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  • "We Had Very Little Say," Graff Discusses Sonic Team Writing Relationship

    You got the LCFE: Least Creative Freedom Ever!
    SSF1991  · 
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    Prior to Sonic Frontiers and the hiring of Ian Flynn as head writer, the writers for Sonic games were Ken Pontac and Warren Graff. For a decade, the pair wrote the story scripts for Sonic Colors, Sonic Generations, Sonic Lost World and more. For fans that didn't like this direction of writing, the two were usually blamed for this. However, according to Warren Graff on Twitter, SEGA and Sonic Team had a lot more influence with the game scripts than you may have thought!

    Graff's remarks was due to correcting a fan claiming that Pontac and Graff had little knowledge of the characters. According to Graff, they were actually fed a lot of information on the characters from SEGA and Sonic Team themselves. They wrote "millions of drafts" for each game, and SEGA/Sonic Team would leave charatcer and story notes for them.

    SEGA and Sonic Team's influence didn't stop there. Graff said that "every word we wrote, every character trait, and every story point was given to us by them". They had a very strong dictation on where the story evolved, how the characters behaved, and what they said. Whatever wasn't provided by Sonic Team and SEGA was, instead, based on the "Sonic Game Bible".

    So, if it wasn't already clear, Pontac and Graff didn't really have much creative freedom. In fact, Graff himself says that "we had very little say" in a lot of the script-writing and "we didn't have a lot of creative freedom". So, things such as "Baldy McNosehair" and "it's been generations since I've seen you!" may have been more of a SEGA/Sonic Team thing than a Pontac and Graff thing.

    That all said, it is worth noting that Graff has absolutely nothing against SEGA and Sonic Team for all this. In fact, despite not really having much say in how the writing went, Graff says that he "loved my time with Sega, everyone was amazing. We just didn't have a lot of creative freedom, which is understandable. It's their most important IP. They are rightfully protective of it. I would be too".

    Via Twitter

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    Urban Burrow

    Urban Burrow 7

    Posted

    this makes a lot of sense, when the character you're writing for is the companies mascot, naturally they would have final say on which way the characters are written and where they go. I feel that's why companies like Nintendo chose not to make a Mario movie for years, as the last time they did and were not involved... and of course I shouldn't have to mention the state of the sonic comics for years, regardless of what you think of the writing, they should have at least kept a closer eye to prevent some of the wilder decisions.

    I'm super happy that Sonic Team is taking more chances and letting the writing team have more freedom to take the characters, my favourite stuff in Frontiers was all the interactions the characters had with each other, something sorely missing from previous games.

    However, I'm willing to bet a good chunk of twitter users won't pay attention and continue to blame them.

    apologies for the long comment, I had more to say than I thought. Have a nice day

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    castell-neath

    castell-neath 695

    Posted

    Interesting. So if Sonic Team and Sega pushed a lot of this through...what DID they do exactly?

    Sounds like easy money to me to be told what to do and how to do it. Lol 

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    The Swordsman

    The Swordsman 82

    Posted

    There is a clear difference in quality when you compare and contrast their scripts to the Japanese version of the games they worked on and Ian is also under a lot of restrictions but Frontiers turned out to be a return to form. So in short this isn't going to change my opinion on them and I just see this as trying to pass the buck off to SEGA.

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    Rabbitearsblog

    Rabbitearsblog 2,905

    Posted

    I'm curious though. We all know that SEGA is notorious for limiting what the writers can write when it comes to Sonic the Hedgehog (which I can never understand why they are being so strict with the mandates in regards to this franchise).  But, when Ian Flynn and Evan Stanley and other current Sonic writers had to deal with these mandates, the stories come out fine.  But when Pontac and Graff dealt with these mandates, the stories came out a bit subpar.  Was SEGA stricter with Pontac and Graff?

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    Forgeafrontier

    Forgeafrontier 27

    Posted

    On 1/15/2024 at 9:39 AM, The Swordsman said:

    There is a clear difference in quality when you compare and contrast their scripts to the Japanese version of the games they worked on and Ian is also under a lot of restrictions but Frontiers turned out to be a return to form. So in short this isn't going to change my opinion on them and I just see this as trying to pass the buck off to SEGA.

    Frontiers had the reverse problem the pontaff games had, jp version was not translated well at all, the plot points are different in some areas.

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