What would make you being excited about Sonic 2016?

[Wittymations]

WEll I mean uh

hmm.

[Briraka]

Yes, that doesn't conflict.

 

Cheesy material is the stuff that doesn't try to be funny but winds up being so.

Forced material tries to be funny and fails to do so. It becomes awkward.

 

Cheesy is stupid but laughable. Forced is stupid and not.

... I'm confused.

 

So you want the writing to not try to be cheesy in order for it to be cheesy?

[Wittymations]

... I'm confused.

 

So you want the writing to not try to be cheesy in order for it to be cheesy?

with my definition, it doesn't try to be funny and that what makes it funny. That's what makes things like The Room so popular.

 

So if you want to look at it that way, yes. If that helps you understand.

 

Granted there's some media out there that actually tries to be cheesy and lands on cheesy, like Sharknado. That movies tries to be dumb-funny and it actually works. Sonic has tried to be dumb-funny and it's failed about every single time.

[Briraka]

with my definition, it doesn't try to be funny and that what makes it funny. That's what makes things like The Room so popular.

 

So if you want to look at it that way, yes. If that helps you understand.

Ew. I get that The Room is popular because of how bad it is, but why would anyone want to emulate that kind of awfulness?

 

 

 

Granted there's some media out there that actually tries to be cheesy and lands on cheesy, like Sharknado. That movies tries to be dumb-funny and it actually works. Sonic has tried to be dumb-funny and it's failed about every single time.

And Sonic also tried grimdark and has failed almost every single time. Ultimately, it's the writing that that determines the quality of the story and not just the tone.

[Wittymations]

Ew. I get that The Room is popular because of how bad it is, but why would anyone want to emulate that kind of awfulness?

[Mauro Fonseca]

So you want Sonic to be bad on accident instead of on purpose?

[Nepenthe]

Why can't we just strive for situational and character humor that's actually well-written and adorable? Why is the Eggmobile incident from 16 years ago still notable for actually not being awful?

[Wittymations]

So you want Sonic to be bad on accident instead of on purpose?

It's one of those things that I always enjoy. Bloopers, mess ups, bad voice acting, unintentional quirks that are so bad you can't help but smile. An example that always plagues Sonic and probably a ton more games, repeating boss quotes.

 

Proooobably not to the extent of Boom.

 

Boom's chalk-full of that stuff, but that's like eating lots and lots of sugary items, it'll make you sick. So, in that, it's not I want Sonic to be bad as a whole, it's already that. But I want some of those things exist, small elements that make you go, "lol what?"

 

 

Why can't we just strive for situational and character humor that's actually well-written and adorable? Why is the Eggmobile incident from 16 years ago still notable for actually not being awful?

Well, sure, if I can have well written humor, I'd be all for it. I always want Sonic to have well written everything. I just don't think it'll happen, but a lot of the things I want aren't going to happen.

 

But what is the Eggmobile Incident? I think I saw this on a status recently and am kinda clueless.

[Nepenthe]

Gosh, such a bad typo on my part. Not the Eggmobile incident, the Egg Carrier incident.

 

Basically, we're shown a cutscene where the ship morphs and rearranges itself for a few seconds, while Sonic and Tails are on it, basically with a front row seat to the whole thing. Tails exclaims "Wow! It changed shape! Did you see that?!"

And Sonic basically give him the "¬_¬" face and ignored the question outright. It's the most intentionally funny joke we've ever had in the games.

[Wittymations]

Oh yes. That.

Sonic Adventure was actually pretty good with its characterization humor. I noticed a lot of that in my replay through of Sonic Adventure. Another example is when Amy stands outside of Final Egg and talking to Birdie, and says something like, "Looks awfully suspicious and dangerous... Wanna go in?"

 

I probably butchered that quote.

 

Problem is in that age with its animation, people probably thought it was unintentional, you know, given the wild face flexes it had. lol

[Diogenes]

Is this going to become a thing? Where that utterly trivial gag ends up becoming some kind of memetic comic brilliance?

[Indigo Rush]

I didn't even laugh at that joke, and that's the best thing the series has to offer, apparently.

Ehh.

[Briraka]

Why do people always hop from one extreme to the other? Especially when I wasn't talking about tone, I was talking about humor. Sure, Sonic's dumb humor is light-hearted, but dumb humor isn't limited to lightheartedness. I find in the adult dumb humor of the likes of Family Guy absolutely terrible, which can sometimes be really dark or violent.

[ThePrinceOfSaiyans]

Multiple playable characters that play like Sonic, but with slight variations. That's all really I want, besides the obvious good gameplay. I mean it would be pretty easy:

Sonic: Spin Dash, Homing Attack, Parkour

Shadow: Spin Dash, Homing Attack, Chaos Powers(Chaos Spear, Chaos Control, Chaos Blast) 

Tails: Spin Dash, Flight, Air Slash 

Knuckles: Super Strength, Gliding, Wall Climbing

Blaze: Pyrokinesis, Double Jump, Flame Burst(short boost)

Silver: Psychokinesis, Hover, Boost(Can boost as long as you have energy)

[Sami]

SA1's voice acting alone is a million times funnier than all the legitimate attempts at humor the series has given us.

"oh no."

[Nepenthe]

Is this going to become a thing? Where that utterly trivial gag ends up becoming some kind of memetic comic brilliance?

[Diogenes]

I just don't see how "Sonic goes '¬_¬'" can be the funniest joke in the series when there's a game with https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUGE0_yKbHA.

[Nepenthe]

You mean the verbal jokes which I've personally never cared for all that much since just about all of it is just a reiteration that Eggman's park is fucked up, and the general delivery of Pollock's acting doesn't actually enhance the material all that much anyway? 

 

I like the Egg Carrier joke more because it gets across Sonic's sheer annoyance without actually having to say much of anything. If nothing else, strange faces implying emotional turmoil or aggravation is the funniest shit the Boom show itself has had to offer me. And on top of that, giving your friend a glare for saying something stupid is actually relatable. I can actually imagine doing that to Tails myself. In theory, I would rather humor wherein the joke is derived more from brevity, implication, and creative staging than sheer blatancy and drilling a single joke into the ground in a myriad of ways that can stretch across 11 minutes.

 

And in general, I'm not as much of an Eggman fan as everyone else is. To me the sheer elevation of any of his jokes into "gold" status speaks more to just how badly the comedy has always been written in this series than it being actually comparable to anything else on offer in similar media. Seriously, I don't get how people are rolling on the ground from any of the shit Eggman has said since Colors, at least not without laughing at any of the other characters since I feel everyone's written on par. Admittedly, I don't roll on the ground from the Egg Carrier joke myself (which is why I'm so confused you took me and Witty's banter to such an extreme). The entire point I wanted to get across was that I think it's just a better crafted joke than "this radiation will kill you."

[Kuzu]

Might be because Mike Pollock's acting just kinda sells Eggman's character to the current writing more than Sonic & Tails; if you noticed, people have far more issues with the latter duo's humor than the former's. 

 

 

Personally, I found both of them pretty damn funny, so I don't understand why we're arguing which jokes are "funnier". I can't believe we've gotten to the point where we're arguing something as subjective as which type of humor we find better. :V

[Wittymations]

I just don't see how "Sonic goes '¬_¬'" can be the funniest joke in the series when there's a game with 11 minutes of Eggman gold.

While I do adore the "darker" humor to this, a huge problem exists in the way the music absolutely drowns out anything Eggman says.  I'd be perfectly okay with them writing Eggman like this more, where he has that businessman industrialist attitude with little to no empathy to people for what he does.

 

I'm trying to put it into words, I guess I can say a more PG Abridged Freeza, in a way? Not even sure if even that's the best description.

[Nepenthe]

Humor, to me, is an art like every other. It is subjective in that not everyone will find the same things funny, but this doesn't mean that some things aren't quantifiably funnier than others for observable reasons. There are reasons why Richard Pryor is considered to be a comedy legend and why Dane Cook fizzled out. There are reasons why the Ice Cream and Blood trilogy's humor will stand the test of time better than the "X Movie" series' (Scary Movie, Epic Movie, Vampire Movie, etc.), even though we can undoubtedly find individuals with tastes that go against the grain. There is a reason why it's non-controversial to say the salad joke in Colors isn't funny even though it probably made some kid out there laugh. We should be able to talk about the objective facets and nuances of humor in service of the goal of actually making Sonic games intentionally funny than surrendering to a nihilist assumption that humor being subjective means every joke is on par with one another.

Because I refuse to live in a world where Mike Pollock's Eggman is actually as funny as Louis CK.

[Kuzu]

I seriously hope we're not comparing the Egg Carrier scene to Louis CK.

[Nepenthe]

Of course we're not. But that's the point. We just kind of know that certain things are funnier than others, and subsequently there have to be reasons for the discrepancies between successful and unsuccessful humor. :V That's why I can easily explain why I prefer implicating glances than in-your-face "radiation is deadly, laugh at that!" verbal jokes that can't even be heard all that well in their original medium, because implication and empathy to me are better bases for quality, long-lasting comedy than blatancy and weirdness.

[Kuzu]

I'll admit, I may have found both scenes funny, but I definitely do prefer reaction faces to situations than simply having a few tongue-in-cheek comments.

 

 

I mean, I'm not gonna say Warren and Graff are the worst things to happen to the series like so many people do, but their random style of humor kinda feels off for the series. Its not because it isn't funny, fucking Zazz is the best character to come from them by far, but because it really doesn't mesh well with what we've known about the characters for these twenty years.

[Sami]

Are we just going to ignore the suggestion of Eggman as a PG Abridged Frieza because that'd be god damn hilarious