Sonic Forces: Infinite Unmasked (SPOILERS/Speculation)

[Dejimon11]

38 minutes ago, VEDJ-F said:

That's probably in part due to the fact they're aiming at that very audience. The avatar and Infinite are getting far more love from kids than the likes of the Hard-Boiled Heavies are, so their design strategy obviously has some merit to it. 

You know the whole catering to kids thing doesn't really justify a mediocre product at the end of the day. That mentality is what got us Sonic Boom in the first place and look how that turned out. 

[Kuzu]

4 minutes ago, Crazy_Diamond said:

I wouldn't be worried about levity mate. The story seems to be almost like Sonic Heroes in nature, where you fight an edgy villain with the super power of teamwork! Hell, even the main theme has this in spades.

And this is just a small part of the theme, the whole main theme is about friendship and working together, etc. The story is obviously going in the direction where you defeat the powerful Infinite through the power of friendship, just like with this guy.

The only thing I'm worried about is that he'll be sort of generic just like Neo Metal Sonic was.

See, this isn't completely true. Because for one, Sonic Heroes barely has a story to begin with. And two, Metal Sonic wasn't revealed to even be the villain until the ending.

Infinite is at the forefont from the very beginning and the PR is upfront in how he helped Eggman take over. You're right in that the story is more than likely going to be about friendship and bonds and all of that. But it kind of falls flat for me because the bond is more than likely going to be between Sonic and the OC...a new character that he's never met before.

In fact, that's something Heroes actually did better. It's just as cheesy with the friendship theme, but at the very least, the theme revolves around Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles three characters who already have an established friendship with each other. It's easier to buy into that at least.

It's so weird for Sonic to be treating the OC as his trusted partner...when Tails and Knuckles are right there. That's what I meant, it's just jarring.

[Your Vest Friend]

4 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

You know the whole catering to kids thing doesn't really justify a mediocre product at the end of the day. That mentality is what got us Sonic Boom in the first place and look how that turned out. 

Character design ethos isn't the whole product though. The product in this case is more influenced by the reception of the gameplay styles of Colours/Generations and a portion of the audience wanting narratives with more meat to it. 

 

Given that the level design to me seems to stick very close to Colours' execution, I am going to say that you brought it on yourselves if you (general you) don't like it.

And if you're talking about the character design product being mediocre, that is pretty much entirely subjective and doesn't necessarily correlate with its popularity (see: my comment about the Forces originals being more popular than the Mania originals even if I don't think the Hard-Boiled Heavies are all that impressive myself). 

[Wraith]

9 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

I feel the DBZness started to overtake the series though; particularly with characters like Shadow and Silver and of course, when there was an actual Anime airing at the time. Its like you said, it went from a parody and reference to playing the tropes straight.

I mean, there's a point where it went too far and started adapting aspects of shonen people found controversial even in the shows they stole them from, but a lot of Sonic concepts from the beginning were inspired by shonen anime/action serials. Not comedy.

The Death Egg may be a "cute reference" but it's played mostly straight as a danger in the games that it's in. The emeralds are powerful and you're driven to acquire them because you want that power...the same reason anyone wants the Dragon Balls. People get hyped for Super Sonic for the same reasons they get hyped for a sudden transformation in anything else etc.

Basically I'm saying Sonic wasn't ever really self aware but mostly kind of derivative to begin with. You can swear up and down  it was a joke but they largely play the tropes they steal straight and they end up resonating with people for the same reasons they do in other things. Sonic ain't a bastion of originality. It's tropey as hell even in the so called self aware modern games and it probably always will be.
 

[Shadowlax]

1 hour ago, Super Mechanio said:

My issue with Shadow, even in SA2, is that we're frontloaded with his tragic backstory from the very beginning and are given very little to actually endear us to him. I was just introduced to this guy, and I'm supposed to care about him seeing his friend get shot? I mean, it sucks, but I don't know him. I'm given no reason to care. It's such an amateurish storytelling technique that sidesteps the natural progression of getting your audience to be invested in a character; Just dump a bunch of sad backstory on them immediately and that'll get people to care, right?

Shadow may have not been an edgelord parody of himself in SA2, but I still found him boring. And here's the sad part: He didn't have to be. A biological experiment created by a mad scientist who saw his only friend gunned down by the government could be an interesting concept, but in my opinion they severely botched the execution by doing too much, too fast. What we're left with is a character we're told to feel sad for, not a character who earns that sympathy by being geuinely likable and endearing to the audience - or, at the very least, not likable or endearing to me and many others.

And sure, his goofy in-battle quotes are amusing, but I would have liked for more stuff like that to actually appear in the story cutscenes proper. As it stands, he just spent most of the game frowning and folding his arms.

So you not feeling shadow earned anything is your opinion. I feel like a from a technical standpoint shadow... earned the most, because its why he still exists, but what the opinions of an audience versions the opinions of the individual viewer and how that effects properties is an interesting conversation to have, but not here. 

I will ask , is your issue that he's just serious and soft spoken? I'm not going to tell you what to like... but that's why I like shadow, there's not really anyone else in the series that's like that. I'm not going to bore you with my life's story but to put it short, I been through some gnarly stuff, I ain't like a science experience that's secretly related to aliens, but stuff happens. And I relate to shadow on some level because... sometimes I don't want to talk to folks, I like the guy because he's about his buisness and when he says something he's going to do it. I can relate to that sort of thing on some level

I don't particularly agree the idea that you need to laugh with someone to feel for someone as a character, this to me at least to me feels like an extremely selfish way to view characters in fiction. Now before I continue I want to make this clear , i'm not holding up sonic characters as some golden gods of characterization, outside of exceptions a lot of them are simple. But I think that plays into my point,  sometimes folks got shit going on, are about their business and don't have time to joke for you. But them being that way... doesn't at least for me, exclude them from me caring about them as characters. Them being mean faced isn't bad either, folks got shit going on. 

For me personally it isn't about if you can make me laugh its if your story is compelling. Because there are plenty of characters, in those archie books with stories so elaborate shadow looks rather plain in comparison. But I can't care for them, because i'm being told to care but nothing shown is engaging and some of those characters are funny. 

I guess my point is, my fear for infnite isn't that he isn't going to be funny. Its that all his autonomy will be taken away via " it was da rooby who did a bad " instead of him making the decision. Its also why i'm upset at shadow's obvious mind control, both are literary cop outs to use characters but not have to deal with consequences. Instead of creating new characters to engage the audience. 

I've just never gotten the notion that I need to laugh to care for  a character, I don't need that. All I need for you to do , is present your case, and if its interesting, well them i'm hooked.  That isn't to say I hate levity, that isn't to say that stories don't need levity , i'll tell you first hand that a lot of the recent DC films needed bad. But to keep this to sonic, one of my favorite arcs in the comic is a about shadow... and its funny. Other people are providing said humor, but its still funny. But its not one of my favorites because its funny, its one of my favorites because shadow is trying to convince metal sonic to take up his own initiative , that while he found out that shadow was organic shadow still understood what metal sonic was going through and wanted to help him. The funny stuff was great, and we got a meme out of it, but for me personally the whole narrative could have literally been metal sonic and shadow arguing about what is free will in some rudimentary form and I would have been super into that.

So let me close this out , I don't need levity. Does it help? sure, do I love it, hell yes. But while levity can fix some stuff with your narrative a lot of times its not going to fix that its uninteresting. So I don't need levity personally, you just have to argue your case through interesting characters and an interesting story. And Personally I feel like a lot of media nowadays are trying to hide those two with humor, and it results with ultimately uninteresting stuff when you get past all that.And I think its why we are at why we are at now with a lot of the sonic fanbase, they don't care if its funny infarct for many the recent brand of self referential self deprecating funny has grown tired, they just want something interesting that they can engage in it. And I think that's why we are here.

[Kuzu]

2 minutes ago, Josh said:

I mean, there's a point where it went too far and started adapting aspects of shonen people found controversial even in the shows they stole them from, but a lot of Sonic concepts from the beginning were inspired by shonen anime/action serials. Not comedy.

The Death Egg may be a "cute reference" but it's played mostly straight as a danger in the games that it's in. The emeralds are powerful and you're driven to acquire them because you want that power...the same reason anyone wants the Dragon Balls. People get hyped for Super Sonic for the same reasons they get hyped for a sudden transformation in anything else etc.

Basically I'm saying Sonic wasn't ever really self aware but mostly kind of derivative to begin with. You can swear up and down  it was a joke but they largely play the tropes they steal straight and they end up resonating with people for the same reasons they do in other things. Sonic ain't a bastion of originality. It's tropey as hell even in the so called self aware modern games and it probably always will be.
 

Of course, I agree. I just feel like there are better ways they could be handling it than how they've been doing for so long now. Contrary to popular belief, I'd actually be completely on board for Forces if it wasn't for a few token design decisions and story implementations.

But at this point, I understand that Sonic Teams focus is more on children who love this type of stuff rather than for it to make sense to a general audience. It's just frustrating because it can work, just not in the way they've been going about it.

[Osmium]

21 minutes ago, Joseph Henry said:

Sonic itself is a DBZ parody.

Is DBZ with cartoony animals.

Okay, no it is not. I wasn't planning on posting today, but this is not what Sonic the Hedgehog is at all. What about the lore of the classic games resembles Dragon Ball at all? And don't say Super Sonic, that was clearly meant to be a very out of left field parody. There are parody elements in the series like the Death Egg but the IP itself is not a parody of anything and was never intended to be. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

22 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

You know the whole catering to kids thing doesn't really justify a mediocre product at the end of the day. That mentality is what got us Sonic Boom in the first place and look how that turned out. 

You mean that comic series and TV show that plenty of people like? I mean sure, you don't have to like it, but it's not a downright awful product or hated by everyone, so your point kind of falls flat.

and if you're referring to something like RoL, well I think we all know it wasn't  a all-ages focus that fucked that over. Because you know, if you want to get technical, Mario is also focused on children and all-ages, but also makes some damn quality games. Age demographics and level of effort in your game creation isn't connected in a way making a product that's meant to be accessible to children automatically means doom  and gloom.

[Dr. Mechano]

6 minutes ago, Shadowlax said:

I will ask , is your issue that he's just serious and soft spoken?

No.

I like plenty of serious and soft-spoken characters just fine. I just think Shadow is poorly-realized one due to Sonic Team not knowing how to write characters well.

[DiamondX]

Geekdom101 made a video on the connections between DBZ and Sonic. You guys should watch it:

 

[Dejimon11]

6 minutes ago, Ryannumber1Scarer said:

You mean that comic series and TV show that plenty of people like? I mean sure, you don't have to like it, but it's not a downright awful product or hated by everyone, so your point kind of falls flat.

and if you're referring to something like RoL, well I think we all know it was a all-ages focus that fucked that over. Because you know, if you want to get technical, Mario is also focused on children and all-ages, but also makes some damn quality games. Age demographics and level of effort in your game creation isn't connected in a way making a product that's meant to be accessible to children automatically means doom  and gloom.

I know franchises like Mario and Kirby and Pokemon are for kids what I'm saying is if the game is bad people are just gonna justify it because "Oh it's for kids" that's what folks did when with ROL and SC(which what I was talking about) came out to defend the quality of the game before it we found out the truth of how the devs got fucked over. Same argument I've seen folks online(outside here) use to defend this game. 

TLDR: Just cause a product is target for kids/all ages-which is nothing wrong with that it should be used to an excuse if the end result is bad. 

[The Deleter]

10 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

I know franchises like Mario and Kirby and Pokemon are for kids what I'm saying is if the game is bad people are just gonna justify it because "Oh it's for kids" that's what folks did when with ROL and SC(which what I was talking about) came out to defend the quality of the game before it we found out the truth of how the devs got fucked over. Same argument I've seen folks online(outside here) use to defend this game. 

TLDR: Just cause a product is target for kids/all ages-which is nothing wrong with that it should be used to an excuse if the end result is bad. 

VEDJ-F's entire point was that kids enjoyed one element far more than another, though. Specifically Infinite over the Hard Boiled Heavies. Not who it was intended for, and therefore justifies it's mediocre execution with, but the actual results from the demographic.

We are arguing about the mere inclusion of the "badass anime villain" trope itself, after all. Not it's execution.

[Razule]

16 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

I know franchises like Mario and Kirby and Pokemon are for kids what I'm saying is if the game is bad people are just gonna justify it because "Oh it's for kids" that's what folks did when with ROL and SC(which what I was talking about) came out to defend the quality of the game before it we found out the truth of how the devs got fucked over. Same argument I've seen folks online(outside here) use to defend this game. 

TLDR: Just cause a product is target for kids/all ages-which is nothing wrong with that it should be used to an excuse if the end result is bad. 

Generally when people use the "it's for teh kiddies" excuse, they don't actually think the product is bad. It's just a way of shutting you up. They're satisfied with it, but because they don't understand why you aren't they assume you're nitpicking or your standards are too high.

[Almar]

20 minutes ago, Limit Breaker Diamond said:

Geekdom101 made a video on the connections between DBZ and Sonic. You guys should watch it:

 

>Knuckles was a villain

Stopped there.

[The Deleter]

So since we seem to have calmed down for now...

I gotta ask:

How offensive are Infinite's powers from the Ruby, actually, when assumingly every other villain in Forces now wields around the same amount of abilities, thanks to the Ruby as well?

Or how offensive it is when the Ruby is what makes him that overpowered to begin with, rather than Shadow's Chaos powers or Silver's telekinesis that they're permanently attached to?

The focus on how "overpowered" he is seems really minor due to these elements imo. I mean we just had the Deadly Six who had a whole slew of powers for no explainable reason, as well. Infinite seems more powerful atm, yes, but it doesn't feel as intrinsic to his character as everything else so far, so I don't really see what the issue is here in comparison...

[Ryannumber1gamer]

8 minutes ago, Almar said:

>Knuckles was a villain

Stopped there.

I mean he was a villain, specifically a rival/villainous character who contrasted the main hero of the series and later turned into a heroic/friendly character to his rival as Vegeta/Piccolo did. Knuckles technically was that til the end of S3&K

[Dee Dude]

 I just to point out that despite all the dumb debates around it, I'm interested in Infinite wielding a sword, I like how it's way of Eggman putting so much stock into by giving him so many ridiculous powers and weapons that it's actually amazing in a good way.

I like how this comic might serve his origins even prior to Episode Shadow, showing him without the mask.

What if he always had it as a normal person, there's so many ways this could turn out.

[Razule]

32 minutes ago, Limit Breaker Diamond said:

Geekdom101 made a video on the connections between DBZ and Sonic. You guys should watch it:

 

It's not like says anything particularly mind blowing or that no one has heard before. Super=Super Saiyan; Silver is Trunks; Knuckles has a deep voice so he's Piccolo, Tails and Krillin are short and orange, etc.

[DiamondX]

1 minute ago, Razule said:

It's not like says anything particularly mind blowing or that no one has heard before. Super=Super Saiyan; Silver is Trunks; Knuckles has a deep voice so he's Piccolo, Tails and Krillin are short and orange, etc.

It's a little more than that.

He points out the similarities between Eggman and Freeza and more.

IDK, found the video pretty good.

[Almar]

4 minutes ago, Ryannumber1Scarer said:

I mean he was a villain, specifically a rival/villainous character who contrasted the main hero of the series and later turned into a heroic/friendly character to his rival as Vegeta/Piccolo did. Knuckles technically was that til the end of S3&K

No he wasn't. Knuckles was intended from the beginning to be a heroic guardian tricked by Eggman into fighting Sonic. S3&K was supposed to be one game until design issues made them split it up.

[Razule]

Just now, Almar said:

No he wasn't. Knuckles was intended from the beginning to be a heroic guardian tricked by Eggman into fighting Sonic. S3&K was supposed to be one game until design issues made them split it up.

He was still initially an antagonist. 

[Almar]

Through Eggman's trickery and was never the main enemy. He had strictly noble goals (protect the Master Emerald from those who'd abuse it).

[Shadowlax]

6 minutes ago, Razule said:

He was still initially an antagonist. 

Being an antagonist makes you piccolo as much as being grumpy makes you vegeta. King Piccolo , and Piccolo Jrs Motives fall more in line with eggman before face turn than Knuckles

[Ryannumber1gamer]

16 minutes ago, Almar said:

No he wasn't. Knuckles was intended from the beginning to be a heroic guardian tricked by Eggman into fighting Sonic. S3&K was supposed to be one game until design issues made them split it up.

 

12 minutes ago, Almar said:

Through Eggman's trickery and was never the main enemy. He had strictly noble goals (protect the Master Emerald from those who'd abuse it).

Despite that fact, he was still established as a villain/rival character for that game, the same way Vegeta and Piccolo were before becoming friends with the main protag. Obviously his motivations weren't villainous but he still took up the role of hindering the hero characters and screwing with them for the entirety of the game.

[Almar]

Repeat After Me: Dragonball didn't invent what you're talking about.

Also, Knuckles was never a villain.