In Support Of Humans

I always thought hot dogs were synthetic meat, not the real thing you get from animals.

 

The way I see it, it never mattered where Sonic's home planet really was, because for all intents and purposes he really lived in his own little "world", metaphorically.

Humans were brought in to be more prominent figures when the games started bulking up on their story chops - which have been, consistently, the same level of quality as bad anime (at their best!)

The only character that has ever mattered was Sonic. I don't need sixteen generic-assholes-per-city block to offer up throw-away pieces of dialog or to stand around in cutscenes to look surprised when the badguy shows up and wrecks some shit. Depending on how it's handled, I don't even need dialog. Every single piece of Sonic plot dialog can be summed up as:

Sonic: EGGMAN IS BAD!
Generic Asshole: OH NO! HERE HE IS NOW
Eggman: YOU'RE STUPID.
Sonic: NO YOU ARE
Eggman: GRRRRR YOU'RE THE STUPID ONE
Sonic: I KNOW YOU ARE BUT WHAT AM I
Eggman: YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE LAST OF ME!
Tails: THAT WAS A CLOSE ONE

Anything that doesn't fall in to the above category is usually equally as worthless for other reasons. I don't care that Shadow has amnesia. I don't care that Tails has to grow up. I don't care if Amy Rose will ever actually marry Sonic - especially not in the ways Sonic Team tells these things to me. With a few rare exceptions, how Sonic Team plots storylines for Sonic games actually makes me less interested with the characters in each passing game. An hour and a half of cutscenes in Sonic Adventure 2 means nothing when it's wrapped around shitty translation, bad acting and inconsistent continuity (this goes with every story-heavy Sonic game, which likes to pick-and-choose at random which parts of the past games are "canon" and which parts aren't).

The only other reason humans exist is to fill up empty space. But, if we didn't have that empty space, we wouldn't need people to fill it up. Sonic Adventure 2 does this to a certain degree. Gerald, Maria, The President and his Secretary exist strictly to "flesh out" the storyline, but even then, they're technically worthless. They exist only as garnish to the meat and potatoes of gameplay - and these are, after all, videogames. I don't need a sprig of parsley to eat a Steak.

 

I thought the story went something like this:

Sonic lived on Mobius, an Earth like planet. In Mobius's earlier days man kind found a way to genetically engineer animals with intelligence, using them as labor slaves. The animals rose up and fought the humans and eventually won, meaning not many humans left.

Then later on came Sonic and DR. Kintobor. DR. Kintobor met Sonic and was doing research on him (turning Sonic blue by accident). One day there was another accident turning DR. Kintobor into DR. Robotnik (Sonic 1 - Pre Sonic Adventure).

Through something (I can't remember), Sonic and the gang were on Earth, Robotnik showed up and was then trying to take over Earth.

That's why there are more people now, because they are on Earth.

I know there are different variations of the story, but I thought that's how it generally went.

 

The way nobody seems to bat an eyelid at a fast, talking blue hedgehog and his gang of sidekicks/hangers-on/obsessed stalkers in Unleashed seems to me to ether indicate that it's not incredibly unusual, or that I'm taking the game far too seriously and I should really just relax.

Probably the latter.

 

I don't have anything in specific againsed humans characters and Sonic, but it dose make so little sence that they don't populate the world with equal measures of both (then ofcourse you get the screaming fans saying Sega stole there fancharacter)

there are a couple of instances in the Sonic x piolet (1st one still remains in the intro) that there were intended to be more animals populating the world.



I just don't know what they find is so horrible about having more sonic similar characters around, it only stands to reason that there is a general population of 'non-superhero' animals wondering around, drinking coffee and reading the paper with a 9-5 job

 

Some appear in the uncut version of Sonic X, when Dark Oak's plants have begun growing. Most are multi-coloured hedgehogs if I remember right.

 

El Gran Gordo, you're a genius. ... well, to me, anyhow.

It's also a pleasant surprise to see not everyone here seems to hate humans in the games for being humans. That'd be self-racism or so.

As for me, I always thought it stood to reason that there just HAD to be other humans. I mean, everyone has to come from somewhere, and the human scientist, Dr. Ivo "Eggman" Robotnik, is no exception to this. Now, if they just fix the ratio human/talking, walking animal, I am fine, but that's just how I see it.

 

Haha, someone else agrees that Sonic 06 is the Twilight of gaming.


I suppose I have nothing against there being humans in the series; especially if they take their design cues from 1960s Disney films.

Arguably what I'd really like to see -- especially since it's the sort of style influencing Unleashed's concept art for characters -- is in addition to several humans more of the smaller characters from the old games actually taking a role in advancing the games plot somehow, much like that one chao colony in Sonic Adventure. Despite taking place with lots of humans, the game actually showed a couple animal societies: the echidna tribe, and the chao. (The latter seem to have a level of sentience akin to that of the small animals in the old games, I think, especially the flickies.)

However, these two same populations don't have any analogues in the "modern day" parts of that game, so thus we see a town full of humans as well as 6 seemingly inexplicable furry dudes, and no others anywhere else, at least none on the same level of Sonic and crew. There is no character like the Amy in Sonic CD who is of the same essence of Sonic and his friends but doesn't serve as a playable character.

This is one reason I support, and I also suspect other people would also like, say, finding a town that was populated with the semi-sentient furballs with the same general qualities as Sonic and Tails, if for no other reason than OMG THAT'S MY FANCHARACTER THERE WOW.

But it strikes me as particularly odd that the smaller animals like the ones in the robots in the early games don't really ever show up outside of in those robots, especially now. In, say, Sonic CD they could sometimes be seen frolicking outside of robots (in fact Robotnik didn't even use any of them in said robots) or occasionally in the chambers -- which no longer exist in the games; the mechanic to hit them was awkward in Sonic Adventure. (Why not something built like the one in Sonic CD though? Seems to me like that would be better than the giant end-of-level ring.) What I'd also like to see is beyond the large cities full of humans, small towns where Pocky, Rocky, and Flicky gather. They have to go somewhere, after all. I envision it something like The Aristocats -- there are humans, but they are mostly unaware of the deeper plot involving all the animals and Robotnik, but Sonic and friends are.

 

As the series gets older, it goes from Animal-people populated world, to Sonic and co. are the only known animal-people in a human populated world.

 

If these picutres are to be believed then Sonic is a crazy dude who runs around naked all day.

 

To me Blaze, it seems that you're opposed to having humans or NPC's in the game because they don't do anything and because all attempts to have currently failed (to you). I don't think you're really opposed to barring humans from the games. I think you're opposed to putting humans in the games in a bad way. If they were integrated into the game well (I thought they were in Unleashed), you might like them. And if you weren't forced to talk to them. I think that people wouldn't be opposed to humans so much if they were put in an animated series rather than a game. Besides, with Sonic's current state, making a good story should be the last of Sonic Team's worries (something both of us can agree on).

As far as their physical appearance goes, they should definitely look cartoony. Sonic's initial design by Oshima didn't suggest manga/anime to me in any way. In interviews, Oshima has said that Sonic was representative of America, that's why he has blue fur and red shoes (with white stripes, even)! He looks kind of like Felix the Cat, actually. In his newer design by Yuji Uekawa, you'll notice that during the Adventure-era that the artwork gave Sonic and the gang noodly arms and legs, something manga/anime artists never do, because they think it looks crude or amateurish. Unfortunately, Uekawa's art seems to have become more stiff and geometrical because of that kind of thinking. My point with all of that is that because Sonic's design doesn't suggest anime/manga or realism, it's only logical that the humans and other NPC's should appear cartoony as well. Most of us probably can't come to a consensus on just how well the designs of the people fit with Sonic in Unleashed, but it's definitely a step in the right direction from Sonic 06'.

Personally, I think that the designs of the humans in Unleashed didn't go far enough. They need to make them look even more cartoony, more diverse, but still have a way to make Robotnik stand out.

 

This can be explained by Chili Dog trees....they grow natrually and have no intelligence. Problem solved. In a serious sense, this is a bit of a conundrum!

Look at the upper left corner of that picture. So apparently Tails isn't the only one with two tails? I'm going to assume that someone wanted it to be tails but decided to turn him another color since he was already conversing with Sonic on computer cam at the bottom of the picture, so it's just a goof.


My question is this: why are most humans in the Sonic universe characterized as Americans?

 

SA2 and Shadow were both made in America, so G.U.N. and all of its affiliates are probably a result of the location (just as Las Vegas inspired Casino Night Zone). I don't think anything outside of that particular arc strikes me as truly American (besides Empire City, of course).

Of course, I've never really seen Sonic X, so I can't speak for that.

 

But what is defined as being "integrated well"? As inoffensive as they were in Sonic Unleashed, when you really stop and think about why they are there and the nature of that sort of thing, yes, the town sections of the game were absolutely worthless. I didn't mind that they were there, because they were so small and easy to navigate, but they were fluff. Filler. A product of Sonic Team trying to tell "stories" with the Sonic franchise.

They could have, just as easily, subtracted the town sections and made you go straight to the Gaia Gate where you select your level instead and the game would have been better for it. Any additional missions offered by human NPCs could have been converted to be more level warps in the Gaia Gate.

Just like that, humans become worthless. Instead, though, they all have dialogs and little story arcs and missions they give you to follow a long these story arcs. A divorced father wants to get in touch with his long lost daughter. An up-and-coming singer wants to get in contact with the hottest record producer. A woman needs to find a suitor. A kung-fu master gives you a crash course in karate. A psychic has lost her crystal ball. A man wants to travel the world to sample local flavors of tea. A little girl's brave sister has gone missing. So on and so forth.

Subtract the humans and all you're left with is mission types. Find an object or a person. Complete the level before time runs out. You get the idea.

Imagine if, in Mario 64, instead of just jumping in to a painting and selecting your mission from a list, you had to find and talk to a Toad somewhere in the castle. For every single mission. Want to do Cool Cool Mountain's rolling snowball mission? There's a Toad on the roof you have to talk to if you want to start it. So you get the roof and you have to listen to his huge diatribe about how he built a snowman without a head and at the end he asks if you want to find his snowman's head.

That's Sonic Unleashed. Either humans exist as background decoration or they exist in a way that would be better suited to a menu screen. If you start talking human characters that are important to the story, we start getting in to Princess Elise and Christopher Thorndyke territory; e.g. a third wheel.

So hey, if they can find a way to incorporate humans in to Sonic, that's nice, I guess, but I certainly can't think of any way I would like that to happen.

 

It's no wonder how the game ended up like this. Sonic Team seems to have just come up with this arbitrary list of things they think people want to see in a Sonic game.

 

Again, it wouldn't have made a difference if those humans had been... well, humans or any other species. You would have just the same reason to dislike the character.

 

I watched the entire 360/PS3 version of the game get played from start to finish by some guy on Youtube. You had to talk to people on maybe a few occasions to advance to the next stage. It was usually not having enough medals that ticked people off. Fix that problem and I don't see a minute or two of talking killing anyone. For the most part, it wasn't mandatory, and if people are still complaining after that, boohoo. Seriously guys. For me, personally, I don't mind if it takes five whole minutes to get from the hub to the next act, as long as I get to play it and as long as the loading times aren't ridiculously long. But that's just me, so disregard the last sentence if you want. And hey, didn't Sonic Adventure require a fair bit of time to get around? There weren't people you had to talk to, but there was the ice stone and the wind stone you needed to carry around. People are hardly any different from that in terms of stalling you from your next destination.

 

I assume it's because they wanted Sonic to be popular in America. Nintendo's aggressive marketing turned the US into the biggest market for video games practically overnight. "Thunderbirds" was one of the most jarring instances of something foreign aiming for marketability in America. The creators of the show were hoping to get a toy deal in the USA, so all the characters have American accents, but they still speak using British phraseology. Someone with an American accent referring to a scuba diver as a frogman cracks me up. Ironically, I don't think they ever got a toy deal in the US, but I still learned about it via the toys, while I was on vacation in Europe years ago. I'm sure they probably used the term "on holiday" in an American accent as well.

And he's also really short