Music
Hello Sega, Sonic Team and a bunch of people who I'm sure aren't reading this thread. I want to talk to you, kind of. You see I'm gonna make some youtube videos maybe, the scrips are done I have my comedic pauses, bass boots, and jump cuts ready. The only things getting in the way is editing and my crippling depression. However I want to talk to some people here to get a different kind of perspective before I commit to doing that, at least in regards to blue hedgehog related content.
So why are we here, well as the title suggests. I'm calling you out Sega! Sonic Team! Even the Yakuza Team I don't know what you did but stay on your toes I'm watching you.
You all lack commitment! I see you all want to do something but you are too afraid to do it, and you have been wanting to do it since 2012. But before we get to do that, we have to go back further. To the magical year of 98.
At the tail end of one of my most legendary years in video game releases came sonic adventure. A game along with its sequel that would capture the minds of young people and cause them to produce fan art to this day. Even dedicating entire episodes of a cartoon they made to be glorified fan art. People really like sonic. They really do . And they liked this sonic and its sequel. Those two games for better or for worse are held up as what 3d sonic " needs to be " by large sections of fans for years. Even now, especially now actually. Now I don't quite agree with this, and I say this as someone who will be saying " SA2 was tight tho " on his deathbed. However in terms of themes , and characters I do think these weird awkwardly voice acted anime ass games are a weird ass golden standard, and trust me I know that says a lot about the 3d sonic games.
However I do understand I don't own sonic. My opinions are my opinions and eventually the giant corporate entity will dictate that people like me are not valuable for their profit margins and proceed to not care about what I desire. And to be honest I thought they already had however a series of events have convinced me otherwise. And unfortunately for my sanity I feel as though I need to say something. Because I'm watching a company who previously tried to appeal to other demographics , fall over itself trying to give me weird half made gifts confused as to why I don't want them.
But I think they are aware, and I think there are people at sega who are or have worked on sonic who are a lot more aware of the room than people give them credit for. Sonic team is often portrayed as bumbling idiots but I would argue to create something like sonic you have to have your hands on the pulse on a lot of things. And I don't mean the sonic room, I mean media in general.
So what does all this mean, simply put they have been trying to do a reformatting of the 3d sonic games for years and they really want to do something with adventure era stuff. But they don't quite want to commit to it. And I feel as though they need to make the same jump, the same flip scrip and just go ahead and reformat it, because until they do. Until they are able to commit to something and work on it all you are going to get are half hearted appeals.
Now some of you might be like, those are very bold claims. "Sonic flipping the script is what sonic has been doing wrong the whole time", and I would argue that you are noticing a symptom of the problem. The flipped scripts aren't an issue, yes I feel like they would commit to a gameplay style for longer ... but they have and didn't help, just like removing the friend characters didn't help. Just like making the stories sillier didn't help. The issue, the virus if we are to keep to the metaphor, comes into forms.
1) they are not given the development time and resources to actually do what they want
2) They have an apprehension to actually committing to their ideas because at some point along the line they became too afraid of alienating people.
Now this isn't unique to sonic team, this isn't unique to video games. "Do we have enough cash" and "are we alienating people" are questions anyone has who is in the business of selling anything to anyone else has asked. But I hope that nudging they into the right direction may make them at least under these conditions make a better more focused product. And generally with sonic team, when one is occurring it feeds into the other thing and it just gets bad.
So why do I think that the script needs to be flipped and why do I think sega has been trying to do this for a while?Sonic Mania.
Now this is weird right , sonic mania seems like the most unflipped script there is it's a hard appeal to no nostalgia it's purely back in the day. But that's just it, after decades of ignoring classic sonic largely making their own 2d sonic games with modern sonic and new characters. Even to go so far as to repackage a mobile game call it sonic 4 with modern sonic in it. They just gave people want they wanted. It was a 2d sonic game with sonic tails and knuckles, eventually mighty and ray ( unfortunately no amy ) , had the 90's rnb sound and had the classic voiceless story... the works. The norm for sonic team hearing your desires is to misinterpret them widly, "oh you want a shadow game... time to give him a gun and make him curse. Oh you want better friend sections because how we have portrayed them and worked them into games have become burdensome, time to just get rid of them " . They make a manner of trying to surgery with a hammer. But in this instance with the help of another studio of professionals, just did the thing and it was received well. And it sort of reinforced what I have thought about this situation for years.
If you just give folks the thing they want and its good people will engage with your familiar IP. if you make them aware of it and if interest is there.
And I want to be very specific , mania is specific. There has been a call for a classic sonic type game for quite some time. This game isn't adventure game, this game isn't a modern game, this is a classic ass game. And its only blemish its unfortunate narrative connection to forces. But in general its own thing executed in the way it needs to be, with general no intruding elements from other parts of the franchise. And that's why it works. That doesn't mean you couldn't introduce a classic version of blaze the cat, but it would blaze reinterpeted in classic format , not it shoved in like classic sonic in forces. You wanna play mania you gotta play by its rules.
Sonic is a franchise that is said to have split fanbases. And I believe to be factually correct. But the context that is always left off, is that every long running fanbase has split fanbases generally. The products go through phases, change, different people like different things. The MCU fanbase is generally different from people who read comics , that's generally different from kids watching cartoons and buying toys and that generally different from yipes and max asking for marvel vs capcom. There is connective tissue but they have different needs and desires. And that's ok. The idea that this has been wielded as some sort of criticism, especially by people who claim to like this series is baffling. That's just how liking a big thing over a period of time goes.
And I am of the opinion a hard appeal to the " adventure era " with all its weird anime ass stories, crazy gameplay styles and wild music changes in fact would do just as well as mania. I'm not asking for SA3, or SA mania or SA1 and 2 remakes ...well I kinda want those last two but we will get to that later.Will talk about that in another thread, this one is gonna be long. Point is , if you make a product for those people a well done, unfiltered product. They will buy it, others will buy it like mania because they will be able to check out what's the hubub is about it. " Oh I have heard folks talk about how cool adventure was over the years but all I saw was an old video game, they remade it, lets see what's up "
Mania has also forced sonic team's hand so to speak. Why would people engage with 2d sonic stuff in modern sonic, or rather classic stuff in 3d sonic. Mania exists , make more of that. It's the thing they actually want. Any inclusions will feel like filler, half hearted appeals and a pale imitation of a thing that already exists. And why will 3d sonic fans engage with sort of weird amalgamations of various sonic things when... the classic fans are getting the whole thing they wanted.
Now I could end this here, I have explained how I feel what sonic has done in the past and made the claim of what it needs to do to actually create games that work for people, explained. I have explained why mania has changed the game and the position its put them in. But there is one claim I have yet to justify that I think ties all this up with a fancy bow. And for that, we need to go back to sonic boom.
Sonic boom was supposed to be a third piller in the sonic franchise, I third brand. There's a lot of talk about why it didn't work, what about it was the failure. But largely these points are irrelevant to me. What's relevant is what it seems like they were trying to do. Based on cut content, what the producer at the time was talking about, rumors spread about its development. It seems like sonic boom was supposed to be an adventure pillar. Multiple playable characters were back, shadow was back in focus and the producer was talking about him having this entire elaborate story , other new playable characters existed, chao world was supposed to exist and was cut , new non eggman villains a somewhat more " serious " story. It seems like they wanted to take things that worked in the adventure era and repackage. And while I think it was poorly executed, its the right track. And I think sonic team and sega are very aware of this. Enough time as passed and we are in a new age of nostalgia, Disney are literally selling repackaged versions of their old movies en masse. I'm about to watch an invader zim movie. Someone somewhere in sega , was noticing this trend back when they were developing sonic boom, or sonic synergy at the time. They noticed that there was an audience specifically for adventure era stuff. And ever since has been slowly trying to work that stuff back into the product.
Now some of you might be reasonably saying " isn't Sonic boom the scrip flip and it didn't work " .Well one it was poorly executed, but two no sonic boom (IMO) issues is that is infact... kind of safe. It doesn't go all in on its bullshit and I think its perfectly represented in the redesigned characters.
The best looking redesigns in sonic boom are Amy , Eggman, Shadow and tails. The first two are wildly different interpretations both in personality and visual design. Eggman's goes from like this sort of like tubby president inspired scientist who's high on his own farts. To kind of an incompetent hunter His whole vibe goes into this techno hunter category. He looks like a 20's weightlifter mixed with a mad scientist from old film., they were going for a very particular colonialist hunter/evil scientist kinda vibe for him and it works he's a eird guy from a foreign planet that wants to enslave animals. And amy while not as drastic as eggman, there's a lot of change. Her personality is wild different she's a lot more reasonable she has a profession and is actually a lot more a functional person than everyone else. She's taller and presumably the same age of sonic so it goes from youthful crush to trying to get a handle on this wild guy you kinda like but who's life is kinda in shambles. He design looks more tough , she goes from girl in gogo boots tone of the crew. And on the opposite end you have tails and shadow. Who are relatively the same, except tails has googles and a belt and shadow has high tops and gauntlets. Shadow's personality is a bit different. Its still just a bad interpretation of the one he had.
And that's sort of the issue with boom in general. ( Well there are some general quality issues ) But overall, it wants to go weird but feels trapped by tradition that's how you get lank sonic and buffles. You get a bunch of weird interesting platforming stuff, kind of held down by the need to be a "sonic" game. But because its a "sonic" it needs to have " sonic-ey" things and those things like mandatory run sections that weren't fun and it kinda drags down the entire experience and you loose focus on a lot of the cool different stuff they did. But on the flip side you have re-interpetations of familiar things that get dragged down by new weird bulllshit or removed. Now obviously sonic boom had development issues , that's understatement. But that conflict was present in all of sonic boom media even the cartoon and that was the only peice of sonic boom content that was ok.
And those two perspectives sort of represent the two main categories sonic game failures fall into.
1) Something different, but they get scared and it changes and they start trying to glue familiar elements not to alienate people
2) Or something similar but they get scared its too much of the same and start trying to glue unfamiliar elements to try not to alienate people
And I feel it's a lot of number 2 with some number 1. " Hey remember classic sonic, adventure sonic oh hey you like boost right " and then doing weird things that aren't anything related to why people liked those things, or do not have the time , money or focus to actually exicute these things in a meaningful way. And recently the conflicting elements of sonic were just other sonic demographics crashing into each other. Things can't get enough time because these sonic fans need to be pleased.
Mania avoids this, it is a classic sonic game for those who want that, executed in fantastically. There is one foreign element and its often the thing people sight as of a few issues with the game.
I think sega wants to make a game that harkens back to the adventure times. Because theyw ant nostalgia money, its good money. The weirdo's who played adventure like me are now grown adults... with wallets and taxes. But if that's what they want, they have to commit. No classic sonic, no like trying to be modern self aware stuff. You need to make dumb anime game that takes its dumb anime shit seriously, it needs to have trick systems, you need multiple playable characters not a billion. But some. Maybe 3, shadow sonic and blaze maybe I dunno. It needs to be executed fantastically. It needs to be a focused, good product. And it will sell.
Commit to something do cool new things , have a new take on sonic adventure style stuff. I do not want sonic adventure the way it was, I don't .But if you want to give your new take, you have to commit to that. Because with mania existing, a shining pillar to " We just gave you what you want" you can't survive on just adventure references for long. You are going to have to do it.
