what if the sonic series cast was less expansive?
- Thread starter Jammin'
- Start date
time gear
Eternity in an hour
We never would have had more than 3 or 4 games. Sonic 1, CD, 2, and 3&K each having only Sonic and Eggman would have probably done well, but nowhere as well and Nintendo would have handily won the console wars much sooner than they did. After that Sonic would have lost it's novelty with nothing really much keeping it fresh and interesting, and people would have moved on as the series lost it's profitability.
An old criticism from the mid 2000's that went around a lot was that Sonic had too many friends, but honestly I've never agreed with that viewpoint. In my eyes, it's not that there's too many of them, it's that the writers are terrible at doing anything with them. They are always at their best when they are the main focus of their own stories such as in Adventure or Heroes, and tend to come off as annoying side characters when they aren't the focus. If these characters could stand on their own two feet without needing the spotlight on them, the games would benefit greatly from it.
An old criticism from the mid 2000's that went around a lot was that Sonic had too many friends, but honestly I've never agreed with that viewpoint. In my eyes, it's not that there's too many of them, it's that the writers are terrible at doing anything with them. They are always at their best when they are the main focus of their own stories such as in Adventure or Heroes, and tend to come off as annoying side characters when they aren't the focus. If these characters could stand on their own two feet without needing the spotlight on them, the games would benefit greatly from it.
Mr Kixx Reborn
Let's give it all we got!
It wouldn't be as fun as it is right now, it would just be the same story with eggman having a different evil plan than before and he Sonic just goes through a bunch of acts to beat his ass again. It would just be boring and would dry out.
rocklight124
An Avenger
like it already is hahaha...that's not funny.
Icarus
Phantasy Savior
To be honest I do agree that the Sonic series has probably a bit too many side characters (aka that term beginning with the Letter S and ending with -y but I won't explicitly state it as it would go against the forums' rules).
I know that even Classic Sonic had quite an handful of characters (such as Mighty and Ray from the SegaSonic Arcade game, the Fang/Bark/Bean and the Chaotix Trio) but I still perfectly understand how overwhelmed Classic fans were around the Adventure era (where more than one character was introduced in each game) as well as Sonic X.
I think the series reached a point of Saturation with Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 2006 and it was a refresher to see that Unleashed only had 5-6 side characters (as much as I'm disappointed that Knuckles, an iconic character who basically appeared in every games since Sonic 3 didn't even get referred to), even the important ones for the story such as Chip and Pr Pickles were important to the game's plot and they didn't overstay their welcome. But on the other hand Lost World felt weak because outside of the main antagonists: the Deadly Six, we only get to see Amy and Knuckles via Tails' tablet and Forces got Silver for no reasons.
Maybe the Wisps are treated as a singular character but while they kinda overstayed their welcome since Lost World (like Zavok in Forces) I'm at least glad that Yackers and Mother Wisps weren't shoehorned back into the series.
PS: But (hot take alert) I still think that Shadow has kinda overstayed his welcome in the series and that Omega is a watered down Gamma that didn't need to come back in Forces (especially since 2006).
PPS: I could agree that the derogatory term beginning with an S has been overused and that we could've at least see some forgotten characters back (like Fang and Blaze) and people loved seeing Mighty and Ray again in Mania Plus. Sega should learn how to use their character effectively.
Last edited:
Draco
Member
In the comics they explain why is silver there
Icarus
Phantasy Savior
Another bad idea was the fact they had to tie the comic to the games.
I don't care if they were good or not, don't force a game to be a multi-media thing like Square did with FFXV.
We need to get everything just by playing the game.
Draco
Member
To know the history and argument of the classic games you have to READ the manual
Icarus
Phantasy Savior
That's a different case, it was another era and the Genesis games are fully understandable even without reading the manual.
Now imagine if Gerald's diary was only mentioned in Sonic X so you wouldn't understand many things from the game.
Darknik
Sonic Maniac
not to mention that not everyone knew that there was a prequel comic for sonic forces for example I did not know it until years later the same with lost world and I do not even know if there are others after these
Icarus
Phantasy Savior
I didn't know about the Lost World one, I might check it out.
But yeah, I wish that Sega's next game wouldn't try to make the "lore deeper" and that it's right into the action (like in Colours which explained why Robotnik made an amusement park in the first cutscene right after the first level).