Why do you reckon SEGA has done an about-face on Sonic's friends lately?

[Scritch the Cat]

Seems like only yesterday I was posting and responding in threads about how Sonic Team was too receptive to the crowd that hated "Sonic's shitty friends" and in probably the wrong way.  While most of the characters had stuck around, they'd been relegated to borderline-useless cheerleaders for Sonic and hardly ever playable.  Soon enough, people angry at those characters being not being playable than those who were angry at those who were angry at them being playable, even if their complaints seemingly fell on deaf ears. 

Then, within what seemed like only a few months, all of that changed.  It started with the other characters getting more dignity in the Sonic Frontiers story than they had in years, arguably in over a decade, then Origins cutscenes seeming to revise history to make Amy look more important to the games' stories than she actually was, which many of us rightly predicted was a prelude to her actually becoming playable.  Then came the announcement that Tails, Knuckles and Amy would be playable in free DLC for Sonic Frontiers, then Sonic Origins getting upgraded likewise to include playable Amy, then Sonic Superstars being announced with the same characters playable, and finally, to usher in this new era, two social media campaigns focuses on Sonic's friends, with a special attention to emphasizing the "Core Four".  So, what happened to cause this shift?

I personally think a number of factors causes this.

1) Let's go back to the sentiment that first spawned the backlash to Sonic's friends, because I was there to see it.  The presumed conflict between people who disliked a lot of the cast and people who liked them was actually the tip of a much bigger iceberg; the larger conflict was more between people raised on the SEGA Genesis era of Sonic and people raised on the SEGA Dreamcast era of Sonic, albeit mostly on the Nintendo Gamecube and then other platforms.  The  complaints about "Sonic's shitty friends" thus came mostly from people who wanted the series to go back to how it was on the SEGA Genesis.  So while SEGA eventually at least said they listened to those complaints and took the other playable characters out, what Sonic became after that was likely not what they had in mind.  Firstly, I don't remember anyone complaining about playing as Tails and Knuckles, except when those complaints were specifically about things like the crappy emerald radar in SA2, treasure hunting being arguably not an ideal objective for Knuckles, and Tails being locked in a mech.  Since then, a lot of pontification has occurred about whether being able to glide, climb, and fly breaks 3D levels too much to be worth it, but I don't remember any such complaints at the time.  Secondly, what the series became after stripping out the other playable characters was hardly more like the Genesis games.  The debut of solo-Sonic had him spend most of the time as a werewolf in a slow beat-em-up, earning the scorn of both Sonic fans and critics, though both have come around to Unleashed.  Sonic 4 Episode I managed to win critics over but not many old-school fans, and while no Sonic Team game released since has been that broken again, it was emblematic of a broader trend; the decision to see Classic Sonic more in terms of what it wasn't than what it was.

TLDR; a lot of people who were complaining about the newer games where Sonic had too many friends might as well have been asking for Classic Sonic to come back, and it didn't.

Until it did, courtesy of Sonic Mania...and it brought along some of Sonic's friends.  A conservative amount compared to the Dreamcast era, sure, but a lot compared to what we got in the Boost era, and thus Sonic Mania arguably put the final nail in the coffin of the myth Sonic Team had fostered since 06, that taking out every playable character that wasn't Sonic automatically equated to a return to the glory days.

2) The movies happened.  They arguably started on the wrong foot by putting Sonic into the tired-out family film scenario of a cartoon character being shoved into the mundane real-world; an approach that "works" in the sense that it's cheap enough to make that it has an easier time profiting, but still most children would prefer more animated aspects, and the same went for most of the adults who would choose to see a Sonic movie.  The film we got nailed home that no, you cannot distill the essence of this series down to just "Sonic fights Robotnik"; it's the world that got built around that scenario that gave Sonic its unique visual flair.  But when they got to the sequel hook that showed Tails, moviegoers around the world exploded in applause, videos of that went viral, and presumably the powers noticed.  

So then more info came out about the second movie, with not only Tails but Knuckles included, people got hyped, the movie came out and children and adult Sonic fans alike mostly loved it, and the sequel-hook that showed Shadow once again got people hyped and spawned viral videos.  In sum, adding characters and making them important got fans hyped...and made new ones.  As was the case after SEGA went third-party and scores of players suddenly got their first look at Sonic and what that first look was influenced their view of what Sonic should be, now lots of youngsters were introduced to Sonic in a new medium that made his friends out to be important.

Those are my theories.

What are yours?

[GX -The Spindash-]

I would argue that the "Boost" format of gameplay wouldn't have been seen as conducive to building around multiple characters. In the modern style, Sonic Team-developed Sonic games generally don't give the cast equivalent movesets, so from Unleashed through to Forces, unless you're going to give Tails and Knuckles the ability to boost (or separate gameplay styles like in Adventure), they don't fit with that philosophy of design.

I'm not saying this was the right or wrong philosophy to have, but if I'm thinking as a development studio managing a major brand, that's the kind of thought that might influence decisions, much in the same way that Miyamoto talked about character choice in New Super Mario Bros. Wii, that Peach would need to fly and Wario would need to fart. They obviously don't, and someone in his position could twist arms to get parody, but there can be a mindset of Character X is defined by Y and must be able to do Y to justify them being there.

[Diogenes]

It's just the pendulum swinging in the other direction. People have less reason to shout "just focus on Sonic" when they have been (to better or worse results) focusing on Sonic, and the people who want more characters have more reason to shout about it the longer they aren't getting them. Sega still has no idea what to do with Sonic so they're following the shouting.

[Sega DogTagz]

In addition to the movies, the TV shows also did a ton of heavy lifting in pushing the other characters into the foreground. Each of the side cast members were a major part of Boom, with several episodes devoted to each as individuals. Follow that up more recently with Prime, which shoves more variants into your eyeballs than should be legally permissible. In the advertising and the episodes themselves, the extended cast is front and center and that means a lot in terms of changing the narrative as to what the franchise as a whole is focused on. It keeps them relevant and ignored the calls to cast them to the sidelines - even when the games themselves were doing just that.

 

When it comes down to it, the same overwhelming appeal that draws people to Sonic is there with the extended cast as well. They all have eye pleasing designs. They all encapsulate something that is aimed directly at a signature market of the times in which they were created. (Shadow for the edgy kids, Amy for the Minnie Mouse crowd, Knux for the muscle heads, ect)  Which gives each of them a place in an all encompassing approach to attracting more fans. In terms of growing the brand, you were never going to keep them down for long. They add the diversity that Sonic and Eggy can't bring on their own. Tails can reach and appeal to people that Sonic can't. The same is true with Blaze and Espio and most everyone else.

I personally believe the whole "shitty friends" narrative was just a roundabout way for Sega to give themselves an easy runway toward quality control when it became abundantly clear that said quality control was the biggest issue facing the brand.

[Wraith]

The people who wanted Sonic's friends back never let up, never stopped complaining, while Classic fans got their fill with Sonic Mania and have been quiet since. It was already a popular position in the fandom back in 2011 when this whole thing started and it only grew in prominence since, as people who grew up with Dreamcast era Sonic reached their mid-twenties and took complete control of the conversation around the series. The Dreamcast era didn't enjoy nearly the same amount of the success that the classic era did, but there was a smaller group that got really attached to those games. That group would form the  Sonic fanbase as we know it.

Most of the modern Sonic games also just aren't very good, so a lot of people who felt strongly about a singular focus on Sonic improving the games were proven wrong again and again by Sonic Team themselves. Colors and Generations showed signs of life for sure, but on either side of those games you have Secret Rings, Black Knight, Sonic 4, Sonic Lost World, and Sonic Forces. It was reasonable to believe cutting down on cast bloat and the feature creep that came with that would make the games better, but that was only true maybe a third of the time. Even in those cases it wasn't the dramatic improvement for the IP people actually wanted when we talk about the good old days. The people that loved Colors and Generations the most were already Sonic fans. They weren't the genre defining, head turning classics that people associated with Classic Sonic iconography.

That only came with Sonic Mania. A game with 5 playable characters in it. Everyone was forced to acknowledge that the argument was more nuanced than that at that point.

Forces and Frontiers were such obvious hail marries to Dreamcast kids that I'm surprised it took this long, to be honest. Classic Sonic audience had dried up and Boom had been a failure as far as establishing a new audience for the brand. The films were a surprise hit, but before then there was no other audience to listen to.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Long story short—time flew and things have changed.

It’s been gradual but noticeable, and over time the fandom has come to further learn the actual problems instead of scapegoating something else that, while connected to the problem, weren’t the actual faults such as the extended Sonic cast.

That and we have a whole new generation of fans that *gasp* like these characters! Weird, huh?

Add onto what’s already been said, and yeah, it’s a pleasant surprise to come and realize how much things have changed from the dark ages in terms of perception of these characters.

[Phoenix]

Sonic Team could not live with their failure. And where did that lead them? Back to Sonic's friends.

But seriously, I've always been surprised by the lessons companies take. Sonic 06 did badly? Must've been because of Sonic's friends, and not, you know... the rushed released, the bugs, the anti player mechanics, etc.

[LongcrierCat]

The way I see it is that it's a good step in the right direction after Sega course overcorrection from toxic Game Criticism that was shaped more on the bias that Sonic had a rough transition to 3D after Sega lost the Console Wars but Sonic was still their best seller in most markets that weren't Japan. That whole "rough transition" talk was a huge course of videogame history revisionism I feel too. I know I didn't hallucinate most major game critics doting on the Sonic Adventure games before the Dreamcast went under. Sonic had an excellent transition, thank you very much.

And you know how Sega of Japan and Sega West fight in the company's history.

So a lot of the Games Criticism Scene used to complain about Sonic's friends, and now after games where Sonic was the main playable dude have met either great or mixed reception now they have genuine need to reconsider what it is about their quality control that's missing while they fix the overcorrection and go back to a healthy course of correction and reintroduce what fans really do love about the series.

The wide assortment of story themes, gameplay styles all emphasized on how each friend does their own thing in their own speedy way, and reintroducing all of that back into the Sonic gameplay formula.

Sonic Prime is also showing that not only are they considering Sonic's friends, but considering the idea of going Spider-Verse on the series. If this opens the door for fans of non game Sonic stories to finally be thrown some meat their way after being tossed aside by the Canon Police of the Sonic Society, then we're in for a much brighter future for the series overall as we tell Toxic Destructive Criticisms of the series to take a hike for the actually helpful Constructive Criticism.

And they have a lot more will to want to ensure Sonic's quality control now due to the fact that Frontiers changed the series history forever now that we finally have the first Sonic game to actually be successful in Japan.

Sega of Japan cares to listen to Constructive Criticism over Toxic Criticism and overcorrection now.

And that's much more healthy for the series direction.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 9/18/2023 at 3:08 PM, Sega DogTagz said:

When it comes down to it, the same overwhelming appeal that draws people to Sonic is there with the extended cast as well. They all have eye pleasing designs. They all encapsulate something that is aimed directly at a signature market of the times in which they were created. (Shadow for the edgy kids, Amy for the Minnie Mouse crowd, Knux for the muscle heads, ect)  Which gives each of them a place in an all encompassing approach to attracting more fans. In terms of growing the brand, you were never going to keep them down for long. They add the diversity that Sonic and Eggy can't bring on their own. Tails can reach and appeal to people that Sonic can't. The same is true with Blaze and Espio and most everyone else.

 

This reminds me of last time the extended cast really took off in the brand, which was in the early 2000s.  It might've been completely by accident, but I'd argue they were lucky that the series had been expanding its roster leading up to the time they went third-party.  SEGA in the 1990s had marketed itself to a large degree as the "cool kids club", something not everyone would be hardcore enough for but you best hope you were or else you'd be that dork who got lambasted on the playground as much as SEGA lambasted Nintendo in their ads, and Sonic himself inevitably became the face of that, on at least some level.  That elitist attitude obviously wasn't going to fly after SEGA gave up on console manufacturing, but that the Sonic series had evolved into one with "something for everyone" helped their transition a lot.  The Sonic series having all sorts of characters in it helped create the impression that all sorts of players were welcome, too, so it's not surprising that Sonic's first simultaneous multi-console release went even further with the multiple characters.  So yeah, multiple characters definitely helped expand the brand, even if at a cost.

On 9/18/2023 at 3:08 PM, Sega DogTagz said:

I personally believe the whole "shitty friends" narrative was just a roundabout way for Sega to give themselves an easy runway toward quality control when it became abundantly clear that said quality control was the biggest issue facing the brand.

Well, it didn't start that way but SEGA certainly exploited it as such.

On 9/18/2023 at 3:09 PM, Wraith said:

The people who wanted Sonic's friends back never let up, never stopped complaining, while Classic fans got their fill with Sonic Mania and have been quiet since. It was already a popular position in the fandom back in 2011 when this whole thing started and it only grew in prominence since, as people who grew up with Dreamcast era Sonic reached their mid-twenties and took complete control of the conversation around the series. The Dreamcast era didn't enjoy nearly the same amount of the success that the classic era did, but there was a smaller group that got really attached to those games. That group would form the  Sonic fanbase as we know it.

 Mostly correct, except I'm not sure it was smaller, depending on how you define eras.  The "Dreamcast" era was much less successful than the Genesis era in that critics were less enthusiastic towards it, and eventually downright hostile, but going multi-console quite possibly brought in a lot more players to the Sonic series than it ever could have hoped for when it was confined to one company's consoles.

On 9/18/2023 at 3:09 PM, Wraith said:

Most of the modern Sonic games also just aren't very good, so a lot of people who felt strongly about a singular focus on Sonic improving the games were proven wrong again and again by Sonic Team themselves. Colors and Generations showed signs of life for sure, but on either side of those games you have Secret Rings, Black Knight, Sonic 4, Sonic Lost World, and Sonic Forces. It was reasonable to believe cutting down on cast bloat and the feature creep that came with that would make the games better, but that was only true maybe a third of the time. Even in those cases it wasn't the dramatic improvement for the IP people actually wanted when we talk about the good old days. The people that loved Colors and Generations the most were already Sonic fans. They weren't the genre defining, head turning classics that people associated with Classic Sonic iconography.

I think back when people were pushing the "Sonic's shitty friends" bit, they weren't as cognizant of what actually made Sonic Team tick.  Back then, a lot of people just assumed that Sonic Team was just spitballing a bunch of ideas and only a third of them happened to be well-suited to the Sonic series.  That in itself would be pretty shameful, but it also made people think that at least it would be pretty easy to fix, just by taking out the ideas that didn't work and keeping the ones that did.  What people weren't aware of back then, but were largely forced to acknowledge the moment they saw the Werehog, is that those slower-paced segments of this series marketed around speed were not just stupid ideas they accidentally had; they were deliberately conceived because Sonic Team just plain refuses to accept the short game length that would inevitably result from playing an entire game going fast.  Not only did that make it clear that this problematic mindset wasn't really innately linked to playable characters other than Sonic, but it made people realize it's actually been in the Sonic series from the very start. 

The more that Modern Sonic alienated people, the more that Classic Sonic also became an acceptable target for game critics, and while Sonic fans were not about to forgive IGN saying Sonic was never good, even many fans have gotten a bit less rose-tinted.  For example, I remember a time when Labyrinth Zone was regarded somewhat like Judge Doom; yes, it traumatized people as children but they still remembered it fondly and saw it as a vital part of the work containing it.  That has changed; today the most common opinion of Labyrinth Zone seems to be that it was the "Big the Cat" of its time, something completely antithetical the intended appeal of the game containing it, which should never have been in the game and was only there to pad it out.  You'll even hear more extreme positions that Green Hill Zone is the only good level in the first game, conveniently the first level as a way to mislead consumers.

So just as this paradoxical attitude towards speed has always been present, it has never really left.  Some games display it more and some games display it less, some levels display it more and some levels display it less, but it never really goes away, and with Sonic Frontiers it's back in full force.  Not only does it gatekeep Sonic's speed in a whole host of ways (though the most egregious of those was alleviated in Update 2), but it also throws in a bunch of combat, puzzles, and shooter minigames.  It even has a fishing minigame featuring Big the Cat.  In short, it was the Sonic Adventure approach to gameplay in absolutely every regard except having multiple playable characters, which is why I predicted some months in advance that this would be the game that would bring other playable characters back, or at least the structure of the future game that would.  Lo and behold, it's the former, and the way things are going, looks to be the latter, too.

On 9/19/2023 at 6:19 PM, Phoenix said:

Sonic Team could not live with their failure. And where did that lead them? Back to Sonic's friends.

But seriously, I've always been surprised by the lessons companies take. Sonic 06 did badly? Must've been because of Sonic's friends, and not, you know... the rushed released, the bugs, the anti player mechanics, etc.

Had they finished 06, then there would still probably be some people who objected to playing as Silver and Omega, as they just aren't built for what quintessential Sonic play is, but others would probably be in the clear.  Likewise, there'd still be issues with the realistic humans, the arguably pretentious story, and of course, the romance bit.  But all of those on their own would have just made for a game that wouldn't necessarily age well, as opposed to this reality where it remained talked about enthusiastically for well over a decade, for all the wrong reasons.  Thus, in that alternate reality, the series would not necessarily have stayed in the mores of the Adventure era, but the change would likely have been more evolutionary than reactionary.

[Wraith]

7 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

 

 

 Mostly correct, except I'm not sure it was smaller, depending on how you define eras.  The "Dreamcast" era was much less successful than the Genesis era in that critics were less enthusiastic towards it, and eventually downright hostile, but going multi-console quite possibly brought in a lot more players to the Sonic series than it ever could have hoped for when it was confined to one company's consoles.
 

Statistically it did not. Sonic the Hedgehog and Sonic the Hedgehog 2 were still the best selling games in the series even on the genesis.
 

Quote

I think back when people were pushing the "Sonic's shitty friends" bit, they weren't as cognizant of what actually made Sonic Team tick.  Back then, a lot of people just assumed that Sonic Team was just spitballing a bunch of ideas and only a third of them happened to be well-suited to the Sonic series.  That in itself would be pretty shameful, but it also made people think that at least it would be pretty easy to fix, just by taking out the ideas that didn't work and keeping the ones that did.  What people weren't aware of back then, but were largely forced to acknowledge the moment they saw the Werehog, is that those slower-paced segments of this series marketed around speed were not just stupid ideas they accidentally had; they were deliberately conceived because Sonic Team just plain refuses to accept the short game length that would inevitably result from playing an entire game going fast.  Not only did that make it clear that this problematic mindset wasn't really innately linked to playable characters other than Sonic, but it made people realize it's actually been in the Sonic series from the very start. 

The more that Modern Sonic alienated people, the more that Classic Sonic also became an acceptable target for game critics, and while Sonic fans were not about to forgive IGN saying Sonic was never good, even many fans have gotten a bit less rose-tinted.  For example, I remember a time when Labyrinth Zone was regarded somewhat like Judge Doom; yes, it traumatized people as children but they still remembered it fondly and saw it as a vital part of the work containing it.  That has changed; today the most common opinion of Labyrinth Zone seems to be that it was the "Big the Cat" of its time, something completely antithetical the intended appeal of the game containing it, which should never have been in the game and was only there to pad it out.  You'll even hear more extreme positions that Green Hill Zone is the only good level in the first game, conveniently the first level as a way to mislead consumers.

So just as this paradoxical attitude towards speed has always been present, it has never really left.  Some games display it more and some games display it less, some levels display it more and some levels display it less, but it never really goes away, and with Sonic Frontiers it's back in full force.  Not only does it gatekeep Sonic's speed in a whole host of ways (though the most egregious of those was alleviated in Update 2), but it also throws in a bunch of combat, puzzles, and shooter minigames.  It even has a fishing minigame featuring Big the Cat.  In short, it was the Sonic Adventure approach to gameplay in absolutely every regard except having multiple playable characters, which is why I predicted some months in advance that this would be the game that would bring other playable characters back, or at least the structure of the future game that would.  Lo and behold, it's the former, and the way things are going, looks to be the latter, too.

Had they finished 06, then there would still probably be some people who objected to playing as Silver and Omega, as they just aren't built for what quintessential Sonic play is, but others would probably be in the clear.  Likewise, there'd still be issues with the realistic humans, the arguably pretentious story, and of course, the romance bit.  But all of those on their own would have just made for a game that wouldn't necessarily age well, as opposed to this reality where it remained talked about enthusiastically for well over a decade, for all the wrong reasons.  Thus, in that alternate reality, the series would not necessarily have stayed in the mores of the Adventure era, but the change would likely have been more evolutionary than reactionary.

I have never seen anyone compare the more controversial levels of the classics to the style shifts in the dreamcast games. Not one time.

Sonic games aren't short because "he goes fast." They're short because they're designed in the style of arcade games that are meant to be played and replayed.  Sega only decided that that was an issue that could only be corrected by different gameplay styles and minigames after the series had gone 3D. Before that there wasn't any padding, just different types of levels that put players in many varied situations to keep them on their toes. Maybe Sonic 1 strayed a bit too far from it's comfort zone with Labrynth, but to say it's comparable to genre roulette is an insane take. One that absolves Sonic Adventure of accountability for it's missteps in a way I find as typical as it is exhausting for 3D Sonic fandom.
 

[Scritch the Cat]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

Sonic games aren't short because "he goes fast." They're short because they're designed in the style of arcade games that are meant to be played and replayed.  Sega only decided that that was an issue that could only be corrected by different gameplay styles and minigames after the series had gone 3D. Before that there wasn't any padding, just different types of levels that put players in many varied situations to keep them on their toes. Maybe Sonic 1 strayed a bit too far from it's comfort zone with Labrynth, but to say it's comparable to genre roulette is an insane take. One that absolves Sonic Adventure of accountability for it's missteps in a way I find as typical as it is exhausting for 3D Sonic fandom.

 

Sonic games are short because designing levels that are large enough to take a fast character any appreciable length of time is not quick or easy, not to mention the added issue of those levels needing vertical depth to facilitate alternate paths.  This is, in fact, a feature of SEGA's thinking that a disgruntled employee leaked a bit before the time of Unleashed, warning people about the Werehog.  I would agree that comparing Labyrinth Zone to Big the Cat is too big a stretch, since at least Labyrinth Zone is still a platformer, but for better or worse, I would compare the slower Sonic 1 levels to Amy's levels in Sonic Adventure and the mech stages in Sonic Adventure 2.  Personally I think Marble Zone is a lot worse than Labyrinth Zone, but both go pretty hard against what was supposed to be appealing about Sonic.  Also, I consider aspects of classic Sonic design that practically demand replay, such as ambushes and purposefully inefficient means of entering special stages, to be forms of padding in themselves, so saying a game is "meant to be played and replayed" does not negate my point.  Especially not when you factor in eventual extremes of that mindset like Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog, which literally force you to replay the game multiple times to see the true ending. 

I've never been shy in admitting that I'd far rather play a Sonic game that pads itself out with slower alternate play styles than one that doesn't have a save feature and forces people back to the beginning on Game Overs.  I don't speak for everyone, but the fact that more and more gamers were feeling like myself is a big part of why Sonic Team was left scrambling for padding in the Modern era; the old expectations they had designed for had essentially been killed by technological progress and the expectations of convenience that brought.

[Kaotic Kanine]

I personally believe that SEGA has always liked the cast and wanted to make use of them. Or at least, SEGA of Japan always wanted to make use of the non-main characters, what with Sonic Channel having always featured artwork and comics of the whole cast (including the Babylon Rogues and Marine), and the wholly Japanese-made Sonic Runners bringing back Mephiles of all characters. Not sure about SEGA of America, but I can assume that the only characters they didn't like to use were Big the Cat and Cream the Rabbit, strictly due to their respective personalities/archetypes having more Japanese appeal (though Big certainly turned that around by now).

But of course, 2006 saw almost the entire Sonic fandom and even the gaming community in the West start calling the characters "Sonic's shitty friends" and blaming them for everything going wrong with the franchise at the time. Both branches of SEGA had to give the cast a break after that, and no doubt the use of the characters was further discouraged with fans making artwork of Classic Sonic being horrified with having to associate with his future friends, and certain reviewers docking points off of Generations for daring to include the cast. Like, you can't get a clearer message about how undesired the characters were than that nonsense. So, the main series games would only focus on Sonic, Tails, and Eggman while the rest of the cast could only be included in multiplayer spin-offs, and only because multiplayer spin-offs require additional characters to fill out the roster.

Since then, though, attitudes towards the extended cast began to improve due to varying factors. Unleashed and Lost World effectively silenced the fans and critics who blamed the friends for "alternate gameplay" since both games were strictly Sonic only, with only two/three other characters involved in the plot (but not even by much), yet ended up having differing gameplay anyway. And indeed, the fact that the franchise as a whole wasn't actually improving with the complete focus on Sonic, Tails, and Eggman further proved that the extended cast were never really "everything wrong" with the franchise. Fans who complained about the cast simply because they preferred the Classic Era with its minimalistic cast were appeased with Mania. And of course, the fans who were children in the 2000's grew up and became the dominant voice in the fandom; bringing up how much they love and miss the characters that used to be major players in the franchise, and pointing out those characters' merits that were previously ignored. It also helps that the type of gaming journalists who contributed the most to the "Sonic's shitty friends" shit aren't taken seriously anymore, with stuff like "Too much water", "Sonic was never good", and the "Cuphead tutorial level" ruining much of their credibility.

The hatred for the whole Sonic cast is practically dead and current fans are begging for them to return, so SEGA is more than happy to oblige. Especially SEGA of Japan for the reason I said in the first paragraph.

[Scritch the Cat]

I just had a thought.  It has of course been discussed here that there was a conflict between people who became Sonic fans in the Genesis era and people who became Sonic fans in the Dreamcast era, but something we have heretofore neglected to consider is the part of the audience that doesn't even remember that conflict, at least some of them not even having been born yet at the time when it occurred.  Those are the people SEGA has said they at least intend to be their core demographic with the Sonic series, although I can't speak to how well Sonic does with them compared to other games aimed at their age range.  Nevertheless, if you never experienced any of the games containing any of the things that made anyone hate playing as characters who weren't Sonic and only experienced the more recent games that still contained those characters, then playing as characters who aren't Sonic is easier to see as a novelty rather than a liability.  It probably also helps that Classic Sonic has led the charge in reimplementing multiple playable characters, both in terms of highlighting the pragmatic way to do it and reaffirming that multiple playable characters have actually been part of Sonic games for a long time.

[PutsitinmyBottos]

When you play a Mario game, you play as Mario (Sometimes you play as other characters but the gameplay barely changes and is still a platformer) and Metal Gear you play as Snake and only snake.

they need to stop ma no my characters pay drastically different from Sonic if they want people to enjoy playing their games, like when I pay 60$ for a Sonic game I don’t want to play as a fat cat that goes fishing.

[LongcrierCat]

See, I still don't get the genre roulette problem because it's not like Sonic was the first 3D adventure platformer to do it tho.

Crash Bandicoot has you switching up gameplay styles so often in 2 and 3 and that series has a lot of very vocal defenders of that series.

I really think it comes down to game critics being harshly toxically critical of the series for a lot of the wrong reasons that really sounded more like kids on the playground saying Mario could beat up Sonic than anything else.

[Diogenes]

10 minutes ago, LongcrierCat said:

See, I still don't get the genre roulette problem because it's not like Sonic was the first 3D adventure platformer to do it tho.

Crash Bandicoot has you switching up gameplay styles so often in 2 and 3 and that series has a lot of very vocal defenders of that series.

It's bad in those games too.

Not that you can't shake things up and have a gimmick level from time to time, but when I got the Crash trilogy I enjoyed the first two games well enough but lost interest in the third because there were too many gimmick levels and not enough of the platforming.

[Phoenix]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

It's bad in those games too.

Not that you can't shake things up and have a gimmick level from time to time, but when I got the Crash trilogy I enjoyed the first two games well enough but lost interest in the third because there were too many gimmick levels and not enough of the platforming.

I respect what you're saying, but I'm just in full disagreement. Sonic Adventure was absolutely perfect for me. When I got bored with regular action stages, I could do a bit of a race against Sonic, or some treasure hunting, or shooting, or fishing, or survival horror. The Adventures were the high of Sonic for me, and nothing's really been able to match that since.

[Scritch the Cat]

10 hours ago, Phoenix said:

I respect what you're saying, but I'm just in full disagreement. Sonic Adventure was absolutely perfect for me. When I got bored with regular action stages, I could do a bit of a race against Sonic, or some treasure hunting, or shooting, or fishing, or survival horror. The Adventures were the high of Sonic for me, and nothing's really been able to match that since.

But that's you.  Fully enjoying the Sonic Adventure games, the first a bit more than the second, depends entirely on whether you like all of the play styles included, and it's quite a brash assumption on developers' part that most people will.  I'm not saying it's wrong to prefer that because that's sort of how I feel too...aside from the fishing  I can just as easily say it's a brash assumption on developers' part that people will enjoy the less varied gameplay of Classic Sonic more as they get better at it.  Still, those games made the franchise huge doing what they did and it was a big risk trying to bring in other sorts of gameplay, especially when it's mandatory.

On that note, I consider the single biggest sin of game design to be the "Battletoads" issue where by far the hardest part of a game is one bit that plays nothing like the rest of it, and you also have to pass that bit to get back to the sort of gameplay you actually bought it for.  Thus if a game has to have alternate playstyles, I feel they need to at least be substantially easier than the main event.  An example of that advice being heeded, to positive results, would be the Big the Cat segments of Sonic Frontiers.  It's not really "good" gameplay, but it's easy and doesn't last long, unless you want it to, and it's totally optional, albeit useful.  Meanwhile, The End garnered a lot of fan ire because a bullet hell game isn't what most of them go into Sonic wanting.

But having said that, I think there's a balancing act in these situations because for any sort of gameplay to be truly good, it needs to move past just the basics.  The shooting segments of the Sonic Adventure games leave me rather wanting, and unlike most people, for me that's not because they're slow.  Gamma isn't actually that slow and the SA2 mechs, though much slower than Sonic, are close enough to other 3D platformers in pace that I still find their platforming fine enough.  The problem for me is their shooting mechanic of just locking onto things and then releasing the laser button to destroy all of those targets automatically is just too basic and one-note for it to be an engaging gameplay style on its own.  If they had worked in a few innovations, like additional weapons that worked well (the gun is really too slow and inaccurate and the melee attack is, well, a melee attack) and enemies with HP, then the mechanic would come into its own, and therefor, Omega has been surprisingly one of my favorite characters to play as in Project 06, because he's got those Adventure laser-and-missile attacks but others as well, and a greater variety of things to blast.  Again, though, that's just me.  I love that sort of gameplay but the haunting question remains, if you need to make a shooter complex and challenging to make it a good shooter, but doing so makes it less of a Sonic game, is that even worth it?  I'm thinking no.  Maybe Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic Forces came closer to making that work than the Adventure games, though still probably not "there", but striking that balance between interesting enough for shooter fans and approachable enough for non-fans is still very arguably more trouble than it's worth.

On the other hand, I feel the "treasure hunting" segments of the Sonic Adventure games aren't actually too far off from being Sonic-appropriate gameplay, and thus deserve another look by the developers.  The characters can still move quickly, exploration has always been part of Sonic game design, and having multiple different "goals" in a stage, as evidenced by the main gameplay loop of Sonic Frontiers, is a good way to compensate for the inherent problem of protagonists who are so much more mobile than those in most platformers.  Only the arbitrary restrictions really bogged it down in the Adventure games.  If they could divorce it from the obligation of every stage (assuming there are stages) requiring you to find exactly 3 items, de-nerf the radar, make the characters just a bit more mobile and give them more to do besides just finding those mandatory macguffins, then what they'd arrive at is something fitting of 3D Sonic gameplay and not too far off from the direction they seem to want to take Sonic himself in.

[Super Sonic Speed]

I think the fans who grew up with sonic’s friends started to outnumber the older group that didn’t want it which is natural.

That said I don’t believe Sega wanted to stop the friends from being playable. I got the impression they were reluctant and bent to pressure.

I mean they approved for release of big red buttons sonic boom despite its state. They told big red button to change and remove things during development but left the multiple characters alone.

All 3 boom games had multiple playable characters.

Even secret rings had a party section and black knight had a multiplayer with multiple characters. The rush games had blaze.

Even without other characters there was the avatar in forces and the mii in sonic colours Wii game land section. 
 

It’s games like that existing after sonic 06 that suggest they were sort of still hanging onto them even if it meant letting someone else do it.

I never understood the dislike for sonic’s friends especially when they were people my age and older who played the megadrive game like sonic 2 and 3 and knuckles. A few of the gamegear games also had an extra character.

Just felt like a group of sonic gamers who forgot why sonic was well liked back in the days. Sonic didn’t collapse when Tails was introduced and made playable, so I don’t see what the big deal is.

More characters allows for more options for story and gameplay variety since you can rotate them based on what is required.

That said looks like they’re back so we’ll see how they go and whether it sticks.

 

[LongcrierCat]

Okay this is a great post, Scritch. Just want to address some things.

If they're gonna have shooter gameplay in Sonic, I've been of the thought that if they made it like a mix between Ratchet and Clank and Doom Eternal in the weapon roulette wheel system, they could easily make a version of the Shadow the Hedgehog gameplay that fans and critics would actually enjoy and part of the basis of why I say this is because people already enjoy a Sonic the Hedgehog shooter game.

SRB2.

How many people enjoy the CTF or Match Modes and going at it with their friends. I would always have a fun time with that as I'd switch between my favourites and play through trying to see how long I could keep up and nail the opponents on the way to my goal while switching between Rail Ring, Bounce Ring, Auto Ring.

They could do this. I know they can.

On 9/30/2023 at 10:58 PM, Scritch the Cat said:

On that note, I consider the single biggest sin of game design to be the "Battletoads" issue where by far the hardest part of a game is one bit that plays nothing like the rest of it, and you also have to pass that bit to get back to the sort of gameplay you actually bought it for.  Thus if a game has to have alternate playstyles, I feel they need to at least be substantially easier than the main event.  An example of that advice being heeded, to positive results, would be the Big the Cat segments of Sonic Frontiers.  It's not really "good" gameplay, but it's easy and doesn't last long, unless you want it to, and it's totally optional, albeit useful.  Meanwhile, The End garnered a lot of fan ire because a bullet hell game isn't what most of them go into Sonic wanting.

As for The End, what I find fascinating is just how much of Sonic Frontiers is the Nier Automata/Drakengard game I knew it was going to be a year before its release and The End is Classic Drakengard Genre Swap.

Spoiler

It drops you into a game type you barely used in the game, for Drakengard a Rythm Shooter game, for Frontiers' an Ikaruga Shooter, for its final boss as you deal with a world ending threat that caused the downfall of civilizations.

In Frontiers' case there were shmup levels before this akin to the Hacking Minigames in Nier Automata.

It's a very Platinum Games style approach from Sonic Team that shows they're not only capable but on the level of the hard hitters of gaming and that it was Sega's restrictive management that got in the way the most piled on by critics who didn't even understand why the franchise appealed to the fans. I will never forget how Sonic Forces* and Lost World* are the overcorrection appealing to the critics' demands of cutting out the "annoying friends" and focusing on Sonic as Sonic turned into a Mario game the critics liked more while long time fans who enjoyed the Sonic Adventure style of 3D gameplay were completely alienated by a very slow and clunky Sonic gameplay.

But like Drakengard, Sonic Frontiers' ending boss ended up being just as alienating and has lead to the excellent new story campaign where it fits the rest of the game now.

I have an admitted soft spot for The End from the base game despite the heart wrenching ending aside from Sonic and friends going their merry way.

[Wraith]

On 9/30/2023 at 12:53 PM, LongcrierCat said:

See, I still don't get the genre roulette problem because it's not like Sonic was the first 3D adventure platformer to do it tho.

Crash Bandicoot has you switching up gameplay styles so often in 2 and 3 and that series has a lot of very vocal defenders of that series.

I really think it comes down to game critics being harshly toxically critical of the series for a lot of the wrong reasons that really sounded more like kids on the playground saying Mario could beat up Sonic than anything else.

The decline of 3D platformers coincides pretty clearly with them with them taking on too many alternate gameplay styles to try and keep up with genres that were outselling them. Almost everybody was doing it, and almost all of those franchises spent a good decade either wallowing in mediocrity or on ice as a result. They didn't really start to come into their own again until the Mario series brought back the idea of more 'pure' platformers with simple controls and a lot of content centered around the core gameplay. Mario was basically the only successful 3D act in town for a while and ruled 2D games too due to the fact that it chose to ground itself in the fundamentals people actually come to the genre for.

"Adventure platformers" on the other hand were basically a dead end, a failed attempt to adapt to a changing market. The PS2 mascots progressivly morphed into shooters with platforming gameplay attached until they were pushing up against the limits of their own cartoony roots and actually became shooters instead. Ratchet games are still called Ratchet games but ultimately leaned harder and harder on the shooting as it went. Sly morphed into Infamous, dropping the alternate gameplay styles and melding shooting gameplay into the auto-parkour systems to make something unique. What started as Jak became Uncharted which is wholey a linear, cinematic third person shooter with very loose platforming elements as the pace breaker. Everyone essentially decided to pick a side. Are you a platformer, or something else?

[Knight Terror]

This fandom is scary.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 10/2/2023 at 6:43 AM, Wraith said:

The decline of 3D platformers coincides pretty clearly with them with them taking on too many alternate gameplay styles to try and keep up with genres that were outselling them. Almost everybody was doing it, and almost all of those franchises spent a good decade either wallowing in mediocrity or on ice as a result. They didn't really start to come into their own again until the Mario series brought back the idea of more 'pure' platformers with simple controls and a lot of content centered around the core gameplay. Mario was basically the only successful 3D act in town for a while and ruled 2D games too due to the fact that it chose to ground itself in the fundamentals people actually come to the genre for.

Let's not fool ourselves, though, Mario was going to stick around anyway because it's Mario, and Odyssey does feature a bit of light genre blending due to Cappy.

On 10/2/2023 at 6:43 AM, Wraith said:

"Adventure platformers" on the other hand were basically a dead end, a failed attempt to adapt to a changing market. The PS2 mascots progressivly morphed into shooters with platforming gameplay attached until they were pushing up against the limits of their own cartoony roots and actually became shooters instead. Ratchet games are still called Ratchet games but ultimately leaned harder and harder on the shooting as it went. Sly morphed into Infamous, dropping the alternate gameplay styles and melding shooting gameplay into the auto-parkour systems to make something unique. What started as Jak became Uncharted which is wholey a linear, cinematic third person shooter with very loose platforming elements as the pace breaker. Everyone essentially decided to pick a side. Are you a platformer, or something else?

I'd argue you need at least a bit more than running and jumping to make a platformer a success, unless, again, it's Mario.  And even then, most Mario games have power-ups to give him special abilities like various different forms of attack.  I find it interesting that you blamed the downfall of platfomers on them trying to ape other genres that were overtaking them, when it might be worth considering that other genres were overtaking them because people were getting sick of just running and jumping.  That almost inevitably happens to any game genre that gets overexposed.  Sure, a game probably shouldn't be considered a platformer if most of its gameplay isn't running and jumping, but only in the realm of quick cash-in mobile games is it considered acceptable to make an infinite deluge of games that are literally just running and jumping, with the only major difference between them being the graphics.

Also, while it's understandable why someone would conclude that a pre-established franchise like Sonic shouldn't be shifting genres within one game, it's folly to say being a mix of multiple genres will doom every game and franchise, and even if everyone in 2000s Sony's camp "picked a side", that doesn't make that actually necessary.  Games that are mixtures between shooters and platformers are not new; they've been around since the 8-bit era.  Should Mega Man be considered primarily a platformer or a shooter?  Does it really matter?  Lots of people find it fun so it can keep being what it is.  It hasn't always, but it has always eventually come back to that combination established in the 8-bit era.  Not every gamer is fond enough of both platforming and shooting to enjoy Mega Man, but enough are that it's a success, so the same principle applies to plenty other series. 

On that note, I'm skeptical that this sort of cross-pollination would have developed such an aversion for the Sonic franchise if that franchise hadn't sacrificed so much of its signature speed many times the other styles of gameplay came in.  Big the Cat being the textbook case makes the Sonic franchise's problems distinct from whatever was affecting Ratchet, Jak, etc in more than just degree; it really is principle.  It's repeatedly shown to be possible to blend fast running and jumping with shooting to form a mechanically coherent whole; the same is also at least sometimes true with melee combat.  You can't blend fishing with fast running and jumping; fishing demands waiting around in one spot.  The tastes they cater to are antithetical, but that's not true of every sort of gameplay.  In gaming, just like with food, some things just don't go together in many people's opinions.  But some things also do.

[Scritch the Cat]

Apologies for the double-post, it might be a glitch.

[Kuzu]

Not for nothing, but the most critically acclaimed Sonic game to date is the game that focused on the franchise's fundamentals. The most critically acclaimed 3D games in the last decade were games that built on the core gameplay as opposed to trying to throw in other styles.

Meanwhile, all of the other games that try to diversify themselves and dilute their central appeal are generally pretty divisive between the people who tolerate it and those who don't.