Is it time to apologize to Pontac and Graff?

[Slashy]

I am not here to say that the franchise has not had an overall major improvement.

I am not here to say their writing style was a good directon for the games.

I will say that there is plenty of writing that evokes the same kind of stupid jokes and character flanderization fans complained about from them.  However, you will not dare see fans en masse complaining about the OK KO special, the Twitter Takeovers, some of the side material from the IDW comics (the not Flynn stuff), the weaker episodes of Sonic Boom (surprisingly NOT from them) even though it is all on par with the same content they were providing.

If we are going to admit they were fine for the franchise, then years of complained and personal attacks thrown their way need to be addressed. Right now the fanbase comes off as a bunch of hypocrites. Pretending like their writing is somehow uniquely bad when it seems like any lack of experience working with the franchise or writing comedy for younger audiences tends to lead to writing similar to them.

[StaticMania]

It would be easier to say they were mischaracterized than flanderized during the 2010 - 2020 period.

Outside of Shadow, it'd be inaccurate to say any character was flanderized during that time, most of them were downplayed and didn't have enough screen time to show otherwise.

Sonic being a non-stop quippy joker, those aren't his usual traits.

Tails not being humble, but jealous and snarky himself...those aren't his usual traits.

Amy acting like she's never expressed her love for Sonic before...what.

Knuckles being a bit arrogant in downplaying Sonic's accomplishments, that's pretty normal.

[MetalSkulkBane]

I admit that big reason I disliked them was simply change of tone. I wanted more serious plot and many characters. Nowadays I understand it wasn't even their choice, Sega just wanted lighter tone and picked lighter writers. I was a bit dumb.

(But no, I never directly complained towards them, let alone threatened them. I was never this dumb.)

WITH THAT SAID I simply don't like their humor.
Colors was a simple, harmless story. If anything, it's one better game stories about Sonic-Tails friendship dynamic. But a lot of jokes were pretty bad. I can't say any of them land (cleaning dead robot is gruesome, Eggman announcements, amusement puns) but the ones that don't land just draaaged. Plus this is the first main story where I couldn't take Eggman seriously as treat. He can have goofy moments like Unleashed, but he needs to show some competence as well.
But even that is miles beyond "Shattered Crystal",  in that game it feels like Pontac didn't even try.

The reason they are judged harshly is because Sonic games are CORE products. Even if you hate Twitter Takeovers, they are made on cheap, a side dish. Yes Sonic Boom cartoon had weak episodes, but good ones to, so it evens out. It's not like we have 1 episode a year. And yes, there were some really dumb comics, but that's really not mainstream Sonic. I mean, most bad comics were pre-internet anyway.

[Kuzu]

The amount of hate and vitriol they got was so uncalled for, that its no wonder they're happy to wash their hands of this series. The absolute worst traits of the fandom were on full display in the last decade and its one of the main things that disillusion me to interacting with people online. And the hate was completely misplaced too because so much of the shit people complained about are still present in Frontiers, so its clear they were never the problem and were just doing what Sega asked them to do, which makes it even stupider.

 

That being said, judging their writing on its own merits, its pretty lackluster. Not the worst writing the series has had, but you can tell they were mostly just trying to collect a paycheck and they even admitted to not doing much research for the series and just opted for their own interpretation of things. Not that you need to be a diehard Sonic fan to understand and write for this series, but you should at least try to respect what came before and they really didn't. Doesn't justify how the fandom treated them, but that is something I can getting under people's skin, particularly the long time fans who are invested in the lore and characters over the gameplay.

 

So its a blessing for everyone they're no longer working on the series; they can move on to better things and leave behind this toxic ass fandom for their mental health, and the fans can find a new scapegoat to complain about when Flynn doesn't write things exactly like how they envisioned in their headcanons.

[Red Hot Jack]

I think I can sum it up, since this topic was discussed a lot before, with: They literally got assaulted, but their writing deserves the hate because they had the job, they did not do research, barely wrote anything significantly deep with Sonic, and when SEGA let them do their own stuff in Lost World, they created a pretty lazy, rushed and effortless plot, not only did they not understand the cast, but I'm convinced they can't write an interesting Sonic plot, plus their humor is not really funny in my opinion, at least in Sonic games, even that Boom ep they wrote was one of the most poor.

In short, they did not deserve personal hate, they deserved to be fired.

Now this is my personal thought, but when you get a job you should actually study for it and make an effort to be worth your work.

[Blue Blood]

They did a terrible job of writing for the series, but they did exactly the job SEGA wanted them to do. Don't forget how they were met with overwhelming praise for the writing in Colours when it was new. Nobody said it was perfect, but it was a welcome breath of fresh air to see the series calm down and lighten up. It continued the trend that Unleashed started and having American writers rather than translators was seen as a sensible choice. 

The bad writing of Pontac and Graff's games deserves all the criticism it gets. And they also deserve criticism for neglecting to learn much about the series history. They really didn't do much to respect the stories of the characters. 

What they didn't deserve, obviously, were the personal attacks and unprovoked barrages that got thrown at them by rabid fans at every turn. Again, they were only doing the job that SEGA told them to do.

All that said, I don't think that most of us here have anything to apologise for. It only takes a few bad apples. 

[Kuzu]

Yea, I realized I never answered OP's question; I can't speak for anyone else, but I really have nothing to apologize for. My feelings have been mostly that their writing is kind of whack, but not much else beyond that and most of my criticism is constructive as opposed to being fueled by pure hate and spite like most people. 

13 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Don't forget how their was actually overwhelming praise for the writing in Colours when it was new. Nobody said it was perfect, but it was a welcome breath of fresh air to see the series calm down and lighten up. It continued the trend that Unleashed started and having American writers rather than translators was seen as a sensible choice. 

This doesn't surprise me, it's usual phenomenon where the general and casual audience likes something, or is at least neutral about it but the die hard fandom (This being fans who grew up in the decade of 2000-2009) being vocally loud about their hatred. In 2010, the general reception Colors got was enough to drown out the vocal dissenters and the game was noted for even bringing back older fans who were disillusioned with the aforementioned 2000's era (Hence why so many classic fans prefer Pontaff).

After the hype for Colors died down and the casual/general audience moved on from it, and the tropes it used were done in a worse game (Lost World and Forces), the haters were vindicated and were suddenly the loudest people in the room which led to the "Colors is bad actually" narrative. 

Its the same exact thing that happened to the Adventure games after a while until the pendulum swung back in their favor. They were praised at first until Shadow and 06 came out and then everyone retroactively hated the game. 

 

Its just a thing that happens with every new Sonic  game.

[DaBigJ]

Fuck no.

While I don't think they deserved any harassment they got, they were not good writers for Sonic at all, and the thing about them not looking back at why people loved the series will never not upset me. I already didn't like some of their previous work, but the small era where they worked on Sonic was arguably one of the worst eras for Sonic in terms of writing.

Poor jokes, botched characters, lame executions, it felt very much in line at times with lame fanfictions that misunderstood what the characters were about and instead portrayed (some of) them as obnoxious unlikable people. I downright hated this era's take on Sonic and Tails, especially Tails, who was portrayed as a jerky, wimpy character.

Lost World and Forces in particular were fucking garbage in terms of writing, and the less said about the Boom sub-series the better.

Was the harassment justified? Hell no, you shouldn't harass anyone, but the overall hate that didn't involve any harassing was more than justified. This was a major low in terms of stories.

[StaticMania]

You can praise them for making Tails a good character...until he wasn't.

" " " " " "

[Sega DogTagz]

7 hours ago, Slashy said:

 Pretending like their writing is somehow uniquely bad when it seems like any lack of experience working with the franchise or writing comedy for younger audiences tends to lead to writing similar to them.

 

Its not usually a good idea to lower the expectation bar because the people in like minded fields also indulge in the low hanging fruit that makes child friendly/related media a dumpster fire. Is their work uniquely bad for a kids show? Of course not - there are plenty of examples, probably a majority in fact, of kiddie content that stoops to the same simple set ups, the same shallow joke cycles and the lack of any real introspection or understanding of its core characters.

 

But that doesn't mean we should just give them a pass either. There are good examples of kid friendly content, where writers put in the time and effort to understand the characters and the audience and delivered something enjoyable across the board. Over time, P&G got progressively worse and the characters in their care devolved. The jokes were almost all misses, which is a problem when every cutscene seems to want to cram some kind of joke into it. They rarely were able to capture a mood beyond campy. They just quickly wore out the welcome and much like the games, continued to trot out a different variant of the product everyone had seen enough of already.

 

I'm sure they probably got some online feedback that was over-the-line. People are dicks when they can hide behind a computer screen. But I'm not going to confuse sympathy for that into some revisionist history were they were not as bad as we remember - because they were.

[LegoFedora]

The more I think about Pontaff, the more I realize that their writing wasn't bad just extremely different in tone. In a weird way, I kind of miss it. Frontiers writing was a step up...for the most part...but I kind of grew to like Sonic having a bit more of a cocky attitude under Pontaff, and being unable to take Eggman as seriously a lot of the time. I think replaying Colors with Ultimate made me realize that. For a character like Sonic to have stopped Eggman time and time again, only to stumble upon a massive amusement park with no world-ending god in sight this time, yeah I probably wouldn't take it that seriously if I were him either. Maybe it's because I grew up with them in control, so "cocky Sonic who doesn't take anything seriously" is the Sonic personality I'm most used to. I'd say Lost World was probably when their writing hit a low point, but even that game was nice just from the back and forth banter we got that no other game really had a lot of except maybe SA2. Games like Colors and Generations weren't really that bad in hindsight either.

Now would I bring them back to write the mainline games? Eh, probably not. For as much as I kind of like their more witty take on Sonic, I can understand why it wouldn't fit within more story-focused games like Frontiers. I have come to enjoy Pontaff's style of writing sonic, and I wouldn't mind if they stuck around for spinoff/non-mainline games though. A part of me wonders what Prime would be like if Pontaff was writing it, with them being primarily cartoon writers it's kind of disappointing we never got to see them write for Sonic in the medium they're most familiar with.

But the hate and threats they got were undeserved, absolutely. It's a video game about a blue rodent and his equally colorful friends, people really shouldn't have been so up in arms about how they're being portrayed. Every writer has a different interpretation of how Sonic and his world works, and that's what makes this franchise so special as compared to a lot of other long running franchises. From the melodrama of Archie to the somber stories of Frontiers, there is no one "definitive" way to write Sonic. Beauty is in the eyes of the beholder (or writer?).

Spoiler

Then again maybe Frontiers is making me have a "you don't know what you have until it's gone" realization. Maybe having writers that don't know much about Sonic isn't such a bad idea since they aren't able to force in references to much better days every 10 minutes.

 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

They never deserved any of the flak they got, and I’m glad I’ve gone on record defending them in the past despite not liking their writing after Colors all that much.

No, their style was the best, and they could’ve done better by having more knowledge of the series. But they were far from atrocious, and all the blame is solely on Sonic Team for the direction they took things.

Their writing was no worse they the cringe that came before in games like ShTH, and was no more badly written than Sonic 06 (Maybe not that bad). But while they weren’t the best writers, yes we should apologize to those two for how they were treated.

Like, you can be critical without being a asshat. I know some topics have aspects that make us behave irrationally at times, but given how this has happened before with numerous other parts of this franchise you think we’d be better at noticing and calling this out more often.

[Kuzu]

I feel like the backlash would have been a bit less severe had they stuck to their strengths though; you can tell they were mostly comfortable writing things like Colors, where the stakes were pretty low and its as by the numbers of a game you can get. Just Sonic & Tails going to stop Eggman. The second they tried to insert drama is the point when all of their flaws as writers were on full display for all to see. Had the games been lighthearted affairs like Colors, I don't think people would have minded as much tbh.

[Rabbitearsblog]

Personally, I don't think that Pontac and Graff deserved all the harassment they got for how they wrote the Sonic games during their time on the franchise.  At the end of the day, they were just doing their jobs and they shouldn't be threatened in the first place. It just makes the fandom look even worse and it makes it to the point where nobody would want to deal with the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise because of how badly the fandom reacted to any changes being done to the franchise, positive or negative. There's no excuse to harass anyone just because they did a poor job on your favorite franchise.

With that being said though, do I think that Pontac and Graff's work on Sonic was perfect?  No it wasn't, not by a long shot.  There were many times where the stories they've written didn't quite land or whenever a serious situation happens, they didn't take full advantage of it.  Like for example, in Sonic Lost World, there was a point in the story where Tails was turned into a robot.  Did we get a boss battle fighting Robot Tails?  No, we didn't get that and Tails ended up turning back to normal in a few seconds before anything was really done with that situation.  Or what about in Sonic Forces, where Sonic was captured and he spent several months in prison.  Did we get to see the emotional impact that had on Sonic?  No. When we see Sonic in the next scene, he's back to cracking jokes like nothing happened to him.  At least with Sonic Frontiers, there's actually a lot of emotional feedback from the characters, even for Sonic himself, especially in regards to Tails and Amy.  Also, there's the fact that Pontac and Graff didn't do any research on the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise when they took the job to write for the games.  If it were me and I was asked to write for the Star Wars franchise, I would have taken the time to watch the movies and read some fan feedback on how these movies were being treated by the fans while I'm writing the series.

[Slashy]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

And the hate was completely misplaced too because so much of the shit people complained about are still present in Frontiers

Curious what you mean like that? Is it that the plot feels like a 2010s game but with much more serious writing and proper characterization?

[Kuzu]

Just now, Slashy said:

Curious what you mean like that? Is it that the plot feels like a 2010s game but with much more serious writing and proper characterization?

The characters still mostly just stand around and talk as opposed to taking action (albeit this one has lessened a bit), plot points are still very underdeveloped and ultimately just fizzle out, and nobody but Sonic really matters to the plot.

Its certainly better than the prior games in terms of writing...but do you understand how low of a bar that is? 

[Slashy]

Just now, Kuzu said:

The characters still mostly just stand around and talk as opposed to taking action (albeit this one has lessened a bit), plot points are still very underdeveloped and ultimately just fizzle out, and nobody but Sonic really matters to the plot.

Its certainly better than the prior games in terms of writing...but do you understand how low of a bar that is? 

I do and I think the metacritic score of a 72/100 is the most deserving a Sonic game has gotten in a long time.

Also everyone seems to ignore the point that there are other people who write just as bad or even worse than they do...even new stuff on the franchise, but you do not see the amount of hate for that stuff.

[GX -The Spindash-]

I mean, I'll stake the rather non-controversial position that nobody deserves harassment regardless of whether you like their work or not, and even if you don't like whichever game you feel represents their touch on the series most, you criticize the work itself, not the person.

Even if that was intended implicitly in this discussion, I think it deserves to be stated explicitly because it is a thing that actually happened. I see a few others also mentioned similarly above.

[jungle_penguins]

In terms of being literal, it's too late for those to apologize, in a selfless way. Ken Pontac was on record a few months ago saying the Sonic fanbase was the most hostile he's ever seen. So what's left is self reflection, and fans being introspective of themselves is extremely rare and hilarious when it does happen. 

Also it really doesn't matter that they didn't do research, and I don't care for around half of their Sonic work to begin with. 

[Slashy]

13 minutes ago, jungle_penguins said:

In terms of being literal, it's too late for those to apologize, in a selfless way. Ken Pontac was on record a few months ago saying the Sonic fanbase was the most hostile he's ever seen. So what's left is self reflection, and fans being introspective of themselves is extremely rare and hilarious when it does happen. 

Also it really doesn't matter that they didn't do research, and I don't care for around half of their Sonic work to begin with. 

My bigger problem is the potential bullying of new fans that like this stuff and the sheer hypocrisy of holding up stuff like the Twitter Takeovers after all of this.

Also Team Sonic Racing might be their best work, the characterization for most of the cast is on point (Shadow is the big misstep) and there are actually interesting character interactions. Of course because it is Team Sonic Racing it does not count.

 

[Kuzu]

47 minutes ago, Slashy said:

I do and I think the metacritic score of a 72/100 is the most deserving a Sonic game has gotten in a long time.

Also everyone seems to ignore the point that there are other people who write just as bad or even worse than they do...even new stuff on the franchise, but you do not see the amount of hate for that stuff.

The writing for the games in the 2000's was criticized just as much when those games were out, the only difference is that the people who hated those games either left the series after a certain point or they just stfu as soon as they got Mania and had nothing else to complain about.

That left only the Adventure fans who had grown up in that time frame to vent their frustrations about the games they loved being trashed and how it led to changes starting in 2010.

 

 

Y'all gotta realize that its not the same people complaining. Its different groups with specific tastes.

[GX -The Spindash-]

Actually, there is another interpretation I've leaned on for the Pontac/Graff years and their inability to deliver on a joke.

And it's that Sonic is kind of a self-absorbed doofus who thinks he's much cooler than he is, and Tails believes it because he's still a child and his surrogate brother.

Which is not that far removed from his portrayal in the early DiC cartoons, the two movies, Sonic Boom, or Sonic Prime.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

I feel like the backlash would have been a bit less severe had they stuck to their strengths though; you can tell they were mostly comfortable writing things like Colors, where the stakes were pretty low and its as by the numbers of a game you can get. Just Sonic & Tails going to stop Eggman. The second they tried to insert drama is the point when all of their flaws as writers were on full display for all to see. Had the games been lighthearted affairs like Colors, I don't think people would have minded as much tbh.

I'm not really sure it was the drama than it was the context they put into it--Tails and Sonic arguing out of the blue over trust in Lost Worlds, Tails flipping out in Forces, the entire script of Forces. If I were being real, these could have actually worked had they actually built into them and had knowledge over the franchise to make them work. But I still question how much control they were actually given over the stories here.

Then there's Generations, which while not a very divisive title, isn't very dramatic. Yet I don't see a lot of people using it as a point of praise for the writers. And even then, people were--and in some points still are--using Colors as the source of the writing problems for those that dislike Pontac and Graff anyway. That Frontiers repeats some of the problems during their time is only mitigated by Flynn's knowledge of the cast is saying a lot, so I'd say that was more a factor given that even playing to their strengths hasn't earned them any less backlash. I could actually see their attempts working much better if they were a bit more in-depth.

[Blue Blood]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

The characters still mostly just stand around and talk as opposed to taking action (albeit this one has lessened a bit), plot points are still very underdeveloped and ultimately just fizzle out, and nobody but Sonic really matters to the plot.

Its certainly better than the prior games in terms of writing...but do you understand how low of a bar that is? 

These are issues of the scenarios set up by Sonic Team. It's mostly outside the control the control of the person(s) writing the scripts. 

Frontiers succeeds in having dialogue and character interactions that are actually entertaining and meaningful. Even if very little actually happens over the course of the story and many of the cutscenes are just characters standing idle and talking, the characters themselves are worth listening too. They behave naturally and how I'd expect them to based on previous events. So even though the bar that Frontiers had to pass was incredibly low, it rose the bar by several rungs. 

All that said, I'm not contesting the points you raise. I agree with them all. It stuck out to me that the Koco are never actually narratively introduced in Frontiers. They're introduced in tutorial messages only. That's a narrative hole that because of how important they are. There are other underdeveloped aspects too, like the similarities between the Ancients and Chaos or the existence of the Master Emerald. Heck, it's hardly made clear in the game that Sage as we know her is actually the result of Eggman's AI being greatly and unintentionally enhanced by cyberspace. And I think one of the points you're getting at is Sonic being in mortal danger for the space of a cutscene before WHOOPS he's fine again with zero repercussions. 

Flynn did a pretty good job with Frontiers. I enjoy the dialogue and the characters so much, even if it's all underdeveloped. I dread to think how Pontac and Graff would have attempted such a game. There surely would have been no emotion to any of it. 

[Slashy]

2 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

These are issues of the scenarios set up by Sonic Team. It's mostly outside the control the control of the person(s) writing the scripts. 

Frontiers succeeds in having dialogue and character interactions that are actually entertaining and meaningful. Even if very little actually happens over the course of the story and many of the cutscenes are just characters standing idle and talking, the characters themselves are worth listening too. They behave naturally and how I'd expect them to based on previous events. So even though the bar that Frontiers had to pass was incredibly low, it rose the bar by several rungs. 

All that said, I'm not contesting the points you raise. I agree with them all. It stuck out to me that the Koco are never actually narratively introduced in Frontiers. They're introduced in tutorial messages only. That's a narrative hole that because of how important they are. There are other underdeveloped aspects too, like the similarities between the Ancients and Chaos or the existence of the Master Emerald. Heck, it's hardly made clear in the game that Sage as we know her is actually the result of Eggman's AI being greatly and unintentionally enhanced by cyberspace. And I think one of the points you're getting at is Sonic being in mortal danger for the space of a cutscene before WHOOPS he's fine again with zero repercussions. 

Flynn did a pretty good job with Frontiers. I enjoy the dialogue and the characters so much, even if it's all underdeveloped. I dread to think how Pontac and Graff would have attempted such a game. There surely would have been no emotion to any of it. 

Team Sonic Racing has decent character interactions, I think Frontiers would have been praised as an improvement for that had they continued writing for the franchise.

I think the biggest change, aside from tonal whiplash, would be more jokes thrown in especially in place of continuity nods.