Good info, but it felt like the interviewers were trying to trap him a little. I cringed when he asked how the team's going to "cater" to old-school fans. There's a lot more tactful ways to ask that without making it sound entitled. I think it put the guy on defensive a bit.
Biggest problem with pieces of clothing, at least imo, is that it kills the character's identity. If Sonic and his friends were created with clothing from the very beginning it'd be cool, but changing this rule now it would be like giving Bugsbunny shoes or giving Mickey a baseball cap, it would just feel off. It's like the blue arms in the redesign, they are not a horrible change but they sure as hell feel like it just because they stray too far from the basic rules of the character's design set up long ago. While a piece of scarf is very much harmless and a shoe redesign doesn't feel too off, adding clothing to the characters would be a huge change that would feel off no matter how good it looked, because the rules are already set and clear: Sonic is blue. He have spikes in his head and skin-colored mouth, arms and belly. He also have red shoes and white gloves. No more, no less. You can change the details and whatever, but not the overall concept. Females on the other hand were presented from day one with clothing, so they don't feel too far off. You can argue that Sally from the Archie comics used to be naked and now she isn't anymore, but she changed to the rules applied to almost every other female on the Sonic universe, and since she is also a female, it's not that much of a change.
A few bits of clothing don't bother me so much. Tails having goggles and a tool belt fits pretty well. Sonic with a scarf feels way too tacky though. What kills it is what they did with the shoes, which were Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles's defining articles of clothing aside from the gloves. The tape covers Sonic's Iconic sneaker stripes/band, and Knuckles lost his Lego shoes. On another nitpicky note Sonic with blue arms is perplexing seeing how Amy kept hers tan. I know Shadow and Silver don't follow that tradition but it breaks up the colors better than a scarf does. It just feels like they did it so it would be different. I'm not even one of those "GREEN EYEEEEEES" people. Though the SA2 Soaps shoes did bug me.
Now what I have to ask is, does it bother you that Shadow has black arms or that Knuckles has red arms? Because that particular reasoning makes very little sense.
As long as they're in the spirit of the character and don't disrupt his shapes too much (the drifter scarf seems fine in both regards), I'm open to clothes on Sonic. Even the Zelda clothes above don't break his silhouette much aside from the hat. Yeah, that also confused me about the whole blue arms thing. I'd understand it being done to bring Sonic's design more in line with the rest of the cast, but not if they were going to leave Amy as the odd-character-out anyway.
You mean the character with the red stripes on his arm in order to more easily distinguish them and the character with a colour that doesn't bleed into itself as easily as blue?
To be honest, you're one of the only people I can remember objecting to the fur-colored arms. Maybe I just haven't been many places, but I haven't seen anyone complain. Plus, there's probably a reason the arms are colored... I bet they would look awful on the Sonic Boom designs if they were tan.
Just posting my annoyance of Sonic having blue arms too. In fact, if you think about real hedgehogs, I think the exact opposite would be more accurate - that only his spines should be blue, and the rest of his body should be skin-coloured:
I've seen plenty of people complaining about Sonic's blue arms. One of them said something along the lines of "that's the first thing I notice about bad fan art, and now it's part of the design. It looks WRONG".
The reason you don't see much complaints in a lot of places is the fear any such complaint will be ridiculed as "lol green eyes".
Sonic Boom isn't the only game coming being revealed this year. There's a Sonic Team game coming too, according to Takashi Izuka. I didn't start a new topic because there's basically no information, but I figured this information is at least somewhat relevant to this forum. EDIT: Woops, my bad. MyNintendoNews are claiming that this is what's been said, but the people at SSMB can't find it in the source article given. Still, I'll keep this post around; it might be true. EDIT II: I've replaced the link with a more reliable source, but the origin of the statement is still vague and unclear. File under "maybe" for now. EDIT III: I get misled. There is no news to report, please ignore/trash this post.
I know that it has been stated that this whole thing is a spin off and will not affect the main series...but has anyone been else wondering, whether - if Boom is like super well received when it launches - that they will make all the redesigns etc. bleed into the main series? Just something I was thinking about. Not a complaint, just a pondering thing.
In terms of art design, the two should stay separate. But in terms of mechanics, if BRB comes up with a great game mechanic (which, considering the developer's pedigree, I'm expecting at least a few), I'm all for Sonic Team incorporating them into future core titles. Sonic Boom has the potential to be a culling ground for new concepts and gameplay styles without interfering with development schedules on Sonic Team's end, or hurting the core series if some ideas are less than great. I think approaching the two series from that direction would be a fantastic way for Sega to go with the franchise for the future.
