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Agreed. Solid, consistent characterization can do justice to both aspects and keep the fundamental heart of him while still not making him boring.
As far as Elise and Sonic, bestiality is a silly way to describe the pairing or the backlash to it. Beyond debates of how OOC the latter acts, the real problem is that the visual contrast in design between the two simply makes it far too absurd for most to take seriously, and there's nothing in 06's writing that can even get close to compensating for it. A lot of this comes down to the difference in regional philosophies regarding furry characters and humans; its not a coincidence that no Western Sonic cartoon has ever gone for a catgirl like Sara from the OVA for example.
Granted making Elise a Princess Tiara type would not have fundamentally improved the game, just made it less of an easy punchline.
Edited by BorneAgain on Sep 11th 2022 at 10:14:46 AM
I also want to commend Bourne Again's post a few pages ago:
Between that the overall shift in fans (with a newbie boom created by SA 2 on Gamecube and some older ones becoming less active) its not really a surprise that there is a divide in viewing the characterization/lore of the aughts era games. To a certain subset of the fandom, it is no more "definitive" to what Sonic is than what Archie or Fleetway was; just another version of the IP that could be rejected or embraced at one's leisure.
When Sonic Adventure came out, and suddenly the character designs were all different, humans were all over the place, Amy had gotten older when nobody else had, and we weren't on Mobius anymore... I naturally assumed this was just another continuity, no more definitive but no less valid than any of the other half-dozen I knew.
Sonic was the franchise that introduced me to the whole concept of one brand splitting into many canons, and it's always been one of the things that appealed to me so much about it. That malleability was baked into the series' concept from the beginning, to allow Sonic to be different things in different countries, different mediums, and in the long run, different decades.
It's another reason I get a bit impatient with people who insist that there IS some "authentic" interpretation of the series that takes precedent. Even if you just stick to the games, Sonic has been SO many different things, and the idea that one is more valid goes against what I enjoy about it!
That's just a thing that happens when you have so many different iterations of the same thing.
Trust me, Comic Book fans and Star Wars fans have it way worst than we do.
It does make me sympathize with the crowd that wished Sonic didn't dilute itself so thoroughly. Because there's an abject fear, rational or otherwise, when an iteration that you don't care for suddenly becomes most popular one and potentially overtakes the original.
Examples include: fans thinking Boom was going to be overtake the Modern universe, or the Movie verse overtaking the Modern verse.
Or my favorite, the time period before Sonic 4 came out when Modern was the hot new thing and people kind of resented how it overtook Classic for a few years.
Yea, fandoms are weird.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
The tricky thing is individual biases and interests will often come into play with matters like that. Certain Adventure era fans that greatly prefer that take will often point to it being the original Japanese lore as it being what Sonic is supposed to be beyond the era of localization, while a few of those preferring Classic lore will cite the stronger success of the Western interpretation as having more practically defined the franchise overall.
Sonic as a multiverse with many faces makes complete sense to me, but it also holds less emotional appeal to various fans not terribly thrilled the preferred version they have a strong investment in is just another interpretation like so many others. I mean certain Adventure fans especially (only just now potentially getting a game that actually feels like the Sonic they fell in love with) could naturally react to the entire notion as a dismissal aimed to lessen their preferences over others. That's obviously not the intent, but given that other fans (even popular culture) has treated the 1999-2009 era like a punchline at times that sort of resistance to the idea is understandable.
Edited by BorneAgain on Sep 11th 2022 at 11:24:28 AM
That's the exact reason SATAM/Archie got into so many arguments back in the day. Because Sega (of Japan) all but ignore the Western continuity and everything.
So it validates the belief that it is just an offshoot that doesn't matter. Same with Boom. A lot of game purist fans kind of turn their nose up at these alternate continuities as a result.
If you're an Archie/SATAM fan and prefer that universe, you're essentially SOL and Sega all but gave it the middle finger.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
I guess, I've just seen the exact cycle play out too many times to not roll my eyes at the idea, haha. When I first got online in the mid-90s, the first impression I ever had of the Sonic fandom was that there were some people over here who loved Sat AM and Archie, and there were other people over there who loved the games, and these two groups HATED each other and insisted that their preferred version of Sonic was true and valid and CORRECT. As an 8 year old who just loved Sonic and judged it all uncritically I was like, "...but they're all great!" And while different perspectives have taken over as The Loudest over the years, they tend to wind up sounding like echoes of that to me.
Heroes WAS that betrayal to me, and when I came back to the series a few years later, I found that I could get so much more out of it when I didn't hold it to those preconceived expectations of what it was "supposed" to be. That's what eventually let me enjoy so many games that it seemed like the wider fandom was just tearing to shreds, and I've only gotten MORE aware of that in the past few years. It's like as I've gotten older, I've come to value (and try to live up to) the perspective I had when I was 8 more and more, haha.
And to that point...
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Saying people "kind of resented" Modern Sonic back then is like the understatement of the century, haha. I have never seen this fandom in as awful a state as they were around the release of Sonic 4. I mean, I love Classic Sonic and wanted him and everything about him to come back, and I still thought they were being utterly ridiculous about it. And again, some of the stuff I see now feels like echoes of that. But still, it's never gotten anywhere close to THAT bad again.
Edited by GeekCritique on Sep 11th 2022 at 9:11:37 AM
That was around the time when I was on the Internet more and yea, it was horrible. Retro was already a cesspool but it became a literal toxic wasteland around the time Sonic 4 came out.
I'll never forget Summer 2010 when the game leaked and the amount dissecting and nitpicking that site did.
I kind of get why Sonic Colors was so warmly accepted after that fallout...
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I mean, Sonic Colors was exactly what the (increasingly) loudest people had been begging Sega to do for the better part of a decade. Having Sonic 4 to compare it to didn't hurt, but I think it would've been received warmly regardless of whether Sonic 4 had happened or not. (And outside of the fandom, it was a moot point among reviewers/critics, who tended to like them both.)
I hope Frontiers can strike the right balance, satisfying the loudest fans of today without alienating the kids who grew up in the 2010s, or the fans who like Sonic to be lighter and softer. If it doesn't, we're gonna be right back here by the end of the decade, haha. Overhauling the series to make it more like it used to be always carries that risk, but I honestly get the impression that's NOT the intention.
Much as I see people going "woo finally they're pandering to 2000s nostalgia," I don't think Frontiers (and the whole brand synergy surrounding it like the movies, Prime, and the Tyson Hesse shorts that have come out in the past few years) is actually about re-inventing Sonic to be more like it was, rather it's about re-inventing Sonic to be better than it's been. I hope so, anyway!
Ian's always been good at striking that exact balance I was talking about earlier (hedgehog with an attitude, hero with a heart of gold), and I'd be a LOT more worried about it if he wasn't the one doing it.
Edited by GeekCritique on Sep 11th 2022 at 9:52:38 AM
I mean, you're gonna have people do that regardless. Fact is, nobody is ever satisfied. You can't please everyone.
Which is why I'm not getting too hung up about Frontiers. Do I wish that it was a bigger overhaul of Sonic's gameplay that it was advertised to be? Absolutely and I'm gonna to hold that against it.
But at the same time, I don't think it looks particularly bad either and potentially interesting in some areas and honestly, yes the more melancholic and dramatic atmosphere appeals to me on a personal level after a decade of low stake, lighthearted adventures. Sue me, I like what I like :P
I make this compared a lot, but Frontiers needs to succeed where Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart succeeded and bridge the gap between old fans and new fans. And that's on top of being a good game for general audiences who aren't already fans.
Forces tried to do that and uh...failed lol. So Frontiers looks like another attempt, hopefully it succeeds. I will say, they are much confident showing it off than they ever were with Forces and that speaks volumes, so I hope it pays off.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.The thing I'll give Frontiers so far is that its cohesive. Forces had odd identity issues from its opening teaser and the more was revealed, the more it felt like a grab bag of things people liked about Sonic put together in inorganic fashion and in many ways making the whole weaker than the sum of its parts. Frontiers at least feels like it knows what it wants to be and is going for it.
Granted the puzzles don't look terribly interesting and one can tell they're still struggling to make combat in a Sonic title feel naturalistic, but even as someone not exactly drawn in by the vocal tracks or promises of a deeper story, I am genuinely sensing a game I can get a lot of out of, whether that's in replaying Cyberspace levels or just screwing around in the open world. I mean I'm someone who got about 75 percent of their fun in Mario Sunshine from experimenting with FLUDD in the hub world, so if I can get something similar here I certainly won't complain.
Edited by BorneAgain on Sep 11th 2022 at 1:21:02 PM
The puzzles and combat definitely feel like they're going to be the most....jank part of the game, and the part that the harshest of critics will judge.
I've seen arguments for both sides of it, but I do generally feel like combat has never felt particularly cohesive in Sonic but Sonic Team are insistent on having it anyway.
Hell, the parts of the game that has actual platforming are relegated to what are essentially side missions in the Cyberspace levels.
The biggest thing that is going to make or break this game to me is how Sonic controls. That has been my biggest gripe with Boost gameplay, Sonic is terrible to control when you aren't running, which makes platforming ass.
The only caveat is that even if Sonic controls amazingly, there's not gonna be much level design to take advantage of it aside from Cyberspace...
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.I don't feel like digging through the past few pages, but have we talked about how someone found a Rise of Lyric dev build from July 2014 in a repurchased Wii U dev console.
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I mean, I think combat makes sense for Sonic and would help with "fleshing out" the playstyles of other characters once we can play as them again. Wouldn't you want to use Blaze's pyrokinesis to incinerate enemies? Shadow's Chaos Spear and Chaos Blast are just one of few things that sets him apart from Sonic in terms of gameplay. And combat is pretty much the only thing that gives Silver's telekinesis any gameplay relevance in a traditional Sonic game, unless a specific gimmick for him is included in levels (not unlike Knuckles' exclusive areas in S3&K).
Though I suppose I myself prefer a more simplistic form of combat for Sonic than the "combos and moves" that Frontiers is going for. Something more akin to how 3D platformers like Banjo-Kazooie or Spyro handled things, where you had dedicated attacking abilities but the enemies can be killed in one or three hits: the differing attacks just being different options on how to deal with them with their own strengths and weaknesses. Or in Spyro's case, all enemies can be killed in one hit but can only be killed by breathing fire, charging at them, or by a third method the level provides.
Applying this to Sonic, the good ol' roll can take out most enemies EZ PZ. But shielded enemies can repel the roll, and hence Sonic would have to use a "wind attack" to blow the shield away and make the enemy vulnerable to the roll. But for Power Types, like Knuckles or Omega, they can just punch and fire a missile respectively at the shielded enemy and kill it with ease, which gives them the gameplay niche of being the best at gaining score from killing badniks (which I feel ought to be encouraged, especially if we have Eggman's robots powered by captive animals again, and hence you want to destroy as many enemies to free those poor animals). Although, that of course requires the "score points" to be relevant again...
It's a matter of pacing, and one of the main reasons why alternate characters have been very divisive. Its just incredibly jarring to go from the incredibly fast-paced Sonic gameplay, and then having to play a slow, clunky character immediately after.
What those games have in common that Sonic doesn't do is that Banjo and Spyro are pretty consistent within themselves; from the start to finish, you're doing the same thing, maybe with the occasional gimmick. What Sonic games do is that they'll have you play one type of game, before abruptly switching to something else entirely unrelated to what you were playing before.
"Had fun playing that high speed platforming gameplay? Well fuck you, now go fish/play a shooter/treasure hunt/beat'em up" etc etc.
Its one of the main reasons Shadow and/or Blaze get passes for "being clones" because they adhere to traditional Sonic mechanics. And nobody really bats an eye at how the Classic games do it.
I'm not saying combat in Sonic can't work, just that the way its been handled does not mesh well with Sonic's core design philosophy. Sonic's a platformer, which typically revolves around movement and dodging obstacles. Needing to stop and suddenly start smacking enemies is the antithesis to that. And Frontiers doesn't really do much to address that aside from just giving Sonic a bunch of Shonen action abilities out of nowhere, which do not get me wrong, are very cool in a vacuum but we're talking about a character who's signature ability is supposed to be just rolling into a ball and now he's firing ki blasts all over the place. It's incredibly jarring lmao.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Sep 11th 2022 at 2:48:38 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Hypothetically there probably is a way to design enemy gameplay so that Sonic's consistency of speed affects the ease at defeating them to incentivize keeping momentum up.
Like if there was a meter that was charged by Sonic continually moving fluidly without stopping, the higher that is, the more enemies could be taken out in one shot. Not like the Boost where you rush forward and immediately knock them down, just that if you are playing the level fairly leisurely, badniks will take a couple of hits to go down, but if you're constantly on the move, they quickly go down to a single homing attack or spin dash.
Creating that isn't easy of course, and incorporating it into rewarding level design is even trickier, so its up to fan game experiments to really get concept going.
Edited by BorneAgain on Sep 11th 2022 at 3:02:01 PM
I mean, originally Tails and Knuckles were pretty much clones as well; Tails was Sonic with a band-aid that didn't mesh up with momentum, and Knuckles was Sonic with gimped jumps that forced you to take specific paths.
Adventure had them with Sonic's physics as well, but, their aerial maneuvering was insane and ought to be worked with and nerfed rather than discarded.
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Yea, I don't mind combat in Sonic but could it please be combat that resembles Sonic gameplay?
Like the most interesting combat abilities from Frontiers to be is the Quick cyloop that launches in the air. That's the only time I felt that the combat looked "right".
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That's another hurdle; Tails and Knuckles' abilities were fine in the constrained level design of the 2D games. But it gets insane when the Z axis added and suddenly they can just bypass the entire level lol. If you nerf them too much though, you run the risk of compromising their iconic abilities, which has been a contributing factor for how Tails is used, since he's more of The Smart Guy than a flyer nowadays. Which defeats the entire purpose of his namesake if he doesn't use them.
I meant in the context of this being a platformer; Sonic Battle is a beat'em up spin off, so it's fine to take liberties there. That changes entirely when you try to apply that concept to a platforming game.
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I mean, it is not "jump half the level" due to the Z axis. It is "jump half the level" because those abilities are no longer limiting as they were.
Tails and Knuckles have to choose between momentum or commiting to aerial movement in the 2D games. That is absent in Adventure; they keep their momentum and just go nuts.
Gliding and Climbing aren't a set speed...
They build up momentum the same way running does, it just resets.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.Yeah, but in the 2D games they break the momentum, while in Adventure they keep it, and even boost it in the same way an air dash does. Hell, the way to cover distance with Knuckles at least in adventure 2 is to start and stop glides repeteadly, as glides slow down with time and that way top speed is mantained.

Here's my take: The differences in attitude between Sonic's eastern and western portrayals tend to be quite significantly overstated, because most of the people talking about them are diehard proponents of one "personality" or another.
Even at the peak of "generic shonen anime hero" Sonic in the mid-aughts, you could still find examples of that cocky attitude. Tapping the badnik off of the cliff in 06's intro, that bit of dialogue in Heroes where Sonic exclaims that we ARE, in fact, going there, or my favorite scene of the time period, his utter *undoing* of Erazor Djinn at the end of Secret Rings. ("I'm not a rat! I'm a hedgehog!")
Likewise, even the peak examples of "mascot with attitude" Sonic tend to show plenty of examples of altruistic heroism and emotional depth. Take the scene in Sat AM where he has a nightmare about Sally being roboticized, the moment in Colors when he pushes Tails in the elevator and gives him a thumbs up, or the heartfelt scene with the avatar at the end of Forces.
The depth of Sonic's character is that (as Jam's character profile said so long ago) he *hates tears*, he doesn't want the people he cares about to worry, and his confidence and bravado, while obnoxious in that way that teenagers *are*, isn't *just* about his pride. He's not only the hedgehog with an attitude, and he's not only the hero with a steadfast heart of gold, he's BOTH, and he's more than the sum of those parts.
Edited by GeekCritique on Sep 11th 2022 at 6:49:33 AM