Character and Circuit Discussion for Team Sonic Racing 🏁

[DabigRG]

Just now, RedFox99 said:

To be fair, Blaze was absent too.

Another separate dimension with her own stuff going on.

Also, I consider her and Silver to be more "minor" recurring characters.

1 minute ago, Sega DogTagz said:

*cough*Blaze*cough*   Whoop Ninja'd

 

Oddly enough, with Cream out of the picture, that pushes the Female Cast to... Amy, Rouge and ?. I've got to think those odds push Characters like Blaze and even Sticks up a couple of hairs. They arn't going to launch a 15 character roster with 2 female reps.

 

If they are willing to bump Cream, I would officially say the writing is on the wall for Charmy. If he's not in a multi-character car, than you can forget about that little dude.

 

Mm...I don't know, man. We'll see if either of them(and/or Walkers help us, Zeena) get in by release.

[Sega DogTagz]

1 minute ago, DabigRG said:

Another separate dimension with her own stuff going on.

Never stopped her before. Its barley a speed bump.

 

1 minute ago, DabigRG said:

Also, I consider her and Silver to be more "minor" recurring characters.

You'll have to explain what criteria your using to pedal Cream as a major character while leaving Silver and Blaze as minor supporting cast.

[DabigRG]

14 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Never stopped her before. Its barley a speed bump.

 

Didn't get the memo, too powerful to get involved, didn't have the car this weekend, whatever.

Point is, missing character that actually lives in the normal world takes precedent.

14 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

 

You'll have to explain what criteria your using to pedal Cream as a major character while leaving Silver and Blaze as minor supporting cast.

Amount of appearances in both main series games, spinoffs, and advertising, plus relevance to status quo.

 

Also, I wouldn't say they are minor per say(That's the Babylon Rogues), just not quite on the level of, say, Shadow or maybe even the Chaotix.

[Sega DogTagz]

Just now, DabigRG said:

Didn't get the memo, too powerful to get involved, didn't have the car this weekend, whatever.

Point is, missing character that actually lives in the normal world takes precedent.

 

The whereabouts of a capable little girl and her Chao friend takes precedent over the Demi-Goddess from a parallel detention who could quite literally swoop in and save the day with her unchecked access to Super Forms and Sonic-lite skillset? Further bolstered by Forces narrative where the heroes are forced so far back on their heels that they are drafting random civies to join the fight?

I don't see how anything takes precedent over getting Blaze onto the front-lines. If they were so desperate as to start handing out wispons - I would think rounding up what is most likely your strongest ally would be priority 1.

 

Just now, DabigRG said:

Amount of appearances in both main series games, spinoffs, and advertising, plus relevance to status quo.

Cream doesn't hold some overwhelming number of appearances over either Silver or Blaze (she might outpace them by like 3) - and of those appearances Silver and Blaze more often than not hold much more prestige in the games where all three appear (like the Olympics where Cream is a ref, but both Blaze and Silver are playable)

If your going to talk status quo, Silver is one of the few of Sonic friends that remains relevant on the wider stage, and Blaze is one of the few who is still held in high regard.

Can't back your line of thought on this one.

[Your Vest Friend]

34 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

*cough*Blaze*cough*   Whoop Ninja'd

 

Oddly enough, with Cream out of the picture, that pushes the Female Cast to... Amy, Rouge and ?. I've got to think those odds push Characters like Blaze and even Sticks up a couple of hairs. They arn't going to launch a 15 character roster with 2 female reps.

Sonic Team don't seem like the kind of company to care about gender ratio. Otherwise, they wouldn't have had Forces with the two female characters (out of...what, fourteen not counting the avatar or classic Sonic?). And even Heroes had a pathetically small three out of fourteen (although to be fair I don't think more than three recurring females existed by then). 

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If they are willing to bump Cream, I would officially say the writing is on the wall for Charmy. If he's not in a multi-character car, than you can forget about that little dude.

I would say he stands a greater chance of getting a solo opportunity than Cream at this point. Both Forces and Runners can say that. 

[RedFox99]

8 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

Otherwise, they wouldn't have had Forces with the two female characters

Especially, when Amy and Rouge (especially Amy) were mostly irrelevant.

[DabigRG]

20 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

 

The whereabouts of a capable little girl and her Chao friend takes precedent over the Demi-Goddess from a parallel detention who could quite literally swoop in and save the day with her unchecked access to Super Forms and Sonic-lite skillset? Further bolstered by Forces narrative where the heroes are forced so far back on their heels that they are drafting random civies to join the fight?

I don't see how anything takes precedent over getting Blaze onto the front-lines. If they were so desperate as to start handing out wispons - I would think rounding up what is most likely your strongest ally would be priority 1.

 

Cream doesn't hold some overwhelming number of appearances over either Silver or Blaze (she might outpace them by like 3) - and of those appearances Silver and Blaze more often than not hold much more prestige in the games where all three appear (like the Olympics where Cream is a ref, but both Blaze and Silver are playable)

If your going to talk status quo, Silver is one of the few of Sonic friends that remains relevant on the wider stage, and Blaze is one of the few who is still held in high regard.

Can't back your line of thought on this one.

 

Okay, when I say precedent, I mean in the senses that I naturally expect to see her and because, if you didn't notice, there was a time where she was a near constant presence that even had some involvement with the battles against the likes of Metal Overlord, Dr. Nega, and even got a cameo in Shadow's game of all things, but her presence has been getting rather constricted in frequency and even showcasing as of late, both in-universe and out.

When it comes Blaze, I have no reason to be concerned or really feel too much beyond "Oh look, Blaze is here--neat!" She doesn't have to deal with what's threatening Sonic's entire World if she doesn't want/need to and if she does, okay, sure, we got another experienced powerhouse to help out and one that's held to a high regard for her infrequent appearances.

But when the softspoken little girl who has to deal with what's happening to the world she lives in, isn't nearly as experienced or buff in combating against it, and yes, isn't quite as popular as "Cool!Amy" --that's worth my attention. 

 

[Sonic Fan J]

While I think Cream's presence would better tie down the Team Rose imagery, the thing that really bothers me is Amy's car. Nothing about it is exciting or sells Amy. It also completely disregards the theme of Amy driving vintage style cars that has been there in every single racing game she has partaken in outside of Riders. That car has no personality and is plain, and irredeemably boring. I know it's been argued that it might be for decals, but that is no reason to deprive even the body shape of any personality. I mean in comparison, Big has one of the coolest cars thematically in the game. I just don't get the design philosophy behind Amy's.

[Shadowlax]

All of team roses cars are basic as shit

[jgcatindig]

4 hours ago, Sonic Fan J said:

While I think Cream's presence would better tie down the Team Rose imagery, the thing that really bothers me is Amy's car. Nothing about it is exciting or sells Amy. It also completely disregards the theme of Amy driving vintage style cars that has been there in every single racing game she has partaken in outside of Riders. That car has no personality and is plain, and irredeemably boring. I know it's been argued that it might be for decals, but that is no reason to deprive even the body shape of any personality. I mean in comparison, Big has one of the coolest cars thematically in the game. I just don't get the design philosophy behind Amy's.

Big has a better car cuz memes.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

I suppose Cream makes sense as a main character, storywise, as in actually being part of Sonic's world, so more naturally involved with what's going on. Where Blaze and Silver would require special reasons to come out of their dimension/ time period/ whatever new thing the writers think they're at.
Then again, Cream doesn't seem very competetive, so I don't see her join any competitions unless it's to specifically help someone.

And from a meta perspective, maybe Cream just isn't popular anymore? She might have been created by Sonic Team to get little girls into the series, they noticed that didn't work (Or little girls were more into Shadow/Silver anyway) and dropped the poor rabbit in the trash with all the other one time gimmicks of the series, who knows.

Honestly, I'm happy she isn't in, since the current writers haven't been very good at writing "cute" characters, everyone is turned into a snarky and more aggresive character. Can't imagine I'd like how her dialogue would be written.
At least Chao can't say anything besides their Smurf language. Outside of Omochao's dialogue being a Meme marathon probably.



Okay, and to be clear about Iizuka's statement about Cream being too young, I did say I just gathered it from the comments. So it's very likely he didn't say it, apologies if they got a little out of hand. Was probably an offhanded joke repeated by several people, mistaking me into thinking it was more real. (And even if Iizuka said it, he probably would have meant it as a joke as well).
I just found it amusing and run with it, so apologies for any confusion that resulted from that.
(Altough I wouldn't be surprised if they use that kind of logic to justify Cream's abscence, seems exactly the kind of logic they love to handwave fan gripes with.)

[Edward850]

2 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

And from a meta perspective, maybe Cream just isn't popular anymore? She might have been created by Sonic Team to get little girls into the series, they noticed that didn't work (Or little girls were more into Shadow/Silver anyway) and dropped the poor rabbit in the trash with all the other one time gimmicks of the series, who knows.

Cream's "problem" is more to do with he fact that she's designed as more of a to-the-point Japanese child, which works well in Japan but it's a particularly complicated element to localise, because it just doesn't work in the West, and you kind of have to understand that to understand her as a character. Consider another franchise, The Simpsons (in the 90s), where Bart was ridiculously popular in America yet In Japan is was Lisa, simply because of how the personalities are perceived without them being any different at all.

A character like Cream is complicated to localise, you can't just do it straight, like for example translating her honorifics comes off as rather contrived as we just don't have anything like it in English and western cultures don't tend to have kids act that way. So the only real way to localise a character like that is to capitalise on it. Sonic Rush and the comics sort of plays with this with her bringing peoples relationships and actions into constant question, it's a great way of doing it by having her play as sort of the pseudo straight-man. However as you say, it's not something I'd imagine the current writers of the games doing, and hence the problem.

So yeah you're stuck with a character that at least in the west, only a chunk of people actually understand her. The kids like her because she's a rabbit, but that itself doesn't hold much weight for long without understanding a lick of Japanese mannerisms.

[LukA8]

I find it amusing how I've seen at least ten people complain that the roster would be "the standard affairs, what a bore, it leaves no place for interesting choices like a Chao racer", and now that they have literally added a Chao racer some of the same people are complaining about wasting a character slot. Sega have really shot themselves in the foot by announcing 15 character, regardless if there will be DLC or not. Of course there will be some surprise choices, and it will most likely hit the remaining two teams as well.

I don't think Cream's problem is popularity here, I'd say all of the extended cast are somewhat recognizable at this point even outside of the fanbase. What happened here is that Sega decided to give the Chao, who still have a huge audience worldwide, a marketing push as well as a reference to Adventure 2 where they were playable in the Kart minigame. It brings them back into the picture in case they want to relaunch Chao Gardens in any form in the future (remember that poll they did on Twitter where they absolutely dominated).

With Team Rose constantly being changed, Cream simply was the weak link here since she is one of the less-focused on characters at the moment, probably due to her cute and more passive image. And don't even start with the ridiculous Cream-is-dead theories just because she skips this game, the character still is getting regular wallpaper support on Sonic Channel and was added to Sonic Forces: Speed Battle only a few months ago. Omega was literally playable in nothing between 2008 and 2015, not even any mobile games, and he still made a comeback.

May I remind you that Team Rose was also a thing in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing mentioned in Amy's and Big's bios, where Cream was supposed to be the co-driver for Amy but was later dropped? Of course Big would take priority in this game, Sumo love the character and they still have his model as well as animations for him from the first game. It sucks for her fans of course, and I do think the team system is partly to blame here, but seeing she is once again not part of Amy's slot, there might be other plans for her.

Also people were literally spamming the "Cream is too young" comment as a joke when Team Rose were announced, so don't pin this on Sonic Team, they are questionable often enough.

[Red Hot Jack]

I don't think the team mechanic is to blame, in Cream's case, it would have been perfect for her, it's up to who decided the roster, I'm sure Iizuka and Sumo Digital, who love Big, decided he had priority over Cream, and the Chao's are very requested too. So I don't know.

With that, I doubt Cream is dead, I've already said this:

- Mighty and Ray were long dead and forgotten and then Mania Plus and Adventures came in and brought them back even as playable.

- Big was apparently retired in 2012 and he's back.

- Same for Omega, he was nowhere to be seen in a major appearance until Forces and TSR, he was gone for like, 10 years.

I still want that official character poll though.

[LukA8]

I don't see any use in a character poll when it will just reinforce what everyone including Sega already knows, that Sonic/Shadow/Tails/Knuckles are the most popular characters, followed by the likes of Metal, Amy, Chao (moreso the feature), Silver and then everyone else. It does not really matter if Cream is 5% more popular than Omega, and it doesn't mean Silver should appear over both of them in a game, or that you can't have wildcards like Zavok or Sticks who never really had the chance to build a fanbase because they didn't debut in the series' more popular days. They should choose a cast that creates variety, not only favour the most popular. They are well aware that the Heroes cast, Eggman, Metal, Silver and Blaze are the "major" players, and all of them are getting attention in some way.

A poll just takes in the views from the core fanbase who bother with voting, not what the larger audience thinks, as such it doesn't factor in how well-known or well-liked a character really is, or even how controversial. It just causes more arguments between fans, and Sega are better off just looking at merchandise sales or general awareness of a character via surveys or social media channels, which they are already doing to some extent as far as I know.

Quote

I don't think the team mechanic is to blame, in Cream's case, it would have been perfect for her, it's up to who decided the roster, I'm sure Iizuka and Sumo Digital, who love Big, decided he had priority over Cream, and the Chao's are very requested too. So I don't know.

The team roster is partly to blame because without it, a Chao racer could have been a standalone slot. As it had to be affiliated with a team however, one of Team Rose had to make place. Doesn't mean her chances would have been higher without Team Rose. Let's wait until we find out more about the roster, anyway, I've been talking too much lol

[jgcatindig]

3 hours ago, LukA8 said:

I don't see any use in a character poll

ITS NO USE! 

[jgcatindig]

Jokes aside,  I agree on the bit about Amy's car. There are all of these people having realistic cars(specially Sonic,  Tails,  Shadow,  Rouge), and then... Her car. 

 

At least make it look like a 911 GT2 if you put her as Speed. You got Sonic with a McLaren-looking car and Shadow with a hypercar and... Amy's got a weird looking Miata that dosen't even remotely look like one. 

[Salamander]

5 hours ago, LukA8 said:

I find it amusing how I've seen at least ten people complain that the roster would be "the standard affairs, what a bore, it leaves no place for interesting choices like a Chao racer", and now that they have literally added a Chao racer some of the same people are complaining about wasting a character slot. Sega have really shot themselves in the foot by announcing 15 character, regardless if there will be DLC or not. Of course there will be some surprise choices, and it will most likely hit the remaining two teams as well.

I think the point is that these decisions would seem less odd if there were more surprise choices overall.  If what we get instead is Heroes minus Cream (plus an also reasonably predictable Team Eggman), then the one racer that's a bit more off-the-wall clearly looks out of place - but if the game had more free roster slots for weird characters and wasn't obliged to fit them into gameplay- and character-dictated teams, then yes, I'm sure people wouldn't bat an eyelid at Chao.

DLC could go some way to opening up what appears to be an unexpectedly limited roster, but I'm taking nothing for granted, personally; Sega seems curiously hesitant about funding DLC for Sonic games.

[Blue Blood]

Apparently several new pages cropped up over the weekend and I really don't care enough to bother reading all of the back-and-forth circular discussions about whether or not Cream should be in this (a page and a half of it is more than enough). So I'm just going to make my own post, probably just echoing a bunch of other people but whatever.

Cream is pretty meh as a character. I'd like her to be in this game, but it doesn't bother me at all that she's not. The team of Chao is as interesting as it is boring somehow. I dread to think of what their dialogue will be though. Random cries and Omochao blathering away belongs in the trash with "Who's your Daddy" Tails. It does seem odd that they would omit Cream in favour of a group of non-descript Chao. Using non-characters in party games as filler when there are other members of the cast AWOL is always a questionable move. Remember Wiggler and Queen Bee in Mario Kart 7, at the cost of Waluigi and Bowser Jr? Literally nobody wanted that. TSR already has an extremely limited cast at just 15 racers, so it's a bit of a problem. Cream could have quite easily been given a Chao motif and/or Cheese could have been given a greater role. Strangely though, I find myself more interested in this group of Chao than juggling about Team Rose by inserting some other character who'd be better suited elsewhere, like Blaze or Silver.

Now that we've got 9 of 15 racers revealed, I'm concerned about the remaining ones. Considering that this game is plugging the whole "R" thing, it would be really nice to see the return of Tails Doll and Metal Knuckles in a team with Metal Sonic. They're probably at the very top of my list of wants for this game. It seems like that's not going to happen though, because from what we've seen so far the R connection goes no deeper than a single letter in the logo and development taking place in England. It's bloody stupid. Anyway, the remaining cast seems very uncertain. Eggman is more than likely going to be part of a team with an entourage of his own, which just leaves three more to be revealed. If it's the Chaotix, that means no Silver, Blaze etc. No matter how it pans out from here and despite the fact that Big is finally back, the playabler cast in TSR is going to be a disappointment.

Still on the subject of characters kinda, the cars suck. I don't really know what happened here after the great designs we saw in the previous two games, but here everything looks to have take a step back in terms of creativity and character expression. It's like the rest of artstyle actually. They're bland, shapeless designs and lacking many interesting features. Even Omega's car doesn't look like it's got much that expresses his character; it looks more like a plastic toy than something that fiercely proud and vengeful partner to Shadow and Rouge would drive. Amy comes off the worst though. I can't see a hint of her personality in the sleek and futuristic sports car she's driving here.

This game continues to be... eh. 

[Plasme]

I'd really want a Team R of Metal Sonic, Tails Doll and Metal Knuckles. But I don't think they are going to do it due to the limited roster. Also, I'm concerned that the strict split between Classic and Modern dimensions would make that impossible anyway. Another reason why it's stupid.

[Salamander]

I imagine Omachao's dialogue as being Clippit-level tutorial tips as he speeds past you.

[Plasme]

I'd like a Sonic R themed track with a remix of the song too. I know that's unlikely, but it's probably the most likely reference they could do with the limited roster.

[Blue Blood]

Just now, Plasme said:

I'd like a Sonic R themed track with a remix of the song too. I know that's unlikely, but it's probably the most likely reference they could do with the limited roster.

If we don't get a Crush 40 rendition of Livin' in the City, I'm legit boycotting this game. 

[Plasme]

Radical City would be great, you could probably mix it with Radical Highway too. That would be an amazing combination. Ahh, imagine the possibilities if they didn't use the R for the most basic marketing purposes.

[JaidynReiman]

Blaze I can see but I highly doubt Sticks. Her only non Sonic Boom appearance was Mario & Sonic Rio, and even Sonic Boom seems like it might be dead already.