Ken Pontac's interview at Yomacon

I can't believe someone would come to a multimillion dollar franchise to work on a script and not even do a little research into what the successful parts of said franchise looked like. When he said he wasn't aware of what SA and SA2 were, I cried a little.

 

I mean, Sega hired him for a reason. The old plots were bad and the characters had no, well, character to them, or very little anyway. So I say it was all for the best

 

Considering the recent games have barely any plot at all and instead have mediocre attempts at humor, I would only say that it's become somewhat less bad instead of good. The last two games before Ken Pontac and Warren Graff took over (Unleashed and Black Knight) may not have had great plots, but it at least felt like shit that mattered was going on. Colours, Generations and Lost World all lacked that and instead felt like a bad saturday morning cartoon.

 

I thought Colors and Lost World had alright plots and they at least had well made cutscenes with no grim dark in them, since that belongs no where in Sonic ever. Generations on the other hand had a shit plot, I'll give you that, and that's the one instance where his lack of knowledge was a bad thing. That game should have had so many in plot references it would have made your head spin, but after the second cutscene there were none. In a game that should have poked fun or celebrated past games and plots, story wise it did very little of it and was a bear bones "Hey guys, this thing is wrecking shit up. Emeralds help. We're explaining what you already realized have fun."

I'll let Generations plot slide extremely though because of almost the same reason. It was a nostalgia fest, it had no need for a plot. I suppose though I'm part of the group that believes that plots in Sonic games don't matter too much, so I'm perfectly happy with the inconsequential plots of Colors and Lost World. It beats popping boils on a giant space lizard with a dildo cannon shoved up it's ass as a final boss.

 

Well I guess I can't say it doesn't show. Sometimes you need some talent from folks that aren't familiar with a property, especially when Sonic and friends were all over the place through this gen and last. The whole Saturday morning cartoon vibe would be fantastic if it didn't fall so flat on its face all the time. Instead we have Sonic the idiot and Tails who is completely useless but somehow has a tech powerlevel bigger than Eggman himself. Going by Lost World, Knuckles is the comic relief lug head and Amy is just as insufferable. I guess the Deadly Six were actually decent but entirely one dimensional. Zavok is the evil guy, Zik is old wise guy, Zomzom is the fat guy, Zazz is crazy guy, Zor is emo guy, Zeena is "btw im a grill" guy. Not even an attempt at making them anything more than just their looks. I guess Eggman's endured, but you have to fuck up pretty bad if Eggman isn't awesome.

Spoiler

I would just stick Flynn in there and call it a day. At least we would get some good character banter from someone who is fluent in both the good and bad of the series and could connect the dots between things for fun.

 

Very yes. I would 100% support Flynn being the games's writer.

 

I know the recent games aren't going to win writing awards, but I'll take mildly-entertaining humor over mediocre melodrama plots any day. Some of the Lost World cutscenes were fairly good at melodrama as well, like this'n:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1-RK5bG9syM

 

I'll quote something I've just read in the Lost World topic, since it sums up pretty much what I think:

 

Sorry man, other then Sonic 4 voice acting is here to stay. all you can hope for is that the writing and voice direction can be improved upon.

Speaking of which and this is offtopic but Chris Welch (Voice of AOSTH Tails) Died, how sad.

 

Very sad. I watched him in an episode of Elementary just last year.

It's hard to believe, assuming the facts are correct, that he must have been 28 when voicing Tails in AoStH. Considering Jaleel White was only 17 at the time, it's pretty funny. I wonder if there's any possibility it's not the same Christopher Welch and it's just the internet copying bad info from IMDB...

 

Not sure how I feel about the post-Unleashed story writing. I feel like Unleashed had a nice balance of standard story 'save the world'-ness without being too shallow.

And I'm guessing it's Pontac's influence in the writing that's causing 'Earth' to be referred to as "Sonic World" now, in some kind of attempt to throwback to how the Western manuals/comics had it as before Adventure made everyone scratch their heads and go "Huh?".
So now people are probably double-scratching...

Very curious to know how the Japanese versions of the game hold up now. Do they just translate the English written Pontac script? Or is the English script re-written from the base (Japanese) script?
(Does Pontac and Warren Graff's writing even WORK when translated to Japanese? Surely something gets lost in the translation process..)

 

The less said about SA2 styled story, the better. Keep that whole era buried.

 

Sorry, but I'll take SA1 and 2's anime-sque stories which actually attempt to build a cool and somewhat fleshed out fantasy world over a less than funny AoSTH any day. SA1's story was the perfect blend of fun, humor, and epic, with only a poor translation really hampering it. (Something this script writer has since fixed) SA2's had flaws, but was ultimately still very compelling. Heroes went back to being utterly shallow, but was only bad because of localization issues, and Shadow was grimdark in all the wrong ways. 2006's story wasn't entirely bad, but was poorly executed like the rest of the game, with elements like the princess which just didn't belong, and Silver being... just... bad (even if I like the idea of time travel).

I'm not asking for an angst fest. I don't want Sonic bawling in tears on the floor. I don't want Eggman to necessarily be a sinister bastard either. I just... miss it when Sonic had a genuine cool edge on him. Even if it turned out to be an anime-cool edge, he still kind of had it. Sonic X, when it was good, did actually capture his essence correctly. We just haven't seen very much of the blue dude with the 'tude doing awesome things like we used to.

Am I seriously the only one out there who feels this way? Even in Sonic 3 and K, you had a sense of tension and meaning when the Death Egg was revived and took you into A MOTHER F***ING CRAZY SPACE STAGE WHERE YOU HAD TO ACT FAST BEFORE WHO KNOWS WHAT WAS UNLEASHED, and a twist when Knuckles finally helped you fight Robotnik.

 

Finally someone who knows what they are talking about. Also all of Roger's Sonic Dissected do a pretty good job of explaining why the stories are good or bad. A story needs build up, climax and reason to love a character. None of the games' stories have done that since SA2. We all can't stand Shadow anymore, but we were sad when he died at the end, or when Sonic was sent out in the capsule, it made you want to defeat Eggman to see what happened next. SA2 did a good job of telling the story.

 

E-102 did the whole death thing better than Shadow. Like, several times over. Didn't even need a ton of voice acting or ANIME EXPOSITION I'LL MAKE YOU EAT THOSE WORDS.

SA2, especially Battle, was nothing but pure cancer to the series.

That said, I happen to like Sonic and friends as they are now. Sonic thinks he's awesome and hotshit, while everyone else just kinda looks at him like, "...really?" Even Tails is kind of sick of his shit and it's pretty funny. The only problem I see people having is that the story is not in your face to move things along, but rather just small blurbs.

Maybe it's because I come from an era where a platformer barely needed anymore story within the game than what was printed inside the instruction manual (which barely exist these days anyway.) Hell, the only problem I had with any of the writing in Lost World was that the Deadly Six were pretty garbage all around. I don't know if that's Sega's fault for designing them that way or Pontac for not being able to try and make them interesting.

Lastly, Eggman's at his best that he's ever been as of late. Hell, Tails too. I always liked that in SA1, they resolved to make Tails grow the hell up and not rely on Sonic so much, only for SA2 and on to squash that and make him Sonic's biggest fanboy. Since Colors, he's just more like "Oh, you did something you say is cool? That's neat I guess." If he's been friends with the guy for so long and is now doing his own thing, of course he'll find Sonic gloating just being normal. It makes sense.

tl;dr: Insert picture of SA2B in a trash can here.

 

I actually think the guy's a competent script writer, BTW. He's authentically better and at times even witty when it comes to dialogue. Though you'll notice his scripts aren't even remotely close to the Japanese translation in most cases (I can't provide specifics, but anyone with an even elementary knowledge of the language can tell. Almost nothing is the same.), namely because unlike before, it's actually being made in English FIRST and then redubbed back into Japanese.

In fact, my problem with Sonic stories likely isn't him. He can read up on a wiki very easily, play some of the classics, and get brought up to speed on most elements in the franchise. What he doesn't know now can be learned pretty easily.

Sadly, I suspect that what we've got now is a mishmosh of Sonic Team losing all story ambition after they royally ****ed up in 2006, and playing it super safe and nothing but super safe from now on in just about every iteration. It makes reasonable sense. To many, why should Sonic ever have a more complex story than Mario? Only a few crazy people like me would ever care, right?

Sadly, I think this is the norm from now on. One dimensional stories with occasionally witty dialogue to help us plod through it. I can live with it, kind of, but it's actually sad to realize that most people don't quite get, or remember, what we're missing out on. Sonic has always had a very cool otherworldly fantasy element to it, harking back to what was very clearly a 80s/90s fantasy anime influence. It carried over into everything, including the stage design, music, and even atmosphere of the classics (especially in something like CD). Hell, I remember a day when people like me were EXCITED at the prospect of finally hearing Knuckles talk and learning what he sounded like! Sonic stories weren't something to loathe yet...

Alas, I'll stop my rant here. I did enjoy Generations and Colors stories, and bits of Lost World's banter.

 

The conclusion I've come to is that the story of the games since Colors are useless, but the dialogue and characterization is pretty outstanding. I loved everything between Sonic, Tails and Eggman in Lost World, and even the plot itself is a decent and self-contained romp, but the way of progressing through the story has no structure outside the

Spoiler

Zeti turning on Eggman, and Eggman's fake death

. Other than that, the story comes to a standstill for the entirety of the proceedings.

I've lived through the crap plots that Sonic went through in the 2000's. But that doesn't necessarily mean that NO plot is the only answer. I know it's difficult for people around these parts to wrap their heads around, but there is such a thing as a happy medium. I personally feel like a dialogue-light game with the plot pushed forward in a pantomime fashion with Sonic CD's ability to swing from surreal whimsy to dark dystopian absolutely possible, and would be my personal ideal for a Sonic game.