Even Yuji Naka didnt want a cutesy funny Sonic

[SBR2]

17 hours ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Honestly, I tend to find critiques of SA2’s story sketchy given that they’re less about how SA2 was bad in its merits for a story than they are spiteful in hindsight towards it for the elements in it and the stuff that came after it.

And I say this in acknowledgement that it’s narrative does indeed have flaws.

Honestly my issue is that the plot makes no sense. 

Particularly in regards to Shadow's origin. Was he made on the Ark or on Prison Island? The Shadow game doesn't help the confusion. 

[BaronGrackle]

3 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Well anyway. Sonic's had a long day of dirtbike racing, and he's about to get lucky tonight. I bet those flowers aren't for Amy.

Bom chikka wow wow.

[DabigRG]

50 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

Honestly my issue is that the plot makes no sense. 

Particularly in regards to Shadow's origin. Was he made on the Ark or on Prison Island? The Shadow game doesn't help the confusion. 

Made on The Ark, locked away on Prison Island.

[SBR2]

35 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

Made on The Ark, locked away on Prison Island.

Yeah except for how Gerald says in his diary he finished Shadow while locked up to unleash his Revenge. 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

2 hours ago, SBR2 said:

Honestly my issue is that the plot makes no sense. 

Particularly in regards to Shadow's origin. Was he made on the Ark or on Prison Island? The Shadow game doesn't help the confusion. 

He was made on ARK and locked on Prison Island. The game very clearly showed that just before you play Shadow through his memories of being on the ARK and Maria launching him in an escape pod. Somewhere within 50 years before Eggman released him, it’s not hard to assume GUN found him and locked him up much like they did Gerald who was on the same Island and probably given a chance to finish his work. Shadow’s game reinforced that if anything.

What the game leaves unanswered is how Gerald managed to program the ARK to fall to Earth, but that’s not a major hole.

[Pengi]

Some of the ambiguity was intentional.

One of the Japanese SA2 guide books has Rouge's report on Project Shadow. In it, she states that the whereabouts of the escape pod ejected from the ARK is unknown, and that nobody knows for certain whether the Shadow they locked away was the original, or a duplicate created by Gerald on Prison Island.

The Shadow the Hedgehog game did away with that ambiguity though.

[Celestia]

1 hour ago, SBR2 said:

Yeah except for how Gerald says in his diary he finished Shadow while locked up to unleash his Revenge. 

I think he considered the reprogramming to be him "finishing" Shadow, like when a game gets it's final patch. The very same game shows Shadow active and alive on the ARK before it was shut down (granted his memories are very ambiguous in SA2 but I don't see any reason to doubt that part, at least, even if we choose to ignore ShTH which confirmed it).

Edit: Oh yeah, I forgot the whole "are you even sure you're even the original" thing. I guess the possibility of him being one of the Eggman built Shadow Androids was them trying to complicate it further but I never really bought into it, especially when ShTH made the Androids more artificial looking with low poly models.

[GentlemanX]

Shadow was created on the Ark. Gerald was allowed/forced to keep working on him on Prison Island after he was jettisoned by Maria. Gerald manipulated his memory at this time to get revenge. His memory is corrected by Amy in the cutscene before the Biolizard fight. Supplementary material such as the GUN report and Sonic X make this more ambiguous to suggest more of Shadow's memories might be fake than we believe. ShTH establishes what I listed above as correct.

[Almar]

I recall the theory that Sonic was in the pod that was lauched by Maria as she died. It used the ambiguity of whether Shadow really was the same hedgehog as the one that got launched or not AND the whole "Sonic can use Chaos Control" (among other noted suggestions that Sonic wasn't just a hedgehog) bit that hasn't really been been followed up on.

[WakanoBaka]

Well since the topic at hand has derailed(probably for the right reasons), allow me to throw it off the friggin tracks...

 

On the subject of Chaos Control, has anyone notice that shit first happened on Sonic 1?

[BaronGrackle]

28 minutes ago, WakanoBaka said:

On the subject of Chaos Control, has anyone notice that shit first happened on Sonic 1?

The... flowers?

[Marco9966]

I just found these pictures and it speaks better than a thousand words. 

(montages by foxheadtails and theswordlegion)

(fanarts by Nathalie Fourdraine for Green Hill Zine)

This is how I remember Classic Sonic back in the day before all the outrage over Sonic 4.

It was epic, mysterious stories. Don't remember the master emerald? Angel Island? The threatening Mecha Sonic? The last battle of Death Egg? Sonic CD with its bad alternate future and legendary animation? This is epic stuff! Not so different from Chaos in SA1 or Metal Sonic in Heroes, or Shadow and Biolizard in SA2, or Blaze in Sonic Rush. It's similar themes of mystery and adventure and fantasy!! Stuff that that I love about Sonic.

(Hence why I hate that people subdivide the franchise while before 2011 and Sonic Generations mistake, it was all one great series, with an inconsistent timeline sometimes of course, but with consistent effort to do captivating stories, not only gameplay)

That's how I remember Classic Sonic, not Green Hill zone all the time or Tom & Jerry comedy! (Not all the time at least, it was just in AosTH and that's just how the style and purpose of the TV show was, like Boom...).

[Sonic Fan J]

1 hour ago, Marco9966 said:

I just found these pictures and it speaks better than a thousand words. 

(montages by foxheadtails and theswordlegion)

(fanarts by Nathalie Fourdraine for Green Hill Zine)

This is how I remember Classic Sonic back in the day before all the outrage over Sonic 4.

It was epic, mysterious stories. Don't remember the master emerald? Angel Island? The threatening Mecha Sonic? The last battle of Death Egg? Sonic CD with its bad alternate future and legendary animation? This is epic stuff! Not so different from Chaos in SA1 or Metal Sonic in Heroes, or Shadow and Biolizard in SA2, or Blaze in Sonic Rush. It's similar themes of mystery and adventure and fantasy!! Stuff that that I love about Sonic.

(Hence why I hate that people subdivide the franchise while before 2011 and Sonic Generations mistake, it was all one great series, with an inconsistent timeline sometimes of course, but with consistent effort to do captivating stories, not only gameplay)

That's how I remember Classic Sonic, not Green Hill zone all the time or Tom & Jerry comedy! (Not all the time at least, it was just in AosTH and that's just how the style and purpose of the TV show was, like Boom...).

While I'm guilty of using the Tom and Jerry comparison myself to try and explain certain dynamics of the series, I'm one hundred percent with you. The whimsy and sense of discovery from joining Sonic on his adventures and the scale and scope of Sonic's encounters with Eggman were some of the greatest experiences of my childhood. the funny thing is though, only the games could ever pull that off for me (and later the OVA - it still amazes me how nostalgic watching that for the first time was), as the cartoons and comics did not have the Sonic and Eggman I knew from the games. To me they were a drastically different world and could never hold my interest back then compared to seeing Sonic exploring the world of his games and the way his encounters with Eggman shaped his adventures. It is one of the reasons I personally don't feel like any game after Unleashed really won me over; none of them have that whimsical sense of discover of exploring Sonic's world and the gradual shift to epic climax that his encounters with Eggman while adventuring should bring. 

[StaticMania]

2 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

I just found these pictures and it speaks better than a thousand words. 

 

Super Sonic mural = dark?

Dank cavern like area = dark?

Someone ought to fix that picture if they wanted to make an actual point.

[Marco9966]

11 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Super Sonic mural = dark?

Dank cavern like area = dark?

Someone ought to fix that picture if they wanted to make an actual point.

Well it's not childish and colorful either.

The thing is that some people say Sonic went bad after the 3D transition because of more serious stories and more characters.

But Sonic always gradually added more characters and more serious stories, from Sonic 1 to Sonic 3&K.

It's just to show that Classic is closer to Modern than you think (I hate to use these 2 words to separate eras, it's all just one saga dammit).

[StaticMania]

Level themes and background detail aren't a sign of tone. It's not like anyone has ever really cared about that, since...ya know...barely any storytelling.

Bleh.

[Marco9966]

5 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Level themes and background detail aren't a sign of tone. It's not like anyone has ever really cared about that, since...ya know...barely any storytelling.

Bleh.

It is actually. All the elements of Sonic 3&K build hype and stakes. The fire in the first level shows us what we have to deal with. And of course there is this mysterious new character who keeps setting us in traps. Many people consider S3&K among the best story of the franchise even if there are no words, there are vibes, there are events. It's not a light-hearted Green Hill Fest with Sonic cracking jokes or dealing with comical useless villains.

Ain't that storytelling?

[Sonic Fan J]

It's story telling through visuals. An interactive mural if you'll allow the analogy.

6 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Level themes and background detail aren't a sign of tone. It's not like anyone has ever really cared about that, since...ya know...barely any storytelling.

Bleh.

Actually, I care so that makes at least one more than no one. When I first heard people pretty much describing Sonic's world as being so bright, colorful, and cutesy as to conjure up images and smiley face clouds that Sonic waved to as he ran by with a bright cheerful grin on his face I could not believe they were talking about the franchise that I so enjoy. Showing these level designs and the aesthetics they use and using them as an argument that Sonic's world is not as I just described hearing described above is actually one of the best arguments one can make for Sonic not having childish imagery. Could it be considered kid friendly? Sure. But it was never Teletubby levels of childish and those visuals are a great way of demonstrating that.

[StaticMania]

Okay, so what's the problem? People see the series as...cute?

Style.

[A person, that exists]

9 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Okay, so what's the problem? People see the series as...cute?

Style.

To be fair, when it comes to Sonic's cuteness factor, it's not all black and white.

I mean, sure, the characters may look cartoony, but the stuff that's shown can be generally slightly more dark, or gritty even.

Robotnik falling into an active volcano at the end of Spinball.

The Death Egg exploding, as Sonic gets swallowed by the light of the explosion in Sonic 2.

Tails massacring an entire army of birds just to protect his small island, which is BURNING by the way.

Metal Sonic destroying a city in Knuckles Chaotix' bad ending.

I mean, that's not the stuff you'd expect to see from a tellytubby-level cute macot, like Kirby (And, even then, Kirby fought some shit in his glory days, see Nightmare from Kirby's Adventure 3 on the SNES)

Honestly, the whole "Cute and/or cartoony characters should NEVER act serious" argument should just DIE. I mean, a lot of children's books, anime and cartoons can have characters act serious or even die, despite technically being made for dumb kids. 

[StaticMania]

What exactly does that have to do with people "seeing" SONIC T. Hedgehog as cute, anime style?

Because that should be a given.

[A person, that exists]

3 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

What exactly does that have to do with people "seeing" SONIC T. Hedgehog as cute, anime style?

This argument, mate.

31 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Level themes and background detail aren't a sign of tone.

 

So, yeah, basically, what you mean is that Sonic should become a yet another cheerful happy mascot, who runs through rainbow islands and fights kawai sausages? 

Because, if that's the case, AiAi from Monkey Ball might be more of a fitting SEGA mascot to obsess over.

[Multikaris]

2 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

I just found these pictures and it speaks better than a thousand words. 

(montages by foxheadtails and theswordlegion)

(fanarts by Nathalie Fourdraine for Green Hill Zine)

This is how I remember Classic Sonic back in the day before all the outrage over Sonic 4.

It was epic, mysterious stories. Don't remember the master emerald? Angel Island? The threatening Mecha Sonic? The last battle of Death Egg? Sonic CD with its bad alternate future and legendary animation? This is epic stuff! Not so different from Chaos in SA1 or Metal Sonic in Heroes, or Shadow and Biolizard in SA2, or Blaze in Sonic Rush. It's similar themes of mystery and adventure and fantasy!! Stuff that that I love about Sonic.

(Hence why I hate that people subdivide the franchise while before 2011 and Sonic Generations mistake, it was all one great series, with an inconsistent timeline sometimes of course, but with consistent effort to do captivating stories, not only gameplay)

That's how I remember Classic Sonic, not Green Hill zone all the time or Tom & Jerry comedy! (Not all the time at least, it was just in AosTH and that's just how the style and purpose of the TV show was, like Boom...).

Do you see Mania the same way?

[Marco9966]

12 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

Do you see Mania the same way?

I like Mania's use of Egg Robos and attempting to tell a new story, and the phantom Ruby is better used than Forces. And the bosses are sure hard to beat. It's on par with S3&K.

But my problem is I cannot like Sonic Mania more than a casual game to play because it's separated from the main canon, I'm much less invested in it than the other games, which sucks considering how well made this game is, I would have liked them to attempt to place it in the original timeline like they did with Sonic 4, instead of butchering the canon to put Classic Money grabbing mute Sonic in Sonic Forces...

Which basically means that I am forced to be more invested in Sonic Lost World than Sonic Mania, that bites huh SEGA?

I would have loved a timeline which includes Sonic Mania and Sonic Adventure in the same canon.

[Sonic Fan J]

29 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Okay, so what's the problem? People see the series as...cute?

Style.

People seeing the series as cute is not so much the problem, as why people see the series as only cute. Sure the series has a cute enough coat of paint, but that coat of paint is fairly natural with a mascot series and is not even present in every level. As Naka himself said Sonic is meant to be an impertinent, cheeky, bad boy and not a cute Hello Kitty type character. This is strongly demonstrated in Sonic's in game body language from his title screen smirk to his foot tap in game when idling showing him getting impatient with the player. Even on the Continue Screen Sonic's attitude is on display as he glares irritably at the player and drums his fingers impatiently. While I can't speak for today's perception, back in 1991 when Sonic came out I remember my parents laughing about the concern people were demonstrating about Sonic being a bad influence on kids because of his impertinent attitude. That is a long cry from being perceived as cute and for kids like he was by 1998 which is why Naka and company agreed on redesigning beyond just making him easier to work with in 3D. While one could argue the success of that decision, since that redesign has been in use for nearly 2 decades now it has arguably had some staying power (unlike Sonic's attitude ironically).

Comically, Sonic isn't even the darkest themed of mascot characters. Klonoa is arguably darker in his dealings with loss, isolation, death, and other similar themes and he is presented from the get go as a cute character (though he arguably became more cheeky himself with time) which helps soften the blow of the subjects he addresses. Sonic on the other hand should come across more as whimsical than cute due to his attitude. IMHO because of Sonic's attitude and the whimsical to epic flow of his adventures, and even some of the nature vs industrialization themes of the franchise,  it is a shame that he did not evolve more in Ghibli-esque way as I think that would be a better fit for Sonic than either Shounen adventure stories, or the comedy adventure stories of late. The best thing about a Ghibli-esque approach is that the character designs and eccentricities of the characters would still blend in nicely as the story goes from whimsical to epically climatic. 

All said and done though, perceiving everything about the series as cute requires not seeing everything there is to the series. If you can honestly tell me that Angel Island burning, the bad futures in CD, Chemical Plant Zone, Scrap Brain Zone, the final boss of Chaotix, and Tails' implied death in Sonic 2 GG are cute than I can confidently say that we don't see eye to eye. As I said to begin with, seeing Sonic as cute is fine, but only seeing him and the entire franchise down to its core as cute is questionable. It's why @Marco9966 was able to post this;

3 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

I just found these pictures and it speaks better than a thousand words. 

(montages by foxheadtails and theswordlegion)

Because the reality is, the contrast he is addressing exists. There is nothing cute about the environments on the right (though to be fair some people think P90s are cute so some people might see it as cute, but I could never see eye to eye with such people) and surely you can see that the style used on the right makes sonic look both younger and cuter than on the left. It really is as Naka said, that he became cuter with time (with IMO Sonic R and Sonic the Fighters being the pinnacle of that cuteness in the games) and why the redesign came to pass regardless of its execution and success. 

TLDR; yes, being seen as cute is a problem. It led Naka to redesign the entire franchise which led to its current identity crisis and loss of the sense of whimsy, adventure, climatic epicness the games used to have.

1 hour ago, Miragnarok said:

Do you see Mania the same way?

I know you were asking @Marco9966 but I can say that I do and it is one of the reasons that I don't consider it as good as 3&K or CD. I find the bonus battle is also weak compared to the boss of TMZ which felt like a more epic final battle to me. While I don't see the Egg Reverie being possible to make better and more climatic, I am really hoping that the new transitions for Plus when I play again though will help with that sense of whimsy and adventure and the lead up to an epic climax. Perhaps though, part of that weakness is just because of the nature of Mania being built as a revisit of the classic days filled with call backs making the new levels my favorites in the game. It's why I'm one of those who hope that the Mania team will be allowed to make another truthful to the classics game with all original levels, because then that wonder, whimsy, mystery, and epicness should be present in spades if their limited original work in Mania is anything to go by.