Pontaff Retrospective: What's Up with all the Hate?

[Wittymations]

On discussion of Eggman's morality, I think the doctor does respect his rivals, but still wants to destroy them. Thing is, HE wants to be the one to destroy them. So, he'll save them if they're in direct danger of something he didn't have a hand in. However, if he does have a hand in it, like the capsule going boom, he's all for it.

 

Sonic's an even more special case because he probably also wants the glory of defeating him. So, he welcomes the challenge. Turns out bad for him, but he's noble in that regard.

[Kuzu]

Going back to the thought that they may be gone from the series as of Boom; I kinda saw it coming, series seems to under a five year rule nowadays. 

The question is, will the series go back to being written by the Japanese series writers?

[NoirSuede]

Going back to the thought that they may be gone from the series as of Boom; I kinda saw it coming, series seems to under a five year rule nowadays. 

The question is, will the series go back to being written by the Japanese series writers?

Probably yes, Sonic Team never ever hires foreigners unless SoA makes them like with Pontaff.

[Salamander]

When did we learn the ins and outs of Pontac and Graff's hiring?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

The result, though, is that we're left with an affable, likable character who can never be the harbinger of destruction, a merciless tyrant, or a heartless monster. Eggman does some truly vile things, but he has limits, and it would be out of character to push him too far. This isn't even about whether he's silly or not; Eggman was played pretty seriously in 2k6 for example, but still helped bring his hated nemesis back to life and hedged his bets on Sonic in the end. 

Honestly, I think that phrasing comes off as glossing over a lot of the character's actual nastiness given all he's done. You say he can't be the harbinger of destruction, a merciless tyrant, or a heartless monster, but we're talking about a character who nuked Prison Island and threatened to wipe entire countries off the map if they didn't surrender to him in SA2 (and seemed likely to do it were it not for his grandfather's fail safe program in the ARK), fractured the world and unleashed a monstrous force of nature in Unleashed, and would have almost nuked Station Square in SA1 if his missile wasn't a dud.

Those are pretty heartless, merciless, and destructive acts each in themselves. That's not saying that Eggman isn't capable of good or doesn't have standards, but for all his affable, likable, and silly traits, it should be clear that Eggman is an egotistical, ruthless sonofabitch who isn't above crossing certain lines if it achieves his goals. I think the key here, or specifically the limit, is that Eggman only does these things as a means to an end. That is, he only does monstrous acts if there's a purpose that benefits him - if there's no point in destroying a small village like Mazuri (a especially monstrous villain would do it because "evil"), he won't do it, whereas nuking a military base like Prison Island so as to weaken any enemy resistance would be something he'd do without a second thought.

[Mauro Fonseca]

Care should be taken when using SA2 as an example of Eggman's personality- take the franchise in its entirely, and Eggman is slightly OOC in it. A touch too "ooh evil serious villain!". I mean, the game itself acknowledges it- the "You're a big time villain now" quote you guys keep bringing up literally points at it. "Oh man you're actually pointing guns at Amy's head and threatening to destroy the United States? You used to just put animals in robots and build big spaceships with your face!"

Therefore taking into account that SA2 is more of an acknowledged exception than the rule, where Eggman goes more serious than usual, having the rest of the games not present him as serious doesn't strike me as anything wrong. He actually keeps upping the ante in terms of damage he's doing or threatening to do, but he's not presented as such.

 

And of course, as I've mentioned a thousand times, it's also all down to how you sell it, blah blah, Wily killed millions but we're not shown it so he's sympathetic, blah blah, etc.

[Kuzu]

Well like I was saying before, Eggman wasn't really presented as this super serious villain until the games transitioned into 3D. Its no different than how most of the cast's personalities kinda shifted after that point. 

[azoo]

I'm not entirely sure how Eggman's doings in S3K and SCD aren't seen as very serious when we see his actions cause forest fires, earthquakes, reawakening volcanoes, and dilapidated cyberpunk bad future worlds. Not even counting his constant chase in 3K for the emeralds and him always being a step ahead.

Despite Eggman's goofiness in his presence for the classic games, he's still a considerably big-time villain because the game's progression and gameplay-told narrative gives you the impression that he's worth worrying about... which proves his interpretation in the Adventure games to be a little too straightforward with his villainy, but ultimately otherwise the same Eggman we knew in games before (with SA2s latter half being his obvious exception).

The reason why Eggman's everything in recent games kinda blows is that it tries to ham up his bombasticity and goofiness (which is a good thing), But fails to allow him to mean anything to anyone besides just being there in the background (which is not). He plays a role no more involved than a generic villain from a Saturday morning cartoon, complete with foil henchmen and a spinny chair to make plans from, And honestly at this point I can barely tell SegaEggman and BoomEggman apart because of it.

If you want me to care about Eggman in the games again (or even the plot in general), Eggman is going to have to be more active. He needs to be there to make the story progress, to make shit happen, to up the ante and make you want to punch his charming little face in. Current Eggman is just background fodder, used to fill in the blanks of some boring one-note storyline where the good guys win and the bad guys lose, and because of that, his treatment is probably the most detrimental to the series storytelling out of everyone.  

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Care should be taken when using SA2 as an example of Eggman's personality- take the franchise in its entirely, and Eggman is slightly OOC in it.

I fail to see how SA2 is singled out when in the previous game he tried to nuke an entire population to nothing and with no remorse. If anything, games past SA2 are OOC for Eggman. 

[Diogenes]

I'm not entirely sure how Eggman's doings in S3K and SCD aren't seen as very serious when we see his actions cause forest fires, earthquakes, reawakening volcanoes, and dilapidated cyberpunk bad future worlds.

Well if enslaving an alien race, tearing holes in spacetime, and sucking the life out of the planet and everything on it aren't enough reasons to take a villain seriously I don't know why these would be.

[azoo]

I fail to see how SA2 is singled out when in the previous game he tried to nuke an entire population to nothing and with no remorse. If anything, games past SA2 are OOC for Eggman. 

Eggman's not foreign to having zero consideration for massive groups of people being offed or not because it's all a means to make room for his great takeover plans. Its all part of his whole thing where he's ultimately apathetic of people's safety and well being as long as they're not the grand majority and it guarantees success.

Granted that SA1 makes him sound like a homicidal maniac for that scene which IS a bit farfetched, but I honestly don't know if that's the dubs handling that makes it like that or if that was part of the original script too.

Still, I'd consider SA2 a tiny bit OOC because Eggman doesn't seem like the kinda guy to hold anyone at gunpoint. Seems much more personal than anything else that way, which makes it all the more strange.

Well if enslaving an alien race, tearing holes in spacetime, and sucking the life out of the planet and everything on it aren't enough reasons to take a villain seriously I don't know why these would be.

Because in 3K you see it firsthand. It happens right in front of you, and stuff continues to blow up and go crazy all around you. Colors, Gens and LW dont do anything to make the events that happen in them matter; everything is a plot point thrown away quicker than it even took to get to it, and everything feels inconsequential because of it. 

I mean I liked where Colors was going with its story, with the theme park, and the enslaving Wisps, and the mind control. But you honestly can't tell me it felt like there was actually any weight to the situation, can you? Did you feel like any of that mattered when you played it? If so, then why? 

[Bowbowis]

Still, I'd consider SA2 a tiny bit OOC because Eggman doesn't seem like the kinda guy to hold anyone at gunpoint. Seems much more personal than anything else that way, which makes it all the more strange.

Eggman has always been rather personal with his enemies though. In the classics he piloted the boss machines at the end of each level himself (instead of leaving it to AI's like he has since Unleashed), whenever Sonic got a Chaos Emerald in Adventure Eggman would show up and steal it personally. Even when he was simply siccing Metal Sonic, Chaos, Egg Golem, Egg Cerberus, etc. on you Eggman almost always put in an appearance, even if it wasn't necessary and/or exposed him to danger. I think it can all be traced back to the trait that, perhaps more than anything else, defines Eggman as a character: Pride. He wants his enemies to meet their end by his hand and, more than that, he wants to be there to see it. The faceless masses might be far enough beneath him to only merit hell-fire rained upon them from afar, but in Eggman's eyes "[his] most admirable adversary" deserves something a little more personal.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Bowbowis

[Wittymations]

Framing matters quite a bit.

 

Sure, Eggman can be sapping away alien life or tearing holes in time, but it hardly matters if it's not presented right. There's a reason why people don't take Colors and Generation seriously, at all.

 

It's like how my stepmother used to get on my very last nerves when she spoke to me. I never minded helping around the house, I was always fine with that. But the way she spoke to me? Didn't make me want to help, it made me want to smack her.

[Diogenes]

How much "framing" is there in the Genesis games, though? You run through a jungle, some asshole robots firebomb it, but then you just...keep going. It doesn't really affect anything besides making the level a lot more red and orange. It's not even Eggman personally doing it, just some generic looking ball robots. Or, some drill robot shakes some stuff loose. And later Eggman in a drill mech shakes some stuff loose. And some generic ruins probably got destroyed? Mostly it just made some hills shift and there was a crusher section.

I'm not saying the modern games always do a great job of presenting things, they could definitely do more to inspire a sense of adventure, but I feel like it's easy to go all rose tinted glasses on how serious the Genesis games were. Probably because most of us were innocent wide-eyed kids when we played them and we filled in the details to make it all feel bigger than it actually was.

[Wittymations]

Thing with Classics, is that you frame it yourself. Why some people see it just as jolly and cheerful while others see it a bit more complex.

[Kuzu]

The Genesis games really don't have as much of an overt focus on Eggman's actions as later games do honestly, not unless you read more into it that is. Which is fine, but you can easily just write it off as just environmental hazards. 

 

Sonic CD I can give because the game actively changes around you depending on if you stopped Eggman's machines or not.

[Nepenthe]

The Genesis games aren't serious in that they lack lightheartedness. It's that the sequence of events that happen within the present narratives are strong and confident enough to ask for genuine investment versus an audience doing a constant "oh you" and rolling their eyes at everything. A happy state of being that's interrupted by conflict actually caused by the direct actions of the antagonist and is seen creates a contrast that makes the audience more empathetic towards a positive outcome. Show me a happy island and then burn half of it down, and I'm going to be more inclined to form an emotional connection towards the previous natural order and want to protect the other half of the island. This isn't nostalgia, this is just Storytelling 101 here. And while you're right in that Eggman isn't actually present in some of these moments, that doesn't significantly alter the outcome because they're still his robots under his command posing a proven threat to the order of things, while in Colors and Gens the robots merely present themselves as existing before proceeding to get trashed. They don't do much of anything.  

The classic games' stories are simple, but they don't talk down to the audience by undermining everything with the amount of flippancy, self-referential humor, and complete intolerance towards defining characters by action that the modern games do. It simply is better storytelling, and despite the lack of dialogue and cut scenes I'd honestly rather go back to that at this point. =/

[Salamander]

In the classics, it helped that you visibly saw Eggman's actions change a level.  You start in a vibrant green Angel Island, and within a few minutes it's burned.  Eggman goes drilling away in Marble Garden, and the screen shakes for the next sequence and the roof falls to crush you and eventually the whole zone falls apart and you have to fight a battle in the air.  Compare also the lights going out in Carnival Night, the changing seasons in Mushroom Hill, Lava Reef turning cold - not all changes caused by Eggman, but they create a visual progression that gives these levels a different character as you move through them.  In Colours, Generations, and Lost World, everything just keeps on looking the same the whole way through - despite Generations insisting that you are restoring life and colour to these levels which were already colourful.  (That could really have done with being a gameplay mechanic rather than a narrative handwave.)

[Dejimon11]

You know Eggman being serious in SA2 isn't too surprising if you look at his track record. If I recall this is the same man who's plan in SA1 was to destroy station square and killing everybody by awaking unleashing perfect chaos and in the same game in an act of desperation he tried to nuke the city. This is the same man who destroyed the planet in the beginning of sonic unleashed in order to awaken dark gia(and the fact that there weren't any casualties is shocking) and in sonic colors he hijacked planets and enslaved a an alien race and mutated them into corrupted monsters. The guy is a monster.

[Dr. Mechano]

You know Eggman being serious in SA2 isn't too surprising if you look at his track record. If I recall this is the same man who's plan in SA1 was to destroy station square and killing everybody by awaking unleashing perfect chaos and in the same game in an act of desperation he tried to nuke the city. This is the same man who destroyed the planet in the beginning of sonic unleashed in order to awaken dark gia(and the fact that there weren't any casualties is shocking) and in sonic colors he hijacked planets and enslaved a an alien race and mutated them into corrupted monsters. The guy is a monster.

I honestly feel like SA1 didn't have a super-good handle on who Eggman's character was. He's never destroyed a city just for the hell of it before or since that game, and even when he threatens to attack cities in subsequent games, it's always used as leverage to conquer rather than destroy. The fact that Eggman's plan was to just destroy Station Square rather than take it over (or at least just threaten to destroy it) sticks out like a sore thumb, considering all of his other appearances.

Like, I acknowledge that SA1 happened but I don't feel it gels particularly well with Eggman's characterization in other games. In Unleashed (and Advance 3, where he had almost the exact same plan), splitting the planet apart didn't actually seem to hurt anyone, and using the aliens as a power source is just a sci-fi version of the animal-powered robots he's always used; It's bad, but nothing that hasn't been around since the beginning of the series.

I don't know. Eggman's a bad person, but I think monster is a little far. Black Doom, Mephiles, and their ilk are all about destruction and cruelty, while Eggman is all about attaining power and admiration - using destruction as a tool to get what he wants, not a goal unto itself. SA1 notwithstanding of course, which again really doesn't fit with Eggman's usual motives.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Dr. Mechano

[Dr. Crusher]

I don't know. Eggman's a bad person, but I think monster is a little far. Black Doom, Mephiles, and their ilk are all about destruction and cruelty, while Eggman is all about attaining power and admiration - using destruction as a tool to get what he wants, not a goal unto itself. SA1 notwithstanding of course, which again really doesn't fit with Eggman's usual motives.

To be fair, villains who are more about order/control/means to an end/etc than chaos/destruction/the end is the means/etc can be every bit as bad as the latter type, as shown in various other franchises, so I don't think judging how evil Robotnik is compared to the one-off antagonists solely through him still wanting a planet to exist while they don't is entirely accurate.

[azoo]

Eggman has always been rather personal with his enemies though. In the classics he piloted the boss machines at the end of each level himself (instead of leaving it to AI's like he has since Unleashed), whenever Sonic got a Chaos Emerald in Adventure Eggman would show up and steal it personally. Even when he was simply siccing Metal Sonic, Chaos, Egg Golem, Egg Cerberus, etc. on you Eggman almost always put in an appearance, even if it wasn't necessary and/or exposed him to danger. I think it can all be traced back to the trait that, perhaps more than anything else, defines Eggman as a character: Pride. He wants his enemies to meet their end by his hand and, more than that, he wants to be there to see it. The faceless masses might be far enough beneath him to only merit hell-fire rained upon them from afar, but in Eggman's eyes "[his] most admirable adversary" deserves something a little more personal.

No, I didn't mean it like that. That's the kind of stuff I'm encouraging from Eggman. I want him to be lead pilot and do most of everything himself, and generally be really hands-on because it's a very big part of his character. That's in fact my entire argument against current Eggman, lol.

What I meant was that it's awfully.. dark for Eggman to do. A laser cannon? A wrecking ball? Missle thingys from a big mech? Other robots doing the shootys? Threatening, but still goofy and far out there enough to be reasonable. Eggman with a handgun, on the other hand, turns from "maniacal genius planning to rid the world of his greatest adversary and his friends" into "maniacal genius ready to commit cold hard murder". There's no bombasticity to it, it's oddly real (and doubly cold) for him to do such a thing as hold someone at flippin' gunpoint.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Azoo

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

How does holding the entire planet hostage with a world ending laser cannon not speak  "maniacal genius ready to commit cold-blooded murder (if not sheer genocide)" any more than holding his foes at gunpoint? What bizzare logic is that?

Framing is one thing, but that's like saying a nuke is less dangerous than a handgun.

Edited September 30, 2015 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Dr. Crusher]

Ironically, despite the Adventure 2 incarnation of Robotnik overall not being as high on my list compared to others', that moment I was fine with.

[azoo]

How does holding the entire planet hostage with a world ending laser cannon not speak  "maniacal genius ready to commit cold-blooded murder (if not sheer genocide)" any more than holding his foes at gunpoint? What bizzare logic is that?

Framing is one thing, but that's like saying a nuke is less dangerous than a handgun.

Imagine Wil E. Coyote with a super duper huge laser beam cannon thing pointed straight at the Road Runner, evil kooky laughing and etc.

Now imagine Wil E. Coyote with one arm on Road Runner's shoulder, holding a handgun towards his head, and threatening to kill him with a cold, dead-serious air about him.

If you can't see the difference in tone it brings then I'm not sure what will help you there, lol. I mean yeah, Sonic is definitely much more serious than Looney Tunes, but the point is that regardless of the actual damage it could do and comparing that, Eggman's other methods of destruction are much more cartoony in nature, even if they too can be very threatening. It helps develop a suspension of disbelief and ultimately helps keep a tone in line, one that's broken when you take something as serious and real as Eggman threatening to shoot someone with a (mostly) real-ass handgun.

Granted I'm partially playing Devil's Avacado since the scene doesn't personally bother me too much, but what I'm saying is there's a time and place to use certain things, and I'm not sure that Eggman would ever be that guy. That's the reason it feels out of character; Eggman I'd imagine would rather do something big and bombastic with a more sci-fi/fantasy esque weapon bigger than him or something and go on a big crazy finale kind of thing... not quite like a cold, real kind of killing. That's a bit much, ain't it? 

Edited September 30, 2015 by Azoo