impeding that.

Human voice isn't something that can be altered that easily. Sometimes, the drop in vocal frequency after puberty can be really great (which is why we have basses in a choir) and no amount of alteration will "correct" it to approach and emulate the pre-puberty voice. Had they done it, HJO's voice might have not sounded natural and lost the quality that makes it Sora.

Agreed. The human ear also picks up on what's been shaven off digitally. (i.e. I gag when I hear autotune.) Haley could easily lose some of the warmth, humanity of his lines if an engineer wasn't careful enough when churning his lines through a pitch bender. Also, a lot of gamers that have played Chain of Memories don't really raise an eyebrow at the voice used in CoM unless they play KHI and CoM back to back.
 

Magnus

Silver Member
Joined
Jul 1, 2010
Messages
3,141
Awards
16
Few people would be able to notice if his voice had been raised by one semitone.
 

Solo

Silver Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2013
Messages
4,606
Awards
15
Age
34
Location
Indonesia
Don't forget the fact that running HJO's voice clips through sound editor would have required additional resources, effort, and ultimately money. I personally think that all those things would have been better spent on lip-syncing instead of altering HJO's voice, which they didn't do.

In addition, it's just my opinion, but if I were him, I would have been disappointed to know that my lines, which I have gladly and passionately recorded, were subjected to such a treatment. That means they don't appreciate what I have done and have underestimated my ability to adjust my voice naturally by not asking me to do so. Voice actors are expected to be able to pull off such a feat naturally since oftentimes, they lend their voices to characters whose vocal profile is way beyond their natural range.
 
Last edited:

Xelon99

New member
Joined
Mar 29, 2014
Messages
288
Awards
8
Age
30
Location
Netherlands
I did notice the difference, but it sounds close to the KH2 voice, so I don't mind it. I wonder more if they'll redo the KH2 voices too to get that a little deeper, so the transition in depth makes more sense. And I wonder how they'll fix it for Coded, since they mostly used the KH1 sora for there.

Technically they could have easily changed the pitch to match the KH1 frequency. Though this would be too much work and if they already were short on time due to Days, this wouldn't work out at all.
 

Antifa Lockhart

Moderator
Joined
Jun 4, 2010
Messages
3,845
Awards
82
I did notice the difference, but it sounds close to the KH2 voice, so I don't mind it. I wonder more if they'll redo the KH2 voices too to get that a little deeper, so the transition in depth makes more sense.
They won't touch the prior recorded audio.

And I wonder how they'll fix it for Coded, since they mostly used the KH1 sora for there.
The kh1 model, but the game was dubbed in 2010. Haley Joel Osment's voice has hardly changed since then, even though they never used the kh1 Sora voice clips for data Sora? There's nothing to fix? They'll have to record for the new scenes, but as they've shown in the Days Cinematic, they're not going to redub the scenes from the game. (unless they get a different actor, like with Ansem)
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top