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

[Kuzu]

If we're gonna measure how threatening Eggman is, let's ask ourselves one really good question "How much of a danger does he, or his plans, pose to the heroes"?

Like come on, at this point, it doesn't even matter how likable Eggman as a person is; between the death traps, numerous attempts on Sonic's life, and outright lack of care who his plans effect, its pretty hard to say he's such a nice guy who would barely hurt a fly. It sorta feels like whitewashing how much of a bad guy he is by downplaying the things he's actually done. And no, these aren't exaggerations, these are things that actually happened :V

So it baffles me to no end how people are saying his actions in the Adventure games are "too extreme". More ambitious and grandiose? Sure, but nothing that really stuck out of the ordinary for me. It sorta feels like ever since Unleashed or Colors what have you, people have retroactively believed Eggman was never actually threatening to begin with, even in the classic games and that his Dreamcast era incarnation was the exception to the rule. 

So like yea, I get it; Eggman is an affable and lovable oaf, I love him partially for it too. But let's not act like he isn't (or shouldn't be) dangerous in any sort of capacity and that he isn't aware how dangerous his actions are.

[Dr. Crusher]

Like come on, at this point, it doesn't even matter how likable Eggman as a person is; between the death traps, numerous attempts on Sonic's life, and outright lack of care who his plans effect, its pretty hard to say he's such a nice guy who would barely hurt a fly. It sorta feels like whitewashing how much of a bad guy he is by downplaying the things he's actually done. And no, these aren't exaggerations, these are things that actually happened :V

Going off tangent a little here, but as an Eggman fan who is more the opposite of what you described, in that I generally prefer it when he actually is being a villain, a common misinterpretation I receive when I mention that I don't like SatAM's version of Robotnik is that the other person will assume that I feel that way because I think that version of him is "too evil", when in reality, it's because I feel he's too stupid (and one-dimensional, but you get my drift, it's practically the same thing when it comes to that version of the character if you ask me).

[Mauro Fonseca]

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.

Because you're thinking on... abstracts? Is that the word here?

 

Using Witty's example, "massage" is the same as "rubbing hands through bare skin" or whatever, but the way it's conveyed will elicit a different response.

In the same logic, holding a gun to one character will generally be agreed to be less evil, in quantitative terms, than threatening to destroy the whole planet. On pure abstract terms, sure.

But then it's actually presented to you. And odds are, you'll recognize "threatening to destroy the world with a laser" as a fantasious threat, a menacing one, sure, but not going to happen IRL any time soon because we don't live in a James Bond movie.

A villainous person holding another at gunpoint though? You immediately recognize that as an "evil" thing that happens IRL and feels closer to you.

So when the clownish evil scientist has a stupid moon-sized spaceship with his face in and uses it to pilot a robot that looks like himself and threaten world destruction, "yeah oh wow this is neat stuff".

When the clownish evil scientist just pulls a gun on a girl, it's suddenly more personal and more, for the lack of a better word, realistic.

 

As I've mentioned before, the difference between Dr. Wily logically having killed more people than the Joker yet the Joker feeling more evil.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

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.

There's no Wil E. Coyote holding guns at Road Runner, but there is Elmer Fudd/Yosimite Sam holding handguns and shotguns at Bugs Bunny as they're both trying to flat out kill him. How does that hold up?

Or since we're talking evil sci-fi geniuses, how about Dr. Nefarious of Ratchet and Clank holding guns at other characters?

You're making a false equivalence in the difference in tone between a laser cannon and a handgun in SA2 comparing it to Wil E. Coyote and the Road Runner, as you're conveniently disregarding that both of those scenes in SA2 were treated seriously and heavy, and hardly anything cartoony about them. There was nothing cartoony with Eggman blowing up the moon like the was nothing cartoony with him pointing a gun at Amy, so regarding tone that's not exactly a huge difference. Especially in previous scenes where he flat out bombs a military base - wanna talk about the realism in that?

Edited September 30, 2015 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[azoo]

Oh my God, lol.

Dude just read what KKM said, he worded it much better than I did. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I did read what he said, my point still stands.

[Mauro Fonseca]

If you want other examples, consider how the hype for MGSV sold us as this being the game that truly has us turn evil not by showing world-threatening stealth nuke launchers, but by implying we get to have child soldiers.

One's generally more realistic than the other and thus carries a darker tone.

Edited September 30, 2015 by The KKM

[Diogenes]

There's no Wil E. Coyote holding guns at Road Runner, but there is Elmer Fudd/Yosimite Sam holding handguns and shotguns at Bugs Bunny. How does that hold up?

Cartoon guns with cartoon effects. When a character can get shot multiple times and suffer no ill effects beyond a slight singeing and a misaligned beak, you are not presenting a gun as an actual threat.

A supervillain threatening the world with a giant laser has no meaningful real-world counterpart. It's harder to get someone emotionally connected to something that is so far outside their personal experiences. On the other hand, holding someone hostage with a gun to their head is sadly not that rare IRL, at least to the point that most people have probably heard of some instances and are well aware of how dangerous a situation it is.

It's not that taking a single hostage is somehow more evil than lasing entire countries off the map, but it's much more "real" compared to the over-the-top cartoonishness of the latter, so it provokes a stronger emotional response.

[Dr. Mechano]

I suppose one reason that threatening the entire world doesn't hold as much weight as threatening a specific character is that those billions of people in the world don't have faces or names we can identify with. Objectively it's a lot more at stake, but from a storytelling standpoint, we're more invested in characters that we've actually gotten to know.

It's not because Eggman's aiming a gun at someone. It's that Eggman's aiming a gun at someone familiar. 

Eggman himself has been on the other side of this. I was genuinely disturbed and upset by those (thankfully noncanon) Eggman death scenes in Shadow the Hedgehog, and even Sonic seemed emotionally moved when Eggman appeared to fall to his death in Lost World. Again, the reason is that a single character that we've gotten to know and love holds more weight to us, generally speaking, than masses of nameless people.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Dr. Mechano

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

 

If you want other examples, consider how the hype for MGSV sold us as this being the game that truly has us turn evil not by showing world-threatening stealth nuke launchers, but by implying we get to have child soldiers.

One's generally more realistic than the other and thus carries a darker tone.

Actually, one is treated much more dramatically than the other. There are tons of media out there with things like nukes and child soldiers, each one playing one or the other up as much more serious depending on how it's framed. 

And that goes back to what was said earlier - framing is important. One thing can be treated several different ways, from Bugs Bunny being held at gunpoint for laughs, to Amy being held at gunpoint played for drama. But that also works with typically over-the-top things such as a laser cannon wiping countries off the map. We may not have actual laser cannons like an Eclipse Cannon (yet), but it's level of destruction is dramatic in itself, and while less personal than holding Amy at gunpoint in a dramatic fashion, isn't something you can even remotely compare to something as cartoony along the likes of Looney Tunes to make a point.

 

Cartoon guns with cartoon effects. When a character can get shot multiple times and suffer no ill effects beyond a slight singeing and a misaligned beak, you are not presenting a gun as an actual threat.

A supervillain threatening the world with a giant laser has no meaningful real-world counterpart. It's harder to get someone emotionally connected to something that is so far outside their personal experiences. On the other hand, holding someone hostage with a gun to their head is sadly not that rare IRL, at least to the point that most people have probably heard of some instances and are well aware of how dangerous a situation it is.

It's not that taking a single hostage is somehow more evil than lasing entire countries off the map, but it's much more "real" compared to the over-the-top cartoonishness of the latter, so it provokes a stronger emotional response.

 

But does that not work the same in reverse? A cartoon weapon with non-cartoon effects that can cause serious ill-effects and is presented as an actual threat? This is the dissonance I'm calling out here.

A giant laser may not have a real-world counterpart (unless you're talking a nuke, in which case it does), but it's presented as something that is an actual threat. Nevermind the other acts such as bombing military facilities, which does have an actual real-world counterpart. But meanwhile, holding a gun at someone is OOC - it has nothing to do with the weapon itself being cartoony or realistic, just the act itself being treated as realistic.

Edited September 30, 2015 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Mauro Fonseca]

Framing is important, but events carry their own innate response. Frame it well enough and you can sell the Jamestown suicides to children, but that doesn't mean you didn't need to push a lot more in the framing for it.

Gun use in Looney Tunes is framed as something silly, gun use in your regular use doesn't need much framing as something serious and dramatic because we can already connect to it as serious and important, so if anything you need to establish that "hahaha it's just a joke see Daffy's not dead his bill's just spinning".

 

Put another way, hmm.

Framing is about the tension between the value inherent in the action you're framing and the value you intend to give it.

The big villainous nonsense of Eggman before and after SA2 is inherently not real and not serious because you CAN'T relate to "giant space laser". If you DO want people to feel it seriously, you then frame it- if you're doing Akira, you maybe show the machinery setting the laser first, have the machinery look cool and sober, show destruction in detail, show gore.

SA2 instead has him take actions that are comparatively smaller and more personal, but exactly for that are more real and carry a more inherent serious feel. If you want, you can then frame that as silly- when Mickey threatens Donald with a gun so Donald won't leave the concerto, the gun's so big it fits Donald's entire bill in, and their expressions are exaggerated, and it lasts a couple seconds. SA2 chose to not go that far in framing it as a fantasious thing- they did a relatively realistic gun, added a bit in the end, and lingered in the implications of Eggman holding Amy hostage at gunpoint.

 

Tension of inherent tone vs intended tone. Framing.

[Wittymations]

Granted, I'm one of those people who thought nothing of Eggman holding the gun to Amy's head. Even as a preteen I thought it was fine, didn't shock me.

However, I do feel like that particular scene could have been handled just as well in different other ways. Perhaps Eggman having a few robots holding Amy hostage (perhaps a new E-Series? Or one of those E-1000s? Egg Pawns didn't exist yet) while he keeps his Egg Walker focused on Tails. It'd still be just as cool, but less shocking to those who think the current way it was handled was a bit off.

 

At this time, Amy was still not as adept at handling too many of Eggman's mechs as she was in Heroes.

[Mauro Fonseca]

I don't even think the scene should be replaced or anything, it's fine, hell, don't think it could've been done in another way since the whole point of SA2 was to go more into that "realer" context, Eggman no longer has just a giant moon with his face, he has an old space colony connected to cold war-esque conspiracies connected to murder and genetics, he doesn't do vague threatening- he takes specific terrorist actions, etc. In the context of SA2 it's fine, I just think people should be more aware overall that when you take the character of Eggman, from 1991 to 2015, in the SEGA games at least, SA2 isn't really representative of him overall, or not AS representative at least.

[Pawn]

I was another one not to bat an eye at the gun in that scene. It was a pretty silly-looking gun, held by a mad scientist while he bobbed up and down in his clunky mech. It wasn't even aimed properly at Amy. Now if Sonic had acted very nervous or Eggman had been standing close to her with a more realistic piece pressed against her head then I'd see a problem.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Pawn

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

The big villainous nonsense of Eggman before and after SA2 is inherently not real and not serious because you CAN'T relate to "giant space laser". If you DO want people to feel it seriously, you then frame it- if you're doing Akira, you maybe show the machinery setting the laser first, have the machinery look cool and sober, show destruction in detail, show gore.

Just about everything except flaying someone's arm off is exactly how it was framed in SA2, and it was framed seriously - the only difference is that instead of pointing that cannon at a person, it was aimed at the moon. Like, I don't get how that wasn't framed as something not serious in SA2.

SA2 instead has him take actions that are comparatively smaller and more personal, but exactly for that are more real and carry a more inherent serious feel. If you want, you can then frame that as silly- when Mickey threatens Donald with a gun so Donald won't leave the concerto, the gun's so big it fits Donald's entire bill in, and their expressions are exaggerated, and it lasts a couple seconds. SA2 chose to not go that far in framing it as a fantasious thing- they did a relatively realistic gun, added a bit in the end, and lingered in the implications of Eggman holding Amy hostage at gunpoint.

 

Tension of inherent tone vs intended tone. Framing.

Which then makes it less about the act overall being the issue. What I'm trying to get at is how it's OOC for Eggman to hold Amy hostage at gunpoint overall given what has already gone on before that scene. If this is all about framing, then it's more about the style in that he's doing so using a less fantastical gun to do so: basically, if the gun was shown as a dangerous, yet cartoony weapon, you guys wouldn't have a problem with it, would you?

Edited September 30, 2015 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Mauro Fonseca]

There's differing levels of seriousness. Or rather, serious is the wrong word here. Realness? The laser in SA2 hits the moon. We're shown no consequences. The laser in Akira hits the actual Earth. Not quite a city, but near it. If we're in a room, there's a difference between me shooting the ceiling to scare you, or shooting the wall right behind you.

 

So no, as I said, the scene isn't quite OOC by itself in the context of SA2. It's SA2 overall that is slightly OOC when compared to Eggman's overall tenure.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

So no, as I said, the scene isn't quite OOC by itself in the context of SA2. It's SA2 overall that is slightly OOC when compared to Eggman's overall tenure.

Dude, you can bold and enlarge the word "slightly" all you want, but that's not going to get your point across any further given that Eggman's overall tenure in that game hasn't been any different from other moments in the franchise. Firebombing islands in S3&K, trying to nuke Station Square in SA1 (and how is this always glossed over when we talk about "serious" or "realness"?), fracturing worlds in Unleashed, etc. Like, I could get the gun being treated as realistic being the problem, but SA2 is no less slightly OOC than at the very least SA1.

[Dr. Mechano]

Yeah, I think SA2 was perfectly within character because he was just using Amy as leverage. He had no genuine interest in hurting her. He certainly had a genuine interest in hurting Sonic, which makes sense given that Sonic's the one who keeps foiling his schemes.

SA1 was the one that was out of character, and grossly inconsistent with anything before or after it. In that game, Eggman's motive is destruction for its own sake. There's no real reason that Eggmanland needs to be built on Station Square's ruins specifically. It just comes across as Eggman being a needlessly murderous maniac instead of the power-hungry pragmatist he usually is. Destruction is the means, not the end. SA2 was fine, great even. But SA1's portrayal did a lot of things with Eggman that don't really feel consistent with his characterization when viewed as a whole.

[Wittymations]

Yeah, I can agree with that. SA1 had the problem of not emphasizing why he'd want to build it over Station Square. Maybe a resource could have been under the city grounds? That'd do it.

Edited September 30, 2015 by WittyUsername®

[Bowbowis]

There's differing levels of seriousness. Or rather, serious is the wrong word here. Realness? The laser in SA2 hits the moon. We're shown no consequences. The laser in Akira hits the actual Earth. Not quite a city, but near it. If we're in a room, there's a difference between me shooting the ceiling to scare you, or shooting the wall right behind you.

I think you're missing the point of that scene. While you're correct in saying that the game doesn't show any consequences of destruction of the moon, that's because the destruction of the moon is in and of itself a demonstration of consequences. It's the same thing as you're Akira example, just scaled up; in SA2 the Earth itself is equivalent to the city in Akira, while the moon is that place near the city which the laser hits. In other words the point isn't that Eggman blew up the moon, it's that Eggman has a weapon capable of blowing up the moon, and is now pointing it a Earth.

[Mauro Fonseca]

I'm not missing the point of the scene, I'm saying the way it's portrayed makes the laser in Akira more menacing even if, quantitatively, the laser in SA2 destroyed more, for an example. They'd be more directly comparable if we'd then gotten a couple scenes going "oh no the tides" or something, dunno.

[Bowbowis]

I'm not missing the point of the scene, I'm saying the way it's portrayed makes the laser in Akira more menacing even if, quantitatively, the laser in SA2 destroyed more, for an example. They'd be more directly comparable if we'd then gotten a couple scenes going "oh no the tides" or something, dunno.

Granted I've never seen Akira so I'm just basing things off of how you've described it. Regardless the destruction of the moon in SA2 makes it abundantly clear what would happen if the Eclipse Cannon were to hit Earth, by showing you exactly what would happen if it hit Earth. It's just like how you know what would happen if the Death Star hit Yavin IV in A New Hope, because you'd already seen it hit Alderaan earlier in the movie. To use your gunman in a room analogy: Eggman isn't shooting the wall or the ceiling; he's blowing off the head of the guy next to you, just to make it absolutely clear what's going to happen if you don't cooperate.

Edited September 30, 2015 by Bowbowis

[Badnik Mechanic]

Wasn't sure where else to post this, but does anyone have the quote from Ken regarding his stance on dealing with fans now? Specifically, that he doesn't due to the level of abuse he gets from some people?

It's for an article I'm doing and can't quite find the specific quote.

[FriendBot]

Wasn't sure where else to post this, but does anyone have the quote from Ken regarding his stance on dealing with fans now? Specifically, that he doesn't due to the level of abuse he gets from some people?

It's for an article I'm doing and can't quite find the specific quote.

I don't Pontac outright said that but I think a guy was about comment on his work in Generations but he said that he's not longer wanting to talk about his work on the series. I'm sure the pic was here somewhere but I just can't remember which topic was it. >_<

[Short-Sleeved Nook]

I personally don't see what's wrong with the new writers: I think fans need to see cutscenes and story in Sonic games as more "fanservice" nowadays instead of something that should be deep, yet engaging. Ever since late 2010, with Sonic 4 and Sonic Colors, SEGA has put a huge effort into dumbing Sonic down to be simply what classic Sonic fans and critics have been asking for, for years. part of this "return to roots" has been keeping the story short and sweet, and as simple as the rest of the game.

When I played Sonic Lost World, I wasn't focusing on how poor the writing was or on how much better a job they could've done writing the characters and introducing actual development and all that other crap: I was just happy to see my childhood hero back on the screen again, very pleased to see how much effort they put into the character models and animations, and heavily enjoying just watching Sonic be who he's always been, cracking sarcasic jokes and just being cooler than anything. Colors and Lost World sort of reminded me of the sheer pleasure of watching Sonic as a Saturday morning cartoon. You didn't always need a deep plot or excellent writing, you just need a charming character, and that's what Colors and Lost World really capitalized on, for myself as a Sonic fan.

Speaking quickly regarding the "drama" in Lost World, I really enjoyed watching Sonic and Tails, again, characters I'm fond of, have to deal with some issues. Is it anything unbelievably well written? No, but if you really love the characters, you should experience happiness of some sort to see them interacting with each other in familiar, and unique (yet simple) new ways.

In terms of Generations, the nature of the game itself means that the story was just being forced out so that classic and modern Sonics could come together. We didn't need anything fancy, because if they do anything fancy, critics whine about it and then people mock the games and blame SEGA for trying to make Sonic into something bigger than "what it really is", according to fans and critics.

Conclusion: Sonic fans, when it comes to cutscenes and story in the new games, just enjoy watching your favorite Blue Blur do what he does best