Character and Circuit Discussion for Team Sonic Racing 🏁

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Hmm, thought Skull leader made a decent point that it would make more sense for Knuckles to be wanting to fight against Sonic as his rival.
Then again, if you go with Knuckles the loner personality, him teaming up at all doesn't work. He won't like beating Sonic when it's trough the help of 2 others.
And Knuckles is probably not social enough to join up with strangers. I Can hardly picture him walking up to Rouge and Shadow, unless he's really desperate.
So he would probably still team up with Sonic if he had to pick someone.


But look at me, aproaching this from a story perspective like a naive fan still expecting character consistency.
I'm sure Team Sonic racing makes it's decisions from a meta perspective. People expect Knuckles to be the third of the group because he was in Sonic 3 and Knuckles, and so he shall be in every game, story context be damned.
Besides, Knuckles loner and rival personality have been faded away and now he's just "designated main character man", who is main character because, and nobody knows what to do with him so he'll just sit in a corner making "Lol I'm dumb" jokes. Or be randomly apointed leader of rebel army, whatever the writer of the week feels like doing.

[Marcello]

Man, 4 Chao instead of Cream? What a slap in the face. Just a totally dumb choice.

Also, I kind of agree with the stuff about Knuckles. I prefer a slightly more antagonistic relationship between Sonic and Knuckles over them being super best buds. But, I can't think of a more obvious choice for Team Sonic's 3rd member unless they get weird, which could be cool actually.

[Wraith]

2 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

I gathered from the comments in this stream that Iizuka mentioned "Cream is too young to drive"

Considering the driving age is 16- 18 in most countries, I'd say every character but Eggman is too young to drive then.
 

So you all understand that it makes no sense for him to have said this and that he probably didn't say it, right?

[Celestia]

I think the comment about Cream is just the person making a guess why she's apparently left out. As far as I could tell Cream wasn't even mentioned, though I only checked around the time the characters were revealed.

[JaidynReiman]

I did speculate before that Team Chaotix could be in one vehicle, or perhaps in two separate vehicles (Espio gets his own while Charmy teams with Vector).

Definitely weird that Cream was replaced by Chao of all things.

[Multikaris]

5 hours ago, LukA8 said:

Whoops, that's what you get for making predictions! Of course Sumo would get Big in. It still looks like a weird constellation of Team Rose, but I guess Amy teams up with anyone. The Chao racer looks cute and reminds me of the Chao Walker from Adventure 2, but that does mean Omochao will be getting all the voice lines..god, help us. Troll character incoming.

You weren't the only one who mentioned this, but a Chaotix-in-one racer won't happen simply because of this. This car would not be strictly Vector-based if that was the case:

Now, the omission of Cream on Team Rose does present the obvious chance of a Team Silver (Speed), Cream (Technique), and Blaze (Power), it's either them or Team Chaotix now since the last team slot automatically goes to Eggman. It could be possible that Team Chaotix are not in the basegame, and the billboard exists as a hint of what's to come in DLC, since no other cars have been spotted on there. Either way, unless Vector, Silver and Espio/Blaze are teamed up, I think the roster will be pushed up to 18 eventually, because it seems very unusual for any of those to be left out of a spin-off. For now, I'm still leaning for the Chaotix being the non-DLC racers since they're easier to write in a story mode than Silver and Blaze.

Maybe the Tailgator belongs to a new villain under Donpa’s thumb we’ve yet to see? Seems to be more of a whitish color, as well.

[Your Vest Friend]

1 hour ago, RedFox99 said:

So has anyone confirmed yet Iizuka's reason for not including Cream?

Nope, and I doubt he said anything. You don't shoot people's hopes down this far from the release (Aaron shooting down Blaze for Forces was close to release and for an NPC in a platformer to boot, not a racer character). 

[RedFox99]

13 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Nope, and I doubt he said anything. You don't shoot people's hopes down this far from the release (Aaron shooting down Blaze for Forces was close to release and for an NPC in a platformer to boot, not a racer character). 

Plus, as @Josh pointed out, Cream being too young falls sort given that most of the roster comprise of characters under 16.

Do you think Aaron will address the grievances Cresm fans are having?

Edited June 23, 2018 by RedFox99
Additional thoughts

[Wraith]

6 minutes ago, RedFox99 said:

 

Do you think Aaron will address the grievances Cresm fans are having?

I mean probably not, but it wouldn't hurt to at least ask someone first next time we get the chance instead of going off an assumption.

[SonicLegends]

The fact that Big got in over Cream is just wow. I will say this if the argument that Cream can't be racer because she's too young is the case then if Charmy is a racer for Team Chaotix that will be utter nonsense.

The only chance now I could assume for Cream if she's still possibly in the game is that if she's with Blaze.

[LukA8]

27 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

Maybe the Tailgator belongs to a new villain under Donpa’s thumb we’ve yet to see? Seems to be more of a whitish color, as well.

The car has Vector written all over it. It has the green tone of Vector's skin, the lime-green found on his arms and belly, it has scales on the back and its teeth are gold like his chain. If the car is going to be used, I don't think there's any question who it will belong to. The white is just the reflection coming from the imaginary spotlight.

Oh, and I don't expect Donpa will have any importance to the plot. The Riders series also had different Extreme Gear manufacturers who were namedropped and advertised but never elaborated upon.

[GentlemanX]

When I said Chao could be a racer back in February, I didn't think it would be in place of Cream. As with Egg Pawn, if not for the limited roster, I'd have no problem with Chao being playable and I like them being a feature in a game again. I would have preferred the Neutral Chao being a default with other skins of Hero/Dark/Omochao/Chaos etc. being available. Like how you can choose multiple colors of Yoshis or Shy Guys in Mario Kart 8.

I'll amend my earlier list so Team Future I'd speculate as Blaze (S), Cream (T), and Silver (P). The three do get grouped together a lot. Anyway, mixed on Chao leaning toward positive though I acknowledge there's plenty to be upset about. Awesome to see Big in, Amy wasn't in question.

Also, my girlfriend loves Chao and was ecstatic when I told her they were playable.

[Red Hot Jack]

Having the Chao is great but I still feel sorry for Cream fans. 

The last 2 teams are probably Chaotix and Eggman but what if...???

Team "let's not exclude them/random" Blaze - Silver - Vector

Hey it's possible, wouldn't make sense but it'd include the most important characters IMO. If we really don't have many more spots.

Also, something I would love, since the Chao are in, do you think there will be a Chao Garden track???

[Ajavalo]

What? There are people here that don't think Team Sonic is a good team because Knuckles doesn't fit there? How?

The bonds that link Knux to Sonic and Tails are much stronger than any rivalry he may have towards them. There's more than the three of them simply appearing in Sonic 3: Sonic and Tails saved Angel Island, and they have always helped Knux whenever he's needed it, he's got nobody else he can call "friend" or "ally", he knows that even if he generally prefers being alone.

And, perhaps most important of all, let's not forget that Knuckles is above all a pure-hearted hero, who is always willing to fight alongside Sonic to save the world. He wouldn't go with anti-heroes/generally nasty guys Shadow and Rouge unless he has a reason (if Rouge also wants to "save" the Master Emerald, for instance), and definitely not with lesser heroes/more mundane guys Amy, Big and the like.

 

[LukA8]

Quote

Team "let's not exclude them/random" Blaze - Silver - Vector

If they're definitely not doing DLC then a Blaze-Silver-Vector match-up would work at least from the types, but otherwise I'm sure they would rather keep the doors open for the real Team Chaotix or a Silver-Cream-Blaze team that actually makes sense, even if one of those two won't be in the base-game. Like how would you even introduce them in Story Mode?

"Hi I'm Silver, I come from the future, this is Blaze from another dimension who's also my best friend for some reason and we randomly met this fat alligator on the street, so now we're a team!"

...actually, that sounds a lot like Sonic Heroes.

[Iko]

I know that everyone already said this, though I'm very disappointed that Cream seems to be excluded from the game, I hope she will team up with Blaze and Silver (I actually think that Cream makes way more sense teamed up with Blaze than teamed up with Amy, but for some reason I'm very skeptical about it happening and I think that at the end she will just be excluded with no explanation, as always).

I like the chao racers, though I hate that they come at the expense of Cream.

I agree that Team Rose should be a team of girls, and that Amy, Cream and Blaze would have been the best option (even though Blaze or Amy as Power type would be odd), while I like Big the cat, and the chao, they all look very unfitting with Amy, it doesn't even look like a team, it looks like random characters with no relations.

Also, why is Amy's car pink and white when Amy's color scheme is pink and red? I hope you can change the color by customizing it.

----------

About Sonic and Knuckles, while I like the idea of having a main trio of character, I also think that occasionally would be cool to see Knuckles being a rival again.

As for the team, I wouldn't mind Sonic, Tails and Amy in the same team is this means that Knuckles would get his own team... and ironically, I would team Knuckles with Cream and Emerl/Gmerl. I think it would make sense because they all have some relations with Angel Island and the ancient echidna tribe (Knuckles is the last echidna, Cream loves rising chao, who are somehow related to angel island and the chaos emeralds, and Emerl/Gmerl is a gizoid, who was originally made by ancient echidnas - Cream had a role in Emerl's story in Sonic Battle, and she had a main role in his story in the Sonic X adaption of it; Gmerl is supposed to be a rebuilt Emerl, and it's been reprogrammed by Tails to be Cream's friend after the events of Sonic Advance 3).

So I think that two teams of Sonic-Tails-Amy and Knuckles-Cream-Gmerl would work as well, sadly it will never happen, Gmerl is an even more forgotten character than Ray and Mighty before Sonic Mania + and sadly I don't see him returning anytime soon (add that Sonic Chronicles ruined the Gizoid lore introducing multiverse nonsense, more aliens and and timeline crap, so Gizoids are dead forever).

On a side note, while I'm not a fan of having two hedgehogs in the same team, having Amy in Team Sonic would allow the developers to stop pairing her with random characters for the sake of making a forced team that makes no sense (like this one in Team Racing, that's the most unfitting version so far).

[RedFox99]

4 minutes ago, Iko said:

Gmerl is an even more forgotten character than Ray and Mighty before Sonic Mania + and sadly I don't see him returning anytime soon (add that Sonic Chronicles ruined the Gizoid lore introducing multiverse nonsense, more aliens and and timeline crap, so Gizoids are dead forever).

If it makes you feel better, he's apparently returning in issue 9 of the comics.

[Multikaris]

And I personally don’t mind it because the team has one single distinct character in Omochao, rather than just anonymous Chao. Everyone’s favorite flying double agent. 

[Iko]

1 minute ago, RedFox99 said:

If it makes you feel better, he's apparently returning in issue 9 of the comics.

Really?!? Wow! I didn't know!

That's cool! Well, comics are not canon I suppose, though the Gizoid returning is always appreciated!

[JaidynReiman]

Wasn't Cream with Blaze in Sonic Rush? I guess that can SOMEWHAT be justified, but it still doesn't make much sense. The problem with Silver-Blaze-Cream is lack of a Power character, unless they make that Silver. Silver and Cream should both theoretically be Technical.

Replacing Cream on Team Rose makes more sense because its easier to fill Technical slot than Power. And well, Sumo Digital loves Big.

[Shaun Shikeishuu]

Ok so about the car that says "Tailgator"... isn't Vector a crocodile?

[Skull Leader]

2 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Hmm, thought Skull leader made a decent point that it would make more sense for Knuckles to be wanting to fight against Sonic as his rival.
Then again, if you go with Knuckles the loner personality, him teaming up at all doesn't work. He won't like beating Sonic when it's trough the help of 2 others.
And Knuckles is probably not social enough to join up with strangers. I Can hardly picture him walking up to Rouge and Shadow, unless he's really desperate.
So he would probably still team up with Sonic if he had to pick someone.


But look at me, aproaching this from a story perspective like a naive fan still expecting character consistency.
I'm sure Team Sonic racing makes it's decisions from a meta perspective. People expect Knuckles to be the third of the group because he was in Sonic 3 and Knuckles, and so he shall be in every game, story context be damned.
Besides, Knuckles loner and rival personality have been faded away and now he's just "designated main character man", who is main character because, and nobody knows what to do with him so he'll just sit in a corner making "Lol I'm dumb" jokes. Or be randomly apointed leader of rebel army, whatever the writer of the week feels like doing.

Essentially, Knuckle's only saving grace is the random luck of having been featured in the third Genesis game. This is why I dislike the trio so much as it both reduces Knuckles to being the equivalent of a YT clickbait thumbnail that exploits that association (not to mentio waste his character by making him sidekick 2.0 instead of the Daffy Duck to Sonic's Bugs Bunny), and robs other characters from having spotlight like it happened in Forces where other character like Rouge, Vector and Amy were more fit to play the role, with Amy being even suggested in the IDW comic as the one that was actually doing the part of keeping everything organized because of ST's shallow mentality. Heck, for all the team dynamic in the game, the cover completely omits both Omega and Rouge so that it can focus on the only four characters ST has faith in.

But anyway, I doubt that's ever going to change given how stubborn the people at ST can be.

Moving on to the characters...

with nine out of 15 participants, that only leaves room for six more vehicles. If the Chaotix are going to be in, they'll probably end up in a single vehicle much like the Chao, and I'm OK with this since in-universe, I imagine that the poor guys would only have budget for just one vehicle... Unless by miracle they'e actually given each their own rides.

Blaze and Silver are two that I doubt ST would want to overlook, and probably where Cream could be added in. This is a logical team given how Blaze and Cream have some story with Rush and the opening cutscene from Generations, plus it's funny to imagine Cream racing against the little critters that she cares after. XD

Silver will be there because, just as ST loves to peg Knuckles to Sonic and Tails, they also have this thing for pairing him with Blaze because of that one game that self-deleted from canon.

The only thing that would upset these two teams is the eventual inclusion of Eggman, as there is no way that the second most important character of the franchise is going to be left out. Maybe he'll race along Metal Sonic (who appeared in the two previous racing games by Sumo) and his most recent "creation" Kylo Re... I mean, Infinite.

[Your Vest Friend]

16 minutes ago, Shaun Shikeishuu said:

Ok so about the car that says "Tailgator"... isn't Vector a crocodile?

Using general Crocodilian puns for a Crocodilian character regardless of what Crocodilian they are has been a thing for decades. 

[Iko]

13 minutes ago, JaidynReiman said:

Wasn't Cream with Blaze in Sonic Rush? I guess that can SOMEWHAT be justified, but it still doesn't make much sense. The problem with Silver-Blaze-Cream is lack of a Power character, unless they make that Silver. Silver and Cream should both theoretically be Technical.

Replacing Cream on Team Rose makes more sense because its easier to fill Technical slot than Power. And well, Sumo Digital loves Big.

Yes, during the story mode of that game the two develop a friendship that becomes bigger with the time, and at the end of the game there are a couple of moments when they focus on the fact that Cream is sad for not being able to see her friend Blaze again.

After Silver, Cream is the character who's more connected to Blaze, so she's the one who would make more sense in a team with her. Silver is more suited for being a Technique type, though I think he would fit as power as well, since in Sonic Generations he lifts cars, trucks and huge metal blocks of trash.

Unrelated, but, I'm even more convinced that Classic Sonic, Mighty and Ray are going to be in the game as a team, DLC or not. This because of the last Sonic Mania Adventure episode, where they have emphasized the fact that Mighty is STRONG!! (probably because they wanted to keep the Speed-Fly-Power pattern from Sonic Heroes even with the classic characters).

He's probably going to be the Power type character of Team Classic, and since they are an Heroes-esque team now, I think they will probably be adapted into Team Sonic Racing as well (and possibly come back as a team in future games too).

[LukA8]

I see those sneaky geniuses at Sumo Digital have once again dug really deep in the franchise for inspiration! (And here I thought they referenced the Chao Walker)

35 minutes ago, Shaun Shikeishuu said:

Ok so about the car that says "Tailgator"... isn't Vector a crocodile?

It's a wordplay on tailgating, i.e. driving dangerously close to someone in front of you. The Tailcroc wouldn't have made much sense in that regard.

43 minutes ago, JaidynReiman said:

Wasn't Cream with Blaze in Sonic Rush? I guess that can SOMEWHAT be justified, but it still doesn't make much sense. The problem with Silver-Blaze-Cream is lack of a Power character, unless they make that Silver. Silver and Cream should both theoretically be Technical.

Replacing Cream on Team Rose makes more sense because its easier to fill Technical slot than Power. And well, Sumo Digital loves Big.

Their friendship is still referenced sometimes, as in Generations. Blaze was a Power character in Sonic Runners (and is also one in Speed Battle), so there should be no problem with her filling that role. Silver was also a Speed type in the same game, and now that I think of it, he was partnered with Cream and Big for that Team Easy nonsense.