What do you think of Sonic's friends..?

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, Hyper Enesephus said:

You're right, he doesn't, but he was already not the main villain in the Adventure titles, and Heroes would have been the perfect time to give him his role as main bad guy again.

As for you, Dr. Chaotix, I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree here.

As for  the whole "Metal wasn't unnecessary in Heroes because he orchestrated the whole thing" argument, I would agree if that was fleshed out, and if he really did anything in Sonic's story, the main story of the game. Sonic's story, the whole way through, felt like a "Sonic vs. Eggman" plot, and excluding Metal's tiny cameo after the fourth boss, it didn't feel to me like there was anything bigger going on, unlike in Adventure, Adventure 2, or even freakin' Sonic '06. Same goes for Team Dark's story, which just feels like it's just setting up for a certain game from 2005. Metal has more to do with the Rose and Chaotix stories, but I always felt like those stories, along with Team Dark's, honestly, were unneeded. They just felt like they were there purely to make some fans of those characters happy, as well as to set up the Metal Sonic twist. 

If there were more crossover between all the stories, making them feel more like they all had something to do with one another, if Metal had more to do with Sonic and Shadow's plots, and if there were just more hints that there was something bigger going on, then I would agree that Metal Sonic, and, by extension, the other characters, had a reason to be there, but the game's story as is just feels like a circle of unneeded characters and "plots."

Basically, Heroes' story was half-assed, resulting in everything about its story feeling unnecessary, beyond Team Sonic and Eggman, at least to me.

The execution behind Heroes' story was half-assed. The assets they had within it were brilliant though. I feel they could have easily made something that rivaled the Adventure series in terms of handling the plot had they not simplified the cutscenes as much as they did. They could have succeeded in still leaving Metal Sonic out of Team Sonic's story even. Having it work as a point of view angle where the hero, Sonic, doesn't care about Metal Sonic's reasoning or who he has to face in the end so long as justice is done, where as Metal Sonic gets a chance to be more fleshed out with the Rose and Chaotix stories. They could have made that work really well but what they ended up doing instead provided a massive disservice to all the ideas that were within that game. It's a shame really.

Still, it didn't end up going to waste as I became a fan of the Chaotix because of it. I intensely admire their role within that game and the potential it had to continue to function for future titles. An undercover team working to clear up any hidden context that wasn't discovered by the main characters by being a cast of secondary characters with their own quirky personalities that don't need to directly interact with the main character except on occasion is a brilliant idea. It's one that not a lot of franchises have the opportunity to use to it's advantage and the few times this franchise has done it (Heroes, Shadow, the Olympic Games Handhelds, and maybe Rivals 2) have worked with varying degrees of interest slated to them. It's been fun for me to come up with more and more scenarios for it too. They don't even need to be playable for it to happen as most of those examples I listed had them as NPCs. 

My writing juices are being stirred up now. I can't wait until I finally start writing my comic. So much fun awaits me ahead. 

[Enesephus]

1 minute ago, Dr. Chaotix said:

The execution behind Heroes' story was half-assed. The assets they had within it were brilliant though. I feel they could have easily made something that rivaled the Adventure series in terms of handling the plot had they not simplified the cutscenes as much as they did. They could have succeeded in still leaving Metal Sonic out of Team Sonic's story even. Having it work as a point of view angle where the hero, Sonic, doesn't care about Metal Sonic's reasoning or who he has to face in the end so long as justice is done, where as Metal Sonic gets a chance to be more fleshed out with the Rose and Chaotix stories. They could have made that work really well but what they ended up doing instead provided a massive disservice to all the ideas that were within that game. It's a shame really.

Still, it didn't end up going to waste as I became a fan of the Chaotix because of it. I intensely admire their role within that game and the potential it had to continue to function for future titles. An undercover team working to clear up any hidden context that wasn't discovered by the main characters by being a cast of secondary characters with their own quirky personalities that don't need to directly interact with the main character except on occasion is a brilliant idea. It's one that not a lot of franchises have the opportunity to use to it's advantage and the few times this franchise has done it (Heroes, Shadow, the Olympic Games Handhelds, and maybe Rivals 2) have worked with varying degrees of interest slated to them. It's been fun for me to come up with more and more scenarios for it too. They don't even need to be playable for it to happen as most of those examples I listed had them as NPCs. 

My writing juices are being stirred up now. I can't wait until I finally start writing my comic. So much fun awaits me ahead. 

But they didn't, which is largely why I feel the way I feel. I don't expect others to agree, but there you go.

Anyway, have fun with your comic!

[Dr. Detective]

1 hour ago, Hyper Enesephus said:

But they didn't, which is largely why I feel the way I feel. I don't expect others to agree, but there you go.

Anyway, have fun with your comic!

You don't have to worry too much about that. The topic wasn't originally about Heroes after all. I only really disagreed with the sentiments behind the existence of the talked about characters' purpose within the story but I didn't really disagree about the way the story handled their purpose. The way they handled it was quite the disappointment.

Still love a lot of those cutscenes though. Mostly the ones that aren't Team Sonic because Team Sonic's dialogue is just a cheese fest. More so then Team Rose.

[E-122-Psi]

I think it's that all the other teams had a character motivated purpose for going after Eggman, making them a bit more complex. Team Sonic were just the generic heroes who wanted to save the day. Not to mention this was the era Sonic was being downplayed into a cookie cutter goody goody. The 'REAL SUPER POWER OF TEAMWORK' doesn't nearly cut into some of the cloying crap they churn out throughout the game.

[Miles Prower The Fox]

All of Sonic's friends are original in their own way. I LOVE TAILS AND I WANT MIGHTY BACK!!!!!

[Singapore Sling]

On 2/16/2016 at 5:46 AM, E-122-Psi said:

 The 'REAL SUPER POWER OF TEAMWORK' doesn't nearly cut into some of the cloying crap they churn out throughout the game.

Sonic Heroes's dialogue was amazing you heathen. 

[SBR2]

On ‎2‎/‎14‎/‎2016 at 3:53 PM, BlueBlur2002 said:

Sonic has lots and lots and... lots of friends. And lots of them are very unpopular, unnecessary and could easily be removed.

 

Does he though? There's like 10 recurring characters in the whole series that'd count as Sonics Friends. Unless the Babylon Rogues count as Sonic's friends.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Sonic's friends are THE reason I like this franchise. I mean, Mario has 4 plumbers, 3 princesses and bunch of toads. Megaman has 3 bots with a gun, girl and two scientists, and bunch of animal bots. Donkey kong has big monkey, young monkey, old monkey ang girl monkey.

In comparison Sonic's word feel much more colorful and interesting. It not always works into a gameplay, but that's not a reason to get rid of them.

[pocket]

The extended cast was a big draw for the series for me for the longest time.  

And I echo the sentiments that Sonic, Tails, and Eggman being the only main characters isn't as fun as it was in Sonic 2. Especially when Tails is just there for science stuff and/or being put in danger.

Maybe from Heroes until Sonic '06 they did over do it with the cast size, but that doesn't mean the cast was bad, they just tried to squeeze too much in at once. They should pick and choose which characters should appear in the game based on the situation. Instead it's been "Absolutely everyone" or "the bare essentials".   

Give me a game where Sonic and Knuckles are main characters, The Chaotix make an appearance, but Tails and Amy don't.  Or maybe a game where Amy tags along with Sonic for story reasons, Omega and Rouge are Antagonists for some reason, but no Shadow to be seen. Mix it up a little with the cast, use sparingly, but not the same faces every single time. 

[Azul]

On 2/14/2016 at 1:13 PM, BlueBlur2002 said:

I just think that in the games the gameplay is much better when you just play as Sonic and Tails appears in cutscenes,

I'm not seeing a  correlation between the cut-scenes and gameplay. Especially when you can just skip them and not miss a beat in the levels.

[ShadowSJG]

I like Sonic's friends tbh. They are a part of the reason why I like the franchise and I wish they could become playable again.

[Regulus]

Sonic's extended cast is overpopulated, I think even fans of the friends would admit that. Sonic has far more rivals than he needs to: Metal Sonic, Shadow, Silver, Knuckles e.t.c. One rival figure would do fine, especially with the lack of writing talent in Sonic Team. I actually think Pontac and Graff were good script writers, but whoever writes the plots for the game, even if it is Pontac and Graff, are clearly very weak.

I think my perspective is very different to the majority of fans here though. I don't care about the friends that much, aside from the main core perhaps. I just don't think a franchise should be producing games to please its fanbase, they should make games they want to and for their own vision.

[Lord Raptor]

I am A huge fan of Knuckles and the Chaotix so I'd love to see them return and be playable in future game, I'd also like Knuckles to ya' know actually be part of the plot, he's been shafted in every main game since SA2 I think, and to see him make an impact again would make me happy.