(2010) Voice Actor Comparison - Shadow the Hedgehog (Humphrey vs. Griffith vs. Thornton)

EDITED 2024: This video was uploaded in 2010 and the description below sucks. Anyway, no I won't be updating this, I don't make these kinds of things anymore and haven't for a very long time.

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Yet again, SEGA has replaced the voice cast of the Sonic games (with one exception: Mike Pollock's Eggman). This includes Shadow, Shadow the Hedgehog. He's seen three voice actors so far, David Humphrey, Jason Griffith, and Kirk Thornton. There's been much debate over who portrays Shadow the best, and Thornton has only recently been able to stick his nose into the conversation, having only voiced Shadow so far in Sonic Free Riders and the DS iteration of Sonic Colors.

This is not a "Who I think is the best" video, nor is it meant to have all these long-winded and lame titles throughout. Each card simply states the following voice actor and what game the clips are taken from. By all means, talk about who your favorite is below, why they're your favorite, throw bad words into why you hate the other guys, I don't give a crap what you do in the comments as far as your opinions on the three actors go; this vid alone is simply informative.

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After several months of this vid being up and reading comments, I figured it was about time to share my own thoughts, especially since there were some points I wanted to address. So here I go.

I'll start with my thoughts on the character. I always liked Shadow the Hedgehog, ever since his first appearance in Sonic Adventure 2. So when I saw the ending and thought he was dead, I... didn't know what to think. Then came Sonic Heroes, which, in retrospect, had a cruddy story, but I was still surprised and delighted to learn that Shadow was alive. Then came the surprising twist that he may have been just an android, which was later proved incorrect. Shadow remained my favorite character, and I enjoyed the attitude he took on and had even in Sonic '06, as terrible a game as that was.

As for his voice actors, I knew Humphrey first, and his voice fit. Then when the actors were replaced, I thought Shadow sounded different when I first played Shadow the Hedgehog. There were some parts I thought he sounded like Humphrey, but other than that, I don't understand how people can say that Griffith and Humphrey sound familiar; just listen to this video and you can see that they do not. Maybe when they talk softly they can sound similar, but not THAT similar. So when I read people commenting "Humphrey and Griffith sound the same," which I infer you to mean all the time, I, quite frankly, think you're nuts. Because they sound nothing alike, and their personalities are completely different; Humphrey is oft-cocky and talkative enough, Griffith is more analytical and softer-spoken.

Which brings me to my next point: Cockiness. I've read a few comments saying that Thornton sounds like he's making Shadow "too cocky." ... Apparently you've never heard Humphrey's Shadow lines. Shadow was plenty cocky in that game. He didn't necessarily lose his cockiness in Griffith's incarnation, he was just less vocal about it. But it was still there; lines such as "There's no strength in numbers," "A super-dimensional being? This might even be a fair fight," and when Sonic says "Don't be late" to him in '06, Shadow replies with "Same to you." So Shadow never stopped being cocky. Besides, folks, can we please separate bad acting from bad writing?

As for Thornton... I don't like him. At least, not yet. Maybe I need time to adjust, but I liked Griffith from the start, so in comparison, that's a bad sign for me. We'll see. I would like for him to lose the slur and maybe loosen up on the snobbiness a bit, and then for the writing team to give him some actual good lines, and who knows? Maybe he'll play the role good. Shadow's rumored to be in Sonic Generations; there's a chance to hear him try to improve. As long as the writing isn't terrible...

And there you have it.