Forum - View topicThis Week in Games - Remembering David Lynch and His Influence on Games
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FrodoGate222
Posts: 108 |
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To be fair, Daisuke hasn't been voicing Sol for a while. It's been Joji Nakata since 2007 with Guilty Gear 2 Overture |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2722 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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Yeah, I was going to bring that up, too. Once Guilty Gear started getting more in-depth story modes & cutscenes Ishiwatari essentially retired from the role, outside of voicing Sol's grunts & shouts during battle for the 2D entries. Even the static image scenes for the original XX's story sequences saw Sol voiced by Hikaru Hanada first, before Jouji Nakata took over.
I think the last time Ishiwatari ever voiced a character was in Battle Fantasia, which came out earlier the same year as Guilty Gear 2, where he played Freed Velez. Last edited by Lord Geo on Fri Jan 24, 2025 11:34 am; edited 1 time in total |
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LinkTSwordmaster
 Posts: 575 Location: PA / USA |
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That Xbox Direct that dropped the other day was a real trip, the Ninja Gaiden announcement was big enough that it seemed to blot out the rest of what was announced, in spite of the other games on it looking like they had some promising elements. Not something I tend to expect from Xbox these days.
The new Phantom Brave is out, and while I imagine the PC release of FF7R Part 2 is probably going to be occupying most JRPG players for a while, I still want to see Phantom Brave do well. It's not often these days that NIS gives us something new that's not trying to shill Laharl front and center, and it's weirdly-refreshing seeing them return to one of their earlier PS2 side stories. They really need to recapture that PS2-era charm badly - whether that's with 2D sprites or not I cant say, but even if I find the Phantom Brave series to be a bit underwhelming compared to other Disgaea titles, it's refreshing that they didn't go for the obvious cash-grab that would have been a Disgaea 8 announcement. |
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FinalVentCard
ANN Reviewer
 Posts: 675 |
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That stuff came in too last-minute to be discussed this column, I'll talk about Ninja Gaiden next week. |
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Lord Geo
Posts: 2722 Location: North Brunswick, New Jersey |
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At least it'll give you time to see how Ninja Gaiden II Black is actually being received, as I've seen some complain that it's really more just Ninja Gaiden Sigma 2, with all of the changes that fans didn't like maintained (& even the removal of two bonus bosses that were in Sigma 2), except with all of the gore of the original NGII added back in. |
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AiddonValentine
 Posts: 2387 |
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Oh Lynch, what an artist. Within a day after he died not only did Criterion make a documentary about him available for free until the end of the month, Plutotv has made Twin Peaks available in the US for a limited time. You know someone has made an indelible mark on a medium when their death causes people to go "We gotta make sure as many people as possible have access to this guy's art!" (Also funny Norio Wakamoto comes up as he was the Japanese dub voice for "Big Ed" Hurley in Twin Peaks).
Anyway, it's very funny what sorts of influences you find in Japanese media when it comes to foreign stuff. Like how the Belmont family in Castlevania is named after Jean-Paul Belmondo who subsequently was the inspiration for the look of Cobra in Space Adventure, how Dario Argento's Phenomena inspired Clock Tower, and so on. And looking back it's not surprising Twin Peaks clicked with Japan what its focus on the inherent surrealism an outsider coming into a small town and the darkness that lays in small town communities. |
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Philville
 Posts: 168 |
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Really appreciated this unexpected tribute to the master. I've been a huge Lynch and Zelda fan for 20+ years but never even knew about the connection, so this really blew my mind. Talk about worlds colliding. I always felt that Link's Awakening had a seriously Lynchian vibe to it, but I had no idea Twin Peaks was a direct influence, and even less that it influenced OoT, which is my favorite game of all time. Shame on me. To be fair, if someone had told me that Lynch had somehow influenced a Zelda game, my first guess would have been Majora's Mask. You can't tell me that Miyamoto, Aonuma and Koizumi weren't binge-watching Lynch's entire catalogue back in 2000; the whole game feels like a Lynchian fever dream.
It was also interesting to see the other games which were clearly inspired by his work. The one big ommission here (even if it isn't Japanese) is Alan Wake, which really feels like a love letter to Lynch (to the point where Sam Lake seemed to be going out of his way to mention other influences than Twin Peaks while promoting Alan Wake 2, such as the movie Se7en).
I didn't know Wakamoto was the voice of Hurley in Japan! Were any other well-known seiyu involved in the Japanese dub? Yes, aside from the presumably "exotic" appeal of Americana at the time the show aired in Japan, its uncanny vibe, mysterious tone, eccentric characters, and exploration of the dark underbelly of small-town communities definitely seem to have tapped into the nation's collective unconscious (not to mention the supernaturally-tinged pinewood forest setting, which must have resonated with a part of the population given Japan's own mythologization of woods in national folktales). It's nice that Lynch acknowledged his Japanese fanbase; I remember that back in the day there were even Japan-exclusive Twin Peaks-themed coffee ads directed by the man himself. I've always wanted to try that coffee with a slice of cherry pie. Shame that the Criterion Channel documentary isn't available in my region. It isn't the same as The Art Life (2017), is it? |
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AiddonValentine
Posts: 2387 |
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Quite a few actually like Masashi Ebara, Masaki Terasoma, Issei Futamata, Akio Ohtsuka, Yoshiko Sakakibara, Gara Takashima, Ryusei Nakao, Hideyuki Hori, Minami Takayama, it was quite the cast. Ironically, Kyle MacLachlan's actor isn't as well known because he's better known for dubbing than anime or video games. And yes, it's The Art Life they made free temporarily |
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Snomaster1
 SubscriberPosts: 2965 |
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Oh,I remember "Twin Peaks." I was around for that. There was plenty of hubbub over that show. I saw very little of it,but what I did see was very weird. Somehow,I shouldn't be surprised that the Japanese would embrace someone like David Lynch,or that "Twin Peaks" did well in Japan,but I kinda am. I don't know if any anime was influenced by Lynch's work. I hope someone here does that. It might make a very interesting read here,since this is an anime site.
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An Unchosen One
 Posts: 38 |
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I say good riddance, as he was among those who signed a petition in support of amnesty for Roman Polanski.
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Stelman257
Posts: 321 |
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Hahaha actually I think the reason is much simpler, it's just because Jouji Nakata has been voicing Sol Badguy for over a decade now. Ishiwatari hasn't voiced him in ages now. Which makes sense, as the series grew and got more dialogue, they hired actual actors.
As it turns out, the real answer is a little more complicated than that. It seems to legitimately be far closer to original NG2 than Sigma 2 in terms of gameplay pacing and style, especially on the 2 highest difficulties. Enemies don't have the inflated HP of Sigma 2, are delimbed quickly and can be rapidly executed like in the original NG2. Where people have called it more like Sigma 2 is the amount of enemies in the encounters based on early streams played on Acolyte/Normal difficulty. But it turns out the encounters dynamically change per difficulty level, with there being a far larger number of enemies on higher difficulties like the original NG2, and a lower number on the easier difficulties, similar to Sigma 2. So it seems like they really have combined the best of both worlds, giving us a game that functions and plays very similarly to original NG2, while possessing many of the QoL's and options of Sigma 2. The two Sigma 2 exclusive bosses were giant statue bosses that were honestly, not very fun to play, and I can understand the choice to not include them, especially given the decision to keep the pacing similar to the original game, not Sigma 2. Outside of that, obviously the blood and gore is right up there with the original game, and all the women return as playable characters, in a game that lets them flow and wreck havoc far quicker. I've seen a lot of people that have played the higher difficulties be really positive of the game, and that while it isn't a total 1:1 remake of the original NG2, it really does feel like a "Black" version of it. Honestly though, Platinum Games working on NG4 was the biggest surprise! |
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Philville
Posts: 168 |
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That's quite the cast! I wonder how a quirky Agent Cooper would sound in Japanese. Good to know for the documentary. For some reason I thought it was a twelve-episode documentary made specifically to celebrate Lynch. In hindsight that would have been impressive, and nearly impossible to pull off so soon after his death (unless it had been in production for a long time in anticipation of this day, which rather morbidly is common practice in the entertainment industry). I've seen The Art Life, which was great, and plan to watch it again. But to be fair, it focuses a lot on him as an artist in general (and as a painter in particular). Still, I'm glad that his movies will in many ways remain shrouded in mystery, as he always wished -- "A place both wonderful and strange." |
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