What it feels like to me is that Amy just went from being an old kind of generic girl character to a more modern kind of generic girl character. I'm not super fond of either, but at least she's much less annoying and more competent these days, I suppose.
Amy was already badass in SA2B and the Advance games. All Heroes did was make her a predator and relegate her verticality to a six year old bunny rabbit, when Amy was already perfectly aerial alone with just her hammer in both SA1s.
Yeah that's true I just realized. Even though Amy did have to get bailed out by Tails, she still managed to sneak into a high security prison island on her own and somehow obtained a keycard to bust Sonic out. That's hardcore.
See, you're laser focused on her "bad" portrayals and comparing her current version to that. I've acknowledged her bad parts already, I don't think I need to say imaging a robot Sonic found is somehow your secret love child is a flattering portrayal. I just personally didn't take as big of an offense to it as most people did. In any case, I'm speaking mostly about the games Amy actually had a role to play that wasn't just comic relief. So mostly the Adventure games. I wouldn't even necessarily say all of her mid-2000s portrayals were that bad, but if you're already operating from the impression that she was so awful that her current iterations are a marked improvement, then there's not much further to discuss. We're operating on two different premises. You think Amy was awful and needed to be "fixed" and I think they just made her more marketable for corporate branding.
I'll give you the Sonic Advance games, but given that Amy is only playable in Sonic Adventure 2's versus mode I'm not sure how canon her abilities there are. And really, you see her as a predator in Sonic Heroes? What an exaggeration.
I'm comparing her current incarnation to every incarnation I'm familiar with. I just think you're not seeing the current Amy for what she is, and while I acknowledge there is some amount of stuff in her SA1 and SA2 self that would have been worth salvaging, it's not such a departure that I could ever find myself asking for the mid-2000s version of the character again, because being more "unique" isn't the same as being good. There's always room to improve, but not if you walk in the complete wrong direction. If we're limiting this discussion to games where Amy has agency and a role in the plot, there's not much to complain about in the modern era either, since it sidelined her the way it sidelined everyone else. And my issue with this is that you could apply this to almost anything, it's assigning a motive to a decision with no perspective. Is "corporate branding" also the reason Knuckles is less of a doofus now? Did nobody working on the past few games care about Knuckles? It's basically the exact same thing. I have to wonder if you only treat "fixing" a character's poor writing like it's a dirty word when it's a portrayal you're more likely to go to bat for. Because, like, I get annoyed by modern Shadow, but I don't think of it this way. It makes sense that they made him the way he is. If Shadow is to stick around, he needs some defining character trait, and since he finished his gordian knot of a character arc in 06, he was left without a direction. Making him a grumpy loner who only seems to enjoy fighting for the sake of improving himself isn't totally congruent with the guy who wanted to help humanity and had a more casual rivalry with Sonic, but it's also a character who can push a story forward without having to be affected too much by change. Is that "marketing"? Maybe, since it enables him to be shoved into whatever story they feel like, but I guarantee the same phrase would pop up if he were talking about Maria and Gerald all the time, which is what people fear is coming from Sonic X Shadow Generations.
I do see current Amy for what she is; they want her to be portrayed as a positive role model who grew beyond her original role as a girl who always needed to be helped. It's not that I don't see it, I just don't buy what they're trying to sell. You can call it cynical or what have you, but to accept the premise behind Amy's current character means you have to ignore two decades worth of inconsistent writing. I can't just change how I see things just because people aren't mad anymore. I accept this new version of Amy, but I simply cannot buy into the idea that it's a logical progression of her character that she organically grew into over time. If it was a different version of her? Sure, but not in the games that barely try to connect their stories together. I mean the primary reason these changes are even happening is because people kept complaining about them very loudly, that's usually why these things happen to begin with. The fallout from that one Tails scene in Forces was so bad that they literally addressed it and made it a plot point Frontiers. If people didn't make a huge fuss about these characters, do you think Sega would care enough to do anything about them? They would have never been written that badly to begin with. And I'd agree with you. I think you're misunderstanding that I simply want the old thing that I like back and hate the new thing. In reality, I'd prefer a logical progression for these characters based on the established traits that they have and for that to inform their actions in the story. You could easily have a story where Shadow isn't quite as over his own trauma as he thinks if you justified it well enough. Conversely, you can also have stories where Knuckles learns from his prior experiences to make better informed decisions or Amy to develop into a more capable person who can properly sort out her personal feelings for another. These are all valid stories to tell with these characters, but you have to put the work in to get to these points and Sega aren't willing to do that. It's much easier for them to just adjust their personalities as they see fit to justify whatever story wanna tell. It's why Knuckles was a commander in Forces all of a sudden with no buildup to it or how that coincides with his established characterization as a hermit who prefers to keep to himself. Seeing Knuckles develop into that role could have compelling story, but it's one Sega didn't wanna tell and expects the audience to accept at complete face value. It's why I can't be bothered to care so much about this series' lore anymore because it's at the whims of a company who could care less about it beyond as an excuse to justify the gameplay premise.
I guess I'm just still struggling to see why you would even specify Amy, or why you'd specify now. Like yeah, Amy isn't the same as she was before, but neither is anything or anyone else. It seems less "corporate pandering" and more that they just only take any of this on a game-by-game basis. Inconsistency characterizes the series, we all know this, but I don't see what makes the inconsistency more "corporate" now, other than the fact that people like the changes better now than they did in 2005. It's not like things were done according to some brave artistic vision back then, or like they didn't think people would like what they were doing. They were just worse at it.
I think up until Heroes, things were fairly consistent, but yea it just kind of fell off a cliff after that. No argument there. I think the main difference for me is that this new push for the cast doesn't feel like it's going to go anywhere and felt more like just retreading the stuff people liked in the case of Tails and Knuckles (and presumably what they're gonna do with Shadow in Generations) or taking her character in a somewhat different direction in the case of Amy. Like you said with Shadow, it's to keep them in a place where it's easier to write stories around them whenever they want. It's not necessarily bad and if you've hated the flanderized versions they were before, I completely understand thinking it's an improvement. And it's probably for the best with an ongoing series like Sonic for it's main cast to be somewhat static. For what it's worth, I think Tails was handled the best in Frontiers. It's clearly retreading the whole "I have to believe in myself" arc again from Adventure, but addressing what happened in Forces and using that as a means of developing him was a good move imo. Would have been all too easy to just pretend like it never happened.
It's definitely fair to say the cast should be able to grow from story to story. I'm personally optimistic, since I would disagree that we're just retreading old stuff (we'll have to wait and see about SXSG), and we've only had one major game since the big story change.
I don't see Frontier's characterizations of Knuckles and Tails as "Retreads" as much as I see them as "Resets". It was an attempt to reconcile who these characters were in the early 2000s with how they've been in the years since. I think Ian Flynn wants to move the characters forwards in the next game if he gets to write it. I think SEGA will likely let him write the next game, but I'm not sure if SEGA will want him to evolve the characters or not. I think they will want them to stay where they are post-Frontiers.
Hard disagree with that YouTube video. His assessment was fine up until he said Classic/Original and Modern Sonic should be separate versions. I don’t know how to explain the extra chaos emeralds (I’m fine retconning whatever was going on with that or come up with an explanation). Knuckles being away from the ME is perfectly fine imo. I never thought he literally had to stay there forever. There must be some explanations for this. Fan or official. Those things aside, for the sake argument let’s say they’re not an issue, saying Classic and Modern are too different to exist in the same continuity is so unfair. Why can’t the same character(s) go through a variety of storylines, situations, and themes? That’s way more interesting than being separate things. I absolutely love that Modern Sonic is the same character from the 90s era. Seeing him grow within the games is one of my favorite things. I love knowing this is the same character that went through all those previous adventures and side games. It adds to his appeal. That he’s been through so many different things and battles. It gives him a grand history/backstory and he keeps going. You can have “Classic” aesthetics and gameplay with the Modern cast. As he showed with Lost World and Colors. Some games being more serious and others more lighthearted is NOT a problem. Again why should one design be bound to one direction? I’ve always been a TMNT fan too. I would also like to see them age but the reason there’s been so many versions is because of licensing. There’s never been a goto mainline that could be around for 30 years. It’s always changed hands. Sonic started as a game and Sega still makes the games...this is why it works. Of course they’ve licensed him for other things too but the games can and should be 1 continuity.
I mean he is right that there's only so much you can do with Classic since no matter what happens, it has to take place before Adventure. It puts a limit on the types of development the cast can go through.
Here's another unpopular opinion about the classic 2D games (since some people are taking about aspect ratios in another topic, I remembered about this): while I don't mind improvements such as a 16:9 aspect ratio and an extended palette, smooth rotation on slopes is where I draw the line. Sonic should only face one of the 8 main directions at all times. Or he can face towards the screen in certain special stages but that's it.
I think I've said this before but the inherent problem with splitting Classic and Modern into two separate canons is that there was never actually a point where the two characters were delineated as separate to begin with. What about in SA1 where Sonic makes references to the Genesis games? What about in Generations where it's made clear that Classic is Sonic from the past? Would we just have to ignore all that and start treating Forces as the true and honest canon, which itself doesn't even bother explaining why Classic is suddenly from another dimension? If so then I question what the problem actually is to begin with. I'd just ignore the current canon's inconsistencies since this other version of the canon would still be full of them anyway.
Possible unpopular opinion: to me this is a good thing. Too much changed in the early 00s as it is, having to keep things at a point before SA1 where said massive changes started (though nowhere near as bad as the main pivot, which was in SA2), I see as a positive.
Classic Sonic's storytelling is always gonna be minimalist, and it makes sense to keep it that way. Superstars' was maybe a little too shallow, but it's not a bad template for other games. They go to new places and meet new people with their own problems and themes, no problem. Not everyone needs to be a mainstay that keeps reappearing
