Has the Sonic series got to many characters?

[Sonictrainer]

19 minutes ago, Swing said:

Sure. You can do that, but also here we have yet again another problem. The reason why Blaze or Shadow or Espio are so beloved characters is because their look and play just like Sonic. Their are all super fast, slinky, athletic, cool anthropomorphic cartoon animals with a bit of an anime-like style to them. If you changed them so drastically fans of this Characters could get turned of by their new gameplay style.  

It is way to late to change them.

Let's say a Team Chaotix game came out and it played like a detective game, where players can help clients, find clues, and solve mysteries.

Are you saying that because it's not a traditional Sonic style game, it's automatically going to suck?

[Swing]

14 hours ago, Sonictrainer said:

Let's say a Team Chaotix game came out and it played like a detective game, where players can help clients, find clues, and solve mysteries.

Are you saying that because it's not a traditional Sonic style game, it's automatically going to suck?

No. But if you are going to make a traditional Sonic game, why then just not use Sonic. DKC and Wario Land are both 2D plattformers, sure, but both of them play, look and sound very different to Mario. 

[RedFox99]

To be honest, different genre games could be nice. Maybe Cream and Vanilla can have cooking games, Amy and/or Knuckles could have beat em ups, and Tails can have a game like Ace Combat (a flying game).

[Swing]

1 minute ago, RedFox99 said:

To be honest, different genre games could be nice. Maybe Cream and Vanilla can have cooking games, Amy and/or Knuckles could have beat em ups, and Tails can have a game like Ace Combat (a flying game).

You seem to be the only one that understands my point.

[RedFox99]

Maybe Rouge could have a stealth game like MGS.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Too many characters? Sonic's pretty average when it comes to its cast size--Plenty of games out there have around the same amount if not more depending on how you're willing to count the Sonic cast. Overwatch has over 20 playable characters, Smash Bros latest title has at least 50. And if you guys want to talk about a truly massive cast, League of Legends has a whooping triple digit of 138 playable characters--and each one plays different regardless of any similarities.

Now yes, those games are different genres and aren't platform/adventure games like Sonic, but that's not really the relevant point here. Sonic's problem with his cast isn't the number and size; that's just a convenient scapegoat that the more close-minded make because they either hate certain characters or for those who don't know what the actual problem is and want something easier to lay blame on.

No, the problem is their utility, or rather their poor use within the franchise's games. You notice that in the games I mentioned above, those games are very centralized in how they have you play their characters. Sure, each character has different playstyles and strategies from each other in their own games--you can't play D.Va the same way as you would play Sombra in Overwatch, nor can you play Yasuo the same way as you would play Leona in LoL, or Mario the same as Falco in Smash Bros. But they're all balanced (or worked on to maintain balance) in the overall structure of play within the games they're a part of without going so far into other aspects that they end up feeling like they don't mesh well. A Leona in LoL is a character who was designed to protect her teammates by taking damage in their place while a character like Yasuo was designed to slip in and kill weaker, high priority targets as fast as possible. There's synergy in the game that players are can and should make use of.

That's mainly why the Sonic fandom dubbed the differences in the Adventures and Sonic 06 as "genre roulette" given that their styles have you doing wildly different things compared to what would be expected--Emerald Hunting being a free roaming, multi-objective mission is different from Sonic's speed stages of simply getting from point A to B. And even the mech stages, being closer to Sonic stages in terms of objective can make things a hassle by being either slower and cumbersome in SA2 or giving you a short time limit that ends your life at 0 in SA1. Ironically, Sonic 06 had a better grasp of this, but it was plagued by bugs and Silver's gameplay didn't mesh smoothly given how slow and stop/go he could be.

And that's just gameplay. Plot and narrative has some issues, too. Mainly on the count of breaking consistency and logic in ways that irritates a dedicated audience--Knuckles randomly shirking his guardianship role, Silver popping in and out haphazardly from the future with weak reasoning, or characters overall having the ability to actually take action but they do very little, and Eggman repeatedly unearthing powerful ancient creatures and not catching on to them potentially threatening him too, etc. These characters act as if time had past by, yet at the same time rarely if ever learn, grow, and develop, becoming inconsistent to the point of alienating a dedicated audience and possibly confusing a new one depending on how it's framed. And in the chance they do show signs of development, it's never capitalized on, instead disregarded as if it's nothing to keep note of.

In short, had any of this been handled with quality and care, we arguably wouldn't be having such discussions like this at front and center. I'd go so far as to say we wouldn't have them at all, and that we're only having it now as a result of Sonic Team's awkward management of this franchise. Because had any of these things been well done and accepted, people complaining about 20+ characters would be laughed at on the count of that not being such a massive number for any long-running franchise.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

DC. Marval. Dragonball. One Piece. Street Fighter/pretty much any fighter game all have tons of characters, especially the comic franchises have a lot and many get turned into their own separate series all sharing the same universe. Most long running series have tons of reoccurring characters because without them the series and main characters will get boring real fast and will turn many people off after awhile.

Sonic does have many action hero level characters yes. This is normally because they were once a new playable character that had new gameplay or concept connected to them. Meaning without them at the time SEGA would had to instead shoehorn the new gameplay only on Sonic or skip out on new concepts altogether, making the whole thing less exciting. Much like comics SEGA should use and divide up their characters who are good enough in their own right to be main characters and give them... well their own games to be stars of! instead of trying to force them all into side roles on the main Sonic games which doesn't work well. Blaze...The Chaotix and even Eggman himself among others could easily have their own spinoff game series IMO.

However that's not the only way to use the characters... Even in the main Sonic game themselves they could overtime use almost all the popular meaningful side cast if they had a few playable characters most games and switch up which ones they use each time besides Sonic himself... They don't need to keep using only Tails & Knuckles as the only other playable characters... when they could easily use the others too on a off and on again routine. This also means they should avoid doing pointless filler things like multiple Sonics and avatars outside of one shot games.

Sonic doesn't need all the spotlight 24/7. You can't fit a character into every role, and at times it already feels like Sonic replaces more characters in positions he doesn't match then he should honestly!

Yes more support role type characters would be nice too. We do need more then just action heroes and probably SEGA needs to slow the hell down on making new playable quality characters as we have enough of them.

[Flyinpenguin117]

I swear, no game series has as much of a vendetta against its cast as Sonic.

[Flyinpenguin117]

...

[Singapore Sling]

6 hours ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Now yes, those games are different genres and aren't platform/adventure games like Sonic, but that's not really the relevant point here. 

I mean I'm pretty sure it is.

[Almar]

On 10/12/2017 at 10:46 AM, Almar said:

What really gets to me is Sega's bratty and sarcastic way of addressing criticism. Once the formula for proper Sonic gameplay was wrecked by mixing in poorly fitting styles attached to select characters (Big, Knuckles, etc), players unsurprisingly were against that. Sega or Sonic Team could not have dealt with these pleas any worse; they hear "we hate the new characters for how they play, original Sonic gameplay was best" and so they respond by excluding EVERY character except Sonic, with the rest of the hero cast there in small ways (all while having Sonic use the polarizing styles anyway). Then they go bring back about all of the hero characters at once into a game yet still only Sonic is playable. Outrage continues and Sonic  Team appears to still be cross-eyed and saying "hurr we don't understand what the problem is we did what you said hurr"

They overcompensate for the backlash against Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06 (and to a lesser level the Sonic Adventure games) with their edgyness and focus on human characters (namely Elise) by  making the Sonic games after sorta reboot Unleashed awkwardly self-aware. Next we have the Two Worlds retcon that also has doses of Iizuka being territorial.

They can't seem to swallow their pride and admit their passive aggression, bitterness, territorial behavior or whatever is pushing their actions. The key is careful moderation. The Genesis Sonic Trilogy each introduced one new character, who followed the more or less the same gameplay but had a couple of different tricks to spice things up. Eggman was a goofy villain but he wasn't getting upstaged by New Edgier Villian #3939 and could certainly present himself as a menace to the world. The games always had some silliness to them but the characters were still taking what they did seriously.

Putting onto this, characters like Big are loathed for being associated with poorly accepted playstyles or the games that had them. Blaze is way more accepted since she plays more or less like Sonic (with the bonus of being the first female character presented as on Sonic's level instead of a recurring joke character, tutorial bot, or plot device/forced romantic option).

Mario's cast isn't in the their position. Looking at just the main games you only ever really play as Mario and/or Luigi (who's more or less the same as Mario). Donkey Kong and Wario have been placed in their subseries, Yoshi's just a mule with games where he's the star, Toad's just a sidekick, Rosalina hasn't been important since Galaxy, etc.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

3 hours ago, Singapore Sling said:

I mean I'm pretty sure it is.

Then try reading further down that post instead of making ignorant quips like this, cuz there's a whole point you blatantly missed.

[TailsTellsTales]

On 10/25/2017 at 2:00 PM, Swing said:

Sure having only the the main character in the centre all the time can become very boring. But in the end that is the main purpose of a main character. 

I do not think you understand the definition of "main character". Main character does not mean only one character gets the attention 100% of the time, it means they get a majority of it and over the years Sonic has gotten almost 100% all the attention. The other main characters desperately need attention.

 

On 10/25/2017 at 2:52 PM, Swing said:

Sure. You can do that, but also here we have yet again another problem. The reason why Blaze or Shadow or Espio are so beloved characters is because their look and play just like Sonic. Their are all super fast, slinky, athletic, cool anthropomorphic cartoon animals with a bit of an anime-like style to them. If you changed them so drastically fans of this Characters could get turned of by their new gameplay style.  

It is way to late to change them.

Yes in a Sonic game you would expect the characters to have similar characteristics to a degree like Sonic. They all generally are about speed. Might not be Sonic speed but it is speed nonetheless.

[Emerald Chaos]

The main advantage to having one playable character is that you can focus entirely on balancing and tweeking their moveset so that it's fleshed out, has a good amount of depth to it and feels fun

Sega have not done this with all the time they've had while they've focused purely on Sonic. A massive wasted opportunity. It looked like they might have been attempting to do it with Lost World, but that was poorly thought out and sloppily executed and they've gone back to the inherently flawed boost style gameplay in the very next game so it seems like it was for nothing.

I actually like the way Lego Dimensions handled the usage of the extended cast. I would like to see more of that in the main games.

[Shadowlax]

If you consider the ammount they tend to focus on, not really no. 

Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Shadow, Eggman, Metal sonic

Those seem to be the ones they want to use for things , those are the ones outside of recently vector that made the boom conversation. 

The chaotix and Blaze and silver seem like special exceptions of characters who can occasionally come up. 

And that's a grand total of...12

Not a lot

[Swing]

Well guys, Sonic Forces showed me, that my few on the characters was actually quit correct. Their are just way to similar in role, personality and appearance. No wonder that in the most recent games their pretty much just background decoration or hype material.

Forces showed once again that the Sonic series can only use a handful of characters: Sonic, Tails, Dr. Eggman, Orbot & Cubot, sometimes Metal-Sonic and the new villain/new characters of the newest story. Sometimes they could also be a spot for Amy, Knuckles and the Deadly Six.  But yeah, that is pretty much it. It is really not easy to find any good roles for most of these characters anymore. 

Like I said. All of them are action hero characters. Characters that would fit better in their own story and game. But should not be a part of Sonic's story. 

[Multikaris]

2 hours ago, Swing said:

Well guys, Sonic Forces showed me, that my few on the characters was actually quit correct. Their are just way to similar in role, personality and appearance. No wonder that in the most recent games their pretty much just background decoration or hype material.

Forces showed once again that the Sonic series can only use a handful of characters: Sonic, Tails, Dr. Eggman, Orbot & Cubot, sometimes Metal-Sonic and the new villain/new characters of the newest story. Sometimes they could also be a spot for Amy, Knuckles and the Deadly Six.  But yeah, that is pretty much it. It is really not easy to find any good roles for most of these characters anymore. 

Like I said. All of them are action hero characters. Characters that would fit better in their own story and game. But should not be a part of Sonic's story. 

Knuckles seems to be every bit of a character who feels like he should stand in his own story as any of the many 2000s introductions. Tikal’s role as a gentle wallflower makes her feel more like recurrent material.

[knuckles20]

2 hours ago, Swing said:

Well guys, Sonic Forces showed me, that my few on the characters was actually quit correct. Their are just way to similar in role, personality and appearance. No wonder that in the most recent games their pretty much just background decoration or hype material.

Forces showed once again that the Sonic series can only use a handful of characters: Sonic, Tails, Dr. Eggman, Orbot & Cubot, sometimes Metal-Sonic and the new villain/new characters of the newest story. Sometimes they could also be a spot for Amy, Knuckles and the Deadly Six.  But yeah, that is pretty much it. It is really not easy to find any good roles for most of these characters anymore. 

 

No one said it would be easy but that’s no reason to go for the most laziest route possible.

Do you know why people want other characters back, because it got boring when the games limit themselves to the same small cast things tend to get repetitive to the point that people stop buying the games altogether.

If anything I can say about Forces it’s that the other characters can work if you’re willing to put in actual effort. 

[Almar]

2 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

Knuckles seems to be every bit of a character who feels like he should stand in his own story as any of the many 2000s introductions. Tikal’s role as a gentle wallflower makes her feel more like recurrent material.

I recall he was intended to be a one-shot character back in S3&K but he returned in more games thanks to being a fan-favorite.

Really though, when you put it that way I'm guessing an issue with Knuckles or Blaze or Silver is that they all have the "hero of a different story" badge and the handlers have had problems figuring out how to have them both be recurring characters and yet grounded in different worlds or conflicts from Sonic VS Eggman. We've gotten Blaze showing up outside of Solville handwaved with her using the Sol Emeralds, Knuckles' latest appearence where the ME takes part has him do a wild goose chase since he had with himall along, and Silver just shows up.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

5 hours ago, Almar said:

I recall he was intended to be a one-shot character back in S3&K but he returned in more games thanks to being a fan-favorite.

You got a source for that?

I'm not trying to be coy here, cuz I find that really intriguing given that hardly anything hinted of him being a one-shot. And if that's true, then it looks like Shadow isn't the only one who benefited from fan demand as a returning character.

[DoubleXXCross]

A minor suggestion: how different do you think the series would be if all the additional characters were limited strictly to boss fight and enemy status, instead of as storyline or playable?

[Multikaris]

5 hours ago, DoubleXXCross said:

A minor suggestion: how different do you think the series would be if all the additional characters were limited strictly to boss fight and enemy status, instead of as storyline or playable?

VERY different. We’d likely have piles and piles of one-shot Characters ala Mario.