Trying to start debunking the "Generations of Sonic Fans" perception.

I really shouldn't keep doing this, but if you're highlighting that the classic games involved Eggman capturing and torturing animals, building an orbital weapon, and chaining captured, mechanized planets together, then...

 

I think the difference there comes down more to how the action plays out. The classics and Adventures (and even the “dark age”) follow through on the threats presented in their games.

Colors and the following games have a tendency to not go anywhere with the ideas they introduce, since they’re often thwarted before we see anything unfold. The tension or action doesn’t really rise or reach a climax, it just kinda stays at a flatline throughout. It’s what gives the games a really lackadaisical “Saturday morning cartoon” vibe.

I imagine that’s always been what people had a problem with in the “modern” era and why they find it an outlier to the others. It’s why I do, anyways.

 

How? In what way? Sonic Adventure carries forward the general tone established in the classic games.

 

I think someone said if best when they said that Sonic is "distinctive"...for better or worse.

Sonic means something different to so many people; if you asked 5 different people their thoughts and opinions about the series, you would get six different answers.

Combine that with the fact that its been around for so long, and it was almost inevitably going to become this mess of a series that it is today. You have a bunch of adult fans who are completely set in their ways on what THEY want the series to be, and refuse to compromise on that vision with anyone else while dismissing the opinions of those that don't share their viewpoint (this applies to both classic and adventure fans this point btw, don't think you're special) and you have some children who are probably reading all of this crap and wondering why a bunch of grown adults are so damn obnoxious about this blue Hedgehog.


Kind of makes me realize how much effort Nintendo went into crafting Mario's image and deliberately kept things light to allow for anyone's interpretation of Mario to be valid without feeling slighted.


Is there a solution for that issue for Sonic? Hell fucking no lol. Star Wars fans, Comic Book fans and other long running nerd franchises have had these issues for decades, and its still continuing today, way longer than Sonic's been around.


You either get tired of the obnoxiousness and just leave the franchise alone altogether, or you take your obsession to the point where you become an official developer and force the series into the direction that you want it to go, that worked for Mania team (legit, no disrespect here because I understand how much effort went into that game to get it to the light of day)


Sonic is, for better or worse, a controversial franchise and its always going to be it feels like.

 

Well, Paper Mario was also just Mario until.Nintendo said he wasn't.

Anyway, Sonic was ALSO just Sonic up until '06 bombed. People seem to forget that since at some point it retroactively got applied to Sonic Adventure onwards.

 

I think Sonic Adventure aims for darker moments and more emotional punches than the classics. The scene with Beta being reconstructed, the violence of the Echidnas, the whole of Gamma's storyline. I dunno, maybe it's just me!

I think this is largely true and the only game that at least tries not to fall into this hole is Lost World. You encounter the Deadly Six and they actually do attack you with full ferocity at the end. Tails implies that Eggman can't be trusted and he ends up being right. It reaches a logical conclusion. The only problem is that the way you fight the Deadly Six in the final levels is incredibly lame and anti-climactic, and they are already lame characters to begin with

I'm also reminded of Infinite's final fight in Forces and how you beat him with the power of friendship. It's probably a logical climax of whatever Forces' story is. Then again, with the way that Infinite gloats throughout the game and ends up being easily beaten, having a strop, and being whisked away with Eggman comes across as anti-climactic. Although I'm not sure if he's supposed to be a Kylo Ren figure who, while dangerous, actually ends up just being a bit of a loser and manbaby. I suspect this might be the case considering Shadow's story but I might also be giving the story too much credit honestly.

 

Forces and LW might be even greater examples of what I meant. They introduce things that should encite higher stakes or payoff, but they never pay it off, nor do they found the tensions much to begin with.

In LW, The Deadly Six are supposed to be seen as pawns to Eggman who without his control become decent adversaries, cause huge damage to the world, kidnap Tails and turn him on Sonic, and you’re supposed to confront them all at the end. But the game doesn’t bother to give any context for who they are or what they want besides “we’re bad”, the thing that kept them at bay (the conch) is never explained nor given significance (was it just some shell?? what??? couldn’t they find it again and use it against them?? if not then why??), the damage they cause is done off-screen with no real metric on it besides a peek later in (of which the effects of are reversed just 2-3 cutscenes later), it turns out Tails is fine within the first second you find him (you can’t even earn the satisfaction of saving him), and the Deadly Six all kind of disappear after their boss battles in the last zone without another word or even acknowledgement they existed.

In Forces, Sonic’s world is destroyed by Eggman's regime and he’s a war prisoner for apparently months but you don’t even get to see the damage done (they literally fade to black and tell you it happened through text like the “poochie died on the way to his home planet” thing lmao) and Sonic isn’t affected by the stakes introduced at all, just mildly inconvenienced.. which sounds like something you could spin in a funny way if not for there being no tension built to pay it off. Meanwhile, Infinite is built up over an entire game, but the game itself fails to bring up his motives (you had to play DLC for that and even then that hardly explains half of his presence!). And then just like the D6 at the end he doesn’t get a climactic finish, he just kinda gets flicked off screen and isn’t brought up ever again.

I think the characterization or lore arguments people get into about new Sonic stories are valid but way overblown. I don’t think anyone would care as much if the stories were functional or coherent, since that’s where the ACTUAL problems reside. lol

 

Yeah, let's be honest, there isn't much defending of Forces lmao.

But for Lost World, I do think it's important to keep in mind that you do actually fight the Deadly Six for a final time and get a big Bowser boss fight with Zavok. Um, I mean it's not great but it's something

 

In the Adventure games, characters' actions push the story forward and give context to each level. In the more recent games the story mostly involves characters standing around and giving exposition in nondescript locations. Sonic will play a few levels, Tails will fill him in on what he's been able to deduce, Sonic plays some more levels, Tails gives him another update, and so on.

 

Sure, but the Adventure games, and especially Adventure 1, had characters standing in place and talking exposition at each other in almost every cutscene

 

Technical limitations of the DreamCast, at the time?
Not really, maybe limitations from how the game was designed.
SA2 demonstrated higher animation dynamic, at the time.
Still, there was a need for said exposition and dialogues.

 

If it's OK for the Adventures, it's OK for post-Colors.
If it's not OK for post-Colors, it's not OK for the Adventures.
C'mon, don't be ridiculous.

 

In my case, it's not if it's OK for the Adventures or Post-Colors or whatever.
It's how it's done, how fulfilling or shallow a game's plot or cutscenes feel.
To me, the Adventures had some degree of plot and feel.
Unleashed still had something, albeit the change had already begun by then.
After that, all stories felt childish, devoit of context, feel and immersion.
I saw the cutscenes on YouTube, didn't get me any eager to play the games.
My brother finished Forces, but got low satisfaction. The plot was a joke.

Still, while SA1 lacked animation fluidity, Unleashed and onwards sure had them.
That's one point to my liking, unfortunately wasted on little to no (childish) plot.

 

I'm not sure "childish" is a useful indicator of a game series aimed at children erring. All of these "Shonen (read: young boys)" comparisons are apt for more reasons than people give credit.

It's fine for us to be insulted by the way the games post-Colors present their stories. But how does the actual target demographic feel about it? Do we actually know? (I mean I'm sure we will in about 5 to 10 years lol)

 

The difference is how it is handled in both games. While it did look pretty goofy how the characters stood around to give exposition in SA1 (Main reason why I prefer SA2's story to SA1) the game at least tried to keep you invested in the story. Besides SA1 wasn't the only game that had characters stand around to give exposition. The MGS series does this at a much higher rate if we are being honest here, and I say this as a massive fan of MGS. Meanwhile the post-Colors exposition are mainly there to just tell you what is going on and that's it. It doesn't try to get you invested in it's story. Just other characters telling Sonic "Eggman Must be doing this to do that" and Sonic cracks a joke about it and then moves onto the next stage. No where in SA1 does that EVER happen. Usually characters spend far large amounts of time to explain what's going on with regards to Eggman's plot and Sonic has a serious tone about it.

 

Sonic Adventure's cutscenes are bad partly because it was their first real attempt at storytelling and they were experimenting. But that doesn't change the fact that the characters are mostly devoid of personality and just spout exposition at each other. It's especially notable in Adventure 1. I'll just list off a few examples: the scene where Sonic and Tails are reunited at the pool, the scene after the first Eggman boss where Eggman tells you his plans with Chaos, the scene where Amy defends Gamma and tells you why she does so. But honestly I could keep listing them because almost every cutscene is like that. It's not all bad and there are some funny scenes, like when Sonic calls Knuckles a Knucklehead and when Tails messes up the landing of his plane on the Egg Carrier. But those kinds of scenes which give insight into the characters' personalities are rare honestly.

I don't really think you can blame the modern stories for spouting exposition and then not acknowledge how egregious the Adventure games were in that respect. I accept that the storytelling nosedived significantly after Adventure - I'm not saying that the stories of SA1 and SA2 are as bad as the likes of Shadow and Sonic 06. I think it's fair to be balanced about this, since I do see a lot of people make claims like that and I've always thought that take was ridiculous too.

I just think some of the complaints about the modern stories are a bit hypocritical. As another example, I have no idea how someone can say Colors has a saturday morning cartoon vibe and then defend Unleashed's story, which has Chip, who is far cringier than anything Pontac and Graff thought up. The humour of his scenes come across much more as a dreadful saturday morning cartoon to me than anything in Colors onwards.

 

Again SA1 Was far from perfect with it's story telling. And most notably the voice direction, which was why the scenes you just mentioned felt like they were devoid of personality (Though the Japanese voices do a better job at fixing that). The thing is though I still don't see how that's the same as how the modern stories just don't even try at telling the stories and just spout exposition that is pretty meaningless in the grand scheme of the plots they were (not) trying to tell. Where as the exposition in SA1 was actually very important to that games plot. As for Sonic Unleashed? Yeah Chip might have been too much, but that games plot still had actual stakes and expected you to take it seriously. In other words it still tried telling an actual story. In the modern games? Where are the stakes? Where was one moment you felt like a character could actually die? Where was one moment you felt like the bad guys were so serious that you actually felt a lot of tension? Chaos Did this in SA1? Same goes for Dark Gaia in Unleashed? But none of the villains in the modern games did this. They mostly play on the fact that "Well Sonic is a goofy cartoon character. He's not suppose to be taken seriously" as it's main drive. Where as games like SA1 go "Sonic Is a cartoon character, but that doesn't mean he's all goofy fun and games". I won't say that he should be Shadow The Hedgehog level of crazy edge. That's just bad, but at the same time shouldn't be the meta goof ball he is now.

 

I did say Unleashed felt like the first step towards the "Saturday Morning Cartoon" type of stories.
Heck, it even has cartoonish humans, which I still dislike to this day. I'd take 06 or Adventure type of humans everyday.
And I agree regarding Chip. They did try, but failed miserably, in my book.

And @XAndrew? SA1 JP was better voiced than EN? Sonic sounded a bit...dope? At least, it got better by SA2 ^^"

 

I don't think the English voice acting in SA1 is bad at all. In particular Ryan Drummond being my personal favorite Sonic voice. I think the voice direction is pretty bad. A lot of lines sounding...pretty off. It's not original RE1 levels of voice acting bad. Goodness no. But it is a flaw that I tend to see when replaying the story. But that was a common thing of that era when it comes to Japanese to English localizations, so I won't get on SA1's case too much about it. After all a lot of English dubs in Anime that came out around that time had the same problem.