A Way To Salvage Sonic's Friends?

Sonic's friends: you know them, you generally only love a scant handful of them. For better or worse, they've changed the series irreversibly, adding a variety of personalities and playstyles that many sorely miss. I think there is a way to salvage Sonic's friends.

One Key Thing: MAKE THEM ACTUALLY PLAY LIKE SONIC.

Fishing in Sonic Adventure was one thing, but Tornado Defense in Unleashed is quite another. Don't make them exactly the same though, then it would feel a bit redundant. Are the Lego games hampered by a variety of characters? No. They are greatly enhanced by them. Is the Skylanders series crippled by many playable folks. Nada. It was a selling point. Does this harm League of Legends in any way. Zip. And so on and so forth. The problem lies in the genre roulette of the series, and the genre roulette should not be blamed on them alone, as even games with only Sonic have featured it, namely Unleashed.

Another Thing: MAKE THEM NOT ANNOYING

Get better (possibly even Hollywood quality) voice actors for them, make them no longer speak in the levels themselves (except guides like Omochao, who need to have the ability to be turned off, like they do now), and make them act less annoying overall.

Third Thing: MAKE THEM FLESHED-OUT CHARACRERS

Give them more of a personality; likes, dislikes, fears, goals, hopes, dreams, weaknesses, strengths, etc. Possibly even create backstories for some. The lack of personality has especially been a problem with very recent additions like Yacker, who have very little personality.

One Last Thing: REDESIGN THEM TO BE LESS PRESCHOOLISH

Some people on this very site have claimed that Sonic's friends look very preschoolish in design. In order to combat this, redesign them to look less so. with Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, people loved Mondo Gecko, Ray Fillet, Tokka and Rahzar, Slash, Wingnut, Grounchuck and Dirtbag, Pizzaface, and others because they had a dark sense to their designs, with bizarre proportions, scars, torn clothing, and gruesome detail, and weren't overly kiddie. Thus, they did not beg for the likes of Irma. When the lamer mutants, like Monty Moose, came along people whined. This was because they looked very preschoolish and lacked the things that made other TMNT friends cool.

Does anyone agree with this? Thoughts?

Are you a Sonic Team plant per chance?

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Originally Posted by Pulstar

Are you a Sonic Team plant per chance?

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No, not at all, but I definitely want to be one day.

http://fc02.deviantart.net/fs71/i/20..._Shodan_CE.jpg

Or you could just get rid of them, they serve no purpose. Tails is the best friend, Amy is the love interest, Knuckles is the rival that's actually a good guy, Metal Sonic is the mirror enemy that can go toe to toe with the hero, Robotnic is the likeable villain.

That's already too much but at least all the bases are covered. What's shadow's purpose? What's silver's purpose? Cream? Rouge? Do we need a love interest for every character? They all suck, they're filler, pointless characters to flesh out a world that needed no fleshing out.

Why does Sonic need to turn into a werewolf, save human girls, or use swords? That's not Sonic, that's something with the same look but totally different from the likeable chubby hedgehog that for a few years showed the fat plumber who's boss.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Or you could just get rid of them, they serve no purpose. Tails is the best friend, Amy is the love interest, Knuckles is the rival that's actually a good guy, Metal Sonic is the mirror enemy that can go toe to toe with the hero, Robotnic is the likeable villain.

That's already too much but at least all the bases are covered. What's shadow's purpose? What's silver's purpose? Cream? Rouge? Do we need a love interest for every character? They all suck, they're filler, pointless characters to flesh out a world that needed no fleshing out.

Why does Sonic need to turn into a werewolf, save human girls, or use swords? That's not Sonic, that's something with the same look but totally different from the likeable chubby hedgehog that for a few years showed the fat plumber who's boss.

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This is essentially what SEGA already did recently. Also, is the extended cast of Mario pointless filler? How about that of the Simpsons?

Another Sonic friends thread? Come on now.

How many times we have to go through this...

Dammit miru stop trolling, the whole pretending to be a retarded stupid Sonic fan is so overdone.

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Originally Posted by miru

Also, is the extended cast of Mario pointless filler? How about that of the Simpsons?

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Yes.

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Or you could just get rid of them, they serve no purpose. Tails is the best friend, Amy is the love interest, Knuckles is the rival that's actually a good guy, Metal Sonic is the mirror enemy that can go toe to toe with the hero, Robotnic is the likeable villain.

That's already too much but at least all the bases are covered. What's shadow's purpose? What's silver's purpose? Cream? Rouge? Do we need a love interest for every character? They all suck, they're filler, pointless characters to flesh out a world that needed no fleshing out.

Why does Sonic need to turn into a werewolf, save human girls, or use swords? That's not Sonic, that's something with the same look but totally different from the likeable chubby hedgehog that for a few years showed the fat plumber who's boss.

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http://media.theweek.com/img/dir_009...on-was.jpg?175

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Or you could just get rid of them, they serve no purpose. Tails is the best friend, Amy is the love interest, Knuckles is the rival that's actually a good guy, Metal Sonic is the mirror enemy that can go toe to toe with the hero, Robotnic is the likeable villain.

That's already too much but at least all the bases are covered. What's shadow's purpose? What's silver's purpose? Cream? Rouge? Do we need a love interest for every character? They all suck, they're filler, pointless characters to flesh out a world that needed no fleshing out.

Why does Sonic need to turn into a werewolf, save human girls, or use swords? That's not Sonic, that's something with the same look but totally different from the likeable chubby hedgehog that for a few years showed the fat plumber who's boss.

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This. Thankfully the last game we saw "Sonic's Shitty Friends" in was Generations (IIRC). Thank God.

Sidenote: Big the Cat just doesn't give a fuck anymore. He's chillin' with Froggy in the Mystic Ruins Zone lighting up that White Rhino. Puff puff pass Froggy.

I don't think the new forum software can handle another Sonic friends discussion.

I think a ban needs to be issued.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

I think a ban needs to be issued.

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Replying to his threads is our problem, he isn't ruining other threads with this kind of stuff. He's done nothing that's against the rules.
Still, changing the rules might not be such a bad idea.

Thou shall not speak of Sonic's shitty friends.

Only a few of your points are really on-track IMO . . . like the "less annoying" thing. (I'd use "less obnoxious" in any case)



Anyway: voice actors don't need to be super high quality here. Decent saturday morning cartoon quality acting is absolutely fine. Honestly, directing and writing are WAY more important than the actors themselves too. (look at the difference in voice acting quality between Sonic Adventure 1 and 2, with most of the same voice cast)



A big problem in many games, isn't the characters themselves at all, but the issue of trying to cram too many into a single game (especially trying to tie them to plot points). Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 did this pretty decently IMO, some thing they went to far with it, it worked well enough overall IMO. (and it's important to note that SA2 cut out more characters than it added -both playable and non-playable)
Sonic Heroes totally went in the wrong direction there with a whole mess of characters compiled from their back log of existing cast as well as adding yet more.
The 2D handheld games have less of a problem with this (and the story issues too) given how they tend to be more streamlined and minimalistic in general, not pushing the story as heavily and not super heavily voice acted or cutscene laiden either. (and some story-heavy games like Sonic Battle manage things pretty decently too . . . I can't comment on Dark Brotherhood though, never really bothered looking into that)


The other problem, both in regards to characters and in Sonic games in general is the story: either they make the plot too complex and just end up being stupid and full of holes, or they try to dumb it down but it falls flat, or it's just an inherently bad/weak/unfitting story that's also poorly executed. (Sonic '06 would certainly be the latter IMO)

Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 handled things alright for what they were, and IMO Sonic Adventure 2 was a pretty decent evolution of the writing, story telling, and acting quality (needs work, but going in the right direction). Then Heroes kind of throws that out the window for a watered down story thrown in the for the hell of it, and overall premise/situation that doesn't make sense (on many levels) given where Sonic Adventure 2 left off. (especially with Shadow randomly thrown back in with no explanation, and then a bunch of confusing and rather pointless overall dialog and story that didn't hold up well at all compared to the previous games)

Shadow . . . I actually kind of liked, but it still failed big time. I like the premise and the basic idea of the story and game itself, but it needed more polish in gameplay and level design (and graphics), but the story and character interaction are separate problems in and of themselves.
The story itself is an interesting concept IMO, and would have made a decent one to pose as a direct chronological sequel to Sonic Adventure 2 (more so had Sonic Heroes not had Shadow . . . or had Sega made a different game as a direct followon to SA2 -still lacking Shadow).
Anyway, I like the concept of the story, but the execution was pretty weak, not properly fleshing out many of the few areas of story/backstory that's actually interesting, not filling plot holes from the previous games, and quite often contradicting previous games' stories and adding new holes to the plot.

I'm totally fine with the game being dark and gritty like that . . . I liked the bit of darker story elements worked into SA2, and as a spinoff (not intended to be a typical main series sonic game), that would have worked well IMO. But it would still definitely be a matter of good writing and directing (and overall execution) of that story, and having good gameplay on top of that.


Oh, that, and the extremely limited profane vocabulary used in the game was really inane and stupid . . . if they'd actually pushed it up to a Teen rating (as originally planned) and had good writing that actually TASTEFULLY made use of that, it could have been OK. They also could have been totally fine without that too, dark storyline and all (plenty of good cartoons with relatively complex stories getting rather dark at times that worked totally fine within G/PG boundaries ;)).





Really, if the writing/plot, and acting/directing was on level reasonably comparable to decent (let alone good) animated TV show production quality, there'd be a LOT less to complain about in these games, and much more chance for the story to actually enhance the gameplay experience overall. (at least for those who actually appreciate a story and get more immersed in the game through that -which I certainly do)

And they were moving in that direction with the improvements from SA1 to SA2 . . . it just fell apart after that. (even more interesting since SA2 apparently had a relatively low budget and short development time compared to SA1 and other typical mainstream heavy-hitter titles of the time)

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Originally Posted by Kamahl

Replying to his threads is our problem, he isn't ruining other threads with this kind of stuff. He's done nothing that's against the rules.
Still, changing the rules might not be such a bad idea.

Thou shall not speak of Sonic's shitty friends.

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Trolling is against the rules.

And yes, there needs to be a rule against such discussion, so that we have another reason to ban him. I wish he'd go back to Sonic Retro.

A forum is a place ( virtual or not) where people gather to debate or discuss about something. As such, it's an absolute must that the freedom of speech is preserved.
If you don't like the content of someone's thread, then don't reply to it. This is a place of discussion, but people tend to forget that.

"Oh, i don't like threads about Sonic's friends so we should ban him". "That guy has a bad grammar, let's ban him". "This fellow is from Iceland, i don't like that country so let's ban him".

The Sega-16 is a respected site and if we want this iniciative to expand, then new members are a must. Like once i saw a member here post "who the hell are you guys?" refering to new members in a especific thread. If that's the way it's going to be, then just ask Melf to close the forum to new members.
Everybody in the internet pretends to be a big fucking bad-ass, only because that's very easy to do when you're behind a monitor screen.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Trolling is against the rules.

And yes, there needs to be a rule against such discussion, so that we have another reason to ban him. I wish he'd go back to Sonic Retro.

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I don't think he's trolling. If anything, he's a kid who just wants to talk about Sonic. If that annoys you, fine, but I don't think he's breaking any rules, at least not yet he isn't.

Do you purists know what you're asking? If Sega made the games Sonic-only en masse, that will bury Sonic faster than any of his friends can say "SONIC". A formula developed in 1991 made obsolete in 1992 will not work in 2013.

I like Sonic. Like an old man, our favorite fuzzy friend needs his friends more than anything.

Sonic friends aren't bad perse, it's just how they've written them that fucked it all up.

Why not just make a fun 3D Sonic in the style of Banjo-Kazooie? have the Sonic world be big and vibrant,
where you run around in a bigass world and you meet your friends (like Vector the Crocodile and Mighty The Armadillo)
and they are all normal kinda friends, with normal stories to tell. none of this : MY GRANDCHILD IS VERY SICK AND ONLY
SHADOW LOVES HER SO NOW SONIC WEREWOLF HAS A SWORD AND WANTS TO KISS THIS HUMAN GIRL kinda crap.

What really turned me off from Sonic games was the Sonic Adventure 2 story, with the whole :
"omg aren't we dramatic, Sonic Shakespeare omg!" shit.

make Sonic live in a fun world again, no fucking tank pursuits, just green hill world, ice world,
lava world, tech world kinda stuff, but in 3D.

Like.. lets take a bigass cauldron..

put in some Mario 64, because of the standard it set, some banjo-kazooie, some animal crossing,
some Sonic Jam hub feel, some Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon (Rrrrrrrrrrobotnik!)
A big scoop of classic Sonic storyline (save the animals, battle robotnik's crazy bosses)

Just keep the emo/swords/human girls/freedom fighters/werewolf/shadow/shit out of it.

And you'd have a great game.

While these Sonic threads might be goofy, at least miru isn't spamming unrelated threads like MrSega was doing, so I don't see any reason for a ban.

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Originally Posted by NeoVamp

http://i1052.photobucket.com/albums/...ps1f8e6d70.gif

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I like the cauldron idea.

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Originally Posted by NeoVamp

Sonic friends aren't bad perse, it's just how they've written them that fucked it all up.

Why not just make a fun 3D Sonic in the style of Banjo-Kazooie? have the Sonic world be big and vibrant,
where you run around in a bigass world and you meet your friends (like Vector the Crocodile and Mighty The Armadillo)
and they are all normal kinda friends, with normal stories to tell. none of this : MY GRANDCHILD IS VERY SICK AND ONLY
SHADOW LOVES HER SO NOW SONIC WEREWOLF HAS A SWORD AND WANTS TO KISS THIS HUMAN GIRL kinda crap.

What really turned me off from Sonic games was the Sonic Adventure 2 story, with the whole :
"omg aren't we dramatic, Sonic Shakespeare omg!" shit.

make Sonic live in a fun world again, no fucking tank pursuits, just green hill world, ice world,
lava world, tech world kinda stuff, but in 3D.

Like.. lets take a bigass cauldron..

put in some Mario 64, because of the standard it set, some banjo-kazooie, some animal crossing,
some Sonic Jam hub feel, some Adventures of Sonic The Hedgehog cartoon (Rrrrrrrrrrobotnik!)
A big scoop of classic Sonic storyline (save the animals, battle robotnik's crazy bosses)

Just keep the emo/swords/human girls/freedom fighters/werewolf/shadow/shit out of it.

And you'd have a great game.

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Repped. I'd play a game like that. Man I wish Sonic had the same kind of snarky whimsy as Banjo-Kazooie, instead of constant extreme seriousness.

This is the forum to a site named Sega-16.

16

Sure we talk about newer games too of course as well as other things but I think it's been made abundantly clear in all of the other topics by the OP on this exact same subject that few of us give a crap about Sonic's friends. You're barking up the wrong tree if you want to find much sympathy for those characters here.

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What really turned me off from Sonic games was the Sonic Adventure 2 story, with the whole :
"omg aren't we dramatic, Sonic Shakespeare omg!" shit.

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That's pretty much where my interest in the franchise tanked as well.

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Originally Posted by Guntz

Trolling is against the rules.

And yes, there needs to be a rule against such discussion, so that we have another reason to ban him. I wish he'd go back to Sonic Retro.

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Sorry Son, this isn't trolling. And Sonic buddy discussions might be old to some, but they aren't breaking any rules.

If we get spammed with five different Sonic buddy discussions when a single current thread will suffice, then miru and I will have a talk.

At least miru isn't asking about rarity and prices of Game Gear games. ;)

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Originally Posted by kool kitty89

I'm totally fine with the game being dark and gritty like that

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Except that Shadow was not dark or gritty... it was hip and edgy in the most immature and childish way possible.

I'd be happy with them not using Tails in the next game cos of how unbelievably annoying his voice is, Knuckles is cool tho keep Knuckles.

The rest add nothing to the series and probably shouldn't be used at all ever again.

EDIT: Honestly, if Sega/Sonic Team focus on anything they should be worried about making a good game, not making characters less annoying, when they finally get round to making a Sonic game that doesn't control like a rollercoaster with missing wheels, then they will be in the right direction of fixing Sonic.

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Originally Posted by Gogogadget

when they finally get round to making a Sonic game that doesn't control like a rollercoaster with missing wheels

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How to make a Sonic game these days.

1. Basketball Player Sonic.
2. Add a billion friends
3. add rollercoaster levels that have tropical backgrounds so the fans can be all like "omg just like green hill zone! this I accept!"

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Originally Posted by NeoVamp

How to make a Sonic game these days.

1. Basketball Player Sonic.
2. Add a billion friends
3. add rollercoaster levels that have tropical backgrounds so the fans can be all like "omg just like green hill zone! this I accept!"

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4. Early 90s 'cool' dialogue.
5. A silly storyline that probably makes absolutely no sense.
6. Make it as hard as possible to actually just play the game, either include coins to open levels, or make you complete 'optional' challenges to unlock bosses.

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Originally Posted by Gogogadget

4. Early 90s 'cool' dialogue.
5. A silly storyline that probably makes absolutely no sense.
6. Make it as hard as possible to actually just play the game, either include coins to open levels, or make you complete 'optional' challenges to unlock bosses.

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7. Think of random ideas that have nothing to do with Sonic (like weapons, werewolves, etc) and add them. How about, a Ninja Sonic? Or Sonic driving a flying saucer? Or a robot suit? Or a singing Sonic who kills his enemies with the power of sound (his awful voice actually). Oh wait, i know.. how about a taco... that craps ice cream?

8. Add melodrama and romance and take the story seriously. Make an epic story about love, betrayal, the power of friendship and believing in yourself and other lame things.

9. More bestiality. I have a thing about big headed cartoony animals having their way with doll-faced Final Fantasy characters.

I for one demand the SatAM crew to be featured in at least one more game.
This is my one and only demand because they don't get quite enough coverage.

(I mean a minor cameo in Spinball? C'MON!)

They have the longest running/still running monthly comic book based on a video game dedicated to them. I think they have enough coverage.

And honestly it's just one big furry soap opera and a game starring them would be awful because you just know they'd get Archie Comics involved.

There's a SatAM comic?

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Originally Posted by Blades

There's a SatAM comic?

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No, there's a long running comic with characters from it, but the two differ in style and approach. SatAM was dark and deep, Archie's comic was light and goofy.

Sonic started his downward spiral in Sonic 2 when they introduced Tails, a completely unnecessary and unwelcome character. Tails' presence makes me feel like a babysitter. I think you need to be a pedophile in order to take a liking to Tails. ALL of Sonic's friends need to go away forever, Tails included. And they need to do it retroactively... go back in time and erase all friend code from every single Sonic game. Except Sonic 1 because there are no friends in that one. Thus it remains the best Sonic game ever, and it's still only mediocre.

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Originally Posted by Cornholio857

This. Thankfully the last game we saw "Sonic's Shitty Friends" in was Generations (IIRC). Thank God.

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Thankfully? Sonic Generations is the latest game of the franchise. How is that something to be thankful about?

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Originally Posted by Alexrd

Thankfully? Sonic Generations is the latest game of the franchise. How is that something to be thankful about?

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Maybe because they didn't have crap gameplay, or ANY AT ALL for that matter? Apparently, Lost World won't have much in the way of friends.

They should make a game like Deer Hunter with sonic friends.

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Originally Posted by old man

They should make a game like Deer Hunter with sonic friends.

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Too funny.