It's evident that Sonic Team and Sega are serious about their upcoming racing title Sonic Racing: Crossworlds, which appears to be almost ridiculously packed from the start with characters, tracks, and extra guest appearances. You can check out our thoughts on the Sonic Racing: Crossworlds preview at Gamescom.
The latter include Creeper (Minecraft), Ichiban Kasuga (Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth), and Joker (Persona 5), as well as icons such as Pac-Man and SpongeBob. But unlike all the Sonic characters, who bicker and insult each other, the guest racers are silent.
In a Destructoid interview with Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka, he explains why they chose this approach, saying that it would have been too extensive and legally complicated to do it any other way:
"In this game, there's a lot of interactions between characters, so if we include voices for the guest characters, that will mean a lot of interaction between them and Sega characters. The scope of the review that we'll have to ask the external companies will become very large. We didn't want to make it difficult for the external company. So that's, I guess, the reason why we decided not to be."
He also adds that the focus of the game is on the Sonic characters, which contributed to simply deprioritising the guest appearances.
What do you think of that explanation? Does it matter if the drivers can talk or not, and does it seem reasonable that talkative characters like Ichiban and SpongeBob don't say a word during the races?