Ouch, this stings pretty bad. I wonder what he thought of the whole stupid "classic Sonic is now from another world and not the past" thing. It makes no sense whatsoever. EDIT: Well... this is awkward...
I'm still willing to believe the info about Flynn that the guy who shared the script with me told me about. And obviously he is not going to say "yes I wrote an entire script of my own and sega rejected it" outright. I'm sure there are just too many old relationships around that nobody's looking to sever.
He says it's completely false though. If it was awkward he would have just ignored it or said he couldn't answer. To be fair I think that puts your source in a bit of a compromised state.
I suppose. The guy was not the original leaker of the script after all, he only gave it to me. It could most likely be secondhand info he heard from Discord or 4chan, he never went into specifics. I probably should have asked him again before making my post. If Flynn stands by his words, then at least it's good to have the confirmation. The script and its Excel doc it came from still legit, though. I have no reason to believe it's a dupe, considering how much stuff in it checks out with the info we got dripfed before the game came out, especially the words from that "Larry" person who posted in the comments on Sonic Stadium.
Yeah, I don't think you are making up the script, it's false or anything like that. That would take far too much of anyone's time :v: But I wouldn't count too much on what the source has told you if you catch what I mean.
These are all the criticisms that the game's story got here on Retro, minus the whole Phantom Ruby incongruities. And somebody pointed them out while the game was still in development. If this info is indeed legit, and I believe it is, then either SEGA or Sonic Team doesn't care anymore about good storywriting.
Alright, the doc actually has a column with the English script. I didn't mention it before because it's more or less near-final, vapid goodness like Sonic being tortured and Knux's comments about war already added and everything. Only some lines are slightly different, with some jokes being worse. Examples include Tails saying "Thank you for helping us, Sonic. It's been classic." when seeing Classic Sonic off and Sonic saying "Hey, what's shaking? Get it? Because it's shaking? Oh forget it… you've got no sense of humor." when we first see him in his cell. I wish I was joking. I'm bringing all this up because someone on Sonic Stadium brought up this screenshot of a Discord conversation from early 2017, back when we knew little to nothing about Forces. It's mentioned there that Tails closes his eyes and thinks to himself, "I'll be with you soon, Sonic." (in the afterlife). And, well... that's legit. That is Tails's line in the doc. I guess Sonic Team did listen to Webber on this one: Spoiler That's the only really notable thing about this near-final English script, though.
I kind of unironically love Tails' awful sense of humour and personality in the newer Sonic games, I can't lie :v: He's like that awful, arrogant friend you have but you can't help but like.
Ah, the Sonic Lost World approach to Sonic I see. I mean I kinda like Modern Sonic being a bit of a dork if only because he used to have no flaws at all and it was kinda boring. For all the writer's flaws I do like the idea of Sonic being a "Take action 1st, think 2nd" kinda guy while also the kinda person who thinks they're the best thing ever when they're really not.
Now this is really interesting, because the french version actually still has that line. When I first played the game in french, I though that the translators just took some liberties with the script because some lines were completely different, but it may very well be possible that they translated an earlier version of the script. Which mean that the script wasn't even finalized when they send it for translation :v:
Ngl I kind of love this approach too and the whole "hey what's shaking" line did make me smile, in spite of how cheesy it is. Getting a glimpse at this early draft of the script has been pretty interesting. I do wonder if it's possible to get any sort of insight into the development of the game. Like, at what point was classic Sonic shoehorned in? Was it always intended to be a boost game or was it supposed to build off of Lost World's gameplay? Was the avatar supposed to be the only playable character? More importantly, how did the staff at Sonic Team feel about the game they were building? Is this a case where someone's creative vision was shot down and meddled in by other people?
On other news, Forces is getting the vinyl treatment from Wayorecords. https://www.instagram.com/p/BkLej7kFPv1/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=1s8u44cafzqrv
So he was actually making fun of the old script when he hoked about Tails dying in Forces, wow. Oh, nice! It's always cool to see more Sonic OSTs getting the vinyl treatment.
For sure, wouldn't mind some of the past games like Sonic CD getting the treatment. If anyone is interested the Forces vinyl goes live on June 23rd here: https://www.wayorecords.com/en/sega-soundtracks/650-sonic-forces-original-soundtrack-the-vinyl-cutz.html
The obviously forced connection with Mania was the perfect excuse to conveniently dump Boom Sonic. We all know why that leftover scarf is there. Boom Sonic would have still fit with the “Sonic from a different dimension vibe” too. This change was made early on and what this part of the game tribes out to be was truly the better choice. #givingsomecredit
I don't know that Boom Sonic was ever supposed to be in there. It would make sense, but there's been nothing outside of fan speculation that suggests it was the case. We know that Sonic Wars started with the premise of a more serious game where Eggman has conquered 99% of the world. I believe it was Iizuka who decided that, as he stated as much in one of the pre-release interviews. While unconfirmed, it's been said that at one point the avatar character played a much bigger role than Sonic, and that was dialed back after a negative reaction from SoA and SoE. From the art blog we know that the core plot concepts like the resistance and such existed before any of the locations were finalized, so the basic story was decided long before the leaked script was written. We also know that it wasn't an early draft, since the deleted scene that Shun Nakamura read at Segafest (part of which was posted by him on Twitter) wasn't in it. There is a brief reference to it though, with someone calling Eggman's Casino Forest lab “the 999 lab.” The Phantom Ruby thing seemed like a fairly last minute addition. Since Iizuka's involvement with Forces (at least later in development) was checking on the project and telling them to add stuff like the drop dash from Sonic Mania, I'd assume it was his idea and they just replaced the Valtron with it.
I did translate his Segafes tweets recently. On the event he says that it was a part of an early story for Sonic Forces, when it was established that Buddy had amnesia and fought Infinite in the past.
