What are some mandates by Sega you don't agree with?

[Guest]

@Tracker_TDOh yeah, I'm not wanting Sonic to be like that. Good grief no. I don't think Sonic is the kind to break down like that. I'm just wanting a bit more emotion to be shown is all. You know, more expressions other than smile and smirk XD

[Badnik Mechanic]

23 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

As for emotional stuff, people seem to forget that Sonic's lack of tears aren't new. It's not that Sonic can't get sad, it's that he's just doesn't like tears. I'm guessing he sees himself as the kind of guy who's gotta keep the positive face going even if things look bleak, and that in of itself is a character trait.

Not to mention... You can show emotion in a character without them crying or blubbering ala Archie comics.

Take this from Fleetways Sonic.

Yeah we can take that panel out of context and meme it all we like....

But if you had that comic back in the day, turned the page and are presented with that, you cannot say that you cannot see in Sonic's face that he's feeling terror, anxiety, and sadness as he slowly realises that his friend who was fought along side him for over 170 issues has been killed.

[Guest]

That's the sort of thing I'm wanting. Emotion like that. Sorry if I couldn't get that through with what I wrote. I'm not the best with explaining things DX

[Mauro Fonseca]

In that case, you don't actually have a problem with the "mandate" at all, since it doesn't say Sonic can't emote, just that Sonic isn't the type to emote by crying.

[Guest]

48 minutes ago, The KKM said:

In that case, you don't actually have a problem with the "mandate" at all, since it doesn't say Sonic can't emote, just that Sonic isn't the type to emote by crying.

Right you are. Editing out now

[Piko]

6 hours ago, A Random Villager said:

- No letting Sonic lose. This one I find a little odd, and honestly I may not understand it properly. Anyway, In my opinion,  Sonic's always lost here and there to Eggman in the past. In Sonic Adventure, he got cocky and lost an emerald to Eggman by a surprise sleep gas attack. Furthermore, in Adventure 2, he got trapped and almost blown up by Eggman when he fell into his trap. Do these not count as losses? They do to me, and that's what keeps the whole fight between Eggman fun. These little victories for Eggman help us feel that for all his heroism, Sonic's still just a guy. Not perfect, and prone to mistakes. Having him win everything would get boring eventually. In my opinion anyway. Like I said, I could have misundetood this mandate, if it's even a mandate at all XD

I always interpreted it as “Sonic always has to win in the end”. There have been plenty of times where Eggman’s had the upper hand, like in the Adventure games or, more recently, the metal virus arc in the IDW comics. He’s absolutely allowed to “win”, but Sonic has to bounce back eventually.

[Scritch the Cat]

•Characters being locked at a single age.  I tend to hate when media doesn’t let characters grow up in general, as it seems designed to keep the same old stuff going and impede more new stuff being introduced, but at least I understand why it’s done in media starring humans and/or media with the protagonists being specifically children.  In Sonic, though, that’s irrelevant to the vast majority of characters and dispensable to the rest.  As Roger Van Der Weid said (or maybe it was Luke the Fox), anthropomorphic characters are largely above age, and in this series it tends not to mean any of what it would realistically mean.  The only character who has (or had) noticeable parents is (or was) Cream.  Tails is eight but doesn’t seem to have either parents of guardians, Amy is twelve but seems to live an adult life in her own home, Sonic is a minor but fully independent.  I’m not saying I want these characters to age until they wither and die, but it would be best if they just didn’t have canonical ages.  The only thing age ever codes for in this series is immaturity, and that has gotten annoying enough that I’d like it gone.

•Team Dark not being friends.  This is one of those things that isn’t just stupid, but also seems to contradict almost everything in the actual games.  I can agree that in SA2 and SH, they were mostly in alliances of convenience, but that can’t explain why they keep showing up together, and the natural assumption would just be that they’re close.  Same with Knuckles; if they’re not going to write any more stories with his involvement being tied somehow to guarding the Master Emerald, it’s natural just to default to assuming he hangs out with Sonic and Tails because he’s become fond of doing so.  Having a mandate that Team Dark are a team but not friends seems pointless unless they specifically intend the members to argue with each other, which last I checked, they usually don’t.  Granted, last I checked was 06.  But somehow Rouge was capable enough of friendship that she attended Sonic’s birthday party in SG.

[Redemption]

The characters flexibility has most likely changed since Sonic has switched over to Idw. (due to the lawsuit with Ken Penders flexabiliy with the characters was down)

What i loved in the archie comics was when Sonic was able to have emotions over issues going on and not just bottle up his feelings and act like nothing is wrong.

If you are writing for the characters of the Sonic series don't you want freedom to take the characters in the direction you want them to go.

Take Shadow for example you can tell in multiple issue Ian starts to try to develop him.

Spoiler

In Idw Shadow helps Sonic save the chateau and gives an apple to the chao

The Sonic series is getting predictable because emotions aren't being shown and because of most of these mandates.

(Hopefully we get some archie characters in Idw)

[Mattjohn234]

That they wasted the  perfect opportunity to actually make sonic good again on his 15th anniversary, and they regret making Sonic 06 and even Sonic genesis gba.

[Rabbitearsblog]

27 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

•Characters being locked at a single age.  I tend to hate when media doesn’t let characters grow up in general, as it seems designed to keep the same old stuff going and impede more new stuff being introduced, but at least I understand why it’s done in media starring humans and/or media with the protagonists being specifically children.  In Sonic, though, that’s irrelevant to the vast majority of characters and dispensable to the rest.  As Roger Van Der Weid said (or maybe it was Luke the Fox), anthropomorphic characters are largely above age, and in this series it tends not to mean any of what it would realistically mean.  The only character who had (or had) noticeable parents is (or was) Cream.  Tails is eight but doesn’t seem to have either parents of guardians, Amy is twelve but seems to live an adult life in her own home, Sonic is a minor but fully independent.  I’m not saying I want these characters to age until they wither and die, but it would be best if they just didn’t have canonical ages.  The only thing age ever codes for in this series is immaturity, and that has gotten annoying enough that I’d like it gone.

•Team Dark not being friends.  This is one of those things that isn’t just stupid, but also seems to contradict almost everything in the actual games.  I can agree that in SA2 and SH, they were mostly in alliances of convenience, but that can’t explain why they keep showing up together, and the natural assumption would just be that they’re close.  Same with Knuckles; if they’re not going to write any more stories with his involvement being tied to somehow to guarding the Master Emerald, it’s natural just to default to assuming he hangs out with Sonic and Tails because he’s become fond of doing so.  Having a mandate that Team Dark are a team but not friends seems pointless unless they specifically intend the members to argue with each other, which last I checked, they usually don’t.  Granted, last I checked was 06.  But somehow Rouge was capable enough of friendship that she attended Sonic’s birthday party in SG.

*I agree that the characters may need to age up a bit to make their personalities make more sense.  Like you mentioned, the fact that Amy and Tails, who are young children, at least according to their ages, are able to live independently and act more mature then they should have, raises some questions for me about where their parents are or why they don't have any guardians to look after them.  At least with Tails' case, Sonic is shown to look after him from time to time.  That's why Tails' portrayal in "Sonic Forces" was a mixed bag for me.  On the one hand, he is acting like how an 8 year old would act like if they are surrounded by dangerous robots (ie: being scared).  But on the other hand, this entirely goes against Tails' character development throughout the series as he actually stood up to Dr. Eggman, a person who could easily kill him, in the Sonic Adventure series.  The reason why I found movie Sonic to be an interesting character in his own right is because he acts his age (apparently, he's supposed to be either 13 or 14 years old in the movie) as he acts a bit immature, but also has insecurities about himself that kids at his age could relate to.  

*Also about Team Dark not being friends, I don't understand why SEGA wants to abandon the Team Dark aspect of the series.  Maybe because they thought that Shadow having friends wasn't going to make him edgy enough, so they decided to disband Team Dark to keep that aspect of his character.  But the thing is though, I liked the whole Team Dark aspect because it actually fleshed out Shadow's character in that he can make friends if he tries and I hate that SEGA took that aspect away from him just to make him dark and edgy again.

[Scritch the Cat]

13 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

*I agree that the characters may need to age up a bit to make their personalities make more sense.  Like you mentioned, the fact that Amy and Tails, who are young children, at least according to their ages, are able to live independently and act more mature then they should have, raises some questions for me about where their parents are or why they don't have any guardians to look after them.  At least with Tails' case, Sonic is shown to look after him from time to time.  That's why Tails' portrayal in "Sonic Forces" was a mixed bag for me.  On the one hand, he is acting like how an 8 year old would act like if they are surrounded by dangerous robots (ie: being scared).  But on the other hand, this entirely goes against Tails' character development throughout the series as he actually stood up to Dr. Eggman, a person who could easily kill him, in the Sonic Adventure series.  The reason why I found movie Sonic to be an interesting character in his own right is because he acts his age (apparently, he's supposed to be either 13 or 14 years old in the movie) as he acts a bit immature, but also has insecurities about himself that kids at his age could relate to. 

Exactly; the appeal of child protagonists is that when they get outside their comfort zone and conquer adversity, they’re appealing to child viewers since their accomplishments at that age can be admired; maybe even to older viewers.  Tails worked as that when he was playable; at least up to a point.  Everyone can admire underdogs who overcome; it’s uplifting.  But if a character is reduced to just a punching bag all people feel is sad for the character.

13 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

*Also about Team Dark not being friends, I don't understand why SEGA wants to abandon the Team Dark aspect of the series.  Maybe because they thought that Shadow having friends wasn't going to make him edgy enough, so they decided to disband Team Dark to keep that aspect of his character.  But the thing is though, I liked the whole Team Dark aspect because it actually fleshed out Shadow's character in that he can make friends if he tries and I hate that SEGA took that aspect away from him just to make him dark and edgy again.

What makes this odder is it seems like being dark and edgy is usually the last thing this series wants to do now.  It would be one thing if it’s lone exception was a villain, but when Shadow’s not a villain I really don’t see what the purpose of making him an edge lord is besides to be a stick in the mud to make more amiable characters look better.

[SBR2]

4 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

•Characters being locked at a single age.  I tend to hate when media doesn’t let characters grow up in general, as it seems designed to keep the same old stuff going and impede more new stuff being introduced, but at least I understand why it’s done in media starring humans and/or media with the protagonists being specifically children.  In Sonic, though, that’s irrelevant to the vast majority of characters and dispensable to the rest.  As Roger Van Der Weid said (or maybe it was Luke the Fox), anthropomorphic characters are largely above age, and in this series it tends not to mean any of what it would realistically mean.  The only character who has (or had) noticeable parents is (or was) Cream.  Tails is eight but doesn’t seem to have either parents of guardians, Amy is twelve but seems to live an adult life in her own home, Sonic is a minor but fully independent.  I’m not saying I want these characters to age until they wither and die, but it would be best if they just didn’t have canonical ages.  The only thing age ever codes for in this series is immaturity, and that has gotten annoying enough that I’d like it gone.

 

This is why I just don't take character ages seriously. They don't matter as much as who the characters are. 

Sonic isn't tied to allegedly being 15 he's tied to being a free spirit who is free as the wind. That will always be more important than him being a teenager. 

Hell when you look at the things these characters canonically do they do not match up with their given ages. Tails is a fighter pilot mechanic who lives alone in a workshop. Amy lives alone in the city (as shown by her grocery shopping in SA1) and there are billboards in TSR for her café so she's a business owner. The Babylon Rogues are two grown adults taking orders from a middle schooler.

Sonic characters are only aged the way they are to connect with the target audience. 

[herefor1reason]

Shadow's forced characterization as Vegeta the Hedgehog rather than Sonic: Brooding Addition. He was less Vegeta and more Zero from Megaman X. A character with the same (but slightly different) abilities and general design of the main character but more "mature" and powerful. All the cocky smarm of Sonic in a character driven by loss.

 

ALSO, the whole "Sonic can't show certain emotions" thing. Let Sonic get sad about stuff. Let him get super angry. LET SONIC FUCKING FEEL THINGS. So sick of ONLY snark in response to every situation. "Oh? What's that? The world has been taken over by my greatest foe, the planet is being ruined and enslaved as we speak, I've been trapped in a small cell for the better part of a year, and I have no Idea if my friends are safe or even alive? Haha! Better crack wise and slowly saunter out of my cell so I can snark at one of the ones responsible for all this!" Seriously, FUCK Sonic Forces. Even beyond what I think they've done wrong WITH the mandates,  I miss what they used to do WITHOUT them. Remember the ending of Sonic Battle? Emerl's death and everyone grieving and memorializing him in their own way? Or the end of SA2, where they're all just...talking. Remembering Shadow and honoring his sacrifice, questioning whether their ambitions are even right after seeing how far Gerald was willing to go for his goals and what it would've meant had he succeeded. Sonic having serious doubts about who he is and where he comes from ("created...the ultimate lifeform..."). Could you really see Sonic written with that kind of nuanced emotion nowadays? The comics do really good but still, it's not in the games which is what most of us see.

 

I understand where these mandates come from and why they exist (fucking Penders) but I don't think they're worth the cost. Rather than having these sorts of strict mandates what the series really needs instead is a strict approval process for character writing and writing in general. Instead of blocking a certain story beat or character moment because it "broke the rules", there should instead be an approval process designed to ask/answer the question "Does this work? Does this fit the brand? The character(s), The story? The universe?" This would be a MUCH more effective and less limiting way to avoid having Sonic become about the casts romantic tensions or grieving the loss of his children in a future timeline that gets erased from existence (FUCKING penders). A set of general guidelines? Sure. "Sonic is an action adventure series with a mixed focus on both depending on the entry. Stories should be focused working within this framework with exceptions given to more scrutinized review. EX: If the writing staff wants to include something like horror elements the review panel will go over the specific ideas and decide whether or not they fit the brand." That sort of thing.

[Mauro Fonseca]

2 hours ago, herefor1reason said:

Rather than having these sorts of strict mandates what the series really needs instead is a strict approval process for character writing and writing in general. Instead of blocking a certain story beat or character moment because it "broke the rules", there should instead be an approval process designed to ask/answer the question "Does this work? Does this fit the brand? The character(s), The story? The universe?" 

... So instead of what's already done, you want what's already done.

How do you even think the "mandates" work? It's literally what you're describing. The writers write something, say, Sonic crying his heart out, and it goes through an approval process where Sega says "Sonic can emote, Sonic can be sad, but Sonic doesn't openly cry in front of others, it doesn't fit the character. Instead of that, how about he's run off to the roof or something so he can be alone?"

 

Please please PLEASE if this thread teaches you guys anything let it be that the "mandates" absolutely do not work like how 90% of the fanbase thinks they do, and even Ian has had to repeatedly say this over and over.

[SBR2]

9 minutes ago, The KKM said:

... So instead of what's already done, you want what's already done.

How do you even think the "mandates" work? It's literally what you're describing. The writers write something, say, Sonic crying his heart out, and it goes through an approval process where Sega says "Sonic can emote, Sonic can be sad, but Sonic doesn't openly cry in front of others, it doesn't fit the character. Instead of that, how about he's run off to the roof or something so he can be alone?"

 

Please please PLEASE if this thread teaches you guys anything let it be that the "mandates" absolutely do not work like how 90% of the fanbase thinks they do, and even Ian has had to repeatedly say this over and over.

Dude some people legitimately don't even believe the Mandates are real preferring to believe Ian is restricting himself as part of some diabolical plan to ruin the franchise. 

[Rabbitearsblog]

2 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

Dude some people legitimately don't even believe the Mandates are real preferring to believe Ian is restricting himself as part of some diabolical plan to ruin the franchise. 

I just don't understand why people would think that.  They have to know that SEGA owns the characters and therefore, they are the ones responsible for how the characters are portrayed.  The writers are only going by what SEGA asked them to write, even though the mandates that SEGA has on the characters don't make any sense from a story perspective.

[Razule]

30 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

Dude some people legitimately don't even believe the Mandates are real preferring to believe Ian is restricting himself as part of some diabolical plan to ruin the franchise. 

In their minds, SEGA apparently just doesn't care that Ian is telling lies about them. He must have some major dirt on someone for them to have kept him around for this long. Truly, he is a mastermind.

[Mauro Fonseca]

5 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I just don't understand why people would think that.  They have to know that SEGA owns the characters and therefore, they are the ones responsible for how the characters are portrayed.  The writers are only going by what SEGA asked them to write, even though the mandates that SEGA has on the characters don't make any sense from a story perspective.

How don't they? How does "Sonic can be sad but he's not the kind to focus on his negative emotions, and he definitely doesn't cry in front of others" something that doesn't make any sense from a story perspective? It's just "This character doesn't cry, this other does, but this one doesn't". Think of what mandates you think don't make any sense from a story perspective, and then think if you actually know them at all or if you're just going by super exaggerated fandom panic stories. Where did you hear them from? IS there a way they might actually be a reasonable core in them? If so, isn't it more likely that the absurd version you heard is just fandom exaggeration?

[SBR2]

What gets me about this idea the mandates are detrimental to storytelling is they kinda haven't been. Like at all.

Sonic can't cry: Except for those times he did including the recent movie and apparently it's novelization where he's blubbering every page.

Sonic can't lose: Yes. Neither can Superman or James Bond. As I said that's just basic storytelling. It'd be kinda unsatisfying if you got to the end and the hero completely and utterly fails.

Canon Characters can't have parents: ...so? At most having parents around would be a piece of trivia. This series isn't about the amazing domestic adventures of Sonic an friends. Honestly the Archie parents were fine but they added basically nothing and honestly treating Sonic like an actual teenager who gets told no by his parents feels weird and wrong.

As for Shadow...well I've made my thoughts on Shadow clear in the IDW thread and honestly I just don't see how his current portrayal is all that different than any of his Post-SA2 appearances. I never got the impression that Team Dark was some close knit family unit best buddies forever kind of deal either. They were literally thrown together by Rouge. 

[Rabbitearsblog]

4 hours ago, SBR2 said:

What gets me about this idea the mandates are detrimental to storytelling is they kinda haven't been. Like at all.

Sonic can't cry: Except for those times he did including the recent movie and apparently it's novelization where he's blubbering every page.

 

I thought that SEGA barely had involvement in the movie.  If they did, they probably wouldn't have Sonic be lonely throughout the movie.

[Scritch the Cat]

Thinking about it some more, then apparent current mandates for Shadow are double stupid because Shadow's psyche as it used to be seen was driven entirely by the implications of friendship.  Shadow when introduced was an artificial lifeform who never had much contact with the vast majority of people (including his sentient relatives); he had only two friends with him on the ARK, one was murdered, the other largely succeeded in brainwashing him to destroy the world in retaliation, when on Earth his only initial ally was their only living relative, and Rouge and Amy helped bring out his merciful side again by reminding him more of Maria. 

The problem as I see it is that after Shadow went through that character development arc, nothing soundly exists by default to motivate him so they lost a clear direction.  I was never among the faction that objected to Shadow being revived after SA2--that was back before the series gave people much bigger things to debate and critique--largely because I felt there wasn't a big deal to bringing back a character just because he's cool to many players.  I liked having Shadow around because it was nice to have a member of the cast who felt more like me.  There's been a lot of talk about it on another thread lately; many gamers are introverts.  We're not completely antisocial, but we have some things that keep us somewhat separate from society, and in turn, lose us some opportunities that being closer to society would afford.  So while we like playing as others in video games, a lot of protagonists are widely beloved in their own world, and rather upbeat as a result.  Not necessarily relatable to quite a few gamers.  Shadow isn't like that, which is why I think he's become so popular to many fans; he too is an introvert mostly following his own interests, even if that comes at the expense of social contacts. 

However, Shadow as originally written wasn't introverted due to any innate personality, but due to circumstances.  So there's a series of choices of where they can go from there, but all of them have pretty big flaws.  Having Shadow get over his misanthropy because he concludes that the brutality he suffered from attacking GUN soldiers isn't the norm from people would be logical character development, but it also might take out some of what people love about him.  Alternately, hey can give him more amnesia, as they did immediately on his resurrection, so he can learn some things again.  They can come up with excuses for why he's still haunted by his past, and maybe even driven to desperation.  That was obviously the route they took with his self-titled game, but it isn't new to literature; Marvel made rather frequent additions to Wolverine's past so they could keep him rather grumpy and withdrawn as a result of his mental scars.  Or, they could just make his introversion a bit congenital; essentially implying that while it wasn't as easy to realize this when he also had external factors, now it's pretty clear.  It seems that last thing is what they've been doing now, and you know?  It might actually be an okay path to take, but I think what makes it so much worse is that now the introversion is only written as a negative.  With the lighter tone the series tends to take now (or did; who knows anymore?), that tends to fall into the jokes about "Ow the edge" or "Damn fourth chaos emerald", or just Shadow being the designated jerk.  The stories they want to tell now aren't likely to see anything worth commending in more reclusive personalities.

[Rabbitearsblog]

This is why I don't really agree with most of SEGA's mandates at this point.  It seems like they are trying to make the characters flat instead of really developing them in certain situations.  Like for example, you have the infamous "Sonic can't cry" mandate set by SEGA.  I mean, don't get me wrong.  I wouldn't want Sonic to be a blubbering mess, but what happens if Sonic gets in a situation that could be too much for him to handle emotionally?  Like, what happens if Tails died (I doubt SEGA would ever go in this direction, but this is just a "What If?" scenario)?  Would Sonic just be happy at Tails' death, despite the fact that Tails has been his best friend for years?  There are ways that SEGA can bypass the whole "not crying" thing by having Sonic just react appropriately, like maybe instead of crying, he would be upset at Tails' death, but either that could lead him to quit being a hero because he can't take the pain or he could be very angry and take out his revenge on whoever killed Tails.

And of course, you have the whole issue with Shadow's portrayal as just being dark and edgy and nothing more.  The reason why Shadow was such a popular character in the first place was because of his tragic backstory of losing Maria and how he ended up saving the world once he realized that his actions wasn't going to make things better.

Taking these emotional aspects away from the characters is not going to do the franchise any favors as I'm assuming that most fans were into the franchise because they liked the characters and the developments they went through.  I'm hoping that SEGA change their mandates and at least, let the characters get some natural development instead of being afraid to take these characters in places they wouldn't have gone before.

[Redemption]

@Rabbitearsblog should mandates be changed to boundries because maybe Sega is trying to protect us from what could happen if those mandates weren't there. I agree some are really quite rediculious but have we even thought to take their POV into consideration.

[Rabbitearsblog]

47 minutes ago, Redemption said:

@Rabbitearsblog should mandates be changed to boundries because maybe Sega is trying to protect us from what could happen if those mandates weren't there. I agree some are really quite rediculious but have we even thought to take their POV into consideration.

What would SEGA be protecting us from?

[Mauro Fonseca]

40 minutes ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

What would SEGA be protecting us from?