Rally 4 Sally

[Pengi]

12 hours ago, GentlemanX said:

You guys love the Koopalings? I do. A lot of people do. Many people are apathetic toward them. And when they were playable in Mario Kart 8 a lot of people were outright frustrated by them because of the number of character slots they took up. So they run the gambit of emotions from folks.

It's a very silly complaint. Character "slots" aren't a finite resource in today's games, in terms of number - it's about time and manpower. If the 7 Koopalings weren't in MK8, that doesn't mean there would be 7 diverse and unique characters in their place. The Koopalings essentially have the same bodies, with different proportions. It's less time and resource intensive to turn a Larry into a Ludwig and a Morton into a Roy than it is to create 7 models from scratch for 7 completely different characters.

12 hours ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Regarding bringing back the Freedom Fighters, I’ve always said they should keep the spirit of the characters at all times. Just like Sonic is a cocky, smart-mouthed speedster, Knuckles is a stubborn, gullible fighter, Tails a kid genius, and Shadow a powerful anti-hero across many spectrums of medias, it’s not that difficult for them to keep Sally’s leadership skills, Antoine’s cowardly lion tendencies, Rotor’s inventiveness, or Bunnies cybernetics—heck, the reboot in Archie changed Rotor more drastically than he ever was where he had an abusive father that rolled over and accepted the rule of Eggman while his son continued the fight, and I actually like that version of Rotor a lot more than I expected compared to the pre-reboot.

Rotor is the weak link of the group, since the core cast already has an inventor in Tails. The reboot played Rotor up as a strong guy, but that's not a unique trait either.

To get around the overlap they'd probably have to be treated as a distinct group, like the Babylon Rogues or the Chaotix Detective Agency.

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, Pengi said:

Rotor is the weak link of the group, since the core cast already has an inventor in Tails. The reboot played Rotor up as a strong guy, but that's not a unique trait either.

To get around the overlap they'd probably have to be treated as a distinct group, like the Babylon Rogues or the Chaotix Detective Agency.

I don't know about ya'll but if Tails was relieved a bit of his smart guy exposition role I think that would be a good thing for him. Gives them a little more room to bring some more of his old childish and endearing traits back. 

[StaticMania]

He doesn't even have to be Mr. Expositioner, he usually ends up spouting the obvious most of the time.

[Dr. Detective]

I don't think being an inventor is holding Tails back from being more childish at all. Childlike fascination with tinkering and making cool, and sometimes even cute, stuff could easily be weaved into his character. Thats more the fault of the writers just slapping him with the "Smart guy says smart guy stuff" label.

Pontaff tried to inject more personality into him but they did that by making him an asshole.

Boom Tails was perfect but he doesn't exist anymore so *rasp*.

[E-122-Psi]

15 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

He doesn't even have to be Mr. Expositioner, he usually ends up spouting the obvious most of the time.

The thing is even if they trade Mr Expositioner to Rotor, well.......why would that be a GOOD thing? It just means the most boring role in the group is traded from Tails to him instead.

Rotor's harder to really place in, since he didn't really grasp a prominent "shtick" besides being the tech guy, and often even the slithers of personality he did demonstrate otherwise felt occupied more strongly by other characters, eg. being the cute dork in early SatAm like Tails, or a more headstrong contrarian in the reboot like Knuckles. I feel like the main reason Penders tried to do that homosexual reveal was as a cheap grab at making him seem more interesting.

One possible idea I had concerning the Freedom Fighters entering the games world is take their more lucid personalities and make them the "Logical Latecomer". Maybe they could revive Sally's rivalry with Sonic by making her the one to question the insanity of the whole dynamic between him and Eggman, why he treats it like a game and hasn't just....got rid of him already. For Rotor....maybe they could take his geekiness in a playful way and make him a bit meta, like the guy who knows and savours every action cliche that goes on, without being too obnoxiously fourth wall breaking of course (this is Satam, not Boom :P).

9 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I don't think being an inventor is holding Tails back from being more childish at all. Childlike fascination with tinkering and making cool, and sometimes even cute, stuff could easily be weaved into his character. Thats more the fault of the writers just slapping him with the "Smart guy says smart guy stuff" label.

Pontaff tried to inject more personality into him but they did that by making him an asshole.

Boom Tails was perfect but he doesn't exist anymore so *rasp*.

Like I said in the Tails thread, most of the best characters have at least two juxtoposing traits, it's just a matter of keeping both in balance so they don't end up one note gags. Boom Tails knew how to intertwine both the genius and childlike aspects in a funny way that gave him an agency, so he had plenty of fuel to work off of.

[StaticMania]

1 minute ago, E-122-Psi said:

The thing is even if they trade Mr Expositioner to Rotor, well.......why would that be a GOOD thing? It just means the most boring role in the group is traded from Tails to him instead.

Wha-...

No one said Rotor should be the expositing guy, he's too chill to just dole out a bunch of boring info

[E-122-Psi]

7 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Wha-...

No one said Rotor should be the expositing guy, he's too chill to just dole out a bunch of boring info

I think I maybe took Wraith's suggestion too literally.

38 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I don't know about ya'll but if Tails was relieved a bit of his smart guy exposition role I think that would be a good thing for him. Gives them a little more room to bring some more of his old childish and endearing traits back. 

I would like more 'smart' characters that weren't just 'all around smart and sensible' though. They're kinda dull after a while. Intelligence comes in all sorts of different areas, you can be a genius in one and an imbecile in another. I think that's why I thought early Sonic vs Sally was more vibrant since it was 'street smarts vs academic smarts' with both of them acting pretty arrogant and childish outside their niche.

I think it's why I'm so damn possessive of Tails acting like a attention seeking child since I find his genius role on its own to be rather dull. He needs some quirks to pepper his actions and dialogue so he's not just the exposition machine with the personality of a senior. Same for me concerning busybody Sally or clumsy nerd Rotor, even if those quirks aren't NEARLY as iconic to their characters anymore.

I think I'm just repeating myself again though.

[Zaysho]

Character roles and archetypes are not some job position that has to be filled by one character and if another comes along that other character has to go and be forgotten.

Tails is young and can be more inexperienced. Still obviously bright, but with some glaring oversights in how he builds and designs machines (he forgot to include a landing gear in the Tornado 2's second mode so there's a precedent for the canon people). Instead of the idea that Rotor is taking over the role of "smart guy" or "inventor," why wouldn't it be that Tails has someone else to bounce off of?

[E-122-Psi]

7 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

Character roles and archetypes are not some job position that has to be filled by one character and if another comes along that other character has to go and be forgotten.

Tails is young and can be more inexperienced. Still obviously bright, but with some glaring oversights in how he builds and designs machines (he forgot to include a landing gear in the Tornado 2's second mode so there's a precedent for the canon people). Instead of the idea that Rotor is taking over another role, why wouldn't it be that Tails has someone else to bounce off of?

Well I guess it depends on how well they develop dynamics between the characters. This is maybe why Boom Tails also thrived for example, since they figured out how to make his personality bounce off of everyone else's rather than just spout out the obvious in every scene.

This is maybe also why after a while Rotor sorta faded into the background in both interpretations, since he didn't really gain a lot of unique chemistries with the other characters to compensate for them taking over his roles.

I admit I feel Sally sharing Sonic's arrogance made her more interesting as a foil early on, same for Tails sharing some of his playful or outgoing traits, some mutuality doesn't hurt, you just gotta make sure it's in a way they don't feel interchangeable in role or one doesn't just feel like a 'lite' version of the other.

[Wraith]

All I said was that it would relieve Tails of that "a bit". You can't really take being a tinkerer away from him, but I always thought you could make it more nuanced by creating clear strengths and weaknesses in the kinds of thing Tails can invent. Maybe Tails is more of a hard mechanical type of guy and Rotor is more of a computer nerd. Maybe the frequent bugs and hiccups in Tails's inventions come from him moving too fast and Rotor has a slower, more methodical approach that makes for more solid work but takes too long to be practical. 

Above all of that stuff though, I just want Tails to have a geek friend. 

[Kuzu]

I feel like the largest problem with Rotor and the rest of the Freedom Fighters isn't necessarily what roles they'd occupy, but rather a common one that's plagued this series for years.....too many characters and not enough focus to go around. 

Some characters are just...inevitably going to fall by the wayside, especially when most of the series` story beats will revolve around Sonic and whoever is around him. I don't think Tails necessarily got "boring", but most of the time he showed up before, the focus of the story was on someone else and didn't leave him with much to do.  When a character inevitably falls out of focus, their characterization is going to suffer for it. 

 

I do think a real fear is having the Freedom Fighters overtake the main cast positions that people are used to seeing filled by Tails, Knuckles, and Amy..but like...you literally cannot develop these characters unless you let them have the spotlight, and that means that some fan favorites will get shafted. There seems to be this dichotomy that everyone has have their favorite characters around at all times, when that's not how storytelling works. 

[Zaysho]

It would be a lot easier if the characters were rotated and had stories more focused around their involvement. It's not something Sonic Team's really tried either (maybe Rush Adventure would kind of count but nothing else really comes to mind). Any time they do tighten the cast to a select few it's the same "main" characters over and over again, and even then they don't really contribute anything. I get there's marketability being considered and whatever else, but the current results are making for some really boring scenarios.

[Kuzu]

15 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

It would be a lot easier if the characters were rotated and had stories more focused around their involvement. It's not something Sonic Team's really tried either (maybe Rush Adventure would kind of count but nothing else really comes to mind). Any time they do tighten the cast to a select few it's the same "main" characters over and over again, and even then they don't really contribute anything. I get there's marketability being considered and whatever else, but the current results are making for some really boring scenarios.

It is definitely mostly tied to marketability; a game focused on say, Tails, or Shadow would get far more attention than one focused on...the Chaotix or Cream. Sega have tried in the past, the 2000's always diluted the focus among most of the recurring characters at the time. Every character had their own campaign in certain games, and Shadow outright was the star of his own game. But at some point, the complaints about the utilization of the cast overshadowing Sonic and the other "main characters"  were at their peak, and hence the series just defaulted to the same central cast of Sonic, Tails, and Eggman since then. 

We're basically at a point where some people want more focus on the other characters, and others wanna keep things simplified and focused on the main cast we have now. 

[Your Vest Friend]

I feel the biggest obstacle to getting the Freedom Fighters in anything like the mobile game cameo people are vying for is the pesky classic/modern divide more than the roles the Freedom Fighters could fill to be honest. As much as they've been retooled for the modern era, their roots are firmly in the classic era, so if SEGA see them as classic characters that stops any chance of a cameo outside a classic branch property (of which there has been one so far), as demonstrated quite obviously by themselves so far.

Adapting their place in the canon wouldn't be so difficult if they could get the foot in the door in the first place. They're not above tearing a character down to rebuild them to suit their needs.

[Shadowlax]

I feel like it would be a bit presumptuous to think they wouldn't be in extremely limited roles in some regard. I don't even see sally's leadership skills ever coming into play in that way. Ian Flynn kind of spilled the beans that there are just things sega just uses with branding that's largely irrelevant to what they want to do at the moment. And I think that would be the case with the FF's . And i think that's a lot of peoples fear with the FF's well those who care, because...I don't really, but the fear is that they will be husks for branding. Some people would just be happy at the use other's not so much with capitalistic goring. Though some may argue that's the nature of the game when dealing corporate mascots, doesn't mean you have to enjoy though.

As for roles I generally agree that having multiple people in " roles " are fine and may actually flesh out what that roles means in the world how they handle it. Having different characters have different takes on where they are is interesting. Its what makes rouge and knuckles's dynamic interesting, or shadow's heroism different than others. Or Eggman or tails's uses for smarts it helps define the character further by showing what they aren't and what they are capable of. This isn't to say there can't be characters you find...superfluous , I feel that way about a lot of archie characters. But the premise ain't bad.

 

1 hour ago, Zaysho said:

Character roles and archetypes are not some job position that has to be filled by one character and if another comes along that other character has to go and be forgotten.

Tails is young and can be more inexperienced. Still obviously bright, but with some glaring oversights in how he builds and designs machines (he forgot to include a landing gear in the Tornado 2's second mode so there's a precedent for the canon people). Instead of the idea that Rotor is taking over the role of "smart guy" or "inventor," why wouldn't it be that Tails has someone else to bounce off of?

So I agree with this

Issue is sega doesn't. Sega has always been kinda brand focused and they are now more so than possibly ever before. I want to remind you they banned the sonic boom team from making another smart character because only tails and eggman can be smart. They may have possibly backed off a wee bit because of platipus man. That said they may just think he fills a new role and doesn't really intrude on what they have going.

 

 

This is also the reason I don't think the FF are ever coming back. It feels like the direction at least with the comics is to create new sort of characters that fill those roles archie characters once did and focus on them. Considering Sonic team had a hand in their creation I think that's where they will stay

[Kuzu]

Oh yea, I do remember that; they didn't want any other smart characters besides Tails and Eggman for Boom...

[Zaysho]

53 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

It is definitely mostly tied to marketability; a game focused on say, Tails, or Shadow would get far more attention than one focused on...the Chaotix or Cream. Sega have tried in the past, the 2000's always diluted the focus among most of the recurring characters at the time. Every character had their own campaign in certain games, and Shadow outright was the star of his own game. But at some point, the complaints about the utilization of the cast overshadowing Sonic and the other "main characters"  were at their peak, and hence the series just defaulted to the same central cast of Sonic, Tails, and Eggman since then. 

We're basically at a point where some people want more focus on the other characters, and others wanna keep things simplified and focused on the main cast we have now. 

It may not be the cleanest solution, but say if there was a new game/storyline introducing these characters but you use some of the established cast to ease them in and help them develop? Sonic's obviously there, so Tails and Amy accompany him and meet the completely redone SatAM characters. Amy and Sally form a bond as the former helps the latter become more proactive, Tails takes an interest in Rotor's work, Sonic eggs on Antoine but also encourages him to become a better knight. Maybe in a later one Team Dark finds an injured Bunnie and Sonic takes them to Rotor and Chuck who can replace her limbs. Stuff like that.

Maybe it's at odds with how these games are even made, but I think mixing and matching them could help give the other characters something to do while easing in newer characters. Tangle got introduced following seeing the main three as well as pairing her with one of the few, but popular, female characters in the games. Whisper is introduced through Silver.

 

25 minutes ago, Your Vest Friend said:

I feel the biggest obstacle to getting the Freedom Fighters in anything like the mobile game cameo people are vying for is the pesky classic/modern divide more than the roles the Freedom Fighters could fill to be honest. As much as they've been retooled for the modern era, their roots are firmly in the classic era, so if SEGA see them as classic characters that stops any chance of a cameo outside a classic branch property (of which there has been one so far), as demonstrated quite obviously by themselves so far).

I don't know if this really matters. The Chaotix were classic characters but their ties to the classic era/branding/whatever were severed completely with Heroes--and this was before they started separating the series officially.

Maybe it would happen and they're only in that type of branding from now on but they may not be either.

 

25 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

Issue is sega doesn't. Sega has always been kinda brand focused and they are now more so than possibly ever before. I want to remind you they banned the sonic boom team from making another smart character because only tails and eggman can be smart. They may have possibly backed off a wee bit because of platipus man. That said they may just think he fills a new role and doesn't really intrude on what they have going.

First I'd heard of the Sonic Boom thing, honestly. Sounds really odd, but I barely followed the series.

Even if I get the whole corporate part of this series, it doesn't make seemingly completely arbitrary restrictions like that that feel any less creatively limiting or straight up boring regardless of whether Sega actually cares about that or what people like me think. It's why I don't care enough to really work it into basic ideas I throw around on here just because I have to already jump through hoops to justify my position to people who already have something to dismiss the idea out of hand.

[E-122-Psi]

13 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Oh yea, I do remember that; they didn't want any other smart characters besides Tails and Eggman for Boom...

Okay....that's a new one....

Then again, like I said before, smart comes in many different areas. If they meant 'smart' as in the techno genius, I could understand because that's a more specific agency. I mean one could argue Amy was more strategically smart in Boom, and that Orbot was more or less Eggman's hyper competent sidekick (Charlie and Dave were also fellow evil inventors, if even more bungling than Eggman). Vector was allowed to be a genuinely competent detective, even if he only got one guest appearance. Hell like I said, sometimes even 'simple' characters like Sonic came off as having more common sense than Tails or Eggman. Either SEGA were more specific about this mandate or Boom knew how to loophole around it with more complex dynamics. There was no straight up 'all around smart' character in Boom.

At the very least that leaves a BIT more leeway for Sally, since while there were hints to Sally having gadgetry abilities (largely when her smarts got flanderized) she was mostly a strategist and a hacker, not a mechanical wiz.

[Shadowlax]

7 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

 

First I'd heard of the Sonic Boom thing, honestly. Sounds really odd, but I barely followed the series.

Even if I get the whole corporate part of this series, it doesn't make seemingly completely arbitrary restrictions like that that doesn't feel any less creatively limiting or straight up boring regardless of whether Sega actually cares about that or what people like me think. It's why I don't care enough to really work it into basic ideas I throw around on here just because I have to already jump through hoops to justify my position to people who already have something to dismiss the idea out of hand.

There were some weird rules that came out of that. Some of which kinda shows the direction they, parts of sega at least, want to go with the series. Like rouge was banned from appearing. Like they specifically said she was just unusable. Fast forward today , somethings make a bit more sense. Or at least have greater context

And That's fair, why limit yourself to the harsh restrictions of a capitalist system that at least in this case already decided you weren't worth appealing to for a good long time in the first place

[Kuzu]

4 minutes ago, E-122-Psi said:

Okay....that's a new one....

Then again, like I said before, smart comes in many different areas. If they meant 'smart' as in the techno genius, I could understand because that's a more specific agency. I mean one could argue Amy was more strategically smart in Boom, and that Orbot was more or less Eggman's hyper competent sidekick. Vector was allowed to be a genuinely competent detective, even if he only got one guest appearance. Hell like I said, sometimes even 'simple' characters like Sonic came off as having more common sense than Tails or Eggman. Either SEGA were more specific about this mandate or Boom knew how to loophole around it with more complex dynamics.

At the very least that leaves a BIT more leeway for Sally, since while there were hints to Sally having gadgetry abilities (largely when her smarts got flanderized) she was mostly a strategist and a hacker, not a mechanical wiz.

No Smart as in "the guy who can create shit that the main cast uses"  I'm talking the most generic example of smart.

[E-122-Psi]

2 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

No Smart as in "the guy who can create shit that the main cast uses"  I'm talking the most generic example of smart.

Ah. Yeah, I figured SEGA might have been more specific about it. Well that kinda limits Rotor, but again Sally is a more questionable case. She hacks and devises through NICOLE, but doesn't really create resources.

[Kuzu]

7 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

It may not be the cleanest solution, but say if there was a new game/storyline introducing these characters but you use some of the established cast to ease them in and help them develop? Sonic's obviously there, so Tails and Amy accompany him and meet the completely redone SatAM characters. Amy and Sally form a bond as the former helps the latter become more proactive, Tails takes an interest in Rotor's work, Sonic eggs on Antoine but also encourages him to become a better knight. Maybe in a later one Team Dark finds an injured Bunnie and Sonic takes them to Rotor and Chuck who can replace her limbs. Stuff like that.

Maybe it's at odds with how these games are even made, but I think mixing and matching them could help give the other characters something to do while easing in newer characters. Tangle got introduced following seeing the main three as well as pairing her with one of the few, but popular, female characters in the games. Whisper is introduced through Silver.

 

That works in the context of a story-driven narrative like a comic book or a television show. It's a different ball game when you're talking about a video game though. 

Like say, if you were going to introduce the Freedom Fighters in say, a new spin off; they'd have to be the main focus of it along with Sonic, which inevitably leaves the likes of Tails and Amy with much less to do. 

That was one of the biggest things before; to promote the new and fresh character of the week, the established characters had to be pushed aside a bit to make way for them. 

1 minute ago, E-122-Psi said:

Ah. Yeah, I figured SEGA might have been more specific about it. Well that kinda limits Rotor, but again Sally is a more questionable case. She hacks and devises through NICOLE, but doesn't really create resources.

Sally's more of a strategist than a tech genius anyway, so she's fine. In fact, that's one niche that hasn't been taken up among the game cast given most of them are a bunch of hot-heads who jump into confrontations with no strategy. Someone who can actually direct them is something that has in fact, not been done.

[E-122-Psi]

Not to mention the cluttered mess we sometimes got when they tried to shoehorn a good heap of characters into the limelight. Next Gen was the straw that broke the camel's back in that regard.

[Your Vest Friend]

13 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

I don't know if this really matters. The Chaotix were classic characters but their ties to the classic era/branding/whatever were severed completely with Heroes--and this was before they started separating the series officially.

Maybe it would happen and they're only in that type of branding from now on but they may not be either.

They were, but Chaotix seems to be literally the only exception to the rule because Heroes changed the rules up one time for some reason (I assume if any of the other classic characters had been chosen as well or instead, they'd be the same). Mighty and Ray are actually a great counter-example though; although they'd only appeared in three games at most (due to the cameos they made in the racing game), they were actually characters longer thanks to the comics, and that's what people associated them with by 2017. That was still pretty much put in the bin when SEGA decided to allow them to come back for Sonic Mania, aside from Hesse being able to incorporate Ray's shoe design into his new classic design.

Of course, there are semantics with that because internally Mighty and Ray's history in SEGA is very different to the Freedom Fighters, but Sally at the very least must have been known to them in the classic era due to the shenanigans of Sonic X-Treme, them apparently knowing about SatAM and all that, although whether they consider that valuable enough to maintain the legacy of is another question entirely. Eh, it's a mess.

[E-122-Psi]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Sally's more of a strategist than a tech genius anyway, so she's fine. In fact, that's one niche that hasn't been taken up among the game cast given most of them are a bunch of hot-heads who jump into confrontations with no strategy. Someone who can actually direct them is something that has in fact, not been done.

Likely why they tried to shoehorn Knuckles and Amy into the role in Forces, since no one else in the main cast quite fit the job. It also had similar unfortunate side effects, with Amy getting conformed into the more cliche no-nonsense 'smart' type with all her old quirks overlooked, barely trying to make them co-exist. It feels like an archetype they struggle to make compatible with their usual colourful lot (while even the inventor type can at least be shown as an eccentric geek that makes the occasional dud in their direction).

I guess a key problem is that often in writing, especially simple writing for kids video games, smart logical characters are no fun to work with story wise. Characters that are impulsive and error prone work in a game as a quick plot pivot. I can see where Lost Worlds was going since giving all three main characters petty bungling vices gave them an even floor and allowed them to more easily set up a dilemma for them to struggle among themselves against. It's just the execution (especially with Tails, the de facto smart character) wasn't all that great.

Pitting such characters against one that is always offering a better logical solution and pointing out NOT to do these things, as shown in SatAm's second season, has the side effect of it being less about a group of flawed beings and more 'this guy is an idiot' since they are still obligated to ignore the more logical character and their blatantly better solution. In worst case scenarios you could even end up with Frank Grimes type situation where a character with too much common sense completely and utterly undermines any integrity or suspension of disbelief the universe has. That COULD be interesting if written intentionally  (and well) but in terms of simple story telling the games like doing, I can see why that role isn't filled, since you usually have to be far more elaborate writing a challenge for a character that is known for making the right decisions (that or you know, just break their character :P). I mean there's a reason Kanga is used the least in Winnie the Pooh, or Edward in Thomas the Tank Engine.