Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

I hope people is aware person made this video actually likes Ian Flynn.

 

It's way more than twice.

But at least as far as being a complaint about Ian, it did also happen in comics headed by Evan as well...so it's consistent in any case.

 

It might not literally be twice but it’s not “way” more. I’m not about download every issue to my phone for the sake of checking this, but off the top of my head:

• Sonic quoting It Doesn’t Matter when talking to Amy in #2
• Sonic paraphrasing His World in a completely innocuous manner when escaping from Neo Metal in #7
• Again, Neo Metal paraphrasing What I’m Made Of in a completely innocuous manner after going Super in I think #9
• Sonic and Eggman paraphrasing Open Your Heart when they see each other at that town during the Metal Virus saga in I think #23
• Team Chaotix singing their theme song after being cured of the Metal Virus in #29

There may be another couple that I’ve missed but I doubt the total breaks double digits, and at least two of those read as completely organic lines in their own right.

 

Only 1 of those makes me dislike the concept in general.

Though, I guess saying "way more" doesn't apply to the music references alone. It's also just the referencing of meme-y lines that "should" be completely innocuous in context, but since it does just build up over time...stuff like that becomes more noticeable and annoying than it should or would otherwise be.

I mean, we already know that Sonic and Shadow are gonna exchange a combination of both SA2 and Heroes dialogue, so...not like it won't apply here either. I don't expect musical references here, but that's only because I don't recall Frontiers having any.

 

Sonic fans when a piece of media makes reference to a previously released piece of media (any kind of reference to the past is awkward and unfitting and Ian Flynn is to receive fifty lashes per line of dialogue he has ever written).

The goalposts are forever moving at this point. My posting record shows I accept Ian Flynn is by no means a perfect writer. Shock horror, on some occasions the references have been able to take me out of an experience and there’s a reason I stopped tuning in to BumbleKast, but I’m convinced he could get everything right and people would still find something to complain about.

We went through almost a decade of Pontac and Graff, writers who (with all due respect) weren’t fans of the property they were creating for and to some extent led to the promoting of Ian to where he is today. Now we have someone who has all the passion in the world but can’t go a week without people trying to dunk on him for the most minor infractions. It’s just tired at this point.

 

If people were convincing in explaining how he makes "too many references" and why he shouldnt (any weight held in critiquing Frontiers for this is lost when it's also asserted that it would be be bad if he made "too many" references in a game about references that already has references; at that point, its just "references are bad". The suggestions of "better" dialogue ive heard from people are amusing, theyre horribly stilted but they truly think its worth not being a reference),

or if this was a complaint that existed in any form than before when Ian Flynn specifically started writing for the games (including when he was writing for Archie and IDW for a combined near-two decades, or when other writers made references, like Sonic Heroes where every other incidental line is "hey, this place reminds me of [other location]!"),

or if people didn't massively dumb down the definition of "references" to mean "naming things in the franchise" and thus think that literally just naming people or things is a reference,

or, and this is the kicker, fans did not explicitly ask for stronger continuity and lore for a decade before Flynn came along,

I'd take the critique more seriously. But with these conditions in mind, I cant; I can only see contrarianism and hyperbole.

What do you mean that fan service is bad? All this fanbase does is demand that Sega and Sonic Team cater specifically to them. How dare Ian Flynn, a massive fan himself, take the opportunity to appeal to both himself and hardcore fans? Is it because it is not, specifically, what you want? You're not the only fan.

This reactionary stance seems to result in fans believing its actually bad to have characters be attached to anything in their history, which is why I don't like it when these critiques run away without being scrutinized themselves. The fanbase does not have the ability to talk about this kind of thing with nuance, I fear.

The only thing I sympathize with is that it is a distinctly "Ian Flynn" thing, the way he makes references, and Sonic games usually do not have such a strong writer voice. He is able to write stories that adhere closer to how Sonic Team usually wrote stories, but it's also possible to tell that this specific writer wrote it.

From the many arguments and discourse I've seen, many fans believe there is an objective, basic way to write Sonic, regardless of the writer (ergo, the "best" writer writes "the" Sonic) and I suppose Ian Flynn is perceived as putting "too much" of himself into Sonic, but that thought train can only lead to entitlement: it is good, I think, that writers to be able to leave their own mark on the franchise if it's going to have so many and so many different writers.

Sonic is not Shonen Jump, where it's a single author's story; it's Marvel or DC, an iconic character made of the several different interpretations of different writers.

I fail to see how it's anything more than contrarianism at heart. "It can get annoying" okay? Lots of things in Sonic are annoying.

 

I don't care what anyone here thinks about those two writers, it is fundamentally anti-art to think that you need to be a fan of something in order to create something worthwhile relating to it.

This kind of mentality is exactly why Star Wars has been a laughing stock ever since 2019 aside from Andor (which was created by a person who didn't consider himself a big Star Wars fan, mind you).

 

I agree with this, it was never an issue that Pontac and Graff weren't fans. They did the best they could with researching on the job and they clearly held a respect for the series regardless.

Them not being hardcore fans means missed a bit of nuance from the franchise, but ironically the bigger issue was Sega and wanting Sonic to be taken in the direction they were written.

Andor succeeds because it has a team of writers of both hardcore fans who go "this is Star Wars" and non-fans who ask good questions like "does it have to be this way?"

Sonic should have a writing team, I think. A mix of fans and newcomers to put life in the franchise.

 

I'm pretty sure Flynn is aware when a reference is a little too forced, y'know. We already knew that the continuity nods in Frontiers were encouraged by SEGA, and now we have a few more of them. It's almost certainly not 100% up to him, and wouldn't be no matter whom they hired. Maybe you can criticize his execution, but we're in uncharted waters with a lot of this. You can't assume anything.

Now, that being said, I'm not sure I'd buy the idea that he wrote a natural-sounding script and got notes back that said "change this to reference the famously definitely-not-embarrassing-dogshit Sonic Heroes English script", but again, we can't just take it as writ that SEGA wouldn't be asking for this from almost any writer they got. That's probably why they're hiring writers who were former fans, it would be a lot harder to jerk off the nostalgia/continuity angle with people who aren't as informed about the series.

Not saying this is a good thing to be clear, I definitely want it to be more sparing outside of anniversaries, but again, we can't assume too much.

 

Thats why I don't like it when the complaints about references are just flat "references are bad".

Your grievance with the specific lines and how they work with the story, whether they're cringe, that's something you take to Flynn. "Be less cringy", sure.

But the existence of references and the volume of them, that's something you take to Sega. If you think it's unbecoming of Sonic, you tell Sega that. If they thought it was "too much", there would be fewer.

So many complaints of this nature are hoisted onto individual writers. It doesn't help there are people who genuinely think Flynn can decide things in spite of Sega.

 

I like how, for years, the likes of Pontaff and Maekawa received all the black marks for stuff that didn't work but with Flynn we're always overly concerned with the complex mechanationa within Sega and who really might be responsible.

I get the instinct to protect the guy. In-between Maekawa being a self admitted hater of the games before his debut, Pontaff not having a clue with no attempt by anybody to give them one, and the swathes of outside Sonic content with little regard for the source material, it's nice to have a guy who gives a shit on a base level. I also agree that the burden is shared with ST proper as it always has been. Writing is only one part of the narrative design of a game and ST is handling the bulk of that.

But, y'know, the forced lyrics in dialogue thing has always sucked. It doesn't matter now how many times he does it if he knows it sucks on some level still never gives up the fight. It also is not a problem in itself but a symptom of his dialogue just not reading very well- pay attention to some of the clunkier issues of IDW and it's pretty evident, but a lot of comic writers don't catch this issue until their scripts are being voiced acted for the first time, for obvious reasons. This can vary a lot thought. I thought Frontiers's script was stiff as a board but I didn't feel that way about Dark Beginnings.

Forced references are another thing. I agree that a more continuity focused series is the intention here, I just think these things can be laced into dialogue in a way that reads a bit less robotically. That's an issue I'd nail on Flynn as far back as his Archie tenure. It is entirely fair to lay it at his feet. Splitting hairs as a not so low-key attempt to stem negative discussion about your favorite game is lame.

 

Okay for what it's worth I was never that guy about Pontac and Graff but uh

It is hilarious to consider that a line like "Green Hill's looking a lot more like Sand Hill" would prompt entirely opposite but still negative reactions in this day and age.

I guess this is an opportunity to hope that Evan eventually gets a shot on the games too, lol

 

That's because we are grown adults who now understand the full scope of how these products are made. I hope, anyway.

Also, they literally told us that is the case. Pontac went on Twitter to say that most of what they wrote wasn't up to them and the ones that were were also under Sega's guidelines. Flynn and writers across IDW, Boom, and Prime also plainly state "I did not make that decision, that was up to Sega, in fact if I had the actual power, I would do things differently".

Social media has also evolved and made it possibly to directly interact with these people, and a lot of fans do, in sometimes hostile fashions and other times in a way that goes against their privacy (like asking questions they are not allowed to answer).

People are also more merciful in this case for the industry as a whole, including Sonic Team. People are realizing that not everything you don't like about something is because the person who made it is incompetent, lazy, and hates them personally. Though, of course, those exact sentiments have also increased as well, coinciding with algorithms regarding people for being negative, hateful, and straight up lying.

This is not (just) because people like Ian Flynn, but that we are forced to recognize that writing things like Sonic the Hedgehog was never a one-person affair, even when there's only one writer credited. I would like to believe that if those other writers wrote today, people would be more nuanced about it (but considering that people are addressing critiques about Flynn with "at least Pontac and Graff aren't doing it"...

The point should be "maybe we treated them too harshly", not "we should treat Flynn and future writers the same, it's only fair", because you really only just highlighted that this is not a problem exclusive to Flynn at all.

This will happen again when Flynn leaves and another writer takes his place and does something a sizable part of the fanbase doesn't like.

Getting to opinions, can't agree. These are the best references he makes. I love them. I love lyrics. These lyrics are written in first person so it's not a stretch that characters can literally say them.

But I can understand if someone doesn't like it.

To be fair, a line today by Flynn would be rendered as something like "why does everything look like Sand Hill, where am I?" Or "did I take the wrong turn at Sand Hill, where am I?"

 

This was poorly worded on my part (in the throes of a pizza-dehydration induced all-nighter). What I ought to have said is that Pontac and Graff didn’t really have much investment in what the series. I’m not saying they or anyone who may one day write for Sonic need to have an established history of loving the franchise, but I think anyone who takes on that job should then do a baseline amount of research to familiarise themselves with what they’re actually working on. By being the die-hard fan he is, Ian already had all that when he took the job at Archie way back in 2006, and has carried it with him since.

Granted, I’m also willing to apportion blame for this to SEGA too. There was evidently a lack of will on their part to cultivate that kind of approach or to provide the right notes. Of course, I don’t know the inner workings of Sonic game development, but I’d like to believe this has changed with the introduction of the lore team and a general shift in attitude from SEGA/Iizuka/whoever. In complete fairness, Ian would probably be doing a lot worse if he and SEGA were on radically different pages about how things should be written (as can be seen with the infamous moments of Shadow in IDW).

 

Evan Stanley, Daniel Barnes, Ian Mutchler, I'd be okay with a rotating role of writers now that there are so many professionals out there who give a shit and have been regularly putting good work out.

I think the discourse around them is regrettable in that a lot of people present them as viable replacements for Ian rather than alternatives and I don't really want to feed into that. I also think that the hate spotlight will just switch over to whoever's in the hot seat(doubly so for Evan) because ultimately sonic fans have been salty bitches about professionals who happen to be fans of the series coming on board since taxman and that's not going to stop any time soon.

I don't think it's healthy to assume everyone who has a negative perspective is a bad actor tho. That type of thinking kills discussion quickly when this should be a fun, laid back sort of thing.

 

In the grand scheme of things, it's so nice that Sonic now had a reliable (and growing!) set of professionals in nearly every field that we can trust that, at the very least, they know what they are doing, even if it doesn't guarantee that the final result will be amazing.

Oh, Tyson Hesse is here? Nice. Oh, the Murder of Sonic was made by the Sonic social media team and some fans? They did a good job. Hardlight really pulled off making their first full Sonic game, I'd love to see what they do next!

 

But then players could miss important or handy skills because they didn't explore random area #125. They also would have little control over character growth, as they wouldn't know where each particular skill is (unless the game marked the each skill's location on the map, which would miss the point of exploration). And there should be some reward for defeating enemies. Exp points and skill trees address all of that. That's why so many modern games use them, especially open world games.

I honestly don't see it. At least not from their writing.

 

If skills are going to have as much overlap as they did in Frontiers in years of utility it wouldn't actually be a big deal if some of them were missable. The players missing a damage burst or projectile ability wouldn't be too big of a deal as long as they have other variants to fall back on. Just sign post where abilities might be located and lock them behind fun challenges and you'll be Gucci. Reward systems always work better when you're handed something more immediately useful and I don't think the Memory Tokens fit that description super well.

 

They write in a meta fashion that catches on to people not in the way that "oh, these characters and their settings have a storied history" like Flynn does, but in the way of "oh, these characters and their settings have a storied history with the audience".

When Flynn makes a reference, it's the characters remarking on their own history, using their experience as a reference point for what they're dealing with. Tails compares the lasers on the Starfall Islands to the Eclipse Cannon, something that blew up the moon and could have destroyed the planet, emphasizing that the Ancient had EXTREMELY powerful technology. This makes sense for the characters. Even the song lyrics he adds in are relevant to the character. Sonic references his own songs, which are themselves about his character and his world view. Sonic says "I never fear the fall", which is literal, but also referencing the lyrical meaning in "His Word" about how he will always jump head first into adventure.

When Pontaff makes a reference, it's the characters remarking on the franchise's history, like when Infinite says that Eggman has been losing to Sonic "for decades", something that is literally not true (decades have not passed in-story), and something that Infinite has no real reason to say (he does not know them enough). It only really works as hyperbole, but it's also something that resonates with the audience, who have been playing Sonic games for decades.

 

It might be no biggie if they miss a redundant skill, but what if they miss a game changing skill? How do you avoid that? Do you place the "important" skills in full view next to a story-mandated location to ensure the player sees it? If so, that kind of misses the point of placing skills across the map, as the player wouldn't have to find it in that case; they would get it served on a plate.

That feels like superficial "research" to me, and the opposite of showing respect for the series. In my book respecting the series would be having the characters act like they're supposed to according to the established characterizations/lore/universe, rather than inserting meta jokes that make no sense for them to say into their mouths.