Ludonarrative dissonance

[Blazey Firekitty]

Has there ever been Sonic games where the gameplay doesn't match up with what's going on in the cutscenes?

[Diogenes]

One thing that's kind of annoying is the issue of actually rescuing animals from Eggman. Eggman capturing animals and putting them in his robots was one of the series' major plot points early on and kind of the inciting incident of Sonic 1. And you do save a good number of animals, from badniks, from capsules, and in a less direct sense by stopping Eggman's plans.

Buuuut...there's never any thought given to all the animals that don't get saved. Unless you're taking on some weird personal challenge, you're certainly not bopping every last badnik in every zone. You're not even really incentivized to free animals from badniks; unless an enemy is an immediate threat, you're always better off running past and ignoring them. That implies dozens, maybe hundreds, of innocent animals left trapped in metal shells in all sorts of unforgiving environments with basically no hope of salvation, and no indication that anyone gives a shit.

I can only think of two games that really address this issue; in CD, destroying the badnik generator ensures that the animals are never captured in the first place, removing the need to track down every robot directly, and is incentivized by giving you Good Futures for doing so (and since getting all the Time Stones also grants Good Futures, it likewise undoes all of Eggman's work). And in 3D Blast, freeing every captured flicky is the game's explicit goal and is necessary to beat levels; finishing the game means that no innocents were left behind.

[TB100]

The only cutscene that really comes to mind for me when I think of this topic, is this one from Sonic Unleashed.

 Seriously why the hell can't i do all this cool shit in the night stages?

(Go to 0:54 to see what I'm talking about.)

 

[Salamander]

I wouldn't call it an explicit discontinuity, exactly, but in the more recent games then what you do in the zones has had very little to do with the ostensible plot of the game.  If you just looked at what happened in terms of pure "gameplay," you'd think the plot of the games was simply to run through some random areas and find a Goal Ring, but the plot tells you that you're destroying generators, or restoring colour to time-displaced zones through speed magic.  I would like it if more efforts were made to tell the story through gameplay, rather than having levels be simple, formulaic arcade experiences with no sign of what's meant to be the plot.

(Also, in relation to Diogenes's point, I think it's pretty uninspiring that Eggman doesn't actually trap animals in robots very often these days, though perhaps Lost World is signalling a turnaround here.)

[TB100]

3 hours ago, FFWF said:

I wouldn't call it an explicit discontinuity, exactly, but in the more recent games then what you do in the zones has had very little to do with the ostensible plot of the game.  If you just looked at what happened in terms of pure "gameplay," you'd think the plot of the games was simply to run through some random areas and find a Goal Ring, but the plot tells you that you're destroying generators, or restoring colour to time-displaced zones through speed magic.  I would like it if more efforts were made to tell the story through gameplay, rather than having levels be simple, formulaic arcade experiences with no sign of what's meant to be the plot.

(Also, in relation to Diogenes's point, I think it's pretty uninspiring that Eggman doesn't actually trap animals in robots very often these days, though perhaps Lost World is signalling a turnaround here.)

Going by on what FFWF said, Imagine if the games had more stuff like this in the stages themselves.

Seriously this would be pretty sweet.

[Blazey Firekitty]

I do feel that if Sonic Team or fan developers ever reuse the Werehog, trying to do more "normal Sonic" style platforming like in that cutscene would be cool. After all, he may be a slower runner in that form, but that doesn't mean rail grinding or jumping are affected.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

On 12/15/2016 at 10:18 PM, Diogenes said:

One thing that's kind of annoying is the issue of actually rescuing animals from Eggman. Eggman capturing animals and putting them in his robots was one of the series' major plot points early on and kind of the inciting incident of Sonic 1. And you do save a good number of animals, from badniks, from capsules, and in a less direct sense by stopping Eggman's plans.

Buuuut...there's never any thought given to all the animals that don't get saved. Unless you're taking on some weird personal challenge, you're certainly not bopping every last badnik in every zone. You're not even really incentivized to free animals from badniks; unless an enemy is an immediate threat, you're always better off running past and ignoring them. That implies dozens, maybe hundreds, of innocent animals left trapped in metal shells in all sorts of unforgiving environments with basically no hope of salvation, and no indication that anyone gives a shit.

Don't forget the fact that, even when you do free them, they're often in very dangerous areas where injury, death, or recapture is extremely likely, and they do things like walk on lava or jump from extreme elevations - in the former case, with no apparent harm coming to them...in the latter, we can only guess!

Another possible example of segregation between story and gameplay can be found in the special moves in character vs. character battles in SA2. With the exception of Chaos Control and related abilities, here's no in-story reason for or reference to them, and there's no reason why (in one-player battles) the opponent character can use them but the player character can't. Because of the way they're presented and used, they seem to just be a way to make one-player battles more challenging and two-player battles more interesting and fun.

I would like to quickly point out that the opening post of this topic isn't as thorough as we would like - we generally prefer they contain more thoughts and elaboration to "get the ball rolling" rather than just posing a question in a single sentence. In this case, it's not as big a deal because it's a fine discussion topic that doesn't NEED more details, so the thread definitely isn't going to be locked or anything. Still, if at some point, the topic creator would like to edit the original post to expand on it a bit, that would be appreciated.

[Tara]

4 hours ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

Don't forget the fact that, even when you do free them, they're often in very dangerous areas where injury, death, or recapture is extremely likely, and they do things like walk on lava or jump from extreme elevations - in the former case, with no apparent harm coming to them...in the latter, we can only guess!

If Sonic 3D Blast is any indication, the Flickies at least can withstand the heat of molten lava.  Heck, they probably enjoy it, in fact, considering that, upon Sonic taking damage, they will almost immediately and unanimously decide to head to the nearest pool of lava (or other death-bringing obstacle), thus putting Sonic in a very awkward situation.

[FriendBot]

30 minutes ago, Tara said:

If Sonic 3D Blast is any indication, the Flickies at least can withstand the heat of molten lava.  Heck, they probably enjoy it, in fact, considering that, upon Sonic taking damage, they will almost immediately and unanimously decide to head to the nearest pool of lava (or other death-bringing obstacle), thus putting Sonic in a very awkward situation.

Not unless you have a Fire Shield which shouldn't be too much of a hassle to find in Volcano Valley.

[Singapore Sling]

...All of it?

[Cheawn]

Well, there was Sonic Heroes. Four teams start at different locations and all somehow end up at Seaside Hill.

It makes sense for Team Rose because they were at a beach and Team Chaotix because they were in a building, and we never learned where it was located.

But Team Dark was in an Eggman factory, which historically are never near such tropical environments, and Team Sonic somehow got from a canyon to a beach. 

Of course, it's not like this affected how fun Sonic Heroes was so I don't mind a bit.