For me, Eggman just needed to be in the game way more for it to work. I can get behind the general gist of it. Eggman growing fond of Sage in a very generic father/daughter dynamic isn't the most interesting thing you can do with the character in that position imo, but it's believable enough. Sage's conversations with Sonic are a highlight and illuminate the true emotional core of the game the best: that you should fight for the people you love, no matter what the odds are. Surrounded for miles and miles by data of the ancients's failure, Sage takes Sonic's hand and chooses to fight instead. That's good. That's classic Sonic storytelling. But what would have really made it great was more of Sage and Eggman, and for that Eggman needed to be more of an acting presence in the game somehow. Maybe you can make it so he's not hidden away until Chaos Island or something, and for the first third or so he's taken advantage of the ancients machinery to throw at Sonic.
I'd rather have an action adventure show with too much action than an action adventure show with too little action or adventure but ultimately it's just a sitcom because the budget was never there for action and the writers are sitcom writers. (If it's not clear, that's Sonic Boom.) Same one as TSR! Super underappreciated model. It sucks the fidelity of the textures in TSR aren't that good, though.
On the subject of Black Knight/Secret Rings, I don't know how controversial this exactly is but, I think those games had some of the best characterization of Sonic outside of SA2, and the stories had a weird premise but were decently enjoyable. They strike just the right balance of making Sonic kind of arrogant/rude while still being kindhearted and helping others. I've never actually played either of those games for myself, so I have nothing to say about the gameplay mechanics.
I think most people enjoy the narrative, or at the very least, the characterization in those games. They just don't like playing them.
There's a pretty common sentiment that Sonic has never been better written than he was in Black Knight, or at least that he was especially good in that game with the story challenging his character. I don't agree with that. He's a total wet blanket, harping on constantly about always doing the right thing. Late 2000s Sonic was lacking almost any personality. "But he killed the king! And he said something about being the bad guy when he was putting an end to Merlina's everlasting world!" No, he killed the transparently evil tyrant with no personality. And he was never the bad guy in the story. Merlina was basically creating an everlasting underworld where nothing died. Again, transparently evil. There was no question to Sonic's morals. "But he always put justice above chivalry!" When has he ever done otherwise? Chivalry isn't a concept Sonic's ever contended with. There's was never anything at stake. Sonic just did the basic good guy thing. "But he's constantly snarky with Caliburn!" Eh, it wasn't bad, but it was also nothing to write home about. Sonic was just finally showing an ounce of personality for the first time in forever. The quality of the writing in Black Knight, particularly with regard to Sonic's personality, is massively overstated. Spoiler: Bonus "Well this is the best voice acting Sonic has ever had. Griffith is really getting into the role and put in a lot of emotion." Dude still couldn't control his inflections and made Sonic sound intensely uncool. I don't think he was notably better in Black Knight than in prior games, and getting replaced by Smith in the next game was a straight upgrade.
I'm honestly surprised that the Sonic fandom gets so worked up over voice actors, more than literally any other franchise I've ever seen. I don't get it. It's like every generation of voice has an entire cult surrounding it, with a legion of fans pushing until the end of time for Ryan or Jason to do something Sonic-related again, and before them, Jaleel. And they go to war with each other every single day over which was the best. I've seen Sonic fans talk about voice talent as if it's more important than story, or even gameplay. And when an actor gets replaced, they go apeshit and look for any possible excuse to call SEGA a horrible company that "doesn't care" about its talent. Mike Pollock is worshipped as practically a fucking deity in the community just for putting out a few Eggman-related memes. You NEVER see this kind of reaction in other fandoms for other voice talent, even when they do memes, like Dan Povenmire or Nathan Vetterlein.
I don't know why that is, but I knew that the voice actor's name for Sonic the Hedgehog was Ryan Drummond before I knew that Charles Martinet voiced Super Mario. When ShtH introduced the new voice cast, it completely threw me off. Finally, here's a direct sequel to SA2B, but we've changed all the voice actors. I wanted a Shadow the Hedgehog game, but not like this. Edit: Here's an unpopular opinion: Shadow the Hedgehog could have had more fans, if they had stick to the OG cast.
I never even knew Sonic had different voice actors for the longest time. If it wasn't for the online Sonic community, I probably still wouldn't know. They all sound more or less like Sonic to me. Kinda high pitched and nasally. The concept behind Shadow was good, the game just needed to be actually fun. I'm all for melodrama, probably why SA2 is my favorite
They aren't the only ones. Everyone of those franchises had their own equal fan backlash for a beloved actor being replaced unceremoniously. You do it long enough or well enough and people get attached to someone in the role.
"Equal?" No. Not equal. Fans may get upset to a certain degree, but their reactions to those recasts didn't even come close to the shitstorm that happened when it was rumored Roger would be recast for Frontiers. And Roger doesn't command the respect that some of those other actors do. David Hayter's voice as Snake was so iconic for an entire generation of people, and crucial to the camp factor the earlier games had, that of COURSE people would be upset about him being replaced. Roger's Sonic doesn't have that quality. He may have been voicing the character for 13 years, but in the grand scheme of things he's just the latest in a long line of actors to play this character. Except he's not even that anymore, having been superceded by two actors, both of whom are better than he ever was. And the only reason Bayonetta was news was the actress airing dirty laundry and literally wielding her fans as an army to go attack SEGA. And then every claim she made turned out to be bullshit.
What exactly alllows you to judge which Sonic actor can or can't be iconic for a generation of fans, enough that being upset about his replacement is too much for your comfort?
I think people were so starved to see Sonic characters emote in a game that we let Frontiers' extremely by the numbers developments wow us. Myself included in that. Getting some distance and thinking back; everyone feels just a little off, not bad but not quite themselves. (Amy warrants special mention for just being a completely different character now, could sega really not get the rights to Sally?) They did all of these characters better in 1999 except Eggman until the very next game. Did I grow out of it or did Sonic go from a cutting edge series that sold consoles, pushed boundaries and excited people to a mascot that sells merch and calls you a loser on twitter? I can tell there's a renewed effort to really get back at it and make great games but they need to get that "spirit" back, sure the genesis onward had a lot of twists and turns and bizaare shit but it still felt like throughout all the guns, melodrama and human princesses it still had this intangible unique quality at the core of the series that's just gone lately. Am I crazy, does anyone else feel that?
Because despite what I said about David Hayter, I don't agree with the outrage there either. Everyone should just act like an adult and realize these things happen in entertainment. However I can at least understand where fans were coming from, given the annoyance at Kojima's attitude about voice actors not being "real" actors. Sonic had a grand total of 4 recasts in the characters' lifetime, yet only when Roger was supposedly dropped did it somehow become an issue. An issue worthy of a literal boycott. It makes no sense. Especially when Sonic, unlike Bayonetta, Metal Gear, or Splinter Cell, are not story-driven experiences. An actor's performance in this series simply is not as important as it would be in other, more narrative-focused games.
That's not your call to make, and mostly just sounds like you being petty that people weren't mad at times that were personally convenient to you. "Shut up and take it" is not much of an argument here, nor is "sometimes these things happen" in an industry where they do not strictly need to happen but are made to because of many layers of unjust conditions and decision-making by people with more power over a property than the people actually tasked with working on it. It's just a really gross mindset for you to be espousing here.
Most Sonic fans grew up in this era where Sonic's role kind of takes a backseat to being more of inspirational influence to the likes of Shahra, Blaze and Chip and Black Knight is the purest distillation of that, so I kind of get it why it's revered so much. Its very much akin to how most JRPGs write their protagonists and I don't need to tell you that a not small portion of Sonic fans love their Anime bullshit.
Sonic definitely fell off. The feeling is amplified because you were a kid at his 'peak' but he's also lost a lot of cultural ground. Some of that comes with time, but a lot of that backslide could have been prevented with better games.
Black Knight's story has a few neat moments but for the most part I think it's just pretty boring and carried by the cutscenes being nice to look at. It's definitely better than most Sonic stories of the era but that's not a high bar to clear at all.
(Semi-related to the earlier discussion about the transition to 3D) the games first got worse because Sonic lost ground, not the other way around. This is unpopular, and certainly a vicious cycle, but I believe development cycles for Sonic being caught in a perpetual wrong foot movement, especially since Nintendo decided to release consoles in a sort of counter tempo strategy, without a home console to call its own and from which to use dedicated technology first, made it very hard for SEGA/Sonic Team to build a stable, reliable audience for Sonic games, which in turn led to the erratic gameplay and thematic decisions we know and love. tl;dr: I don't think, even in hindsight, there's much they could have done to make better games
