Spoiler Thread - SONIC X SHADOW GENERATIONS (SPOILERS!... Obviously.)

Amy's tarot cards are hilarious. At first it was a cute little piece of trivia that people would cite from some old Japanese material. Now it's something super important that is suddenly a major part of her abilities.

 

RCS Sonic will always be the bane of me.

On another note, it's amusing how obvious it is to me that Sonic's using his Forces/Frontiers model. It doesn't fit with how he looks in base Gens at all, but only the fans are gonna notice. What a tortured life we lead.

 

The solution is to remove the burden of representation from the character entirely and just do what's true to the character. Excising or even downplaying Amy's crush after all this time isn't really true to what the character has been, but what they've replaced it with (mostly) isn't all that interesting either. They're failing on both fronts here outside of Evan who seems to be the only one who remembers Amy's hot temper is a lever to pull.

Being an Official Brand Ambassador for Women should have never been the responsibility of Amy in the first place, and if the franchise simply made the choice of having more than one prominent female character in a mascot role Amy would be able to breathe easy. The same is true of Peach. They can't come up with a Fifth Ranger whos also a girl? Why can't these characters simply be?

 

Amy using a hammer like a broom isn't any less of a stereotype than just noticeably liking the main character, which as far as I know is still supposed to be the case. It's just awkward the way they're handling it currently. It's not doing anything for womens' rights either way.

 

Roger is definitely not the lame duck in this scene from what I'm hearing lmao

 

I'm still curious about the tarot cards as the fanbase claims they are. If Sonic Team wants it, they can do whatever they want, but at the same time they've maintained a "magic does not exist" aspect of the universe, characters abilities and such, and their fondness for sci-fi over all else has proven to thwart the godhood of multiple Sonic deities by definition or backstory. It's part of why I always keep the addition with an asterisk in my mind, because it's still being enabled by cyberspace - the rule hasn't been broken yet, but it would be interesting if they do one day. + - Bring back wizard villains, dammit...  

 

I don't have anything against Flynn, but I feel that he's going a bit overboard with bring back the "Amy likes tarot cards" thing. I remember seeing her moveset in Frontiers and thinking "That's cute, but why not her hammer?".

 

They explain why (Cyber Space is affecting her). And her hammer is still part of her Cyloop abilities. The fact that they felt the need to justify it in the lore despite not needing to do so for Knuckles and Tails (who actually inexplicably throws wrenches and summons weapons) means they know it's not "normal" for Amy and they don't want it to be.

The behind-the-scenes reason is that besides having something new for Amy, they probably believed they can do more with the cards than the Hammer, or at lest experiment with it.

The cards give her projectiles and more "magical" aesthetic to her moveset. Besides two moves being reskins of moves she can do with the hammer, they share little overlap.

EDIT: Also, yeah, Ian Flynn doesn't choose what the gameplay is like. It really is insane that he is blamed for everything.

It was annoying when Iizuka was the victim of this but it at least made more sense, he is the head of Sonic Team and only the executives have more say than him.

Flynn is a freelance writer and people think he can decide how characters in the game play, and that's crazy.

 

Why do you assume that was his decision?

As far as it goes for her in the comics, it's literally just a hobby.

 

Frontiers emphasizing that was Sonic Team's initiative; they introduced the cards as an addition because they were comparing fan-made mods and wanted to provide a new experience:

https://www.famitsu.com/news/202311/08320390.html

 

I hope Sonic Team tempers their fan game/mod vigilance, because while it's cool they want to shake things up from fan expectations, I also hope they don't go "oh no, the fans did this, we can't do it or it'll feel like we're ripping them off".

 

I do feel that Boom Amy has been misremembered. The way people speak about Boom starting the current ruined Amy is always really weird. Maybe because the Rise of Lyric announcement trailer focused on her athletic game abilities so people thought it was pushing her as a girlboss? But she was really just a better written version of her normal self. She still liked Sonic and was clearly into him but it was done in a less ridiculous manner than in something like Heroes. But it wasn't something they erased from her. It's very clearly a major aspect of her character. And she's plenty feminine in Boom. I mean they go out of their way to give her a girl BFF in Sticks.

 

Just reinforces my belief that games starring Shadow will Sonic be super annoying.

 

Boom Amy was cute. I liked her.

I miss Boom.

 

Isn't this literally the point of Creators of anything not really being advised to look at fan content?

 

That's more about legality, i.e. a creator makes a character, this character is like a fan character, and if a fan brings it up, they go "we do not look or want to look at fan projects" and avoid a bunch of issues.

Here, Sonic Team wants to explicitly avoid doing what fans do by knowing what they do and coming up with new ideas. They're not going to get into legal trouble (besides, there's precedent that if a fan's ideas are that good, they'll just hire them), but they will skimp out on neat ideas because of that.

In this case, they emphasized the cards because it was an idea that wasn't used in mods or fan projects, which made it more novel, but meant they downplay Amy's hammer.

 

My thing about Boom Amy is that they never really settled on a consistent personality for her. In Rise of Lyric, she's fine. But since it was a comedy, her character fluctuates a lot in the show. Sometimes she's the only character with common sense, another episode will have her go boy crazy along with Sticks, and another will have her be just as temperamental and violent as her original self.

 

I don't take characterization in the Boom show seriously because its goal is just "whatever's the funniest" and it's consistent enough there. Sonic is "snarky hero", Tails is "precocious mechanic", Knuckles is "lovable idiot", Amy is "passionate tsundere", etc. and they turn the dial depending on the joke.

It's a sitcom-slash-parody so it works.

 

If you're trying to take feedback from Sonic fans it's kind of hard to just ignore it. You're being directly compared to fan stuff all the time.

 

I've been trying to decide if I actually care about the Generations cutscenes being rewritten but I don't really understand the decision to have modern Sonic talk during the cutscenes when you save the other characters. Always thought it was funnier that Sonic doesn't say anything. Sonic should shut up and talk less imho.

I try so hard to like this voice but Roger really just is not the guy for this role lol His Sonic is good at short snappy catchphrases but not much beyond that.