So fictional characters have nothing relate-able to real people? Are you sure? I would say millions of kids relate and identify with fictional characters. The analogy is spot on - the people reading it have clouded judgement.
... if you're trying to argue character design changes make sense and should be accepted by everyone because of human bodily functions, isn't that a bit silly? I mean, as you're saying all that Sonic there has a cyclops eye.
At least the interviewer was smart enough to tie in the Sonic Boom theme to the game :P. Getting some major Ratchet & Clank: All 4 One vibes. Moreso from the way he described teamwork than anything else.
Was this drawn by you? If so, I'm just wondering if it would be all right for me to feature this in a video... when I shit on the character designs.
The more I think about it, the more I think that this is Sega's attempt to reintroduce other playable characters back into Sonic. They heard complaints about the other playable characters, so they made Sonic go solo for a while. Now that they've seen complaints about the lack of playable characters, perhaps they thought the best way to address those complaints is to create a spin-off series where there are other characters to play as. The main issue people seem to have with this spin-off series are the character designs and the general art direction. I'm sure kids in the 6 to 12 demographic may like it, but who's to say they didn't like the modern Sonic they already had? Heck, who's the say they wouldn't like classic Sonic? The Genesis titles are still being re-released on modern devices and you can still find a lot of classic Sonic merchandise at various stores. If they're going to keep Sonic Team's modern Sonic around, and Sonic Boom is being aimed at kids, then what demographic is Sega aiming for with Sonic Team's modern Sonic?
That's part of what irritates me about this. Sega's continues to show no commitment to keeping Sonic's image consistent. Now we're going to have this Sonic and that Sonic and all these differents fans of everything, and Sega will be able to please even fewer people at the same time.
Yeah. On top of that, I'm getting this feeling that Sonic Team's modern Sonic is going to aim for a different demographic now that Sonic Boom is here to aim for the kids. Which demographic Sonic Team plans to aim for now is a mystery. Unleashed and Colors aimed to please the Dreamworks and Pixar crowd, Generations aimed to please both classic fans and modern ones, and then Sonic Team went full Mario on us with Lost World. Now that Sonic Boom has been assigned to appeal to younger fans or, at least, kids who aren't already fans, does that mean Sonic Team plans to aim for older fans? I guess we'll find out sooner or later.
I'm kind of confused as to why people are bowing out now. There have been many worse things to happen to this franchise and if something like this is going to tear you down, I can't wait to see when the worse things come by again because I guarantee that at least one more dark age will happen. Also, this is a series that is aiming for a base of 6-14 year old boys. Not a bunch of 20-30 something year old grown men. An 8 year old boy will certainly not care about how buff Knuckles looks or Sonic's arms being blue, I didn't when I saw Sonic's green eyes. EDIT: Yes, my complaints about the designs in this thread make me a slight hypocrite. Shoot me. Another EDIT: I know I don't make a good argument either so just ignore opinions.
Actually, this being a spin-off franchise kinda shows that they do have commitment to keeping his image the same. They could have made this a reboot of the franchise, but they're still keeping the Sonic Colours/Generations/Lost World style as well while having this as an alternate take by western developers. All this does is add more variety to the Sonic franchise. This isn't much different from Mega Man having spin-offs like Mega Man X, Legends, Battle Network etc. Also, if SEGA tried to please as many as people as possible with the Sonic series by keeping it the same, the franchise would probably end up getting stale.
If Sonic Boom does well this will be Sonic's image, at least that's what I think. If he bombs then SEGA could simply disregard it and move on.
I don't think Sonic has ever had a consistent image in the sense that there's only one universe, so we've always had things on the side of main games. There are more than three official comic book universes, (One of which is probably pulling the plug and starting over from scratch.) cartoon series that all tried different directions, and video games telling radically different stories from each other on different platforms. And everybody wonders why this fanbase is so far fragmented. However, that's also part of the reason Sonic appeals to many more people than it normally would by itself.
The gameplay for this game sounds great, but it's unfortunate the characters designs aren't better. Still, I have a lot of hope for this game. Too bad I won't be able to own the HD version unless I buy a Wii U someday. Hopefully the 3DS version is good. God fucking dammit, why the hell is there never online co-op for the games with co-op I give a rat's ass about? >_< I am not a fan of local co-op.
Has anyone mentioned how Tails seems to have a lisp in the TV show clip yet? It's pretty off-putting, I don't feel it was really needed.
My issue with this comparison is that all of those spin-offs are well-defined. Each one has a distinct incarnation of Mega Man that is its own character with its own personality and backstory, and the surrounding worlds and characters are only tangentially related to each other ("different time periods of mostly the same universe" notwithstanding). Sonic Boom, on the other hand, is about as distinguishable from the main Sonic canon as Universe A was from Universe One. That is to say, it has the same characters (albeit with altered visual designs), the same basic conflict, and a setting that hasn't shown itself to serve any functionally different purpose. Frankly, I don't see why the Sonic Boomiverse needs to exist. Maybe it's meant to be some sort of Sonic testing grounds, but this is a hell of a lot of effort to put into a spin-off that hasn't even gotten off of the ground yet.
My guess is that it exists because SEGA of America wants to be able to fuck around with the Sonic franchise without SEGA of Japan not agreeing to the changes they're making to it.
That'd make sense, but I still think it's a shame that they had to pick THIS of all things to sink so much promotion into. It feels like the sort of alternate world Sonic might stumble into in the Archie comics. Hell, I bet THOSE guys would know how to turn this into something interesting.
It's a shame that Sega of America is just now getting the rights to do something serious with Sonic. Polarizing opinions of SatAM aside, I think it would have given an alternate universe to Sonic that was compelling and fleshed out.
I don't know if this was linked here yet, but here's some details from behind the scenes http://www.polygon.com/2014/2/6/538...-over-to-western-studios-and-gave-him-a-scarf Basically Iizuka is still overseeing it, but the idea is they want Sonic to be more appealing to the western audience again
Heavier emphasis on combat? Oh dear. The more they discuss the intentions of the game, the more it really does feel like a Jak & Daxter game with some Sonic thrown in. Has Sonic's influence in the West truly waned to the point that they needed to take such drastic action? At last check, up until Lost World, Sonic was still at least a million-seller per game. It feels like this was more out of desperation than anything else.
