How would you redesign Sonic the Hedgehog?

I wasn't intending to propose a retconning, amalgamationist reboot. Trying to squash all the different character backstories into one would truly be an exercise in mangling.

While Bostwick's comprehensive re-envisioning is impressive if only in its wall-of-text enormity, I don't really want the characters to have a comprehensive backstory, where you know essentially everything they've done from birth to the present day. Mystery stops being fun once you reveal it, and canonically explaining precisely where and why Sonic / Tails / Eggman come from can, I think, only end in storyfag tears.

If anything I guess I want more mystery and ambiguity about exactly who Sonic is and the world he lives in. Possibly in this thread or elsewhere, there was some time ago a good deal of BAWWW about this:



...and how you wouldn't see Modern Sonic buy groceries with a smile from a Parisian street vendor, but instead he'd insult the vendor, grin like a jerk, and bolt off to the nearest fast food joint for fried chicken chilli dogs. Now I personally like jerk-ass Sonic, but given that the dude is first and foremost a videogame character, you DO have the option for him to do both - a la Chronicles, where the player was the arbiter of how much of a dick Sonic could be via dialogue choices. This was great, giving me the opportunity for Sonic to persecute Eggman like the genocidal bastard deserves, while everyone less wrathful than me could play the "They're friendly rivals" conversation route.

So while I accept that Sonic's eight different canon pasts are incommensurate, I'd much rather his future didn't branch wildly across alternate continuities and universes. And while it may be impossible to retroactively squish SatAM and AoTsH into the canon, references like we find in Chronicles are great. Making Sonic's personality the player's responsibility is also a great way of helping him be all things to all people, letting YOU play Sonic precisely how YOU think he should be played, instead of having people bawwwww their eyes out when the script railroads the hedgehog into shit-earing-grin mode. This interactivity and player choice is what videogames are FOR.

...but let us return to geography for a bit, as that was where my main gripe lay - Sonic Team's apparent insistence that you need an Arabian dimension to have Sonic fighting genies and an Arthurian dimension to have Sonic fighting knights. You don't. I'll try and channel the spirit of the Sonic CD cutscene that you and I find so sexual, Mercury:

One of the things I loved about Ye Olde Sonic was that he lived in a surreal and magical world where you got weird, fantastic stuff like rainbow plumes when he runs across streams, and a time-travelling planet that appears only one day in every 30 was the kinda thing you'd expect. And yet Modern Sonic has to travel to a Fantasy Parallel Dimension for this sort of thing to happen to him. WHY? What happened to the mystery and fantasy and enormity of the world he already lives in?

TL;DR - I don't want Sonic's world to be like this:



I want it to be like THIS:



OMG everything's still unexplored and mysterious and who knows what fantastic lands lie just over the horizon and look out there's fucking monster squids in the sea oh shit!!1!

 

The way I'd remake Sonic, actually, I'd use his Stay Sonic backstory. There was an owl named Sophocles in Green Hill Zone. One day he finds an orphan baby. Said baby is a bleeding supersonic hedgehog. He gets named Sonic! One day Sophocles disappears, and Sonic goes travelling the world.Ta~da!

 

But Sophocles was a notorious pedo.

O_o

 

That... oh. Hmm.

Owl, you got your name changed to Epicure or Socrates. Choose :specialed:

 

I doubt Plato ghost-wrote Apologia for Socrates simply out of being a caring student.

Hedonism Bot - Let us cavort like the Greeks of old! You know the ones I mean.

 

I don't think that's true - the fun of mysteries isn't their persistence. The fun comes from revealing the truth behind them, and moving on to the next mystery. Continuing to wonder about the same mystery is either a) frustrating, or b) an excuse to come up your own explanation. Which brings us back to multiple conflicting continuities anyway.

I happen to like the idea of Sonic as a well-defined character. I've never minded him having a voice, for instance. I think that picture is great.

I agree with this wholeheartedly.

 

You have total control of who the characters are!

But considering that Sega wants Sonic to continue to be a mascot, he has to be consistently if perhaps somewhat vaguely defined.

But yeah, explaining Sonic's backstory is a really bad idea.

 

That's not a game, that's eight hours of quicktime!

And I'd put stress on the vaguely.

 

Sonic - Tails? Duh. :v:

 

Mah boi, sluts are what all true fat cats desires. Or is it depression? Or the brown hues?

Yeah, but I don't want Sonic himself to be a constant mystery. I'd like to have the hero be defined yet be changed by the events that happened to him in a story. That's something that bothers me in the modern games is that the entire cast seems to be very static and never changing. It feels like I could've skipped it and it wouldn't have mattered a single bit.

No emphasis on vague. Please let us have a definite characterization of Sonic unless the change has something to do with character development and storyline.

 

I thought that said "Link - The Feces of Evil".

 

I'm not a fan of those comprehensive backstories, simply because most of them are just excuses for draaahma, sound like bad fanfiction, or both. Sonic should focus on the present. It doesn't matter much where he comes from, but where he's going next.

The thing that really gripes me with Sonic today is... god dammit, STOP with the Totally Radical vibe already!
You know what practically all the cheap knockoffs of Sonic from the 16-bit era have in common? That's right, they tried to be "hip", and failed miserably because they just ended up being stupid. They tried imitating Sonic for something that Sonic actually wasn't.
Who was possibly the only Mascot With Attitude that actually managed to be good and stand on his own? Sparkster. Was he rollerblading or wearing backwards caps or sporting a psycho grin? HELL NO! He was badass because he was a JETPACK KNIGHT! He was lively, expressive and wasn't afraid of being adorable as well.
(I acknowledge that his games being awesome count as well)
Sonic and Sparkster didn't need to try being "cool". They just were.

I know that the cartoons did feature a lot of Totally Radical elements that are part of Sonic's identity to many people today, so my opinion may not be shared by everyone. Still, I can't reconcile the Sonic of today and the Sonic of yesterday when today's Sonic is chattering in adrenaline junkie pidgin nonstop. Though I did like his Sonic Battle lines and characterization, so maybe what he really needs is a good writer, who knows.

My favorite Sonic ever is the one in that Sonic CD animation. My redesign surely would try bringing Sonic closer to that.

 

I know this might be a little off topic (given that you guys seems to have gone kinda off topic anyway... So that would make me either WAY off, or back on. I'm gonna go with back on) but I figured I should probably show off how I would redesign Sonic... Given that's what we're supposed to be doing here.

Anyway-

This is the sketch I'm going off for a 3D model of him I'm making.

Now, yes, I know you might complain that he's not fat, like the Classic image of him we all hold dear, but hang on- I figured there has to be a way to get the best of both- Making Sonic appeal to the old fans, and the new ones. New fans like Sonic because of his athletic looks, while the old fans like Sonic because of his attitude... So how about this as a compromise?

Thoughts?

Bear in mind, the model itself will take a while to finish given I'm still learning Blender, but hey.

 

I think what you're saying should be judged on a mystery-by-mystery basis. Because the Half-Life series - hell, most Valve games - thrive on mysterious events. But never have they come right out and said, "Look. This is exactly what's going on, this is exactly why it's happening, this is every detail explained in the finest, most accurate detail we can manage."

There is a lot left for the player to infer. You are only ever aware of the immediate events happening right that very second, as they relate to your mission objective. Anything beyond that is kept to a minimum.

Why do I need to know what planet Sonic is on? Why do I need to know what his shoes are made out of? Sonic probably isn't even his real name, but why would I ever need to know his real name? What does that do for the gameplay? Nothing. Whether he's called Sonic or Robert, it doesn't actually matter, and getting too caught up in the minutiae of Sonic's world and history has played an active role in spoiling modern Sonic games, in my opinion. Sonic Unleashed was a breath of fresh air in that regard because it shook off all of that dumbass baggage the franchise had been carrying with it for 6 or 7 years (only to bring it all back for Black Knight ).

There is something to be said for brevity and simplicity without needing to explain how every grain of sand got on to the beach. Sonic is too caught up with what's ahead of him to worry too much about what happened in the past.

 

this reminds me...

nice picture.... I love it...

 

Very nice. You are right, he does look like a good mix of the old and new designs. He still looks athletic, but without being awkwardly tall and lanky.
I like how you designed his shoes especially. They are way too wide in recent games. Good job on this one. I am excited to see the 3D model.

I started to learn blender a while back, but it was a little complicated for me then. I should probably try picking it back up soon. If you do learn to use
it well, then please teach me, haha.

 

Excellent artwork!

Obviously the design resembles slightly of the sonic design from the sonic CD intro/ending, because of the more straighter quills, and has the modern sonic adventure body design. (no shit lol)
I personally think it would be a great main stream replacement as a sonic design!

 

Well, in a sense, at least. Shadow in Black Knight wasn't Shadow specifically, but it's still keeping the character in the spotlight. Unleashed was all "yeah it's just Sonic and maybe Tails and who's Knuckles? Shadow? I've never heard of those guys".

Black Knight was like "YEAH AND SHADOW IS A BADASS KNIGHT :specialed: "

Unleashed felt like a new direction and Black Knight felt like full reverse.