Sonic Boom the video game.

At the very least I'm glad Sonic Team realized that "serious" stories told by giant anthropomorphic animals come across s ridiculous, and have gone with a more comedic style lately.

thank you for expressing EXACTLY how i feel.

granted, i'm sure you could tell a decent story with sonic, but they've failed to do so outside of maybe the storybook games? i haven't played them, but i've heard good things.

Maybe the comics could do a good job with a serious story.

Not really.

I mean, at the end of the day, it's a giant blue cartoon hedgehog trying to invoke feels. Maybe that would work for other people, but not me.

Said giant blue cartoon hedgehog is hardly ever in scenes like that to begin with, for the record.

They're almost always reserved for side characters, who tend to end up as one-offs anyway.

the side characters also tend to be furries though, so it really makes no difference.

Why is it an automatic reaction to think telling a serious story for cartoon animals is ridiculous?

Its only ridiculous when it tries too hard to invoke the feels...and even when this is the case, its only ever an immediate reaction towards Sonic stories.

I don't know. If we can take Disney and Mario, or Star Fox for that matter, seriously, why can't we take Sonic seriously? You don't see anybody other than trolls tell you Mario or Disney is for kids, but everytime you bring up Sonic having a somewhat serious story, someone has to mention that it's for kids, as though that gives it an excuse to have terrible one dimensional characters that make cringe-worthy jokes.

Yeah, I have to say that I find it odd that some Sonic fans constantly complain about the series having serious storylines for a while just because the prominent characters are all anthropomorphic animals. I know people have their preferences, I never felt that that made much of a difference for the franchise, at least not as much as how well (or not) the various stories were written.

As for the comics, they tend to make the cast more rounded than their game counterparts, which makes taking their stories seriously somewhat easier to swallow.

That I can agree with.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:27:57 PM by Customer

You can tell a serious story with furry animals. Blacksad proved that beyond a doubt. But it requires the person in charge to be actually competent at doing so. Sega has failed at doing so time and time again. They just aren't good at crafting stories.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:25:43 PM by wehrmacht

Mario has never had a "serious" story, though. It barely has any story at all.

And all the Disney Movies with serious stories are about people.

Like, I'm not saying furries instantly make any attempt at seriousness narmy, but it takes a lot to break that barrier for me, and all of Sonic's attempts have been.

Can people stop misusing the term "cringe-worthy"?

It doesn't mean what you think it means.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:28:28 PM by Zoroark69

Mario RPG's have comparatively serious stories. Super Paper Mario is actually kinda serious business.

Not if you include Pixar. Finding Nemo was about animals. Toy Story was about well, toys. Wall-E was about robots.

you can tell a serious story with just about anything, but it requires a certain mastery of craft...which again, sega is sorely lacking.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:30:59 PM by wehrmacht

They were bad...they were either bad with the writing, bad with the actual storytelling, or bad with both.

But if its just because the stories are bad, then why say they can never do serious stories when they've done it before.

x3 The Mario games have had serious stories...in the RP Gs and they were mostly all good stories in the end.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:32:47 PM by randomness4

I'd say that Mario's RPGS (and the Galaxy games, from what I've heard) tend to be more serious than usual, but that's really only compared to the rest of the Super Mario Bros franchise. ...But I see your points.

...What is Sonic Boom's plot anyway? Ancient snake guy wakes up and wants to take over the world? Or are the plots different between the games and the TV show?

Other people have done it before. Sega hasn't. And YMMV, but Sega's brand of furry animals are REALLY conducive to Narm-fests when they fail. that's why people complain.

The games plot(Rise of Lyric): Sonic wakes up an evil Snake who wants to destroy organic life and replace it with machines.

The T.v. show has no plot.

Sonic Team has done it before, with the Storybook games and Sonic Unleashed. If it wasn't for Sa1's bad writing, I'd say that one too.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:39:08 PM by randomness4

Basically that. The Sonic characters are very 90s-styled, and what kids considered cool in the 90s isn't what they consider cool now, so it's hard for people to take it seriously.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:38:02 PM by Zoroark69

And honestly, even the 90's thing is forgivable if you're moderately competent. I have an easier time taking Kirby or Klonoa seriously than I do Sonic in most of their games. Sega is just bad.

Galaxy 2 was full-on Excuse Plot, but otherwise, yes.

Also, I like how we're all judging Sega's general writing skills based on the one solitary series with a notable lore that they're still properly marketing.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:45:17 PM by Demonfly

i'm not judging them on one story, but on multiple stories. I dislike every Sonic narrative starting from Adventure 1 to Sonic 06. they were all bad. I guess it would be more accurate to say that Sonic Team can't write, but whatever.

I wouldn't call any of the Mario RP Gs "serious." They have dramatic plot beats, sure, but they're full of jokes and silliness.

As opposed to, say, Sonic Adventure 2, which was basically deadpan the whole way through.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:49:29 PM by Mukora

As do virtually all of the more story-based Sonic games, to varying amounts.

I really wouldn't describe this as "deadpan", for instance. Even if there are plenty of other words for it.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:55:23 PM by Demonfly

SA 2 really wasn't that dark until the Last Story. It was slightly serious, but nothing too outrageous.

Then the Last Story hits you in the face with Mood Whiplash, with an old man going insane with grief over the death of his granddaughter and trying to destroy the Earth. That was where Sonic Team started to go too far in my opinion.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:53:03 PM by Zoroark69

...and then when about getting near the 3rd quarter of the story all of those jokes start becoming less abundant.

Sa2 wasn't deadpan all the way through, it has its fair share of light-hearted humor in the writing and even in the Dark side story where it gets more serious.

edited 13th Nov '14 2:58:01 PM by randomness4