~Looks at Ride to Hell: Retribution and The Lord of the Rings: Gollum~
...I don't know about the worst cutscenes of all time for Sonic Heroes, To be honest....
Watch SymphogearI heard the Adventure 2 - Black Knight writer/creative director didn't really think much of the original Sonic lore and world, hence their games changing such a ridiculous amount of the tone and universe.
Heroes meanwhile is relatively more of a nostalgia game aesthetically, possibly explaining the lethargy with it. I reckon maybe they felt they were being forced to dial back their style and make a 'dumb little cartoon game for babies'.
Edited by Psi001 on Jun 18th 2023 at 2:55:34 PM
You're thinking of Shiro Maekawa, and he wasn't a creative director, just a writer and sometimes level designer. His output was significant, but it he wasn't that signifigant to the overall style of Sonic in the 2000's. The number of Sonic games he wrote the story or dialogue for can be counted on your fingers (SA2, Heroes, 06, Secret Rings, Zero Gravity, and Black Knight).
He did say that he didn't particularly like Mega Drive era Sonic, but I don't think that solely decided the direction of the series since many people were involved in decision making and again he didn't work on every 2000s game. I also don't get the impression he disliked working on Heroes. He was one of the people involved in planning out Heroes, including suggesting characters to use for teams like bringing back Mighty, Ray, Fang, Bark, and Bean.
Heroes being so scaled down in terms of... everything, was probably an executive decision to coincide being the first multiplatform release. Give non-Sonic fans an introduction to the series and group dynamics...
Which is why they brought back a character who died in the previous game and brought back an antagonist who hadn't been in the series for a decade to that point.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Speaking of Team Rose, I wonder if that's not going to be a thing any more.
Since they're making it pretty clear that it's not really going to be "the boys have their team of protagonists and then the girls have their team of supporting characters," as much as Amy is just part of the core Team Sonic group now and the Team being a quartet, I suppose we're not going to see Amy separated out with her own team from now on.
Probably the fact that whenever there's a plot, the protagonists are usually Sonic, Tails and Knuckles, while Amy is usually either a supporting character or a character with an entirely separate story to herself via Team Rose. This didn't change until Sonic Boom came out, which is one of the first to really push the idea that Amy is not only one of the heroes but as much a part of Sonic's core team as Tails and Knuckles - one of only two really good lasting things that game inspired (the other being the Boom tv show, which I'm pretty sure itself is one of the reasons for the change in Amy's role as well).
The only narrative game I can think of where she was part of the core cast was Adventure 1, because that game had the novel approach of being five mutually important branching stories with five different protagonists that all converged into one climax.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 18th 2023 at 8:52:46 AM
She has been playable in basically every multiplayer Sonic game, going as far back as the first Sonic Drift. Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Amy where presented as the main four in Sonic Shuffle and Sonic Advance. She was also playable in Advance 2 and 3, and in later 2D games where she wasn't playable neither where Tails or Knuckles. And Sonic X basically did a core 5, which included Amy and Cream. The only games where she's explicitly more secondary to the three guys are the games that focus on trio dynamics, so SA2 and the Riders games, and I guess 06 if you count that she was grouped with Silver instead of with Sonic. Any game that wasn't splitting the cast into trios didn't really do that, either Amy was just as important as the other 3, or she was just as secondary to Sonic as Tails and Knuckles.
So yes, if you put the cast into a venn diagram then she was outside "Team Sonic" but she was clearly the 4th most important hero in the cast and step or two in focus above every other character.
If your criteria for a core cast member is "playable in multiplayer games," then... well... yeah. That's every major character in the series. But it's also not what people are talking about when they call her a "core character" - it's not really the same thing.
It's more the difference between being written as a supporting character and written as a primary protagonist - or, at least, one of Sonic's principal sidekicks. It's why I made the point of noting narrative games specifically. The concept of there being "Team Sonic" made up of the game's main heroes is a thing from the narrative game, after all, minus Team Sonic Racing.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 18th 2023 at 10:20:42 AM
I guess its because Amy always felt ancillary to the group until later on; like yea, she was there but never particularly important depending on who you asked. But you can really apply that to Tails and Knuckles too; all three of them kind of went through a period where they were mostly supporting characters to Sonic and whoever was a new debuting protagonist at the time (Shadow, Blaze, Silver particularly).
Its only relatively recently that they stopped introducing new protagonists and just started focusing on the four of them as the "core" characters.
But in terms of advertisements, there's never really been a debate on Amy's place in the series and I'm kind of surprised people thought otherwise.
Edited by BlackYakuzu94 on Jun 18th 2023 at 1:17:25 PM
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.![]()
I get what you're saying, but the main point I want to get at is that the separation of Amy from Tails and Knuckles really only exists because of the speed/flight/power trio dynamic. Well, first she didn't make the cut in SA2 because of how they wanted to do the Hero and Dark thing, but after that you have Heroes who's premise was to group the characters into trios, so they made the decision to split Amy from the other 3 to make her the speed leader of the "girl" group (which didn't 100% pan out since they ended up moving Rouge onto Shadow's team). Then Riders and Team Sonic Racing just continued that idea of the teams of three in those same roles. Games that didn't separate the characters into those speed/flight/power trios didn't treat Amy like any more of a supporting character than Tails and Knuckles.
Which goes back to your original comment, wondering if "Team Rose" will still be a thing. And I believe the answer to that will be that it's just dictated by the gameplay. I think if they make a game without the trio dynamic then Amy will be clearly part of the "core four", but if they want to make another game that uses the trios then Amy will get her own team again as before.
I'd call SA 2 a significant downgrade in prominence for Amy from SA 1, tbh. It's definitely the start of her being written more like a supporting character: she's mostly there to follow the other characters around, make funny comments surrounding Sonic not being into her or the boys not listening to her, and only skew into The Heart right at the end.
SA 2 Amy's the kind of character we used to have The Chick as a trope for.
Edited by KnownUnknown on Jun 19th 2023 at 12:39:51 PM
Cream still has potential I say, if Amy is the fourth member of Team Sonic, Cream works well as the fifth.
Cream just has good chemistry with Sonic, Tails, Knuckles and Amy. I actually think Cream works better in a Team Sonic than in Team Rose.
She does have limited apparences in that fifth member role though, only in Sonic Advance games and Sonic X (maybe sonic battle and maybe sonic chronicles?). In Sonic Boom the fifth member is Sticks, and in Sonic Prime the fifth member is Rouge.
I think it's most likely that Cream will fall further into relevancy, but that doesn't change the fact there can be more to her than being a Team Rose member.
Edit: SA 2 is a weird one for Amy, as she definitely does do some action to steal the key card to free Sonic, but it happens entirely off screen.
Edited by Whowho on Jun 19th 2023 at 10:44:01 AM
We're not talking about Sonic the Comic.
I see what happened to Amy in SA 2 to be collateral damage. The game is about duality and all, so each playable character has their own counterpart. It'd unbalance things if Amy was a main character too.
And points for not going for the Designated Girl Fight and have ger be Rouge's rival.
A lazy millennial who's good at what he does.Welp, it looks like I was wrong...
Amy's Hyper form does have a difference (or maybe it's just her Super Form)
She can throw hammers, like...a hammer throwing person, or that one scene from Sonic X.
Edited by randomness4 on Jun 19th 2023 at 9:16:47 AM
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Sonic Heroes has the worst cutscenes of all time.
Rules of the Internet 45. Rule 45 is a lie. Check out my art if you notice.