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Popular and unpopular Sonic opinions you agree and disagree with!


KHCast

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2. We know that Sonic Team had worked on NiGHTS, which was released in July 1996 at its earliest date. Given the scope of Sonic Adventure, it was likely already in the very preliminary stages of development by the time X-Treme was due to roll around, so it wouldn't have been affected by X-Treme's release.

 

You can actually confirm this by noticing the dates on the photos of when Sonic Team went to South America. They were travelling in November and December of 1996. Assuming they didn't just go "hey we're making a new game let's travel and after that think about it", it means the game was in basic development on the months before already, enough for them to conclude some basic story stuff.

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I think, as bad as Sonic's reputation may be now, it's planting the seeds for a future victory of some sort. How that victory comes about, I don't know.

 

Could be Sega selling it to someone better (when they literally need the money, or are winding down on operations). Could be Sega finally getting their act together (though their stubborn refusal to learn from their mistakes makes me think the former is more likely at this point). I don't know. 

 

But whatever it is, I think it's only a matter of time before Sonic gets back on his feet. Maybe I'm just being blind, but as the old saying goes, only time will tell.

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I'm not too certain how popular or unpopular this is at this point, but here goes:

 

While I do admittedly have my little grievances with Ken Pontac and Warren Graff's work with the Sonic series, especially with what happened with Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, the fervor I've been seeing against them recently just strikes me as needlessly overblown and overtly exaggerated. They're hardly my ideal Sonic writers, but with the way how some folks talk about them, one would think that they're worse than whatever went on with Shadow and Sonic '06, and I just can't help but feel that that's selling them far too short.

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Eh, I prefer Sonic '06 and Shadow's writing to Lost World and Shattered Crystal. 

 

I might need to slap an unpopular label on my own post now.

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Eh, I prefer Sonic '06 and Shadow's writing to Lost World and Shattered Crystal. 

 

I might need to slap an unpopular label on my own post now.

 

The fact that I cannot disagree with this really kind hammers it home to me how far this series` writing has degraded...or rather how its never been all that good to begin with.

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Eh, I prefer Sonic '06 and Shadow's writing to Lost World and Shattered Crystal. 

 

I might need to slap an unpopular label on my own post now.

 

Is there a reason why? No really I'm interested

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Eh, I prefer Sonic '06 and Shadow's writing to Lost World and Shattered Crystal. 

 

I might need to slap an unpopular label on my own post now.

 

With how I've seen people act with regards to the latter two games versus the former, it might at least be sitting on the crossroads between unpopular and popular.

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I actually like Pontac and Graff's work. I haven't played Shattered Crystal yet, but out of the work I played, Lost World's characterization of Tails is literally the inly thing I don't like.

 

Yes, I am easy to please.

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Speaking of Pontac and Graff, I'll be honest when i say this but I found Shattered Crystal's story much better than Colors' in terms of comedic plots written by them.

 

Certainly, it wasn't great but atleast they had some more wiggle room than just sticking to dialogue and it shows.

 

The jokes flow a lot more natural and the characters don't constantly explain them either, also outside of one instance, no translator jokes. No seriously, one of the biggest reasons why I can't stand Colors' story is the terrible translator jokes. Out of all the various forms of humor, grammar jokes should NEVER be used in Sonic, at all!

 

Oh yeah, Lost World's story was fine. Had some really strong individual moments but doesn't have a proper flow.

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Eh, I prefer Sonic '06 and Shadow's writing to Lost World and Shattered Crystal. 

 

I might need to slap an unpopular label on my own post now.

 

At least they had the self-confidence to actually believe in themselves, no matter how inept they may be.

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From a realistic standpoint if the main series is going continue with its current lighthearted and humor-centric tone I think I'd much rather prefer the writers behind the Boom cartoon handle the dialogue in any future game.

 

They're not perfect by any means, but at least their writing has made me chuckle enough to be pleasantly entertained on a semi-regular basis. The only thing P&G's writing ever succeeded in was managing to make me sharply exhale in amusement on two separate occasions.

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I can't believe people actually prefer ShtH and '06's writing to Pontac and Graff's.

P&G's writing hasn't been great but I've gotten a hell of a lot more entertainment out of them than the self-absorbed melodrama and lifeless characters of those two games.

Fuckin' Double-Dark Sonic alone should be enough reason to prefer P&G...

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While I do legitimately enjoy Shadow and Silver's individual stories in 06, it's more of the character interactions than the actual plot of their stories so yeahhhhh P&G's stories seems to be the better option for me. 

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I'm not going to argue about the Adventures or anything, but talking about ShtH and '06 specifically, any sense of adventure they could have had is completely ruined for me by characters I have no interest in and a story that doesn't have the weight it thinks it does. Even with the disconnects that Lost World had, the characters were interesting enough for me to care what was happening to them.

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I don't think P+G are great, but they are at least showing signs of improvement. Lost World was flawed but it had more life and story to it. It had some decent personality defining moments and tried to place in at least some sort of moderated drama. The gags didn't drag the whole thing to a halt like with Colors either. It was still very hap hazardous but it was a huge step up. If they keep making this sort of progression each game, we could end up with a good story next time.

 

Concerning Tails, I admit it was a flop but considering Tails has spent so long as a bland exposition device I'll credit them for at least trying. There were at least some decent subtle bits of character that worked (e.g. him too fixated on his inventions). I think Boom Tails sorta took some elements of what they were aiming for and done it much more fluidly (ie. prideful and overeager kid inventor whose protective of his friendship with Sonic). If they now have experience with the show I hope they may take notes in that area.

 

I haven't played Shattered Crystal though, how were the characterisations there?

 

 

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Well Sonic tends to harp on teamwork, Tails just says smart things and point out things like the fact Knuckles is called Knuckles because of his spiked knuckles, Amy says girly things cause she's a girl but wants to kick Lyric's ass ...err, I mean tail. Sticks says random paranoia stuff but humorously misinterprets teamwork at the end. Knuckles likes to punch things but does act dumber compared to RoL but not braindead dumb like people like to interpret as, just a silly kind of dumb. Shadow is a non-sense guy and just kicks ass, and would rather to work alone and finds him superior to Sonic, a better interpretation than in RoL.

 

Does that help or you can just watch the cutscenes online.

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Okay, ShTH makes me raise an eyebrow. But prefering Sonic 06, the most incoherent and nonsensical plot even compared to ShTH, makes me think this is more out of spite.

 

Now I have a lot of greviances with P+G's writing myself. It's very joke heavy, lacks tension, can neglect other characters, and in Lost World its disjointed and lacks a lot of background detail to the setting (what is Lost Hex and the Deadly Six's story beyond what we've seen?), and this is on top of playing way too safe.  At this point, I've been expecting these things to come out in some form given what they went and hired new writers since they've botched their stories too much, yet at the same time I thought what they did in Colors was at least decent compared to ShTH and Sonic 06.

 

But here's what I don't get: weren't we still informed that even P+G were forced to write Lost Worlds the way it was, and wasn't given as much freedom as we expected? Initially we were told they did, and I hardly came to their defense for it when the opposition had a point. But come that revelation, I figured that all blame once again rests on Sonic Team for being too tight on the leash.

 

And given how Sonic Boom seems to be continuing that direction, and that it isn't just P+G who've had their hands on it, why are P+G being given the full blame when they're not entirely responsible for how things have been? Like, it really amazes me how black and white this is being treated, at least from what I'm looking at.

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Can somebody please explain to me exactly what makes Sonic '06's story so bad?

 

I get that the whole Sonic/Elise thing is weird but it takes up so little of the story that it's a bit silly to claim that it ruins the whole thing.

 

On a technical level I get that there are a few plot holes regarding time travel. What I don't get is why Sonic '06 gets blasted for them when they're the exact same plot holes which are present in every other story involving time travel, from Chrono Trigger to Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban.

 

The other complaint I often hear about it is that it's too dark for a kid friendly franchise like Sonic. First, that's entirely a matter of opinion, and second that has no bearing on the actual quality of the story. Plus I don't get how it's too dark for Sonic when Adventure 2, Majora's Mask, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon 2, Mega Man XTransformers: Prime, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars, all of which are installments of franchises which are considered to be kid friendly, are just as dark as, if not darker than, '06.

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Can somebody please explain to me exactly what makes Sonic '06's story so bad?

Mainly how nonsensical the plot is regarding Mephilies's plan being so overly complex. 

 

Everything Mephilies wanted could have been done much simpler than it was:

  • Want the Iblis out of Princess Elise? What's Silver there for then? Why not let Elise and Sonic bond while trying to avoid Eggman, then stab Sonic in the back when you get the chance. The amount of beating around the bush until he did just that was unnecessary when he could have simply teleported the two and be done with it. No Silver required.
  • On top of that, why bother with Shadow when he's the main person who sealed you away? Mephiles can hide in peoples' shadows, teleport anywhere in the world and at any time period, so he could have done better avoiding Shadow throughout the game and then stab Sonic in the back to become the god he wanted to be. Nothing in Shadow's fate would have benefited him in anyway, and if anything, having Shadow sealed as a scapegoat for the Flames of Disaster would have been an achievement by keeping Shadow out of his way.
  • In addition to that, why did he need to bond with Iblis the moment it was released from Elise? Iblis already existed in the future, and Mephiles could have just bonded with it right then and there and succeeded without a hitch. So what was the barrier preventing Mephilies from doing that instead? That was poorly explained.
  • And as Mephilies can teleport into the past, present, and future, he should be able to see with clarity that there is no way Shadow would ever consider joining him by traveling everywhere Shadow will go to interfere, so why bother recruiting Shadow anyway? Much less, why bother if Shadow's going to be sealed away regardless when Iblis is released? 
  • And if anyone wants to argue that Mephiles wants Shadow to stay out of his way if he can't get him to join him, why didn't he send Silver on him instead of Sonic who he could have kept an eye on without anyone giving away his real plans? It doesn't matter if Silver couldn't beat Shadow, it would have been much smarter to keep Shadow occupied with someone else to keep him off Mephiles's plan, which would have succeeded in five brilliant strategems with just one move:
    • hiding his real goal with a fake goal until his aims are achieved (lying to Silver or Shadow on the cause of the Flames of Disaster and having the two fight each other over it),
    • avoiding a head on battle with a strong enemy (Mephilies pitting Silver against Shadow so that he doesn't have to waste time and energy),
    • causing damage to an enemy by getting a third party to do it (having Silver fight Shadow, and weakening the two from stopping him - notice a pattern?), 
    • Attacking an opponent when they have their own problems to deal with (Attacking Shadow when he least expects it, and therefore preventing or at least delaying Shadow from ever sealing him in the past)
    • Getting his the enemy to focus his energy, and then attack a position that would be weakly defended.(so if Silver and Shadow are weakened yet alive after fighting each other, Mephilies could move in for the kill without too much resistance, and therefore he rids himself of the two who are the most capable of stopping his plans without a hassle)

And the fact that he missed out on these opportunites doesn't make him seem like a practical villain and more someone who's complex for the sake of being complex.

 

And keep in mind, that Sonic was Mephilies's target the entire time and that absolutely no one, not even the player until we get to the last story, knew that his real plan was to become Solaris and destroy all of existence. Even if plans are complex, they have to have some pragmatism to it. But hardly any of them had any relation to what he wanted to achieve, or if it did it went about it in a way that could have been done much easier and with everyone still unaware of his plans. That's a big problem with Sonic 06's plot, and I will go so far as to say that even I could write that story much better than that if I had the time.

 

Simply put, place yourself in Mephilies's position, with all his powers and capabilities, and tell me you would do the same thing he did and not any one of the suggestions I made to achieve the same goal. Because I know for certain I wouldn't if I were him.

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Well, another thing is just how incredibly stupid everyone acts. I mean, Sonic's story is the absolute worst about it. How many times does Elise get captured? FOUR times? 

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Assuming the worst of people who disagree with you on something does not a good argument make. I don't, in a sense, "prefer" Sonic 06's plots to later games' out of spite. I prefer them because the game's pathos align with my general thoughts about how the series should handle its narratives. This is a different subject than the objective characteristics of its narrative and they shouldn't automatically be equated as the same argument, particularly in an attempt to paint people as being melodramatic, spiteful, crazy, or what-have-you. As an example, no one- and I mean fucking no one- wants a Pacific Rim 2 that only follows any characters who have absolutely nothing to do with piloting the Jaegers, and I don't care if you get Charlie Kaufman to write it and actually make it some amazing postmodern, psychological drama film that would end up being better than the first as an overall movie. The whole point of Pacific Rim is mecha versus kaiju. If you don't have this, I don't want to watch it.

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Assuming the worst of people who disagree with you on something does not a good argument make. I don't, in a sense, "prefer" Sonic 06's plots to later games' out of spite. I prefer them because the game's pathos align with my general thoughts about how the series should handle its narratives. This is a different subject than the objective characteristics of its narrative and they shouldn't automatically be equated as the same argument, particularly in an attempt to paint people as being melodramatic, spiteful, crazy, or what-have-you. As an example, no one- and I mean fucking no one- wants a Pacific Rim 2 that only follows any characters who have absolutely nothing to do with piloting the Jaegers, and I don't care if you get Charlie Kaufman to write it and actually make it some amazing postmodern, psychological drama film that would end up being better than the first as an overall movie. The whole point of Pacific Rim is mecha versus kaiju. If you don't have this, I don't want to watch it.

And using the absolute worst example that nearly destroyed the franchise as something that is much better preferred makes an even worst argument that only serves to reinforce people's assumption of the worst in others. You want a game's pathos to align with your thoughts on how this series should handle its narratives? You could use any other example except 06 and made your case known: SA1 which handles its narrative in that same way, yet suffers none of Sonic 06's flaws, SA2 which goes further than that, and hell maybe even Shadow the Hedgehog, a game whose incoherence at the very least has the excuse of being done in a "Choose Your Path" style where players pick where they want to go (though I wouldn't guarantee you won't get a similar response).

 

But to use Sonic 06, of all games, as an example of how the series should handle its narratives - a straightforward narrative which is incoherent in itself, handles its characters in a way that makes them seem like morons, made one large plothole over a character that can still incite arguments, and is universally regarded as outright broken and terrible even compared to ShTH - and compare it as something that is preferred over the likes of Colors and Lost World (plots which have their own narrative problems, but none as glarring as 06), comes off as spiteful. There is hardly any defense for that game's narrative on its own strength whatsoever. And I say that as someone who wants to go back to the way things were Pre-Colors, because not only did I prefer them that way, those other previous titles have handled those same elements with much better care than what Sonic 06 had gave us.

 

And really, in the midst of this identity crisis this franchise has had, exactly what is the whole point of Sonic the Hedgehog when it comes to narrative? You tell me.

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You're doing that thing again where you think your personal negative assumptions about people who disagree with you are a proper substitute for a rebuttal. No one here is deluded enough to argue that Sonic 06's story is technically good so why you decided to reiterate what we already know as if I'm dumb enough to think the game is good is something I don't understand. It literally has nothing to do with the personal belief that it's general overarching themes and ideas are more suited to the franchise than another game's is. If you are offended that people are using Sonic 06 as an example to the point that you're going to willingly ignore what they're actually saying then I don't know what to tell you, other than you should probably stop being so offended at people using Sonic 06 as an example to the point that you ignore what people are actually saying.

 

Note that my previous thoughts we discussed the last time we actually talked to each other still stand. If you're going to found your argument on negative assumptions about me based on things that have nothing to do with what I'm actually talking about and instead things you've conjured up, then I don't want to actually have this conversation with you because that's a waste of time.

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You're doing that thing again where you think your personal negative assumptions about people who disagree with you are a proper substitute for a rebuttal.

Actually, what I'm saying is essentially "You're not helping your own case" when you saying you "prefer" Sonic 06 over the current writing due to it aligning with how you think this series should handle its narratives. And that criticizing people for assuming the worst in others being a bad argument doesn't hold a lot of water when you use a game with such a broken narrative as an example, and as such that leads people to assume the worst in others.

 

You may not be saying Sonic 06 is technically good, but you're holding it up as something that you'd rather have over the likes of Colors and Lost Worlds despite all of the problems 06 has with its narrative. Meanwhile, other titles preceeding 06 will get your point across without people thinking you're saying it out of spite, because few people associate Sonic 06 with anything preferable for this series, much less one that has had an identity crisis starting around that period.

 

And to that I ask you again, exactly what is the whole point of Sonic the Hedgehog when it comes to narrative? What in Sonic 06 is more suited to this franchise compared to Lost Worlds and Colors? We've practically been all over the place, from just a simple hedgehog stopping a madman of a scientist, to themes of revenge and forgiveness, to themes of longevity and death, and rebirth and destruction, and it's to the point that the only thing anchoring it all is that there's a blue hedgehog stopping a madman scientist even as we strip it to that point and add a quirky goon squad to it. 

 

 

 

Note that my previous thoughts we discussed the last time we actually talked to each other still stand. If you're going to found your argument on negative assumptions about me based on things that have nothing to do with what I'm actually talking about and instead things you've conjured up, then I don't want to actually have this conversation with you because that's a waste of time.

It sounds more like you're taking this a bit too personally, because I've long since moved on from that. But if you still I'm founding an argument based on negative assumptions on you, then by all means you're welcome to stop right here. But I'm still going to make my point so that others can understand and make sense of the clashing here.

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