WarTraveller

On 5/2/2019 at 5:10 AM, Wulfsbane said:

Let's be real though; if it bombs, SEGA will just brush it off to the side and act like it never happened.

Really, they'd probably do that if the film was somehow successful. They have a long history of burying their head in the sand and forgetting things ever happened. But when they do that, they don't learn the lessons they frankly should have learned decades ago. Lessons like, "Don't rush games to market for quick profits" and "Don't give your license to any old developer, especially those who don't understand the source material". It's this stubbornness that has led to Sonic being this joke propped up by nostalgia and memes. They could have fixed this, and yet...they didn't.

That's not to say the blame is entirely on them in this case. Hell, it's barely on them in this case. Paramount knew from the VERY FIRST teaser that people despised the design, they had months upon months to pull the "we're going to fix this honest" stunt. But they went with it anyway, so sure their vision was superior to those of the fans or even Sega themselves. It's not even uncaring so much as it is arrogance, Nintendo levels of it. This isn't SEGA's thing, or the fans' thing like Detective Pikachu is. No, this is Paramount's thing. Their ugly, probably toy-shilling thing. I'm at least very happy that they agreed to change up the design, but now I'm just sort of worried for all the animators who will be working endless hours of (very likely unpaid) overtime to fix an issue that never needed to be one in the first place.

On 5/2/2019 at 5:10 AM, Wulfsbane said:

Maybe we'll get lucky and they do what Nintendo did after the Mario Bros. Movie: Make a great game after it

Considering Sega's track record of game quality, I find that quite unlikely.

See, why doesn't he look like that for most of the film? Why is it that they're doing what they did with Luthor in Batman v Superman?

I'll say this, though. Carey is clearly having a ball as Eggman.

Hoooooooooo boy. They actually went for Ganster's Paradise. They could not have chosen a worse-fitting song.

So, uh, when ARE We getting a trailer for this thing, anyway?

I can't believe this film is actually looking decent. Perhaps for the first time a video game movie will in some way resemble the game it's based on. Woooow. And really, I'm just impressed they managed to find a way to render the Pokemon as close to real life as possible and still make them...look good.

Oh yes, I was supposed to write about my first D&D session, wasn't I? I, actually had a lot of fun with it. Just playing this tall, beautiful half-Wood-Elf and everyone hitting on my character. It was an experience like no other, let me tell you. Then next thing you know, I'm sailing down a river with some others, catching fish to sell for a profit. I remember the way I proved to one of the characters that my character was quite experienced in catching fish. And by that, I mean she took a flying leap out of the boat, slammed the fishing net over the fish in mid-air and slam-dunked it into the wicker basket. I was, uh...really not sure if that would work out. But it did. XD

So I got some more news, seems Toy Network, who already have the rights to Sonic plushies as-is, got the rights to make toys based off of the movie, too.

So we'll be getting some plush toys of Gremlin Movie Sonic.

On 12/28/2018 at 3:46 AM, TheRedStranger said:

Yes. And I guess it’s our duty to reach out to those people.

I guess. At this point you have to make your own fun in the franchise to really get anywhere. You have to create your own entertainment.

So...what do we do? What plans shall we form? How shall we save the Bandaged Blue Blur?

To be honest, I wouldn't trust them to do that. I was already a bit worried about the Crash and Spyro remakes. They were still Activision products, and recent events have proven Activision has no shame and no soul. They would do anything to brutally montize the remakes. But thankfully, they backed off and the remakes were incredibly good. They were made by talented development groups and published by someone who actually gave them some space.

Sega and Sonic Team? Very different story. After Rise of Lyric and Big Red Button in general, I doubt Sega is very trusting of outsourcing Sonic to that many third-party developers, with the exception of Sumo Digital (even though they totally screwed Big Red Button over and let them become the scapegoat), so it would be made by whatever remains of Sonic Team. And this is SEGA. Alongside their wretched mandates that just forbid half of what made the Adventure games so special, they just can't not screw up, they must ruin SOME part of it. They would probably make changes people would actually hate...or like. That's kind of the issue. Split fanbase aside, Adventure 1 and 2 can't be shot-for-shot remakes -  what worked for the time doesn't work now, as many many many Youtube videos just love to point out over and over. So the questions really come out;

• What do you keep the same from the originals?
• What do you change?
• What do you do with the story beats that didn't work?
• How do you modernise gameplay styles even Sega doesn't understand?
• What do you do with Big the Cat? You can't keep his gameplay the same, everyone hates it, but he's also really popular again so you can't just remove him.
• Do you bring back as many of the old cast as possible or just use the current cast? Or even a new cast of soundalikes?
• How do you shoehorn Zavok in, as apparently he's a main character now?

And more questions besides. It would perhaps make more sense for the games to be a reimagining (or as Mike suggested, more of a reboot) more than a straight remake. With story beats retconned and a good amount of the old actors either dead or unwilling (or in Drummond's case, unable) to work with the franchise, it kind of has to be. But frankly, at this point, I feel that whatever choice they make, it will be the wrong one. It's the only kind of choice they've been making for the last eight years.

Boom was a victim of restructuring. Synergy, the original pitch and the original version of RoL were clearly full adventure, on the same lines as Jak and Daxter or Ratchet and Clank. Just full, tennis balls to the wall adventure with some slightly darker tones. But when the show was pitched as a lighter comedy where the main joke is that every character is one, the rest of the sub-franchise was muddled and messed with to support this new direction (doubtless spurred by RoL's troubled development).

So what we're left with is a dumb show about dudebros draped over the skeleton of something more serious. It was restricted by SEGA to be the thing they wanted it to be (another way to sell toys) rather than what it truly was. As much as I hate Boom for tainting the franchise and making Classic all the more enticing, I feel sad it never got the chance to truly express itself in the way RoL clearly was set up to. 

Well...Disney never tried. But if they did, I'm certain they'd devote years of thought and testing into making him look right in live-action. Like the Detective Pikachu stuff. It's clear they spent a long time working out how they should look, how they should cross the barrier between cartoony and fictional and cartoony yet almost real. This Sonic design, on the other hand, feels like some bigwigs sat down and went, "Let's make it HYPER-REALISTIC, to make him look cool and edgy! Let's REALLY Micheal Bay this one! No-one cares! It's just for kids!"

I mean, I wanted an anthro Sonic, sure. I'm fine with the noodle limb style, but I know a lot of people are not. And with good reason; I do sometimes wonder if the stories to 06 and Shadow would have been a bit easier to tolerate if the characters were full anthro instead of...well, 90's era platform mascot stuff. But there's a decently thick line between anthro as we know it, and making something as realistic as possible, for no other reason than because you can. And they Drop Dashed across that line anyway.

Also, a friend of mine found some spiel from Richmond Lee where he goes into detail on why this design is as it is. It's worth reading, check it out; https://twitter.com/Richmond_Lee/status/1072912281401360384

8 hours ago, Wulfsbane said:

Better yet, I'm hoping this will light a fire under SoJ, SoA, and Sonic team to make a game that's got the quality akin to Super Mario Odyssey and Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild  and the fun of Mania, Generations, Unleashed, and the Adventure series

That should have happened after 06. And Rise of Lyric. And Forces. It did not.

Look, I wasn't expecting much from the film, I thought Sonic would look like Blue-Core!Sonic, but slightly worse. But THIS?! They didn't even get the shoes right. He's not wearing socks. It's actually 96.3% wrong. I can only hope and pray it looks better in motion. But it probably won't.

Oh dear. Oooooooooh dear.

Okay, so after a bit of a chat with @Wulfsbane elsewhere, I came up with another question we could look into. It's safe to say that Scourge is an example of Good Idea, Bad Execution. An anti-Sonic with all of his drive and snark (but pointed in the other direction) sounds like a good foil for Sonic, but Scourge never really felt like he was linked to Sonic. Personally I hated him for being a womanising scumbag buried in bit of Plot Armour, but that's neither here or there. So I'm gonna ask;

How would you write Scourge, or really any attempt at a supposed Anti-Sonic?

Well, my plans have changed for the worse anyway. I've had to look after someone's dog during the holiday itself so I don't have the time nor the oppertunity to do even that. So...great. I wanted this week to myself, but no.

Oh, and Sonic talks in that scene, too!

https://www.sonicstadium.org/2018/10/sonic-talks-in-latest-ralph-breaks-the-internet-trailer-watch-here/

Now to sit here and wait for people to say that Sonic's few seconds of relevance in this film will be better than the entirety of his own. XD

It only took them three rushed products of infamous quality to get there. I guess the same stubborness from the 90's never left. Still though, it's for the best Team Racing is getting delayed; Sonic has...a history with deadlines (almost as if they keep making them too short or something), and even a few weeks ago people were saying it was the same old unfinshed rushjob as ever. It's for the better. I mean personally, I don't really care either way. TSR just sort of fails to impress me. But then after Forces, anything would. I might just get Transformed instead. I hear that's pretty top-tier.

I'm kind of stuck between 3, 4 or 5. I say we call a vote. See who wants to do what. OR perhaps a poll, if these forums support that.

On 1/23/2018 at 5:46 PM, TheRedStranger said:

I might be a bit crazy...but every time I think of this thread, the Spencer Mansion from Resident Evil and The Police Station from Resident Evil 2 comes to mind. So apparently I desire to go frolic in a hopeless doomhole of survival horror where unholy abortions of science stalk around every corner.

 

Eh, it's probably still better than living in Manchester.

Hmm. What if the zombies were versions of the characters we play, from many alternate timelines where they perish and reanimate? Just all these different timelines where they all fail, thus rendering a lot meaningless and breaking their morale? Owlman would be proud.

22 hours ago, Mike Arcade said:

Because really when you have an official comic book use a concept not even fan comics from over ten years ago wouldn't do, I mean what else can you really say? 

You say that perhaps tying it so close the games was a bad idea after all. I want IDW to be good, but it fails to be more than...passable. At most.

On 10/20/2018 at 2:54 PM, TheRedStranger said:

Yet ironically has no character, just a couple of shiny macguffins and ridiculous powers to fill up a hollow character arc.  Metal Sonic is the biggest waste in all the franchise. He could have been an somewhat interesting concept for a few games and comics  -  but he’s both fetal in his development yet tired and old in his over use. 

I mean he's not even Sally Acorn! How dare he, the philistine! XD

See, this is kind of why I didn't want the IDW comics to just be the games but not. Why I would rather it had gone in its own direction from the very start. The connection to the games drag the comic down, rather than enhance it. Ironically, Sonic is probably one of the few franchises where not sticking to the source material makes for a better product. The issue is that comics rely on good stories, and Sonic games don't have stories anymore, moreso a particuarly agravating string of handwaves until the minimum runtime is reached. The characters are basic if not outright cardboard-flat, the stories are pointless bordering on maddening at times, and any potential it may have is quashed by paranoia, a need for control and Values Dissonence, as is the case with Japanese-published games.

In other words, the story to the games are rubbish, and cannot translate into mediums where storytelling and characters take centre stage. Metal Sonic has become a go-to textbook-type character, like Shadow, Amy and Green Hill Zone. He's only really there because he has to be, because people (well, kids) recognse him. But because he and Shadow are just fanservice, just window dressing to wave in front of the audiance for cheap praise, they're given no time to develop and they feel less like characters and more like some suit's plaything. A collection of polygons and textures used pragmatically to bump up the Metacritic scores a few points. It's why I was so angry when they brought back Chaos for Forces, and did nothing with him. He might as well have not even been there. And, if you want to be pedantic, he wasn't.

That's not to say the writing in IDW!Sonic is the worst, I actually think it's not that bad considering the circumstances. They even have good characters in Whisper and aspects of Tangle. And I do appreciate Metal taking centre stage, finally getting a proper super form and actually feeling in-character (moreso than Boom Shadow, at least). But ultimately the writing can't be "good"; not with the wretched source material it's stuck with, buried further in mandates. Mandates that they said wouldn't be there and that SEGA would take things "step-by-step". Yep, saw straight through that little lie. Because of this, of ALL this, IDW!Sonic just feels...empty. Uninspired. It's the same old stuff any Sonic story in any of the games would follow, just written slightly better. I can't even bring myself to be angry about it, as I saw all this coming the moment they made it clear it was game-inspired. There's nothing to the game stories, so there's just nothing to this. Why do people want the Freedom Fighters to return, to live in this...creative wasteland?

Well personally, I'm a little in the mood for something a bit more psychological. Existential. Macabre and otherwordly, like a warped version of Alcatraz in a pocket dimension that is basically Purgatory. Something a little dark and depressing. Just kind of the mindspace I've found myself in. I mean we COULD do a slasher movie type, but I dunno...not sure how that'd really work here. But ultimately, I guess it's up the majority here. So, what does everyone else prefer?

Argh, I actually had a cool idea for a character but I've completely forgotton what it was since. AAAAAAAAAAA-oh, wait a minute. I think I've got a better idea.

As for what type of survival horror, well I dunno. What will it be? Will it be subtle, psychological, Silent-Hill type horror? Or the more well-known, American "strap a chainsaw to your arm and murder all the zombies" type horror?