How is IDW an improvement over Forces?

[SBR2]

1 hour ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Not seeing how SA2 was different than SA1 in that regard. It was more the stuff that came after it and Heroes that was really trying to hard to be dark and edgy.

Well with SA1 it felt more like we already knew Knuckles was the last of his kind so it was more just explaining what happened. With Maria's death it just felt like a stupid "edgy" reason for Shadow to be so pissed off at humanity.

[OBD96]

4 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

Gameplay taking precedent over narrative logic, probably. Which is how it should be really, but it has little bearing on the Unleashed example since Tails isn't playable there. 

 

He's also got a big bloody mech in SA2, and in those cases the enemies aren't so much in a concentrated group swarm like the Gaia monsters or Zombots, but easily dealt with waves (because again, gameplay divide.) That, and in cases such as Shadow or 06, he's generally got someone alongside him doing the bulk of the fighting. 

Then what about in the "end of the world" level, where he's all alone in Crisis City fighting Iblis Lizards and dodging those death portal things? He shows no signs of cowardice there. 

[Empire88]

To be clear, I don't think anyone here particularly loves how Tails was written in Unleashed or think it makes perfect sense. Just on a relative scale, Unleashed at least had some basis of logic. Not fully excusable, but executed better than Forces. Most people agree there was a downgrade, but at least with Unleashed it did not feel 100% out of character for Tails to be overwhelmed for an isolated incident.

[OBD96]

2 minutes ago, prowerboy26 said:

Most people agree there was a downgrade, but at least with Unleashed it did not feel 100% out of character for Tails to be overwhelmed for an isolated incident.

How? Whats the difference between the two scenes?

[Tracker_TD]

5 minutes ago, OBD96 said:

Then what about in the "end of the world" level, where he's all alone in Crisis City fighting Iblis Lizards and dodging those death portal things? He shows no signs of cowardice there. 

His friend is dead and the world’s about to end there. I think there’s a bit of a difference.

That, and it’s at the very end of the game, after he’s already fought the Iblis monsters alongside Sonic and co for an entire game. The Unleashed thing happens at the very start, as an introduction to the Gaia brute monsters. 

[OBD96]

5 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

The Unleashed thing happens at the very start, as an introduction to the Gaia brute monsters. 

So? That doesn't excuse him not fighting them, since again, in SA2, Shadow and 06, he'd never fought G.U.N robots, Black Arms aliens or Iblis monsters, but he didn't cower at them and run like he did with the Dark Gaia monsters, he went ahead and fought them anyway.

[Diogenes]

14 minutes ago, OBD96 said:

Tails never fought G.U.N robots (SA2), Black Arms aliens(ShTH 2005) or Iblis monsters (Sonic 06), but he fought them without running. What's your argument on those?

I mean, the GUN robots are, well, robots, something he's got experience both fighting and building himself.

As for ShtH and '06...personally, I say they're bad games and he's boring in them so I would rather decide that they are the wrong interpretation of Tails.

[OBD96]

3 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I mean, the GUN robots are, well, robots, something he's got experience both fighting and building himself.

As for ShtH and '06...personally, I say they're bad games and he's boring in them so I would rather decide that they are the wrong interpretation of Tails.

So Forces is the "right" portrayal of him? You know, when he cowered at Chaos 0 instead of fighting him? I guess by your logic, 06 is the wrong interpretation of Shadow, despite many people loving his portrayal there.

Edited July 3, 2020 by OBD96

[DabigRG]

The darkness complaint generally doesn't make much sense to me. LIke preferences are preferences, but I believe a story should be able to do what it sets out to do as long as it does it well. Is there a limit and cases of going too far in a particular direction? Certainly. But the Zombots are sorta undercut by the fact that the characters aren't really dying so much as being roboticized into goo monsters. Which you can still argue is a dark take on what Eggman was doing in the classics and Colors anyway, but yeah.

 

As for the characters, the only one of say is a downgrade from Forces is Shadow, funnily enough. Everyone else is about as good as they should be, with Tails in particular being a considerable improvement. Honestly, I got sick of the complaints with him after a bit anyway and if you wanna core reason why extending that before Forces is flawed, look at Shadow here. There's a time and place for everything--expecting a character to always be a certain way or react in a different direction is flawed thinking to get stuck in.

[Empire88]

1 minute ago, OBD96 said:

How? Whats the difference between the two scenes?

I can only speak for myself, but I think it is at least 10% feasible that Tails, who has already been shown to not like ghosts and thunder (in other words has some fears here or there), to feel creeped out when he is alone at night and decide to run for it. Again, it is not how I would write him, , but I can see some universe given what we know about Tails and his confidence in himself to be afraid for one small cutscene at otherworldly creatures.

The issue with Forces for me, is that Tails is also the type of character that is willing to set aside his personal fears to save a friend. He isn't a bystander. His friends/the fate of the world his is trigger so to speak. He doesn't watch his friends get beat up.  The Forces scene looks awful in combination to what happened a few cutscenes before with Sonic getting beat up. He fought Chaos before, and the scene makes Tails' fear the highlight. It makes it look like Tails really is helpless on his own.

I guess what I am saying is that one scene in Unleashed at the time didn't make me feel like Tails was helpless for good, just that he was frozen for a moment (which I still didn't like in the context of the game). Forces was even worse though because it betrays everything you know about Tails and makes fear the biggest part of his character. 

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, OBD96 said:

So Forces is the "right" portrayal of him? You know, when he cowered at Chaos 0 instead of fighting him? I guess by your logic, 06 is the wrong interpretation of Shadow, despite many people loving his portrayal there.

Yeah.

Some of my opinions are very far off the mainstream, but I stand by them.

[OBD96]

2 minutes ago, DabigRG said:

The darkness complaint generally doesn't make much sense to me. LIke preferences are preferences, but I believe a story should be able to do what it sets out to do as long as it does it well. Is there a limit and cases of going too far in a particular direction? Certainly. But the Zombots are sorta undercut by the fact that the characters aren't really dying so much as being roboticized into goo monsters. Which you can still argue is a dark take on what Eggman was doing in the classics and Colors anyway, but yeah.

 

As for the characters, the only one of say is a downgrade from Forces is Shadow, funnily enough. Everyone else is about as good as they should be, with Tails in particular being a considerable improvement. Honestly, I got sick of the complaints with him after a bit anyway and if you wanna core reason why extending that before Forces is flawed, look at Shadow here. There's a time and place for everything--expecting a character to always be a certain way or react in a different direction is flawed thinking to get stuck in.

So you consider Tails cowering at Chaos 0 an improvement over his SA1 & 2 character development?

2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Yeah.

Some of my opinions are very far off the mainstream, but I stand by them.

I respond your view, but at the same time, I'm quite shocked by it. So you're saying you hated Tails' portrayal in the Adventure games where he actually does something instead of cowering in fear? And what's wrong with Shadow's portrayal in Forces?

[DabigRG]

2 hours ago, OBD96 said:

And what about when he fled from the Dark Gaia Monsters in Unleashed? 

I already addressed this, but honestly I don't see the problem. He's being surrounded by Monsters he's never encountered before, some of which are huge, that also have the ability to emotionally influence or even possess others. The best thing he could've done there is use his flight to get away and regroup if he intends to still take them on. That the already technically possessed Werehog wandered by was just fortunate timing.

[Tracker_TD]

19 minutes ago, OBD96 said:

So? That doesn't excuse him not fighting them, since again, in SA2, Shadow and 06, he'd never fought G.U.N robots, Black Arms aliens or Iblis monsters, but he didn't cower at them and run like he did with the Dark Gaia monsters, he went ahead and fought them anyway.

Like I said and you apparently didn't read: gameplay divide. In SA2 he has a big mech, and is going up against mechs, which he's already had plenty of experience dealing with via Eggman in the past. In Shadow, well, Shadow is there, and the one doing the bulk of the actual fighting. In 06, by the time he's tackling them himself he's had more than enough exposure to them alongside Sonic and co; and it's a literal end of the world situation if he doesn't fight. 

And in all of these cases, it's waves of enemies, not a big swarm including a boss-tier monster.

That, and he's playable in them at all, hence a narrative/gameplay divide. This isn't Lester the Unlikely, having Tails run away at each enemy would be an annoying mechanic; but it doesn't mean he fears nothing. 

The brute at the centre of the Gaia goons that goes after Tails can be a chore to fight as Sonic, who's already a lot stronger than Tails is. No point Tails fighting if he's smart enough to realise he'd just get his ass kicked and achieve very little. 

 

[OBD96]

3 hours ago, Tracker_TD said:

The earlier issues already showed Tails teaming up with Sonic to actually lay the smackdown

That's not good enough. He needs to fight regularly in my opinion.

[iambitter21]

2 hours ago, SBR2 said:

Maria's death in SA2

I'm pretty sure that's one of the only 2 extremely "dark & edgy" moments in the game, there are some jokes in the game, like sonic making a joke about airline food, Rouge shaking knuckles, and the face tails made during the Shuttle scene. it's a weird mixture of light and dark elements, If you know what I mean.

[Tracker_TD]

1 minute ago, OBD96 said:

That's not good enough. He needs to fight regularly in my opinion.

Then you've missed the point of Tails' character, not the writers. Forces may have gone too far in making Tails look like a wuss, but he's not some shonen action hero. He's the brains of the operation; Sonic's the reckless action star, and Knuckles is the brute force.

[Red Hot Jack]

Did we just forget everything Tails did in IDW so far? Especially his kamikaze move against Master Overlord. How is that for a coward?

[StaticMania]

4 minutes ago, Jack out of the comics! said:

Did we just forget everything Tails did in IDW so far? Especially his kamikaze move against Master Overlord. How is that for a coward?

If he's not fighting every time there's a threat to stop, it doesn't matter is basically all I'm getting from this...

[Diogenes]

3 minutes ago, OBD96 said:

I respond your view, but at the same time, I'm quite shocked by it. So you're saying you hated Tails' portrayal in the Adventure games where he actually does something instead of cowering in fear?

Nope. I like SA Tails learning to be a little more independent and to do things in his own way rather than just following and copying Sonic. I like how that carried into SA2 with him using his mechanical genius to build his own battle mech (narratively, anyway, the gameplay sucked ass). But I also like Forces Tails being genuinely broken up over Sonic's defeat and possible death, struggling and mostly failing to keep his shit together as the world fell apart around him...right up until Classic Sonic appeared and they dropped that plotline entirely, because Forces is also a very badly written game.

I don't want Tails to be useless, but I also don't want him to be invincible. I want to see him struggle with, and eventually overcome, things that are more meaningful than just stronger bad guys. While it completely failed to follow through on it, what Forces had started setting up was one of the most interesting things they had ever done with Tails, and I'd much rather see them try to do things like that than just "yes he can fight the robots/monsters/demons, just like everyone else, the end".

3 minutes ago, OBD96 said:

And what's wrong with Shadow's portrayal in Forces?

I mean in Forces he basically doesn't have one, but I assume you meant '06? Short version is that ShtH left him basically aimless as a character, throwing away his past and leaving him just a grumpy hero, and '06 failed to do anything to advance him beyond that. Mephy's whole "humanity will betray you" gamble rings entirely hollow when the previous game had him make peace with the only organization/person we know of who had a reason to hate him and the world's already accepted other superpowered talking animals as beloved heroes, not to mention it's just "bad things will happen in the future (that we will never actually see)!" And people praise his relationship with Rouge and Omega, but...he honestly barely even seems to care, he just frowns and glares his way through every scene. It's not that I expect him to be all "oh golly gee I love friendship!", but for how much people praise it over future appearances you'd think there was some kind of actual bonding between them.

[thumbs13]

1 hour ago, OBD96 said:

That's not good enough. He needs to fight regularly in my opinion.

So every game needs to come to a complete halt so tails can be cool even when it's uncalled for?

Why?

If Tails isn't playable he doesn't have to go above and beyond. That's pretty simple.

[OBD96]

16 minutes ago, thumbs13 said:

So every game needs to come to a complete halt so tails can be cool even when it's uncalled for?

Why?

If Tails isn't playable he doesn't have to go above and beyond. That's pretty simple.

By that logic, the other characters in Forces didn't have to fight those clones at the end of the game because THEY weren't playable.

[thumbs13]

Just now, OBD96 said:

By that logic, the other characters in Forces didn't have to fight those clones at the end of the game because THEY weren't playable.

That scene was so bad I'm wishing they didn't, but I get your point. Tails should have gotten to fight something in Forces. He should have not in Unleashed, or against the Zombots, or in Colors. Those games were not about him. 

[OBD96]

59 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

If he's not fighting every time there's a threat to stop, it doesn't matter is basically all I'm getting from this...

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

55 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Nope. I like SA Tails learning to be a little more independent and to do things in his own way rather than just following and copying Sonic. I like how that carried into SA2 with him using his mechanical genius to build his own battle mech (narratively, anyway, the gameplay sucked ass). But I also like Forces Tails being genuinely broken up over Sonic's defeat and possible death, struggling and mostly failing to keep his shit together as the world fell apart around him...right up until Classic Sonic appeared and they dropped that plotline entirely, because Forces is also a very badly written game.

I don't want Tails to be useless, but I also don't want him to be invincible. I want to see him struggle with, and eventually overcome, things that are more meaningful than just stronger bad guys. While it completely failed to follow through on it, what Forces had started setting up was one of the most interesting things they had ever done with Tails, and I'd much rather see them try to do things like that than just "yes he can fight the robots/monsters/demons, just like everyone else, the end".

I mean in Forces he basically doesn't have one, but I assume you meant '06? Short version is that ShtH left him basically aimless as a character, throwing away his past and leaving him just a grumpy hero, and '06 failed to do anything to advance him beyond that. Mephy's whole "humanity will betray you" gamble rings entirely hollow when the previous game had him make peace with the only organization/person we know of who had a reason to hate him and the world's already accepted other superpowered talking animals as beloved heroes, not to mention it's just "bad things will happen in the future (that we will never actually see)!" And people praise his relationship with Rouge and Omega, but...he honestly barely even seems to care, he just frowns and glares his way through every scene. It's not that I expect him to be all "oh golly gee I love friendship!", but for how much people praise it over future appearances you'd think there was some kind of actual bonding between them.

Nah, you're lying to yourself; you think Forces is a perfect, competently written game, which is why you're praising Tails' portrayal in that game. That's the impression I'm getting anyway.

[Tracker_TD]

Quote

Yeah, that's pretty much it.

So you did miss the point of Tails. Sorted!

16 minutes ago, OBD96 said:

Nah, you're lying to yourself; you think Forces is a perfect, competently written game, which is why you're praising Tails' portrayal in that game. That's the impression I'm getting anyway.

Then someone's being a little too assumptive. It's possible to find things to appreciate in a given thing without a black or white outlook of "it's perfect" or "it's the worst thing ever". Anyone who's been here longer than five minutes knows Dio is the last person who'd call anything Forces does 'perfect'.