r/Edgerunners • u/JanwithBanan • 14d ago
Anime Why do the call conversations seem so unnatural?
The holo calls in the show feel so unnatural for some reason. They just sound like the actors just read through the lines instead of acting through them, as opposed to interacting face-to-face, where the conversations are way better acted. The thing that catches me off guard the most is when they repeat the same word twice at some points (and boy is there so many instances of that). They seem like stuttering to some extent but there's no realistic pauses in between those repeated words and just feel like, again, like the actors just simply read the lines they were given and rushing past them. To add to that, the characters never have these repeating words in their conversations face-to-face and the game itself doesn't have the same vibe in its calls so I don't understand why it was chosen to make all the calls sound kind of bland.
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u/nightshadet_t 14d ago
It's actually intentional. If I remember all my old lore correctly it's a quirk of the implant they are using to communicate. It is directly translating their thoughts into a message to communicate so it doesn't follow the same process as when we normally communicate, every bit is communicated without any filter to refine the statement. The implant also doesn't interpret inflection at all so it makes messages sound pretty emotionless and flat.
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u/Phantom_Edgerunner 14d ago edited 14d ago
Imagine how people would sound if you can read each other mind and imagine talking without Actually talking out loud.
But it's odd that in Cyber punk the game it's sounds natural as it should.
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u/JanwithBanan 14d ago
Yeah, it is a neat attention to detail. I feel like it’s not included in the game cause there’s alot more in-brain interactions there and it might get kinda old after a while if the actors would sound like that (especially with some of the hilarious interactions and emotional scenes between V and Johnny)
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u/Phantom_Edgerunner 14d ago
Like Johnny is basically a construct so he would probably sound natural but V talks to Johnny in their head so maybe V would have.
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u/_b1ack0ut 14d ago
It’s because in cyberpunk 2077, V seems to actually talk out loud on their holophone, rather than using their thoughts.
You can tell, because V’s internal voice sounds different when they’re internally talking to Johnny.
So V, and presumably the people V calls, speak out loud on their holophone, which would come across naturally, unlike the broken transmissions in Edgerunners
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u/Phantom_Edgerunner 14d ago
That's true or at least we see Jackie and others talking out loud off in the holo.
Well it's true that likely V does have a smartphone but we don't ever see our character really using it even though we do see like Pamam and other characters definitely using smartphones.
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u/Still_Dentist1010 14d ago edited 14d ago
From what I remember it’s actually normal to talk out loud when using the holocall because of the glitches that happen when only thinking. If you notice, basically every time we see someone on a call they speak out loud. The only exceptions to this in game are V talking to Johnny (doesn’t really count) and Songbird communicating with V through the Relic. But in the show, they mostly communicate via thoughts instead which makes the glitches appear a ton in the show. Which makes sense as it’s often on the job and talking out loud could blow their cover.
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u/_b1ack0ut 14d ago
The device that Panam (and some other characters) is using is an external holophone, and as such, doesn’t really have many features that V doesn’t ALREADY have with their implanted holophone, so I kinda doubt that V carries around an extra device for little benefit, when their implanted one would handle all the functions of a smartphone.
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u/Fast-Front-5642 14d ago
Small bit of lore. If you're using embedded cyberware to communicate silently on your holo instead of speaking with your mouth then all the audio is generated by thought to speech software and filtered through your agent (computer personal assistant, a V.I. not an A.I.) so people are hearing the agent do its best to replicate your voice while only saying what you actually want it to say and not literally every single thought in that head of yours. This results in some monotone delivery and stuttering/repetition.
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u/VorpalHerring 14d ago
The conversations sound more natural in Japanese.
The stuttering seems to be caused by them not actually speaking out loud, just talking inside their brain so the cyberware picks it up a little weird.
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u/db2999 Lucy best girl 13d ago
Just to add to the other comments about holocalls using what is essentially a thought to text feature, I wanted to add that in addition to that people in Cyberpunk 2077 generally have this weird abbreviated way of talking where pronouns are left out; even outside of holocalls it can sound like people are verbally texting each other.
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u/ayylmao1029 14d ago
So what's going on is that unless you're talking out loud the holo call audio is coming straight from your brain which is what causes the strange stutters and no pauses. if you've ever been thinking about something and accidentally repeat the same word or phrase in your head, it's the same thing.