Sonic Forces SPOILER Thread

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Just now, KHCast said:

"Wondering how you failed sooo badly"

am I the only one that thinks the voice direction for that line felt REALLY badly done? Like roger sounds really bored and fake.

That was actually one of my favorites. He's mocking Eggman there, really hammering it home and rubbing it in his face. 

[Clewis]

10 minutes ago, SonicLegends said:

In regarding the friendship bit people should just get off their high horse on that. Sonic stories are not the only ones to have this cliché theme of friendship is power you can go on over to Kingdom Hearts and even Fire Emblem two series that are plot driven in driving this theme one way or another. Heck in the latter's case as a Fire emblem fan veteran the friendship card isn't just something that's part of the new games, but was involved in the older games, but the point of the friendship speeches going on in the games is that for their war stories it was meant to be as morale in keeping everyone's hopes up especially for the final charge or in trying to rebuild and the case just as will was for Forces here.

That's nice and all, but a lot of people still find it goofy and ridiculous (at least the western audience does), and since Sega sees those same people as potential sales, you can bet the blatant friendship stuff will be some of the first to go when developing the next game's narrative.

[KHCast]

4 minutes ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

That was actually one of my favorites. He's mocking Eggman there, really hammering it home and rubbing it in his face. 

The way he mocks in games like colors and lost world felt way more lively and fun tbh

[The Deleter]

14 minutes ago, SonicLegends said:

In regarding the friendship bit people should just get off their high horse on that. Sonic stories are not the only ones to have this cliché theme of friendship is power you can go on over to Kingdom Hearts and even Fire Emblem two series that are plot driven in driving this theme one way or another. Heck in the latter's case as a Fire emblem fan veteran the friendship card isn't just something that's part of the new games, but was involved in the older games, but the point of the friendship speeches going on in the games is that for their war stories it was meant to be as morale in keeping everyone's hopes up especially for the final charge or in trying to rebuild and the case just as will was for Forces here.

 

Heroes was far worse in it because Sonic telling Metal Sonic "Because we're Sonic Heroes!" is just a incredibly silly thing to say narrative wise.

Nah they deserve all the flack they get with how hamfisted and lame that line was

Even Rise of Lyric did it better

 

[Sonicfan287]

2 minutes ago, Clewis said:

That's nice and all, but a lot of people still find it goofy and ridiculous (at least the western audience does), and since Sega sees those same people as potential sales, you can bet the friendship stuff will be some of the first to go when developing the next game's narrative.

I didn't mind the whole "friendship" thing in Sonic Heroes but when the stakes are as high as they are in Sonic Forces, it does seem to contradict things. You can't have it both ways which this game tries to do. It tries to be this dark edgy game while also shoehorning in the feel good, saturday morning cartoons ideals of "friendship" and I know that's not unprecedented but even in some other media that uses this, thats not the sole reason the good guys win. I feel like in this, Sonic and co. overpower infinite and robotnik because of how good of friends they are and Infinite loses because he's all alone (or whatever Sonic says to him in their final fight) 

There's just a weird conflict between all these things, between the militaristic assault on Robotnik but then the feel good "friendship" approach

[Clewis]

10 minutes ago, KHCast said:

am I the only one that thinks the voice direction for that line felt REALLY badly done? Like roger sounds really bored and fake.

Definitely, although I feel like a lot of Roger's VA work in this game was kinda off. The way he delivered some of his lines just caused Sonic to come off as annoying, even if there was nothing wrong with the line itself.

Which is weird since he did a great job in the Boom cartoon. Not so much here, imo. Different voice director maybe?

[SonicLegends]

15 minutes ago, Clewis said:

That's nice and all, but a lot of people still find it goofy and ridiculous (at least the western audience does), and since Sega sees those same people as potential sales, you can bet the friendship stuff will be some of the first to go when developing the next game's narrative.

And I'm saying those people are being ridiculous and need to examine the previous Sonic stories too like the adventure stories that they so love to death with nostalgia glasses with adding in friendship. "I don't know. But what I do know is; we all did it together!" "Negative forces aren't the only way to empower the Chaos Emeralds. Our positive feelings toward each other can make them work. Our hearts together form awesome power."

 

11 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

Nah they deserve all the flack they get with how hamfisted and lame that line was

Even Rise of Lyric did it better

 

And I can say again that Fire Emblem has done the exact same thing. So again they're just being ridiculous, I wouldn't pay much mind to them. Even Kingdom Hearts is of the same way. "Who else will I have ice cream with?" which was clearly meant to say "who else well I spend time with now that you my last friend is leaving me" but that line struck a cord with a lot of people.

[Shadowlax]

33 minutes ago, Clewis said:

And honestly, if Forces is the best they can do when they actually try to handle a Sonic narrative more seriously, then it's probably for the best.

Or you know

Do better

[Diogenes]

I'm not against a basic theme of "friendship is good" showing up in some form, but you've got to put the right spin on it if you don't want it to come off as cringy and childish. I mean, we all know friendship is a good thing already. We don't need characters talking about how important their friendship is and how the evil loner can never win because of it. You need some amount of subtlety and finesse, and to actually show how the characters are supporting each other.

[Clewis]

53 minutes ago, SonicLegends said:

And I'm saying those people are being ridiculous and need to examine the previous Sonic stories too like the adventure stories that they so love to death with nostalgia glasses with adding in friendship. "I don't know. But what I do know is; we all did it together!" "Negative forces aren't the only way to empower the Chaos Emeralds. Our positive feelings toward each other can make them work. Our hearts together form awesome power."

There may be people among the general public who hold nostalgia for both Adventure games, but I doubt you'll see them sit down and seriously defend the quality of writing in them. Also none of your examples are as ridiculously blatant as Sonic literally saying "Wrong, loser! The things that can't be defeated are heart, soul, and the bonds of friendship", which is what I'm talking about.

That's the kinda shit people make fun of.

51 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Or you know

Do better

I thought Forces was their attempt at doing better?

But don't paint me as one of those people who are against "serious" narratives in a Sonic game, I'm just stating things as I see them.

[Dr. Mechano]

Look, the reason this whole "power of friendship" angle falls so flat is that these characters don't feel like friends to begin with.

We don't really see their relationships fleshed out at all. We don't see them just ever interacting much beyond working together to stop whatever big bad they're up against. This is Sonic Team telling us, rather than showing us, that these characters are friends. And that's why many people aren't particularly invested in these characters or their relationships - because they don't feel like people, so much as flat one-note archetypes.

Again, it's not that what they're trying to is inherently bad; It's that this story (and series at large) doesn't really earn its theme of friendship that it keeps trying to hammer in.

[KHCast]

Say what you want about Kingdom hearts, but they do the "friendship" shit way better than Forces weak attempt at least.

 

[Almar]

1 hour ago, Clewis said:

I thought Forces was their attempt at doing better?

It has Sonic 06's writer. Either they're operating under the delusion that 3D Sonic up to 06 hasn't been written poorly even for a platformer or they just don't care about making Sonic anymore.

[PandaChao]

1 hour ago, KHCast said:

"Wondering how you failed sooo badly"

am I the only one that thinks the voice direction for that line felt REALLY badly done? Like roger sounds really bored and fake.

I feel like it's also due to the fact that they were saying really cheesy lines. Very reminiscent of Sonic Heroes and it's atrocious dialogue. 

[KHCast]

Just now, PandaChao said:

I feel like it's also due to the fact that they were saying really cheesy lines. Very reminiscent of Sonic Heroes and it's atrocious dialogue. 

True dat

[Almar]

So can we just call this game Sonic 06 2 now? It's apparent that this game is trying to revisit at least some of what 06 had (edgy new villain tied to darkness and dimensions/time that upstages Eggman, new hero that upstages every established hero short of Sonic himself, Eggman being just there to unleash or help unleash the new edgy villain).

[PandaChao]

1 minute ago, Almar said:

So can we just call this game Sonic 06 2 now? It's apparent that this game is trying to revisit at least some of what 06 had (edgy new villain tied to darkness and dimensions/time, new hero that upstages every established hero short of Sonic himself, Eggman being just there to unleash or help unleash the new edgy villain).

Rise of Lyric was Sonic 06 2. Sonic Forces is Sonic 06 3.

[Penny]

Personally, I think this might be Roger's best Sonic by far. I mean, he was great in Boom (games and show) because his tone and voice fit Boom Sonic perfectly, but this is the first time he's absolutely nailed Modern Sonic. Granted, I haven't seen all the in-game stuff, and I've only seen most of the cutscenes once or twice, but damn, he really impressed me here. The delivery on some of his lines actually made me laugh out loud; something I'm not sure I've ever done during a Sonic game (well, when the game intended for me to lol). My favorite lines (that I can remember off the top of my head) are "Your concern is touching, Knuckles" and "What? Haven't you seen a hedgehog before? C'mon, I'll show you my spines!"

 

Man, they really nailed Sonic in this game, even with a few of those really cheesy lines.

[Soniman]

10 minutes ago, Penny said:

Personally, I think this might be Roger's best Sonic by far. I mean, he was great in Boom (games and show) because his tone and voice fit Boom Sonic perfectly, but this is the first time he's absolutely nailed Modern Sonic. Granted, I haven't seen all the in-game stuff, and I've only seen most of the cutscenes once or twice, but damn, he really impressed me here. The delivery on some of his lines actually made me laugh out loud; something I'm not sure I've ever done during a Sonic game (well, when the game intended for me to lol). My favorite lines (that I can remember off the top of my head) are "Your concern is touching, Knuckles" and "What? Haven't you seen a hedgehog before? C'mon, I'll show you my spines!"

 

Man, they really nailed Sonic in this game, even with a few of those really cheesy lines.

The "you hate fun" line got me chuckling myself, doubly so because he said it to a stiff and humorless character like  Zavok 

[StaticMania]

28 minutes ago, PandaChao said:

I feel like it's also due to the fact that they were saying really cheesy lines. Very reminiscent of Sonic Heroes and it's atrocious dialogue. 

Heroes dialogue was positive...

"Only 3 lazers? A hero's welcome!"

[Celestia]

3 hours ago, DanisWhite said:

I like to think the whole paragraph about sonic being captured for 6 months was suppose to have a much shorter time frame but Sega really wanted to keep the possibilty of more character DLC open and so, just made it into 6 months instead. Honestly if they made it say "Sonic has been gone for 2 weeks", I feel that cutscene woulda made much more sense. If he was tortured the whole time, how is he able to function properly and doing super risky things like JUMPING FROM SHIP TO SHIP WHILE BEING SHOT DOWN.

To be honest, I'm not sure why they specified a time frame at all. It just made how abrupt everything was feel even worse. Like, anything would've been better than a text box, but even just replacing "six months passed, deal with it" with "the Resistance and Eggman's army continued the struggle, until one day..." would've been, uh, marginally better. Of course that leads into how abrupt it is immediately after the time skip which would also need to be fixed, lol. It's funny because while there are some other plot issues here and there that's the main thing that still gets to me, aside from Infinite not getting a proper sendoff.

Then again it's not surprising since I'm someone who's more invested in character writing / interaction, which...this game is a mixed bag on. Sonic was actually pretty great, Tails backpedaled from Lost World but not quite enough backpedaling tbqh (RIP SA1&2 Tails), Knuckles & Amy were just really boring outside of the one moment each where the writers remembered their quirks...and on the villains side I actually like their idea for Eggman on paper but it felt abrupt, and Infinite is actually pretty interesting to me but again, the lack of sendoff was weird as hell, and we're still waiting on supplementary material for his origins so who knows how that's gonna go.

[Framerate]

I hope the custom character return in future games

I'm not joking 

[A_W]

The streamer's tweeted that he has all 120 red rings, and will be finishing the last remaining Extra Stages in the morning. There's a total of 7, apparently. Here's hoping that beating them all unlocks something good, though I wouldn't expect any extra story content; Lost World's ending was similarly underwhelming, after all.

[Woun]

 

 

Supers Sonic confirmed

[shdowhunt60]

So, wait are patches being released?