King mogeko: It's part walkthrough, part drama, part parody, and all kinds of awesome!
One day, a man going by the handle of Marshall D. Teach happened to watch an online playthrough of Mogeko Castle, and thought to himself how much more awesome it would be with voices. Specifically, a full cast of voices, a lot less silence as the heroine roamed the castle's corridors, and a number of extra comedy skits. Thus, The With Voices Project was born.
Even after finishing with Mogeko Castle, Teach decided he wanted to give the "With Voices" treatment to similar unvoiced, text-based games such as The Gray Garden and Ib. You can watch his videos here
, and also support his efforts here at his Patreon page.
No relation to Let's Dub Project.
So far, the With Voices oeuvre includes:
- Mogeko Castle With Voices (completed)
- The Gray Garden With Voices (completed)
- Garden Gray The With Voices (completed)
- Garden Gray The With Voices
- Undertale With Voices:
- Secret of Mana Theater With Voices (completed)
- Ib With Voices (completed)
- The Witch's House With Voices (completed)
- Octopath Traveler Machinabridged (currently in production)
As of June 2022, the series is on an indefinite hiatus so Teach can work on video games for a profit.
The With Voices Project provides examples of:
- Adaptational Gender Identity: Both Frisk and Chara aren't really referred to any gender, in both the Genocide and Pacifist route, they're both referred as male and female respectively.
- Adaptational Heroism: Frisk in Genocider still kills monsters, but is sympathetic throughout, doing so mostly because he thinks he’s in a standard RPG and that the monsters attacked him. Yet he is willing to spare those who don’t pose a threat to him and winds up killing them due to outside influence: he was sparing Toriel until she says, “attack or run away!” and didn’t realize she’d die in one hit, killed Papyrus only because he was paranoid over the skeleton’s inconsistent behavior around him, was willing to spare Muffet once she called off her attack, only for Chara to take over his body and kill her anyway, and took up Sans’s false mercy offer the first time, and told him he fought the monsters because they were dangerous, citing what happened to Chara. He also actually fights Chara off when she tries to destroy the world at the end.
- Adaptational Villainy: Chara not only takes control of Frisk’s body to kill some monsters he wants to spare, but actually gets off on death and violence.
- Bilingual Bonus: The title for Episode 2 of Undertale With Voices: Pacifist, Les Freres Sans Peau, translates to "The Brothers Without Skin."
- Black Comedy Rape: When you're covering a game like Mogeko Castle, what choice do you have?Mogeko: Pikachu!!!
- Boisterous Weakling: Emalf and Poemi. Highlighted nicely in their version of Team Rocket's motto.
- Chivalrous Pervert: The Mogekos in The Gray Garden. They'll be helpful and heal Yosafire and her friends and sell them whatever they need. But whereas they are totally G-rated in the canon game, here, Mogekos will be more true to their roots and drop sexual innuendoes every step of the way.
- Contrived Coincidence: Frisk grew up in Chara’s village, and saw Asriel return her body, convincing him that all monsters were dangerous.
- Cover Version: "Something Stupid," by Kcalb.
- Early-Installment Weirdness: The first Mogeko Castle episode keeps the 'beeping text' noises that are present in the actual game. This is done away with in future episodes. Also, King mogeko's mouth doesn't move after Yonaka's first bad end.
- Entertainingly Wrong: In Undertale: Pacifist, when Frisk comes to New Home and sees it looks just like Toriel’s house but with flowers blooming, he concludes that Toriel married the gardener (who shared a name with the king by coincidence) because he didn’t think a king would live in an ordinary house.
- Evil Is Hammy: Although Kcalb is no longer evil, since he's the Devil, Teach decided to go this way for him, full-blast.
- Filling the Silence: Any place where video game heroes would normally be fighting or walking around silently... in the With Voices Project, they become as chatty as Gordon Freeman in Freeman's Mind. Teach refers to it as "banter".
- Gag Dub: The dubs don't always stick to the script, instead opting for expanding what is there if it's funnier that way.
- Somewhat averted with Secret Of Mana Theater With Voices. It's more of a "Straight Dub," providing voices, but adding no new material.
- Gosh Darn It to Heck!: Charlotte Elizabeth Poe, who voices Fawn in Secret Of Mana Theater With Voices, does this in place of Fawn's "fugging" F-bombs.
- Happy Ending Override: Inverted, in a sense, with Undertale: Genocider. Everyone still dies of course, except Frisk. This is because Teach's Frisk is characterised as a sort of Author Avatar of Teach himself, including having done all kinds of crazy adventures before (i.e. played other games), so this Frisk is a Genre Savvy, Crazy-Prepared Combat Pragmatist son of a family of Monster Hunters (this also explains his "old man voice"). When Chara starts to turn on him in the ending, he really does just shoot her with a gun he alluded to before but kept hidden and ready for the assumed Final Boss, then gives her an epic "The Reason You Suck" Speech, before shooting her a few more times until her head explodes, killing off the Fallen Child for real. Frisk, having killed every monster who stood in his way including his own proverbial monster, then climbs out of the chasms and goes back to his family. Happy Ending ensues.
- Hidden Depths: In Episode 5 of the Pacifist Run, Frisk reveals himself to be a musician; a singer and master pianist.
- Idiosyncratic Episode Naming: All the Ib With Voices episodes are named for the colors of the walls of the rooms Ib is exploring at that time.
- Interactive Narrator: In Episode 1 of Mogeko Castle With Voices:Yonaka: (tired of fleeing Mogekos) They're not chasing me anymore!Narrator: Get moving, already, damn it! Geez! Way to ruin a good narrative! Now keep running and don't stop, okay?!Yonaka: Okay. Running, running, running, running...
- Just a Stupid Accent: Emalf's is Spanish.
- Kleptomaniac Hero: Any protagonist which Teach is given control of will inevitably become this; swiping everything that’s not nailed down. During Mogeko Castle With Voices, Yonaka stumbles upon a cabinet filled with a bottomless supply of money. Despite the fact that almost nothing can be bought in this game (except for some drinks), Teach still has Yonaka loot ¥86,000. In ¥1,000 increments.
- Leitmotif: Mr. Monokuma’s Lesson from Danganronpa is made into King mogeko’s personal theme. It’s devilishly appropriate, if you consider how unsafe high school students are around both Monokuma and the King.
- Lemony Narrator: Ib's narrator is really, really crazy, focusing on bizarre details, giving strange descriptions to everything, and elaborating on facts about people sometimes bordering on Too Much Information.
- Let's Play: Teach was in the middle of a more traditional Let’s Play of Hero and Daughter, but hasn't done any new episodes in a while.
- Level Grinding: Teach will gladly demonstrate to his audience how much he LOVES battling and RPG level-building, time and time again. He makes it fun for them to watch, though!
- Man of a Thousand Voices: Teach provides about 60% of the male voices, including Defect Mogeko, King mogeko, Moffuru, General Hashasky, Male Etihw, Tal E. Whacker, Lowrie, Emalf, Thanatos, Elliott, Frisk... not to mention a small army of nameless bit parts!
- His brother, Weatherman, also qualifies, playing Shinya Kurai, Somewhat Strange Mogeko, Blood Spirit, Kcalb, Dingleberry, Dyluck, Sans, and Papyrus.
- Many Spirits Inside of One: By the end of Pacifist, Frisk shares his mind with the Snowman from Snowdin, as well as Asgore, though this is undone after his Reset.
- Mascot Villain: King mogeko has become one to the entire The With Voices Project; the schoolgirl-kidnapping monarch is the one you'll see encouraging viewers to visit the Patreon page at the end of each episode.
- Nice Job Breaking It, Hero: If Toriel hadn’t told Frisk to attack or run away, he’d have spared her and Genocide wouldn’t have happened.
- Not So Above It All: Even Defect Mogeko cannot resist lusting over Kurotsuno!Defect Mogeko: Do you have any idea who this girl is?! She is like the goddess of high school girls! Hundreds upon hundreds of Mogekos would gladly sacrifice their left nut to get to bed Kurotsuno!... Kuro-chan, do you think you could take off your shirt for a minute?
- No Ending: Secret Of Mana Theater With Voices... although Teach has expressed an interest in continuing it, if he acquires enough money.
- Pokémon Speak: The Flame Bat accompanying Emalf speaks like this, yet somehow he still understands what it's saying. Other Flame Bats also talk like this later on.
- Police Are Useless: In the first episode of Undertale With Voices: Pacifist, Frisk actually thinks to call 911 with the cell phone Toriel gave him. Unfortunately, thanks to the magical barrier, the cops can do nothing but wish him the best in his new life underground.
- Previously on…: "Last time on... [Insert Title] With Voices..." Followed by a parodic summary of the preceding episode.
- The Quiet One: Ib is, by far, the quietest "With Voices" protagonist yet. She rarely speaks for herself; instead, an omniscient narrator reveals her inner thoughts.
- Running Gag: Whenever a red arrow appears in one of Deep Sea Prisoner's computer games, the player character will always comment on it. Always.
- Schrödinger's Gun: Not all the lore is consistent between the two Undertale runs. For example, in Genocider, the castle visible from Waterfall is not Asgore’s, while in Pacifist, it is.
- Shown Their Work: Teach really takes the time to research all there is to research about the games he covers. This includes past versions of the games and everything else in the game creator's oeuvre. It leads to a lot of nifty Mythology Gags.
- Speaking Simlish: Mogecuckoo's voice is nothing but chicken clucking, even though he speaks actual words in Mogeko Castle.
- Suddenly Voiced: Enforced, as it's pretty much the mission statement of The With Voices Project. This is especially true with Frisk, who was a Heroic Mime in the game, who is now just as chatty as any protagonist in The With Voices Project who isn't Ib.
- The Many Deaths of You: If there's some unique way for the protagonist to die, rest assured, Teach will have his player character march to his or her doom. After the ghastly cutscene plays out, another character will assure the audience that this isn't how the story really ends.
- Too Dumb to Live: Frisk has this opinion about the monsters in Undertale: Genocider who constantly attack him for no reason. He's perfectly willing to leave them alone if they'd just stop bothering him every step on the way (even though this Frisk is a Hunter of Monsters by trade, which means he's being very generous to them), but they simply can't get a hint, so he solves the problem the pragmatic way. In the end, even Chara turns on him despite knowing how powerful and pragmatic he is and begins threatening to kill his family, so he just shoots her repeatedly until she's no longer an issue, then simply leaves.
- Un-Sorcerer: Frisk.Frisk: I am so jealous of all those other humans born with magical powers, it's not even funny! My sister gets to go places like the Pigpimples Academy of Spellcraft and Sorcery, while Muggles like me just get to schlump off to Albert Gore Jr. Elementary every day!
- Vocal Dissonance: Frisk, in both versions of Undertale, has the voice of a gravelly older man.
... and now, back to the troping!
