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Seriously, why are Pontaff still writing for Sonic?


ShadowSJG

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Oh, I don't know if I mentioned this, but you know how one of them admitted they knew little to nothing about Sonic when they got the job? I'd say that while that may very well be true, I also get the vibe that they read/skimmed character bios and/or wikis to get an understanding of the characters. Sonic Generations and in Tails' Case, Sonic Lost World kind of scream of that. 

So I suggest that as a considerable step in the future, they watch a few cutscenes with the characters on Youtube when considering any noteworthy developments.

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A lot of people try to claim they should have done research on the characters but the games of the past were years apart and handled by different writers with their own ideas too. There isn't a ton of consistency there to gleam and I don't think the problems lie with the characters being out of character to begin with outside of specific instances. The characterization doesn't have to be perfectly congruent to me because it never really was and it would be pretty difficult to start doing that now. Understanding the characters on a base level and doing your own thing with them is natural.

The problems are more structural and fundamental. The gameplay is completely disconnected from the cutscenes when that wasn't the case before. The cutscenes are about nothing but the characters talking to eachother so the dialogue has to hold the whole show up. The dialogue is mostly bad jokes, so it can't. They rarely expand on the worlds you're running around in and rarely provide any meaningful insight to the characters. They're pretty poorly animated and contain almost no action scenes so they can't even run on raw cool factor.

A lot of time they only exist to be fun breather sections between levels. That would be fine if they were good at that. It wouldn't be ideal, but I'd at least be having fun with it. Watching the different personalities bounce off of eachother is fun enough, but you can only do so much with 2 or 3 characters just talking to one another, especially if your range is as limited as the writers we have now.

Dialogue might be the only part that pontaff have a huge hand in, but considering all the characters are doing is talking to one another that suddenly becomes a pretty big part in the process. Getting someone who at the very least does a better job with character interaction than Pontaff would go a long way toward making the stories in these new games watchable for me. 

Sonic Team could stand to pull their own weight too and start structuring the games better again, but that's a whole different discussion. There's a lot of moving parts to this "storytelling in games" thing. 
 

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13 minutes ago, Josh said:

The problems are more structural and fundamental. The gameplay is completely disconnected from the cutscenes when that wasn't the case before. The cutscenes are about nothing but the characters talking to eachother so the dialogue has to hold the whole show up. The dialogue is mostly bad jokes, so it can't. They rarely expand on the worlds you're running around in and rarely provide any meaningful insight to the characters. They're pretty poorly animated and contain almost no action scenes so they can't even run on raw cool factor.

I still think Unleashed was the game to handle this element best. Even the opening went straight for high octane action that felt pretty damn cinematic and actually clues us into some of the stuff with the Boost formula since you can see Sonic dashing through enemies and such at points. Not only that but gives us a general scope of the story at hand since for once, Eggman's entire armada is in space looking down on the planet as he cracks it open. I think it's one of the best well-done intros for the series just for general scope, foreshadowing of the gameplay, and setting up the general themes with the world symbolism and such.

Unleashed's cutscenes as a whole I tend to give more credit because discounting characters, it's actually really good at displaying general atmosphere, information about the worlds themselves and giving them some decent distinction. Apotos has windmills in the background, and a ton of buildings and scenery based on the real-world locale it's based in. Several cutscenes shows the different cultures and countries found in the game, and some cutscenes even show Sonic chasing and engaging Eggman directly in and transition into the bosses proper, similar to something like Kingdom Hearts 2. True, you could argue a lot of the stuff in favor of Unleashed's plot just in general comes from the concept - it's fifty times easier to connect and establish worlds/levels better when they all have a unique theme as opposed to the cliche "Grass, Sand, Seaside, Snow" etc.

It's nowhere near perfect, but I felt Unleashed was probably the best attempt at establishing worlds/levels as their own distinct places and having an actual story reason for them to exist and be so different since it is a world adventure, and actually tried to transition a few times between gameplay and story.

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1 hour ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

I still think Unleashed was the game to handle this element best. Even the opening went straight for high octane action that felt pretty damn cinematic and actually clues us into some of the stuff with the Boost formula since you can see Sonic dashing through enemies and such at points. Not only that but gives us a general scope of the story at hand since for once, Eggman's entire armada is in space looking down on the planet as he cracks it open. I think it's one of the best well-done intros for the series just for general scope, foreshadowing of the gameplay, and setting up the general themes with the world symbolism and such.

Unleashed's cutscenes as a whole I tend to give more credit because discounting characters, it's actually really good at displaying general atmosphere, information about the worlds themselves and giving them some decent distinction. Apotos has windmills in the background, and a ton of buildings and scenery based on the real-world locale it's based in. Several cutscenes shows the different cultures and countries found in the game, and some cutscenes even show Sonic chasing and engaging Eggman directly in and transition into the bosses proper, similar to something like Kingdom Hearts 2. True, you could argue a lot of the stuff in favor of Unleashed's plot just in general comes from the concept - it's fifty times easier to connect and establish worlds/levels better when they all have a unique theme as opposed to the cliche "Grass, Sand, Seaside, Snow" etc.

It's nowhere near perfect, but I felt Unleashed was probably the best attempt at establishing worlds/levels as their own distinct places and having an actual story reason for them to exist and be so different since it is a world adventure, and actually tried to transition a few times between gameplay and story.

I have to disagree. Sonic Unleashed's cutscenes are pretty basic beyond the first one. The tone of the game is relaxed and the actual plot takes a backseat pretty early on because the game isn't really that intense of an experience. It's the same lighthearted around you see in something like Sonic Colors,  but it's better because there are more characters in play, the animation is a lot better, etc. The cutscenes that are there are mostly there for character stuff, though. 

 The actual parts that do a good job fleshing out the world and making it interesting are the parts you play. You talk to the villagers, explore the far reaches of each locale as daytime Sonic and usually get more intimate with the local setting with the Werehog. These are the parts of the game that flesh the world out. The actual story is sort of barebones and in the background to put this attention to detail at the forefront. Sonic Colors had a nice eye for detail in it's levels as well, but it didn't really have anywhere for the player to have some down time and because of the way the game is structured you end up repeating a lot of terrain. The games that came after only got worse about this.


The actual best game at tying cutscenes into the gameplay, IMO, is Sonic Adventure 2. 

Each level is practically an action sequence in a movie. The character is going here with a purpose and a goal and a lot of the levels are built around the context they have in the story or at least have a nod to those ideas. It gets kind of flimsy with this sometimes when it comes to treasure hunting, but stuff like escaping Prison Island before it blows up or the mad dash in the ark to get to Tails and Amy when Eggman is holding them hostage contextualizes a lot of the levels in the game and gives them a purpose. This is backed up by the cutscenes, which show the setup and the pay off of each level and give you your next objective. Each level feels like it pushes the story forward and changes circumstances a little bit. It feels like the gameplay and story are feeding off of each other a lot of the time in this game instead of one aspect bending for the sake of the other. 

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20 minutes ago, Josh said:


The actual best game at tying cutscenes into the gameplay, IMO, is Sonic Adventure 2. 

Each level is practically an action sequence in a movie. The character is going here with a purpose and a goal. It gets kind of flimsy with this sometimes when it comes to treasure hunting, but stuff like escaping Prison Island before it blows up or the mad dash in the ark to get to Tails and Amy when Eggman is holding them hostage contextualizes a lot of the levels in the game and gives them a purpose. This is backed up by the cutscenes, which show the setup and the pay off of each level and give you your next objective. Each level feels like it pushes the story forward and changes circumstances a little bit. It feels like the gameplay and story are feeding off of each other a lot of the time in this game instead of one aspect bending for the sake of the other. 

This is honestly a part about the older games that tends to get overlooked a lot because people are so focused on highlighting their flaws to prop up the newer games. 

 

But yea, the story and gameplay from the  games feel completely divorced from each other Not that you didn't have things like that in the older games, but there was an attempt at making them cohesive at least that just isn't there anymore, or least in a much smaller capacity. I get that Sonic Team want to make Sonic more a laidback, pick up and play franchise ala Mario, but they still feel the need to add these cutscenes and emphasize the character's personalities with them but they can't be bothered to actually write them in a way that's entertaining. 

I don't think anyone wouldn't be as hard on the  games for their plots if Sonic Team just bothered putting forth just a bit more effort in either tying them to the stages or just make them about something that's just not two characters standing around with limited animation making bad puns. It's not endearing, its not entertaining, it's at best boring and obnoxious at worst.  And this isn't just a symptom of the Post-Colors era, this has been present in games like Heroes, Shadow, and 06. 

 

Unleashed really is the best of this new, lighthearted era; it doesn't have too many cutscenes, but the ones that are there actually have purpose.  Beyond that though, the entire game is explored through game play with barely any interruptions from the story until the climax.

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3 hours ago, Josh said:

 They rarely expand on the worlds you're running around in and rarely provide any meaningful insight to the characters. 


 

This is something I wish Lost World in particular did more of.

2 hours ago, Josh said:

Each level is practically an action sequence in a movie. The character is going here with a purpose and a goal and a lot of the levels are built around the context they have in the story or at least have a nod to those ideas. It gets kind of flimsy with this sometimes when it comes to treasure hunting, but stuff like escaping Prison Island before it blows up or the mad dash in the ark to get to Tails and Amy when Eggman is holding them hostage contextualizes a lot of the levels in the game and gives them a purpose. This is backed up by the cutscenes, which show the setup and the pay off of each level and give you your next objective. Each level feels like it pushes the story forward and changes circumstances a little bit. It feels like the gameplay and story are feeding off of each other a lot of the time in this game instead of one aspect bending for the sake of the other. 

Yes, more of this, please. I like the interactions, entertainment, and happenings of the cutscenes and all, but I'd also really like it if there was more effort put into making what I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and why feel properly established within some of the cutscenes.

Forces got a little better about this, but not too much.

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37 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

This is something I wish Lost World in particular did more of.

Yes, more of this, please. I like the interactions, entertainment, and happenings of the cutscenes and all, but I'd also really like it if there was more effort put into making what I'm doing, where I'm doing it, and why feel properly established within some of the cutscenes.

Forces got a little better about this, but not too much.

Even if they don’t get enough leg room in the story, could they at least afford to do it as in-game dialogue, or even in the manual? Perhaps Sonic mentions Eggman is now just like his grandfather Gerald, or even Nega when seeing his destructive plan (speaking of which, how scary was Gerald Nega? Was he like Dr. Weil levels of demented?) play out. Or if knuckles appears state an explanation for the Master Emerald’s role, even if it doesn’t show up. The manual can be a band-aid for the writing at the top.

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31 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

Even if they don’t get enough leg room in the story, could they at least afford to do it as in-game dialogue, or even in the manual? Perhaps Sonic mentions Eggman is now just like his grandfather Gerald, or even Nega when seeing his destructive plan (speaking of which, how scary was Gerald Nega? Was he like Dr. Weil levels of demented?) play out. Or if knuckles appears state an explanation for the Master Emerald’s role, even if it doesn’t show up. The manual can be a band-aid for the writing at the top.

Not sure about those examples context-wise, but very true.

Too bad the industry seems to be doing away with manuals.

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