Iizuka & Hoshino Interview "Burning Sonic Questions Answered"

[Your Vest Friend]

43 minutes ago, pppp said:

Then what was up with that house at the beginning of Secret Rings?

Not his. Many have theorised it to be Tails, but in any case it's unknown. 

41 minutes ago, Teoskaven said:

Don't forget Sonic Labyrinth.

Not canon. 

39 minutes ago, Bowbowis said:

Or Sonic Battle.

What about Sonic Battle? He doesn't have a house there. 

He has one in Shuffle, but then that's also non-canon. 

[big_smile]

Just now, VEDJ-F said:

He has one in Shuffle, but then that's also non-canon. 

Is it? Sonic Team supervised it. Plus it shows Tails rebuilding the original Tornado (Although SA had the ending graphic with a rebuilt Tornado so....) 

All these houses though could just be friend's places where Sonic crashes in between his adventures. 

 

[Mauro Fonseca]

There's a human world and an animals world, and there's portals linking both that're required in the current sonic bible to never actually be acknowledged in the games, because the idea is to forcefully go "look, don't worry about the backstory, worry about what's happening right now". The only game that causes a problem with this is Adventure thanks to the Floating Island.

[pppp]

3 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Not his. Many have theorised it to be Tails, but in any case it's unknown.

The game never explains that the house is not his, Tails is nowhere to be seen, so the obvious thing to assume is that it's Sonic's.

[Mauro Fonseca]

Considering he's always been stated to be a drifter, I honestly first assumed "oh he's crashing at Tails', nice"

[SBR2]

Honestly I can't really get mad about homeless Sonic. I just kinda always assumed that was the case anyway. This was a cute interview some nice trivia even if they are still insisting on that ridiculous two worlds thing.

[StaticMania]

Staying at Tails' workshop or Amy's house are the only 2 places Sonic is likely to stay for extended periods of time.

[Diogenes]

5 minutes ago, pppp said:

The game never explains that the house is not his, Tails is nowhere to be seen, so the obvious thing to assume is that it's Sonic's.

Yeah but then Word of God says it's not his, so the obvious assumption has turned out to be incorrect.

Anyway whenever Sonic Team starts talking about canon and continuity and that kind of stuff I just end up wishing they'd reboot the whole thing. It's very clearly grown beyond their control into a bloated, contradictory mess, even when they're talking about it there's a very strong sense of "don't look too close and don't think too hard".

[Dr. Detective]

Dude. Iizuka. Just say that Sonic's world has humans and animals in it. You can do that! That's fine. Humans are animals too. Eggman is a human and he's been around since the beginning. Why intentionally make things more confusing for everyone? I don't understand.

I actually don't mind Classic and Modern Sonic being two different dimensions or entities or whatever. Honestly, that probably makes this less confusing for me. 

But that separate human world shit needs to die. Stop it. 

Also, I like Hoshino's response to the question about the Super Emeralds.

"Hoshino: They're gone. I don't know how it happened, but they're gone."

I like that.

[Blue Blood]

3 hours ago, pppp said:

The game never explains that the house is not his, Tails is nowhere to be seen, so the obvious thing to assume is that it's Sonic's.

I mean, I don't think there's actually supposed to be any assumption there about where he is at all.

Sonic is sat down reading a book somewhere. Suddenly a game happens.

The end. 

[Shadowlax]

A lot of those answers seem like " unless it is something expliclity we don't want to touch with a 10 foot pole ( despite them actually touching mephilies again ) " here is an asnwer/nonasnwer in case it returns. 

 

Which I mean I get it, they aren't the only ones to do that. I read comics, but goodness is it confusing. But I didn't exspect anything, there are a great many mysteries in sonics world, they just don't want to touch, or just don't care to. 

[Milo]

 

5 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

5 hours ago, PC the Hedgehog said:

Sonic's world is just as fluid as Mario's. Character, locations, and the like can change from game to game, as the plot warrants. It's the kinda thing that's not worth thinking too hard about.

Except Mario's world was always focused on the gameplay first, so we could easily accept that those worlds were fluid and changing.

SONIC's world on the other hand (at least up until after Sonic Adventure 2 and maybe Unleashed) was generally always tied to some level of cohesion or at least made it clear that places were clearly defined, and there was at least some level of cohesive lore and story to go with it. It's only after that point that Sonic Team just stopped caring and did whatever, assuming they ever really bothered to understand what made the earlier works work in the first place.

Moreover, assuming that Sonic's world being fluid as Mario's world doesn't exactly work when Sonic Team themselves isn't actually interested in supporting that notion. They are always making some sort of nonsensical excuse on the spot for certain design decisions. They're still pushing the idea that the moon is still destroyed from when Eggman blasted it in Sonic Adventure 2, for example, despite that idea being in direct conflict of the moon's subsequent appearances since. This could easily be handwaved away with a basic line like "the moon was a fake built by Eggman" or "Sonic used the Chaos Emeralds to restore the moon". Are these novel excuses? No. But they are way more simple to understand and are way more consistent with how the moon has been shown since that title, as opposed to what they are pushing now. Likewise, simply saying "we decide whether humans appear in certain games or not" makes more logical sense instead of saying Sonic has two worlds where humans populate one and animals populate another, especially since this is a statement that has never been supported within the games themselves.

If only Sonic Team just gave up on trying to try to explain things and just made Sonic's world as fluid as Mario's following Adventure (2). Or, as I said before, simply chalked up certain elements to simple "status quo" explanations or designer preferences. They make far more sense and are far more consistent in the context of Sonic's narrative canon (or at least, what remains of it anyway), compared to these convoluted narrative asspulls they keep making up everytime they give an interview.

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

If Sonic Team & co. aren't interested in having a coherent world or universe and just want all the games to be looked at solely in a standalone sense and not have anyone think about any of the details or continuity, I wish they would embrace that wholeheartedly instead of making up stupid stuff that never gets referenced in the games, like the two worlds "explanation", to "clear things up".

Pretty thrilled about Mighty tho. Pretty cute interview, the only problem is that it also sheds a lot of light on how the Sonic series having a remotely coherent world and consistency is something that Sega and Sonic Team do not care about remotely, which in turn makes it hard for me to care about where they're taking the Sonic series. The series' lack of direction is reflected not only in design decisions, but evidently in the canon itself. Other than that, it actually was fairly fun and interesting, genuinely.

[Scritch the Cat]

15 hours ago, The KKM said:

There's a human world and an animals world, and there's portals linking both that're required in the current sonic bible to never actually be acknowledged in the games, because the idea is to forcefully go "look, don't worry about the backstory, worry about what's happening right now". The only game that causes a problem with this is Adventure thanks to the Floating Island.

Sure, but if "don't worry about the backstory" is their point, I don't know why they see any need to go writing a backstory that explains something that...not too many people really worry about.  I mean, just because we only ever saw one human in the classic Sonic games doesn't mean that there weren't more; whom did they expect us to believe built all those cities?  Robotnik would have been the obvious answer to the ones focused on manufacturing his stuff, sure, but not all of the cities in this series focused on that.  Sure; more recently we've had games and other media that suggests anthros have a human-level ability to build things and can behave like humans, but before that the natural assumption was always that there were, in fact, many humans in this series.

I can't help but wonder if this is SEGA of Japan importing the notion of "Mobius" into their canon, just like they imported the name Robotnik--hasn't gotten used a lot since, but it was canon as of SA2.  However, even when the Western branch of SEGA was declaring all the Sonic media to take place on Mobius, I don't remember them ever implying that not many humans exist on Mobius, and that those who do are inter-dimensional aliens.  The first time I remember that ever being pulled was in Sonic X, and many fans would be just fine if SEGA never took inspiration from that.

[Multikaris]

3 hours ago, Monkey Destruction Switch said:

If Sonic Team & co. aren't interested in having a coherent world or universe and just want all the games to be looked at solely in a standalone sense and not have anyone think about any of the details or continuity, I wish they would embrace that wholeheartedly instead of making up stupid stuff that never gets referenced in the games, like the two worlds "explanation", to "clear things up".

Pretty thrilled about Mighty tho. Pretty cute interview, the only problem is that it also sheds a lot of light on how the Sonic series having a remotely coherent world and consistency is something that Sega and Sonic Team do not care about remotely, which in turn makes it hard for me to care about where they're taking the Sonic series. The series' lack of direction is reflected not only in design decisions, but evidently in the canon itself. Other than that, it actually was fairly fun and interesting, genuinely.

Well, it seems like they're taking steps to embrace that sort of lack of canon, with the somewhat jokey responses like the one to Metal Sonic. And the "individual bubbles" a while back. The problem is that Boom already does that, so a division is needed to have a consistient storyline. As Boom is coming to a close, I guess if they want to embrace a lack of canon, we need a new series closer to how Boom was originally intended to be.

[big_smile]

7 hours ago, Miru the Living Planet said:

Well, it seems like they're taking steps to embrace that sort of lack of canon, with the somewhat jokey responses like the one to Metal Sonic. And the "individual bubbles" a while back. The problem is that Boom already does that, so a division is needed to have a consistient storyline. As Boom is coming to a close, I guess if they want to embrace a lack of canon, we need a new series closer to how Boom was originally intended to be.

 And the "individual bubbles" a while back.  - Could you elaborate on this please? Thanks!

[Multikaris]

6 hours ago, big_smile said:

 And the "individual bubbles" a while back.  - Could you elaborate on this please? Thanks!

He once mentioned that each game takes place in its own little bubble in one interview.

[big_smile]

7 hours ago, Miru the Living Planet said:

He once mentioned that each game takes place in its own little bubble in one interview.

Got a link to the interview? Thanks! 

[Muscles Maximum]

Quote

Has anybody noticed that Mighty the Armadillo is missing?

Iizuka: Mighty is a part of the Classic world and the Classic group of characters, and some of the Chaotix did get interpreted for the Modern vision of the games. However, Mighty still exists in the Classic world, so maybe we'll see him in the future in some Classic iteration.

Hoshino: How popular is he? [laughs]

Well gang, it seems things are finally beginning to look up :^)

[Zippo]

On 6/12/2017 at 0:58 AM, Polkadi said:

ln Sonic Adventure 2, Eggman blew up the moon. Is the moon still in pieces?

Iizuka: As we see the moon as it's presented in Sonic games now, we see one side and it looks very nice and presentable. However, maybe the dark side of the moon is how everyone remembers it to be.

Did that affect the tides at all?

Iizuka: [laughs] No... no.

Oh Iizuka, that's not how the moon works, ya silly goose! 

It's called synchronous rotation, everyone knows that, duh!  

[paulojrmam]

Wow, after reading this... they just don't care, it's apalling!