Why did a level designer write the story for Sonic Forces?

[Badnik Mechanic]

So the story for this game is all sorts of naff and there might be an explanation as to why.

Saw this on retro. In the credits for the game, under writers story and script...

...Eitaro Toyoda is credited as being the writer for the story and game script.

Even if you excuse this as 'well he designed the sequence of levels so that's the story' it doesn't explain why he also wrote the script for the characters.

But doesn't seem to have any experience in writing either entire stories for games or script of any kind.

http://segaretro.org/Eitaro_Toyoda

But then later on, Pontaf and Pontiac and Graf are listed as the English localisation guys... but Makoto Goya is also listed as a writer, who has a long history of writing games according to various sources.

 

So... who wrote Sonic Forces?

[Blue Wisp]

Infinite wrote Sonic Forces.

This game is all an illusion conjured by the enemy Phantom Ruby.

[Salamander]

I see from the link that Eitaro Toyoda has recently been doing a lot of work as a "Character Supervisor."  Forces uses a ton of Sonic characters; perhaps that's why he was brought in, because Shun Nakamura thought he could keep all these characters in line and wanted him to cut his teeth on scriptwriting.  The section of the credits where Pontac, Graf, and Makoto Goya come up appears to be dedicated purely to the CGs, that is, to the animated story scenes, so... maybe they handled purely those, while Eitaro Toyoda did the interlevel Codec calls?  It is all rather mysterious, and tempting to align with the apparent understaffing of Sonic Team on anything which isn't purely making the levels prettier.

[Gabz Girl]

I uh...huh.

Apparently Eitaro Toyoda designed levels for SA2, Heroes and ShtH. Interesting, but why on Earth is he helping out with story this time around? O_o 

[Razule]

28 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

So the story for this game is all sorts of naff and there might be an explanation as to why.

Saw this on retro. In the credits for the game, under writers story and script...

...Eitaro Toyoda is credited as being the writer for the story and game script.

Even if you excuse this as 'well he designed the sequence of levels so that's the story' it doesn't explain why he also wrote the script for the characters.

But doesn't seem to have any experience in writing either entire stories for games or script of any kind.

http://segaretro.org/Eitaro_Toyoda

But then later on, Pontaf and Pontiac and Graf are listed as the English localisation guys... but Makoto Goya is also listed as a writer, who has a long history of writing games according to various sources.

 

So... who wrote Sonic Forces?

But then.. where does Nakamura come into this?

[Tracker_TD]

6 minutes ago, Razule said:

But then.. where does Nakamura come into this?

He's the producer of the game, not the writer.

IIRC most people erroneously took him mentioning SEGA Japan checking the script as a confirmation that he was writing it.

[Nuggets]

Forces seems to have a higher level of integration with the plot than pretty much any game since Unleashed in that we have actual reasons for going to places again and there are plot related transitions to different stages instead of just "yeah you were just in Hang Castle but now you're on the Egg Fleet and no we aren't going to explain how or why". I'm not sure why that level of cohesion was just suddenly here, but I'm willing to bet that's why. 

[Scar]

So what you're saying is that a former Level Designer wrote the script for the game. Was he at all involved in the actual Level Design? Cause if not....

 

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA

[TargetWatch]

So instead of finding the right people they're assigning the wrong people to roles they have little experience in? Why am I not surprised by that? 

Seriously Nintendo just buy the franchise off these morons. 

[Indigo Rush]

Does this mean I can't use "Pontaff" as a scapegoat for anything I don't like about the story? I'm shook.

[Remy]

From your link in the OP:

Quote

He originally dealt with in-game event scenes for Sonic Adventure but expanded to level design, working regularly with game director Takashi Iizuka as part of Sonic Team USA. Following the release of Shadow the Hedgehog, he moved back to Japan to work on Sonic and the Secret Rings.

His roots were in cutscenes, so it's not a stretch that he'd move onto script writing. Furthermore, he's credited as the director on Secret Rings. You can also see him on there as Sonic Character Supervisor, so what is that, if not a writing position? Trying to reduce him to just a "level designer" is a stretch. I imagine a stretch taken to get a rise out of people.

On the other hand, I don't think it's a stretch for someone to move around various roles due to the open ended nature of game development, which lends itself to people wearing many different hats, so to speak. Plenty of writers start as programmers, composers, or artists. Plenty of programmers, designers or composers become writers.

To answer your question of who wrote the game: Eitaro Toyoda did. Anything else is conspiracy theory nonsense. 

Is the writing of this game really the problem anyway? Shouldn't you be torch and pitchforking the lead game designer?

[TargetWatch]

Just now, Indigo Rush said:

Does this mean I can't use "Pontaff" as a scapegoat for anything I don't like about the story? I'm shook.

Well not really, cause Warren Graff was the one who: 'translated' it. Using the term lightly. 

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Part of the reason is because Sega operates using archaic, artless business practices. 

The other part is Sonic Team's idiocy. 

[Remy]

1 minute ago, TargetWatch said:

Well not really, cause Warren Graff was the one who: 'translated' it. Using the term lightly. 

Why? Did he leave some of it in Japanese? 

[TargetWatch]

Just now, Remy said:

Why? Did he leave some of it in Japanese? 

I mean that I'm sure it's about as much as a faithful translation as every other Sonic game since Sonic Adventure...

[Indigo Rush]

4 minutes ago, TargetWatch said:

Well not really, cause Warren Graff was the one who: 'translated' it. Using the term lightly. 

So, what did they change?

[TargetWatch]

Just now, Indigo Rush said:

So, what did they change?

Barely anything now that you mention it. 

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

Well, the levels do actually play themselves.

 

[TargetWatch]

1 minute ago, Booblur99 said:

Well, the levels do actually play themselves.

 

True dat... 

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 hour ago, Remy said:

Shouldn't you be torch and pitchforking the lead game designer?

Sure if you want to make a topic about that go ahead but I'd like to keep this one to whoever wrote the story if that's ok?

[Rusty Spy]

Nothing new there. Sonic Team staff have constantly been shifted around throughout their careers. Let's not be quick to forget Yuji Naka, star programmer of the original Sonic games, relegated to producer from the Dreamcast era onward.

[Gabz Girl]

15 hours ago, Remy said:

Is the writing of this game really the problem anyway? Shouldn't you be torch and pitchforking the lead game designer?

Ahem.

Spoiler

Plot inconsistencies, OOC moments, Infinite’s backstory never explained (unless the comic and/or Shadow DLC does), Black Screen of Laziness...need I go on?

I think both the level design and story deserve a damn good torch and pitchforking, but I’m mostly upset about the story rather than level design because I knew the latter wouldn’t be great anyway! I was actually holding out hope that the story would at the very least be Unleashed quality, but boy was I wrong! It tried so hard to be like SA2 but it failed big time. Like a more seriously written Sonic Lost World.

Edited November 1, 2017 by Sean

[Ryannumber1gamer]

14 hours ago, Indigo Rush said:

Does this mean I can't use "Pontaff" as a scapegoat for anything I don't like about the story? I'm shook.

Naw, just when the godawful facepalming jokes decide to pop up. Or when they actually do have a hand in creating an terrible story such as Lost World. Because writing bad stories in this franchise isn't mutually exclusive to one set of writers but doesn't suddenly make it so they never wrote said bad story before, or a lot of the humour most people dislike in this franchise, as well as said memes birthed from said humour such as "Good one buddy!", "Baldy McNosehair" and the majority of the bro jokes between Sonic and Tails.

Because surprisingly, people don't just meme Pontaff to say a story is bad, they look at said story, explain what reasons why they dislike it and then look towards the writers who typically ends up showing these trends anyway. 

10 hours ago, Gabz Girl said:

Ahem.

Spoiler

 

Plot inconsistencies, OOC moments, Infinite’s backstory never explained (unless the comic and/or Shadow DLC does), Black Screen of Laziness...need I go on?

 

I think both the level design and story deserve a damn good torch and pitchforking, but I’m mostly upset about the story rather than level design because I knew the latter wouldn’t be great anyway! I was actually holding out hope that the story would at the very least be Unleashed quality, but boy was I wrong! It tried so hard to be like SA2 but it failed big time. Like a more seriously written Sonic Lost World.

Disliking the story or not, is unmarked spoilers really necessary?

[DiamondX]

5 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

Disliking the story or not, is unmarked spoilers really necessary?

Well, the title doesn't say "SPOILERS" but you should be aware that there are huge chances of spoilers appearing.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

3 minutes ago, DiamondX said:

Well, the title doesn't say "SPOILERS" but you should be aware that there are huge chances of spoilers appearing.

Uh no? You can discuss a story director not being an actual writer without spoilers? Or if you are, at least place them into a spoiler tag? Or is it alright to place unmarked spoilers into the Odyssey topic, majority of Mania topics, etc etc.

I don't care, the story's been spoiled enough for me, but I know more than enough people who want to avoid Forces spoilers, and making topics designed to discuss Forces that shouldn't have unmarked spoilers and throwing unmarked spoilers into it just means those people are going to be spoiled. Thanks to that - 

Spoiler

People now know Infinite is ineffective, and has no backstory, and that calls his role into question.

Spoilers in of themselves are fine, but unmarked spoilers aren't.