User blog comment:Shadowclaimer/Exaggerated Characters (Opinions)/@comment-785068-20101102162516/@comment-785068-20101102180859

Damn it all, the new wikia skin is weird with blogs so I'm not if this'll show up right. Well, whatever.

Xu Zhu has had the same Japanese voice actor since the PS DW, so the only thing that really changed was his personality and performance. Back then (like in DW~DW3), he was actually much more serious and darker, right? I kinda liked that aspect since it made him hella scary when smacked people around with his mace. To make an outside Koei reference, it faintly reminded me of The Butcher from Diablo when he would say, "Fresh meat!" Yeah, Xu Zhu lost a lot of that over the years. Omega Force probably thought they had too many "dead serious" characters and decided to exaggerate the jolly part. As for the transition with Xu Zhu, I'm a little mixed. I do like the childish and oblivious aspect they emphasized because it makes it seem ironic that he's in Wei to begin with. He sticks out like a sore thumb and his character symbolism is way more interesting because of it. It lead to me jokingly saying that Cao Cao will hire anyone who impresses him. I'm depressed at the same time since they lost that same dark element they had going with Xu Zhu. The him "being hungry all the time" also lost a lot of its sinister elements because of his cheery remake. His darker side pops up now and then through his lines, but not really to my liking. Feels too awkward now.

I didn't really like Yuan Shao's older interpretations of his personality because he felt too much like a clone of the other rulers (Liu Bei, Cao Cao, Sun Quan) to me and not as competent. Though I'm not sure if I like the comical relief change for his character better or not. He's a mixed bag with me in that regard. I do like it at times in Japanese since his whole "I am a heroic noble, damn it! Respect me!" can be hilarious. Plus his surprise at Guan Du gets more interesting each game because of it. At least with his exaggeration, I can get a laugh at times while playing. But, ugh for his English performances; just feels too forced and falls flat of what the Japanese one does. He's still a serious guy in spite of the change, just not as much anymore. Yuan Shao's still awesome in my book, but he's much more appealing to me in WO than DW as far as Warriors interpretations goes. His reactions to some of the SW characters is kinda neat.

It's actually nice talking about the not "too popular" characters for a change. :)

I personally think the characters who did change for the worse with these intended exaggerations would probably be Gan Ning or Jiang Wei. Gan Ning became a weird, loud mouth delinquent as opposed to a badass pirate. Gan Ning in the East redeems himself a little bit in my book due to his sheepish nature with the Edit characters and his tough guy reactions to his shipmates; this is cut entirely in English though. Jiang Wei nearly became a Zhao Yun clone with Zhuge Liang hero-worship, which I think is way too shallow for him really. I do hope they try to make these characters better with the inclusion of Jin.