How Sonic became the only character able to save the day, and How I think it can be addressed.

[Scape]

 

I'm going in hard.

Shadow the hedgehog and Blaze the cat are only popular as characters because that they were guaranteed to play and function like Sonic at a time where Sonic Team and Dimps filled their games with half-baked experiments to pad out the length and they couldn't write a story without ending it in a superform fight. 90% of their fans can't distinguish between headcanon and the actual character.

Sonic Origins Plus will probably fumble the bag with Super/Hyper Amy somehow but the idea of it existing in an official game is glorious.

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NNNNUUUUU SUPER FORMS WON'T BE SPECIAL ANYMORE IF ICKY AMY HAS ONE

GOOD. The superform garbage is what led to Sonic being the only one character allowed to matter because Shadow and Blaze are so hard to use. If Tails, Knuckles and Amy all have one, Sonic can just be one of the crew like he should be. He loves freedom so much, let the other characters be their own heroes. He'll still be the one who brought these people together and inspired their growth. If the Mary Sue Mascot who looks like Mickey Mouse made love to a Red Bull can still needs to be super special for some reason, just say he can run the farthest and can hold onto his super form the longest without getting tired.

 

[Rabid-Coot]

Its his name on the box.

Poorly implamented gameplay put everyone else on the shelf for over 15 years.

[Scape]

3 minutes ago, Rabid-Coot said:

Its his name on the box.

Poorly implamented gameplay put everyone else on the shelf for over 15 years.

sonic having useless friends makes himself look weaker

[MetalSkulkBane]

UNO:

Try using more comas and dots. Maybe reading it before uploading. Your post is kinda hard to understand.

DOS:

Look, I love Sonic friends. If was I was in charge, we would be playing Sonic Adventure 7 by now.

But making only Sonic playable is just much easier to implement. Even 2 playable characters requires split of resources. Time, money, programmers, focus. Plus, additional characters create just many new challenges. And considering that Sega lately had hard time making single-character game work, I don't think they are ready for the challenge.

Look at Forces, game with 3 characters, so short everyone gets extremely little and Classic Sonic is just a joke.

TREES:

With that said I think there are few solutions
1) Make 2D games with no cutscenes beyond what Rush or Rivals games did. Something ala Shantae or Rayman Origins where new characters can be somewhat easily added. That's what Sonic Mania/Origins did. This is the reason I have soft spot for Rivals 2, despite it many flaws.
2) Wait to see if game is a success, then make DLC campaign with new characters. Preferably with new levels but also ability to re-play the main game with new character. Now even if DLC fails, it won't damage the main game.
That's what Forces did with Shadow but he was just a skin, his DLC was 15 min long, so again, kinda lame, maybe splitting resources was a bad idea. I HOPE this is what Frontiers will do now, but properly this time.

But Sonic Adventure 3 kind of thing? Too risky, I would only trust it in hands of very competent developer. Frankly how many "best games of all time" have multiple character?* A top of my head I can think of Devil May Cry 5 and Crash 4. "Single character" list is far-far longer.

*Not counting Turn based RPGs, Smash Bros, Racers, etc. You know, genres that kinda must have multiple characters to work.

[Wraith]

There aren't arbitrary rules in place that make the characters hard to use or keep them from reaching their full potential or w/e. SEGA just started designing the games around one character because it made the most practical sense for getting a decent game out on time and having it be received well. The lore excuses are secondary to that. They can make a game about Blaze or Shadow or even Amy being heroes any time they want, but if it doesn't make practical sense they won't do it.

[Diogenes]

Sonic the Hedgehog became the one character who could save the day in 1991, when they made a game called Sonic the Hedgehog starring Sonic the Hedgehog where Sonic the Hedgehog saves the day, and it was successful enough to keep making more of them.

He's...the main character of the series. Always has been and always will be. You can argue for better use of the other characters but you can't force them to turn this into an equally balanced ensemble cast kind of series just because you want it to be. And regarding super forms you've got causality all backwards; Sonic isn't the main character because he has a super form, he has a super form because he's the main character. Having a super form never stopped any other character from having fewer appearances or lesser roles and giving super forms to more characters wouldn't change that. You'd just find yourself complaining that most games end with just Sonic vs the final boss instead of having a dozen glowing, invincible animals dogpiling the current big bad.

[DaBigJ]

It's like complaining about how Mario saves the day in every game in the Mario series

I.E. It's pointless nitpicking

[Scape]

3 hours ago, Diogenes said:

having a dozen glowing, invincible animals dogpiling the current big bad.

that would've improved sonic heroes

[Ghelatlishol]

Understandable for time and budget that they would focus on Sonic as he is the main & flagship character. Perhaps something can be in the works in the background while they make games to release in between, like how they did with Sonic Spinball before the other Genesis games.

SEGA really seemed to have something going when they had the Adventure format, especially the first one. Sonic still took his place as the main character, involved in almost every variation of every level, and he was crucial to unlocking the other characters. Each character unlocked added to the story through their own unique events/timelines. The only thing that should be avoided is all the overlapping gameplay. I get that Sonic and Tails were racing doppelganger style in Tails' storyline but the whole thing was 50% Sonic's storyline all over again. And the unskippable cut scenes really grate on you after the 32nd or so playthrough, so that should be avoided too.

All that, and it would be much better if SEGA tried a little harder with the storytelling. Given the time and ambition of Sonic Adventure's release, it was a great game for its time, and good even now, I think.

 

 

Edited May 5, 2023 by Ghelatlishol

[Mobotropolis]

 

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SUPER FORMS WON'T BE SPECIAL

Mobians (Sonic-people) are essentially Saiyans so all of them can turn Super in the right conditions. 

The difference between Super Sonic and any other Super is the amplification of power. 

Sonic getting 10 times the power would be more potent than Cream (except those two games where she was the best character to the point of being broken) getting 10 times the power. Sonic isn't the only one capable of saving the say, but folks usually turn to him because its statistically more likely that he'd save the day which is an important factor when the world being barbecued and/or enslaved is the alternative. 

Quote

probably fumble the bag with Super/Hyper Amy somehow

Well, though Super Amy should be lime green but --

 

[Scape]

6 hours ago, DaBigJ said:

It's like complaining about how Mario saves the day in every game in the Mario series

I.E. It's pointless nitpicking

mario's series is stable enough for his friends to get their own franchises

[DaBigJ]

I

I don't think you know how spin offs are hsndled. They're not "franchises", they're sub-sections.

[Kuzu]

The characters don't get focus because they're not the focus of the series, plain and simple. This might be hard for some people to understand and accept, but creators are not obligated to focus on their supporting cast just because a few people on the internet complain about it.

They had focus before because Sonic Team wanted to pad the game time out to avoid finishing it too fast and the characters were the means of doing so. The narrative justifications were secondary to that. Which is why as soon as they figured out how to extend the game time without using the characters, they stopped using them because there simply wasn't a reason to anymore.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I mean, the simple solution is just to give another time to shine in the spotlight.

Yeah, Sonic is the face, but someone else can wind up saving the day.

[Kuzu]

It ultimately comes down to what Sonic Team want to do; if the supporting cast don't factor into the focus of the game they want to do, then they aren't going to get focus. 

Honestly, I'm surprised they're even entertaining the idea with the Frontiers DLC and even, I'm not expecting much more than the bare minimum there whereas fans think we're gonna get full on campaigns for Tails, Knuckles, and Amy individually and its like "noooo....". When the last time an additional character was playable besides Sonic was being as close to Sonic as possible and being a literal reskin, there's not very high expectations here. 

100% expecting them to just be playable in the Cyberspace levels with mostly Sonic's moveset. 

[Kazhnuz]

Limiting super form isn't that bad, it can works well. Having a "more powerful tiers of character" is kinda normal and common for that kind of IP, I'm more annoyed with the selection (I would be for having more female character with one, and adding one to Knux even if I like the idea that he doesn't want to use the power of the emeralds… But when a character don't want to do something/using their power, storytelling gods ask for that character to have to do it lol).

And I don't think it's really the reason why the other character are sidelined. I mean, the period when they started to do way less in the story, Unleashed-onward is ALSO a period where two and a half mainline game didn't have story-related super form. So nope, giving a super form to everybody (and trivialising it) won't really change much.

If they want to make a story where the other character saves the day, they'll. And it's not hard to do it without a Super Form, by just making the story not needing one.

[kazz]

putting it down to 'budget' for why modern sonic is so hyperfocussed on sonic-only gameplay doesn't really gel with me considering just how graphically dense some of these modern sonic games are. sonic unleashed has as much graphical detail as a billion dollar pixar movie and yet the gameplay is as stiff as ever. if this is really about money at all then it really seems to be a problem of budget allocation. take some of that aesthetic money and put it towards more open levels and dynamic gameplay. frontiers is an awkward step in the right direction but it feels like sega is just weirdly cheap about sonic game production, regardless of how much a of a cash cow he is, to the point where we don't even get nice graphics anymore despite sonic doing better than he has in a long while. yeah the budget excuse just makes no sense lol its just sega making crappy business decisions as usual imo.

[Scape]

I understand putting a lock on Hyper Sonic. Let that be exclusive to Angel Island and Sonic 3&K. But everyone should potentially have a super form. "only male hedgehogs can go super" yeah unless they pull an entire new universe and set of emeralds out of their ass because its all fiction anyway

[Diogenes]

Limiting it only to male hedgehogs is dumb, and I personally still take that statement to mean "of the characters in the series, the only ones who are capable are the male hedgehogs" and not "being a male hedgehog is a requirement to go super". But that doesn't mean the only right thing to do is to give everyone a super form. No more than every superhero series must give superpowers to every character, as if Batman is somehow a failure of a character because he doesn't have super strength or heat vision.

[Scape]

5 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Limiting it only to male hedgehogs is dumb, and I personally still take that statement to mean "of the characters in the series, the only ones who are capable are the male hedgehogs" and not "being a male hedgehog is a requirement to go super". But that doesn't mean the only right thing to do is to give everyone a super form. No more than every superhero series must give superpowers to every character, as if Batman is somehow a failure of a character because he doesn't have super strength or heat vision.

Sonic has speed, Tails has flight and high intelligence, Knuckles has strength and has a special connection to the Master Emerald. Shadow has chaos powers, Blaze has Pyrokinesis, Silver has Psychokinesis. Do not tell me Amy has been given the respect or attention that DC has given to Batman.

[Diogenes]

She's not a Batman, no, but she's in a Black Widow/Hawkeye kinda tier in some takes on the series.

[Iko]

I don't think that the male hedgehogs thing is really meaningful. Classic Sonic was Sonic from the past, then Sonic from a different dimension, and now Sonic from the past again... I think that the male hedgehogs thing was a poor explanation given without thinking too much, and not necessarily still true, if ever.

Not only there are Burning Blaze and Super Mecha Sonic (they use different stones to transform, but it's still a super form), we might count Perfect Chaos in the group as well maybe... the movies freaking did Super Eggman, live action Super Eggman.

Besides, like others, I too think that it's not a problem of super forms if the other characters don't get a chance to shine.

Sonic Team isn't obligated to use the other characters, right, but still, the franchise has those characters, and people love them. They can decide to not use them, as well as they can decide to not use the momentum based physics, classic desings, etc... but those are all things that some part of their fanbase love. Nobody can force them to listen to their fanbase, but if you give your audience what they want, or at least, something that can satisfy them, the games will be more successful.

The success of the murder game is proof that the supporting characters and their interaction with each other (story-wise) are still well appreciated, and the fact that the game starts with Sonic missing (due to being "dead") means that maybe Sonic being the main hero is not 100% always necessary for a game to work well. It's a spin-off, allright... if it's a Sonic game, people expect Sonic to be the main character, but still, people don't seem to mind other characters getting the spotlight some times.

[Scape]

49 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

She's not a Batman, no, but she's in a Black Widow/Hawkeye kinda tier in some takes on the series.

half the time, she's barely Jimmy Olsen

[juiceDpunk983]

I want to see Super Espio and Vector. Amy is getting a super form in origins? Lol that's gonna be funny to see.