Star Fox Adventures: Oddities

Star Fox Adventures was shaping up to be such a superb game. With impressive graphics and the potential for game play and aspects that would surpass those featured in Zelda, it was poised to be Rareware's best game yet. However, when all was said and done, the final project was rushed out before it was truly ready, and with Rare having moved to Microsoft, making a vast amount of improvements was not an option. Alas, with a rushed object came a lot of odd features, and it is my duty today to list some of the oddities that were left when the game was released. The list of strange features that could have easily been corrected are as follows...

1. On several occasions, the subtitles and voice acting are out of sync. In other words, the subtitles appear before the characters recites what they are saying. An example of this occurs when Falco arrives to aid Fox in the final battle.

2. While some characters initially communicate with Fox with roars or the Saurian language until his translator begins to function, the Shopkeeper and the Warpstone talk to him in English. Is the English language considered their native tongue, or was the translator only working with certain characters at the time?

3. When Fox first picks up Krystal's staff, her Saurian instructions are out of sync with the English subtitles.

4. On their way back from their first trip to the Volcano Force Point Temple, Fox and Tricky hear Krystal's pleas for help. Even though everyone else has been talking to Fox in English for a while at this point, Krystal is still speaking in Saurian. Did the translator suffer some sort of glitch? Interestingly, Krystal's cries were originally in English during this scene, and the anguish in her voice was much more profound than in the final version.

5. Apparently, the Thorntails have the ability to change their voices, because once you have returned the second Krazoa Spirit, they begin to say random things in different voices. Only the female Thorntail has a distinct voice.

6. One particular Thorntail does not say a word until you are nearly ready to journey to Dragon Rock, at which time he reveals that he is its Gatekeeper. His voice is quite distinct during the cut scene where he opens the gateway, but when you speak with him again afterwords, he shares the same voices and dialog as the other Thorntails. Did Rare run out of unique dialog for the Gatekeeper at this point?

7. Once you pass the Krazoa Test of Combat, the Krazoa that Krystal saved says that he will guide you through Krazoa Palace when you arrive there. However, he never shows up while you are exploring the palace.

8. Upon rescuing the Cloudrunner in Dragon Rock, Fox is asked is he is a friend of Krystal. This is the first time that he learns the name of the girl that he is trying to save, and yet he acts as if he already knows her name. The voice acting here sounds a bit off and is out of sync with the mouth movement.

9. If you travel to Moon Mountain Pass before you head to Ice Mountain, you still trigger the cut scene in which the Sharpclaws spot you and begin to ambush you with barrels. Even though Fox's translator is not functional yet, the Sharpclaws speak in English instead of Saurian.

10. During the early parts of Fox's portion of the adventure, there are no English subtitles for when some characters talk to him in Saurian. When he tells Tricky that his father has been captured, one must assume that he somehow learned about it from the Queen Earthwalker, for it is the first time we have heard about it.

11. In the "fight" against General Scales, he does not attack at all. He merely walks towards you, stopping to brandish his sword when he is close to you.

12. Sometimes, the subtitles do not quite match the voice acting word-for-word. For example, when you rescue Belina Te, the subtitles read "I am Belina Te," but she says "My name is Belina Te."

13. You can unlock a Saurian subtitle option, but the Saurian subtitles are rife with misspellings. My understanding is that Rare eliminated this feature for some international releases and replaced it with a fortune.

14. The highest percentage you can obtain is 99%. Since the game does not save after the final battle, it is impossible to have a 100% file.

15. At around the 90% mark, there is a point where you trigger a point of no return and are thus unable to freely explore Dinosaur Planet after you beat the game. With no way to copy to an empty file, the only way you could create a back up file is to play on one file to the end and another until just before the point of no return.

16. Tricky seems to have the ability to transport himself from one place to another, because he can materialize on the other side of a gap without any explanation whatsoever.

17. When you meet the Hightop in Cape Claw, he admits that his memory is not what it once was. It must really be that bad, because if you talk to him at some point after you have returned his gold bars, he will act as if they are still lost and ask you and Tricky to find them.

18. Most of the Earthwalkers in the Walled City do not move their mouths when you speak to them.

19. When talking to some characters, there is no voice acting...only subtitles.

20. Prior to flying off to the Cloudrunner Fortress, Fox tells Tricky that he can wait at the hollow until he comes back. However, Tricky still climbs aboard the Arwing right before take off, and stays there for the duration of Fox's fortress adventure.

I am sure that there are a few oddities that I have missed, but the ones listed here are some of the strangest that were left in the game. Rare could have easily corrected these errors, and if they had been given more time to finish the game, chances are that many, if not all, of these mistakes would never have existed in the first place. This is what happens when a game is rushed out: we get a product that is nowhere near as polished as it could have been. A shame that its release was not pushed back any further, for what could have been a solid game became the product that caused Rare to jump the shark after years of delivering a lot of great masterpieces. What a terrible fate for Star Fox, which used to be a great franchise filled with loads of potential.