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Spax interviews Ken Balough


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Just came across this at the SEGA Forums, I did a quick search here but couldn't find it posted during E3 or after.

Anyway, Spax managed to somehow get into E3 and while he was there he got to interview Ken Balough about Sonic 4 with questions he gathered from fans. There are some good questions answered but some are just way too out there and leave Ken speechless. Most interesting bit gathered from the interview is the confirmation of no classic model in the game, so people can quit asking and begging now. Spax seems to be quite rude throughout the interview, it's painful to watch and I applaud Ken for being able to put up with him for about 12 minutes, the mic lowering thing is awesome.

http://www.spaxgametoonzone.com/E3_2010_3.html

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Wow...that was painful to watch. Spax kind of went a tad far with some questions. Props to Ken for getting through all that.

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This is a good thing. Breaking through the PR barrier by having a fan speak to the devs directly, and not just asking those crappy generic questions.

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Spax was SO unprofessional.

Ken had this "What in the name of all that's holy, is in front of me" look on, practically ALL the time.

At the end..."Wave at the screen". What the fuck is that! I mean seriously.

I can understand that Spax was probably nervous, but come on!

Back to what was actually said.

We now know that the title screen will be fully animated.

We now know that the Classic Sonic model won't be in Sonic 4, but Ken acted kinda weird when he said "we have heard you".

You have heard us about what?

" There will be no Classic Sonic in Sonic 4, but we have heard your [many, MANY] voices, but we chose to completely ignore them in that regard."

At one point it may even have sounded like they were going to add a "classic skin", but I doubt it.

We now know that there will be new stuff later in Sonic 4.

We don't know for sure if the game will lock-on, but it probably will, because not doing it would be stupid.

We know that Sonic 4 wasn't inspired by DonkeyKong Country and Sonic Megamix......(lol)

Overall, it was a cringe-inducing interveiw, but did shed some light into some grey areas (unfortunately Spax covered most of it up)

Also, lol at all the retards in the SEGA forums who are jumping down Ken's throat. I mean its like they think that he is making the game single-handedly.

One guy complained about Ken saying that the Pre-rendered design was a natural evolution. I mean, its his JOB to make Sonic 4 sound good. He gave a perfectly reasonable answer; because CGI pre-rendered sprites is the same method used for Sonic 3 and Knuckles, but now its a higher resolution. Why would somebody who's job is to promote Sonic 4, say its crap.

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Must he ALWAYS have that hoodie on? He looks fucking creepy.

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Lol, how high he held the microphone :D But, yeah he got rude at times..

- Opening animation = more sales; What? If buying a game is up to that, there's definitely something wrong.

- Ken pretty much confirmed lock-on with his statement that he can't talk about characters to come, when asked if there'll be lock-on.

- I'm really starting to get annoyed about Classic-Sonic wanters to use the argument "It takes place after Sonic 3 and before Adventure! He didn't have his redesign yet!!!" Damn it, the modern design doesn't have anything to do with the story. Adventure even proves that by showing Amy remembering Sonic CD with the modern designs. Spax even showed that scene!

- He say's Amy can't be in it, because she says she hasn't seen Sonic since CD, which isn't true, she just says she misses the old times and remembers when she got saved in CD. She didn't say that was the last time they saw eachother.

Must he ALWAYS have that hoodie on? He looks fucking creepy.

Yeah, and in LA in a hot convention building it must be burning. How can he wear such thick clothes there? :blink:

Edited by MarcelloF
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End of the interview, he does something I really wish people would do more often- he just interrupts Ken and essentially says "Shut up, I wasn't asking that question.".

Okay the interview didn't really bring out much info, but he was sort of just throwing everything we say in Ken's face. I wish he'd specified what he meant play 'plays itself' though, cause they probably won't hear that as SPEEDBOOSTER, SPEED BOOSTER, SPRINGSPRINGSPRING!

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Is there a text transcript of the interview? Java can't be updated on this computer for reasons that aren't worth going in to, and apparently there's some interesting stuff here.

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Is there a text transcript of the interview? Java can't be updated on this computer for reasons that aren't worth going in to, and apparently there's some interesting stuff here.

Dude, it was borderline incomprehensible. Half the time Ballough tried to say anything worthwhile, Spax interrupted him with his own opinion.

It would be a transcript of unfinished sentences.

End of the interview, he does something I really wish people would do more often- he just interrupts Ken and essentially says "Shut up, I wasn't asking that question.".

Thats actually really rude and improfessional. Its an interview not an interrogation. Ken's just selling the game, he doesn't necessarily know all of the inner workings of the game.

If he were allowed to finish speaking after most of Spax's questions, we may have been able extract some more information from it, but alas, we instead know, what Spax thinks about the game...

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Thats actually really rude and improfessional. Its an interview not an interrogation. Ken's just selling the game, he doesn't necessarily know all of the inner workings of the game.

If he were allowed to finish speaking after most of Spax's questions, we may have been able extract some more information from it, but alas, we instead know, what Spax thinks about the game...

Yup, I know. Basically though he just wasn't going to accept those pre-packed PR responses for things. He didn't need to be rude fair enough, but he was asking some proper questions and wanted proper answers.

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Yup, I know. Basically though he just wasn't going to accept those pre-packed PR responses for things. He didn't need to be rude fair enough, but he was asking some proper questions and wanted proper answers.

That much I can agree on. Its just it got really annoying, when he asked those questions, and then Interrupted Ken, when he was trying to answer them. Then he would give his own opinion and move on.

I saw Ken saying something, but the mic was away from his face, so I couldn't hear any of it.

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Thats actually really rude and improfessional. Its an interview not an interrogation. Ken's just selling the game, he doesn't necessarily know all of the inner workings of the game.

If he were allowed to finish speaking after most of Spax's questions, we may have been able extract some more information from it, but alas, we instead know, what Spax thinks about the game...

Spax isn't professional, though, is he? I think it was good he did that, rude or not, if I ask a question, I want an answer to that. I myself wouldn't do it, because I'm too shy, but I think it was good Spax spoke up about his fears about the game, even if I didn't agree with some of them.

But I think Balough was answering the question. He was asked about lock-on, which in S3&K made you be able to play Knuckles in S3, and his answer was about not being able to reveal anything about characters. Which means he couldn't answer it, because it would reveal that you can play as characters from Episodes 2 and on in episode 1. Meaning it would be completely confirmed that there are more characters in the following episodes.

Did that make any sense? xD

Edited by MarcelloF
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He was just asking if they would lock on, so you could play one big adventure like: Splash Hill > Casino Street > Lost Labyrinth > Mad Gear > E.G.G. Station > Episode 2 levels. Ken started talking about characters (probably because he was on the spot and horribly nervous after the rest of the interview).

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Oh, Ken Balough, you are truly a man of infinite patience... and Spax looks like a creeper with that hoodie on. :P

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Spax doesn't know how to talk to people properly. Go watch his Mike Pollock interview. He complains about 4kids and Jason Griffith during the interview.

Spax didn't ask any hard questions that fans wanted to know. He was talking about shite Ken doesn't care about like plotholes in Sonic 06 and how Amy shouldn't appear in Sonic 4. Also, what's with Spax saying "Okay okay, I'm just here to help."?

Other people asked Ken about lock-on technology,

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While Spax didn't necessarily interrupt the guy a lot, the lock-on question notwithstanding, he did inject a ton of his opinion in there, opinion Ken Balough and other community managers like RubyEclipse have probably already heard, opinion that even Sega has probably already heard.

This petty interview solved nothing, and I disagree with the notion that putting a PR agent, emphasis on PR agent, on the spot like this and conducting slapdash interviews trying to force answers to questions the fanbase has apparently already answered from taking apart the trailers for months on end will somehow "break through the PR barrier" and open up stronger dialogues. To do that, you're going to need a relevant degree of professionalism which Spax simply does not possess. I don't cheer this guy; I don't applaud him. If anything, he just reinforced some degree of negativity about us. So thank you Spax.

Edited by Nepenthe
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Also, asking about why the Continue sprite isn't Sonic 3's. Really? Really??

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Also, asking about why the Continue sprite isn't Sonic 3's. Really? Really??

Because he's really THAT petty.

Also, I have seen people bawing about the style clash of classic Sonic on the scoreboard and loading and then modern Sonic in gameplay. I mean, really?

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Spax doesn't know how to talk to people properly. Go watch his Mike Pollock interview. He complains about 4kids and Jason Griffith during the interview.

Spax didn't ask any hard questions that fans wanted to know. He was talking about shite Ken doesn't care about like plotholes in Sonic 06 and how Amy shouldn't appear in Sonic 4. Also, what's with Spax saying "Okay okay, I'm just here to help."?

The problem Spax has online and in real life is that he thinks he speaks for the entire fanbase, he thinks his oppinion is that of everyone elses, but that just isn't the case. He also forces his oppinion on folks involved with the franchise, which is just rude and in an interview for a site like this, completely unprofessional. Most recently, Spax went and shoved his oppinion on Sonic's voice acting down Roger Craig Smith's throat on his Facebook.

Ken was trying to answer the questions best he could in my oppinion, if he can't speak on certain things then he can't speak on those things. At the end of the day, Ken is only doing his job and very well at that for putting up with Spax's shit. Ken or anyone else at SEGA doesn't deserve poor manners, anyone trying to force info out of them and/or force them to take their oppinion and implement it into a game because that's what they think everyone else wants.

Looks likeSpax was able to interrogate another PR about Sonic Colo(u)rs at E3 (bottom of page).

Mmm, cringe worthy (sorry if this is old news).

There's more of his shit? :blink: *goes to watch, takes pain relief tablets*

EDIT:

Spax has joined Retro :o -

http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?s=&showtopic=21726&view=findpost&p=491912

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Looks likeSpax was able to interrogate another PR about Sonic Colo(u)rs at E3 (bottom of page).

Mmm, cringe worthy (sorry if this is old news).

Am I the only one getting no sound on that?

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He looks like he's trying to shove the mic in her face in the Sonic Colors interview :lol:.

Other than that, it wasn't good, but it wasn't completely terrible. He asked some interesting things,, though he was a bit rude.

Edited by MarcelloF
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Just finished watching that Colours one, that was painful too. The amount of very specific references he expects Marcella to know are just ridiculous and he's rude as usual. Ken wins again for trying to save Marcella and cut the interview so it doesn't go on for 12 mins like the one with him.

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