New Pokémon Snap’s Voice Acting Is Unnecessary and Underused

One of New Pokémon Snap‘s selling points was its voice-acted cutscenes that were teased even before its release. Fans of the Pokémon franchise were looking forward to a game that could have a different vibe than the others. But New Pokémon Snap‘s supposed cutscenes turned out to be mere seconds long, mostly leaving players to still click through text boxes instead. Since the game’s launch, New Pokémon Snap has received good reviews and high praise from players and critics alike, but some fans are wondering why the voice-acted cutscenes were included in the first place.

The storyline for New Pokémon Snap begins with the player taking on the role of a Pokémon researcher who has traveled to the Lental Region to assist Professor Mirror in his research on Illumina Pokémon. The game starts with a couple seconds of beautifully rendered shots of the Research Camp, and the chosen player character. After the title is shown, and a few Pokémon previewed, a high-pitch voice is heard off screen, and the camera pans to see Professor Mirror and his assistant Rita. Professor Mirror says “Greetings!” and then the scene fades and changes to both NPCs standing off-center of the screen in classic text-adventure format.

The rest of New Pokémon Snap follows this pattern with the more important cutscenes beginning with one or two voice lines and then switching to reading through text. The text scenes are accompanied by the NPCs occasionally saying a generic phrase, or making a noise and then remaining stationary. This format creates a sluggish environment for the story, as the voiced cutscenes are often silent or meaningless, and followed up by exposé heavy text-based scenes.

New Pokémon Snap’s Voice Acting Has Unused Potential

The tutorial in New Pokémon Snap has the player test out controls and features in the yard of the Research Lab with a voiceover from Rita. The audio cues here are helpful as the user becomes familiar with the game’s buttons and mechanics. As the player progresses through the game and captures particularly rare shots, some of the NPCs will offer exclamations of jealousy or encouragement that are accompanied by a pop-up text box and the same monosyllabic voice line. This lack of interaction is particularly disappointing as many fans’ favorite part of the original Pokémon Snap was hearing Professor Oak say “You were close!” over and over again.

Given how beautiful New Pokémon Snap looks, it’s unfortunate that Nintendo didn’t take full advantage of the available voice actors and create more cutscenes that included both the beautiful graphics and the fun voices. It would have been much more satisfying to experience the Lental Region with sweeping shots of the landscape narrated by Professor Mirror, rather than still reading mostly text during cutscenes.

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