Interview with Ken Pontac & Warren Graf.

[Diogenes]

How many games are we going to have wait for the likes of Amy & Knuckles to get their due?

I don't know, I'm not in charge of that.

Are we seriously still under the impression that any inclusion beyond Sonic, Tails, and Eggman will somehow lead to terrible writing?

The more characters you have, the more you have to split time between them, the more difficult it is to make each of them interesting and well developed. I couldn't tell you exactly where the tipping point between "ok" and "too many" is, but regardless adding more characters is not trivial.

We just had a game with six new characters, but asking for two long standing ones to have a larger role is suddenly "too much"?

Six characters with very stripped-down characterization. Maybe they could have traded two of the Zeti for equivalent time and characterization for Knuckles and Amy, but I'm not sure people would be too happy with that outcome.

[Kuzu]

The long standing characters arguably have stripped down personalities as of now, so what exactly are we losing with the inclusion of Knuckles and Amy?

[Diogenes]

If you don't mind them continuing to be stripped-down characters, not much, I guess. I'd rather wait until a game where they can be properly developed.

[Kuzu]

There's been three opportunities when they could have been:

 

 

Knuckles could have known something about the Gaia Temples and give some clues to Sonic

 

Amy could have connected with Yacker to give the audience an actual reason to care about him

 

Classic Knuckles and Classic Amy could have been in Generations.

 

 

This isn't rocket science, using these characters is not a difficult task and I don't know why people are treating it as if it is.

[Diogenes]

Knuckles could have known something about the Gaia Temples and give some clues to Sonic

I suppose he could've, but there's not a whole lot of reasons why he should know anything about them. And honestly Unleashed was probably right in not trying to include as many characters as possible, since it was the next main game coming off '06.

Amy could have connected with Yacker to give the audience an actual reason to care about him

Considering how Colors' story goes nowhere I doubt they would've gotten much value out of including Amy. Also it's not as if Amy is the only character able to empathize with things.

Classic Knuckles and Classic Amy could have been in Generations.

I don't see what that would have accomplished.

This isn't rocket science, using these characters is not a difficult task and I don't know why people are treating it as if it is.

Okay, then they're just not because they're stupid and evil or whatever.

e: Okay I woke up with a headache and it's making me a bit snippy. But, I mean, you can contrive a reason for almost anyone to appear in almost anything. But that's not the same as being able to write them well.

Edited November 10, 2013 by Diogenes

[Scar]

There's been three opportunities when they could have been:

 

 

Knuckles could have known something about the Gaia Temples and give some clues to Sonic

 

Amy could have connected with Yacker to give the audience an actual reason to care about him

 

Classic Knuckles and Classic Amy could have been in Generations.

 

 

This isn't rocket science, using these characters is not a difficult task and I don't know why people are treating it as if it is.

 

Not sure if its Pontac's and Graff's decision to include said characters.....

Like I said so many times before; its all down to Sonic Team.

[Kuzu]

The point I'm making is that there seems to be this aversion to adding additional characters for arbitrary reasons: "Its not the right time" "Too many characters in one game is bad" They have to get Sonic's gameplay right" or some other variation of the above excuses. Everyone praises the characterization for Sonic, Tails, and Eggman for the past few games, and this is after 06 where everyone thought they could never make them interesting again, so why is it that they cannot do the same for the additional cast. 

Not sure if its Pontac's and Graff's decision to include said characters.....

Like I said so many times before; its all down to Sonic Team.

 

I understand that and I'm not blaming anyone in particular, I'm just trying to figure out why after five years of the extended cast getting sidelined that people seem to still think "Its not the right time for them".

[Diogenes]

The point I'm making is that there seems to be this aversion to adding additional characters for arbitrary reasons: "Its not the right time" "Too many characters in one game is bad" They have to get Sonic's gameplay right" or some other variation of the above excuses. Everyone praises the characterization for Sonic, Tails, and Eggman for the past few games, and this is after 06 where everyone thought they could never make them interesting again, so why is it that they cannot do the same for the additional cast.

I'm not against including other characters, but there are reasons not to rush into it. Including more characters does put a bigger strain on the writers to give every one of them proper attention. I do think they should prioritize Sonic's gameplay over other characters' because his is necessary and theirs is optional. This isn't just some random character hate BS, these are valid reasons to not dump every character that everyone wants into a big heap and call it a game.

Now, considering how well they did with the characterization in SLoW, I think they'd do ok with a story focused on Knuckles or Amy or whoever. But if they try to make a story about Knuckles and Amy and Shadow and Rouge and Silver and Blaze, as well as Sonic, Tails, and Eggman playing a part in it, it'd almost certainly be a clusterfuck, because they'd have to split their attention between so many different characters. This series has a large cast. Fixing them all is going to take time.

 

I understand that and I'm not blaming anyone in particular, I'm just trying to figure out why after five years of the extended cast getting sidelined that people seem to still think "Its not the right time for them".

Because the series doesn't have a solid grip on either its gameplay or storytelling with only a few characters. Adding more characters means more complexity means more ways to fail, and that's not really what the series needs right now. Edited November 10, 2013 by Diogenes

[Kuzu]

Well then why are you assuming that I'd want them to prioritize the characters over gameplay, or that if I wanted those characters that I wouldn't want them to be utilized to the best of their ability. I don't want other characters just for the sake of it, I want them to be well written and if they ever had a chance to be playable to be properly implemented. I don't think that it takes five years to do this tho.

[Diogenes]

If the series is struggling to handle just Sonic, it's not likely to do better trying to juggle Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy all at the same time. Maybe you think it'd be great if they just tried it, but to me, from what I've seen of the series, that's like praying to hit the lottery.

[Kuzu]

But you yourself have praised Sonic in Lost World as it being the best the character has been written, so what the eff?

[Diogenes]

What what the eff? I said they handled the characterization well enough that I'd be okay with them focusing on fixing up another character in the next game. That doesn't mean all problems with the series have been solved and they can go all-in with every character at once.

[Kuzu]

And once again, and I repeat, I do not want them to use every single character at once, The least I was asking for are Knuckles & Amy. Two characters, does that suddenly count as too much? 

Edited November 10, 2013 by Azure Yakuzu

[Dejimon11]

thats pretty much easier said than done

[Salamander]

I view Knuckles's presence in Lost World as a kind of sign of good faith.  Literally the only reason he was in the game was to remind us that he still exists.

 

I fear, though, that if we are to wait for the developers and writers to get a good grip on how Sonic plays and acts, we may be waiting for a long time.

[Nepenthe]

We had 13 characters in Sonic Lost World, all of whom were actually characterized well within their allotted roles and stereotypes, whether or not those roles were actually significant or had development. So, in the next game where we will inevitably cut down on the number of cast members by nearly half that by virtue of not using The Deadly Six, I'm to believe it would be far too risky to bring another character in the mix? Like, the game with maybe six or seven characters would be just way too much over Lost World? I just can't anymore.

[Diogenes]

I don't think it'd necessarily be bad to bring in one more major character, or maybe two, given SLoW's cast minus the Six. But that's about all I would advocate for at this point, especially if it's bringing in one or two heroes to replace six villains. And I would really rather they focus on a small number of characters to ensure that they get them right rather than spreading themselves thin just because they can.

[Nepenthe]

We're not asking for a large cast every single game. We're asking for a rotation of the current six or seven slots we already have. The only person who needs to appear in every single mainline Sonic game is Sonic himself.

[Diogenes]

I'm not really opposed to that, though I'd say it's not entirely reasonable to imagine it as full and free rotation. Sonic's the only one who's strictly necessary, yeah, but Tails is very likely to be involved due to being Sonic's sidekick, and Eggman's almost certainly going to be involved whether he's the main villain or not, since those two seem to be the only other characters that Sonic Team doesn't mind sticking around with Sonic. I'd say it's for the best for Eggman not to be the only guy on the villainous side, whether it's Orbot and Cubot or someone else; having 5-6 heroes and one villain is not the greatest balance. Plus they're still inclined to create new characters with each game, and I would figure they've got priority over bringing back nonessential existing characters at this point. And for any spots that are left, they need a plausible way to fit into the story and to have some meaningful role in it.

[Nepenthe]

The moment you throw the stories back on Earth again is when nearly everyone has a viable reason to jump into a conflict, because there's few to no limitations on the extent of it (e.g., the entire planet is almost always in danger, so there's no reason for most characters not to have a stake in things) and much of the cast has feasible transportation due to their occupation or goals. You can also have less important characters accompany others due to interpersonal relationships. Or just set the epicenter of a game near places where certain characters are likely to be. Or downplay the role of certain "must-haves." Just because Tails is probably going to show up all the time doesn't mean he needs to be surgically attached to Sonic's hip. Black Knight's story didn't suffer much from doing this. The universe is so vast in its lack of limitations on storytelling that it confounds me that we are having trouble thinking up reasons or ways for anyone to even show up.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

You can't solve every problem at once.

Yet they've had YEARS to fix these problems and haven't even bothered tried to solve them?

 

Yeah, it's pretty easy not to solve anything when you do nothing about it.

Edited November 10, 2013 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Nepenthe]

We just have to keep waiting. They'll get it right in 2057.

[Diogenes]

Yet they've had YEARS to fix these problems and haven't even bothered tried to solve them?

 

Yeah, it's pretty easy not to solve anything when you do nothing about it.

The fact that they haven't tried to fix it yet doesn't mean it's going to be a quick fix when they do.

[Soniman]

We just have to keep waiting. They'll get it right in 2057.

As if most of us wouldn't wait that long anyway.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

The fact that they haven't tried to fix it yet doesn't mean it's going to be a quick fix when they do.

Yet they had the time to create and throw in six all-new, albeit 2 Dimensional, characters 5 years after the biggest screw up of the series while sidelining others throughout that time.

 

The fact that they haven't tried to fix it isn't an attempt at "solving the problem" which just gets more noticable the longer they hold off on it.

Edited November 10, 2013 by ChaosSupremeSonic