Zeshiro said:
I don't hate any characters really. And half of the people who flame characters don't have a reason to hate who they claim to hate. They seem to just want to follow the few people who actually feel strongly about what they're saying.
I can't seem to count the number of times "I hate Shadow. He's emo." has been paraphrased. I don't see how you can hate a Sonic character for being a recolor, but want everyone to have the same personalities.
Shadow, in Sonic Adventure 2, was a rather well executed idea. He was a seemingly one-dimensional character that as the game went on, turned out to have a little more to him, until he nobly sacrificed himself for the good of mankind in the end. The problem I have with Shadow isn't his personality or anything else, it's the fact that they completely reverted all that happened in SA2, personality-wise. Shadow had character development. Lots of it. All of which was TOTALLY ignored in the sequels because they wanted to keep the angsty "cool" Shadow the fans seemed to want. If Shadow did somehow miraculously live through getting killed off intentionally, then he would be a different character than the angsty, "emo" hedgehog he was in the beginning of SA2.
Instead, in Heroes, we got more of the OMG ULTIMATE LIFEFORM stuff, and that had already been done in SA2, so it was just stupid. I have not played Shadow the Hedgehog, so I don't know how they handled his character in there, but from what I understand, they make the player choose his "path". That's stupid. If it's set before SA2, he should be an evil scientist's project. If it's set after SA2, he should have been changed from the experience in the game, and not go around murdering helpless GUN robots, or whatever you fight.
Zeshiro said:
Another thing, people complain about extra characters not having a role in the whole series. Up until recently, Sonic Team never even considered the series having a timeline in the games. The focus was gameplay, which many people complained was outdated. People also said that the stories made no sense, which is part of the reason several things were changed. Everyone seems to be getting upset due to the fact that Sonic Team is attempting to construct stories beyond the simplstic plot of Eggman trying to take over and Sonic saving the day. If each game was like that, more people would have lost interest a long time ago. And if they had to keep making up reasons as to why Eggman won't quit. I'm positive that only would each story be worse than the last, but people would still complain.
The problem isn't that we have a ton of extra characters. The problem is that they don't really do anything in terms of gameplay.
Look at the classic games. Sonic is the hero, so he doesn't need any specific gameplay gimmicks. Tails was introduced as a sidekick, and his ability to fly let him get back onto the screen, but he didn't have any reason to play as him. He was purely added for plot and multiplayer. In Sonic 3, they gave Tails the ability to actually fly in-game, which opened up new paths and ways to play the game. These extra paths and gameplay options are the reason Tails was interesting in Sonic 3.
Knuckles was also added as a plot character in Sonic 3, being a rival and generally a pain in the butt. However, unlike the later games, when we're actually given a chance to play as Knuckles in S&K, he had his own maneuvers, tricks, and yes, pathways only he could take. Both Tails and Knuckles highly justified their existance by playing very differently as a player character, with seperate routes, moves, secrets, and in some cases, entire levels. Note how, while both characters have a reason to exist in the plot, they also have very different gameplay mechanics for the game itself.
Now look at what we have today. Most of the extra characters we get nowadays are simply clones of characters we already have, if you get to play as them. SA2 is a perfect example. Shadow is Sonic, Eggman is Tails, and Rouge is Knuckles. While being used for the plot, they don't justify their existance at all for gameplay. Sonic could play all of Shadow's levels just fine. Why not add differences between the characters so that they could take their own routes through the same stages, or play a little differently. As it stands, Shadow is just Sonic with a different graphic.
Heroes was even worse in this regard. You'd think that with 12 different characters, you'd get some gameplay variety, right? Think again. All the stages had you going on the same route, albeit with a few more enemies in one mode, shorter stages on another, and annoying fetchquests on another. There was a tremendous amount of detail put into the characters. Just messing with Espio a bit pissed me off in realizing that they never used ANY of the cool abilities the characters have in the game. Why didn't they use the character differences in the gameplay as well as the plot? It would have made the game more interesting, and ultimately more fun.
It's not that we have a ton of extra characters for the plot that's the problem. The problem is that they don't add anything at all to the gameplay, and always feel tacked on. If all 12 of the characters in Heroes could access their own hidden paths, used their unique skills in-game and had the player play the game differently based on what characters they were using, I'd bet people would overlook the game's flaws a lot easier. People wouldn't have a problem with the fact that there are a lot of characters in the game if they contributed something other than Charmy's god-awful annoying voice.
