Sonic and the Children

[Kuzu]

I reckon the bajillion fanfics also might have something to do with it.

There's a reason they're called fanfics, I really think it's stupid to let a story written by people who haven't reached puberty deter you from new narrative options. A bad fanfic is just that, a bad fanfic and has no impact on the series as a whole.

[TheFury БЕИ]

Pretty much everything that was done in Shadow the Hedgehog, honestly.

That is absolutely true.

[Speedy]

I think a problem with Sonic and children is that many people label Sonic games 'for kids'. Maybe even people at Sega think they have to primarily appeal to children with new games. When Generations came out, I read somewhere they made it easier to play than Unleashed to appeal to young ones and win new fans. Don't really know if that's true.

A lot of Sonic fans I know are teens and young adults, and they're the kind of fans that have been playing Sonic games for years and will probably keep playing them for years. There's nothing wrong with making games the way they can easily be played by children. But there's something wrong with basically ignoring the rest of the audience. Generations is a really weird example for target group management. I mean, the whole nostaligic theme was based on 'reviving' previous games by remaking stages from them. They even brought back Classic Sonic. But the more than shallow plot, cheesy and superficial cutscenes/dialogue and the low level of difficulty in the stages would have appeared stupid to me even back when I was, like, eight.

Most pixar movies have shown really well how to include a deeper plot while still keeping things child-friendly. Anothing thing one probably could compare are Marvel movies like Spiderman or Fantastic Four. They include serious, deep themes such as love, loss, responsibility (and the typical insane superpowered villains of course), but they also appeal to younger ones. What the Sonic series needs is some effort being put into story and character backgrounds, not bloodbaths, swearing and weapons. To me, some of Sonic's appeal stems from not being like the trillion of shooter games or dystopian RPGs. It's refreshing to see Sonic's colorful worlds between the ever the same broken buildings, dark alleyways with burning barrels and car wrecks full of zombies. The cartoony world of Sonic games kind of stands out between these scenarios and I think it should stay that way... But optics shouldn't restrain plot themes.