NotPigeon said:
What's with all these people asking for no plot?
Am I the only one who likes having characters that aren't one dimensional?
I mean, even Super Mario Galaxy had some character development (admittedly, Rosalina's backstory isn't much, but it's something).
I don't want NO plot, I want a plot that's not horrible tripe with erotic furry overtones and extraneous characters bogging back both the gameplay AND the storyline and what may be the worst dialog since Star Wars: Episode 2 and the worst voice acting since (insert almost any westernized anime from the 90's here). How you can possibly BEGIN to defend these games is totally beyond me.
Let's face it, nobody LIKES Silver or Rouge or Big the Cat or team Chaotix or any of these other idiots that Sega introduced under the misguided pretense that a new character in each game would make things better, with the possible exception of people with nothing better to do than jack off to the image of a cartoon bat. There's plenty that can go on between just Sonic and Eggman. Shadow I have positively no objections to, either, and I can certainly live with Tails and to a lesser extent Knuckles, but the others all have to go. If you ask me, Sega doesn't understand the value of NON-player characters well enough.
Here's what a good 3D Sonic game's STORY has to be like:
-NO HUMANS except Eggman and the Robotnik clan. While we're on the subject, let's make him a reasonably intimidating, EVIL man instead of some kook who builds theme parks and haunted houses for no real reason. If you're gonna be bad, take it to the max so he's at least satisfying to fight. At this point I'm not even laughing at how badly I'm beating him any more.
-NO MORE ANIMAL-THEMED ROBOT BOSSES. I was INCREDIBLY sick of this the minute I saw the first boss of Sonic Rush and was disappointed when I found out they continued this theme in Sonic 2006. The more garish and cartoonish Eggman's robots are or the more half-assed the designs get, the harder it is to take him seriously.
-Speaking of evil, let's take the "animals trapped inside robots" theme to the next level. Let's show, in the opening cutscene, a baby deer crying for its momma while a series of robotic arms lifts it up, then brutally slam together the pieces of a hulking, spiked robotic monstrocity all around it while it quivers with unbridled terror.
The classic Sonic games, at their heart, were a story about nature (Sonic and animal friends) against technology and industrialization (Robotnik/Eggman, the Death Egg). Without this theme the game loses the main source of its story's depth. Many people will say that Adventure and Adventure 2 were their cutoff points and after that they begin to loath the story so much they can't bear it. This is why. Forget the extra characters, this, I GARANTEE you, is why. Adventure took and inverted this theme by making it a story about man trying to twist the primal forces of nature to do his bidding. Adventure 2 did another variation of this theme by introducing a biologically engineered clone of nature's champion on the side of evil, but completely lost its direction with the introduction of GUN. What Sega REALLY needs to do is emphasize the "man versus nature" theme as strongly as possible by making Robotnik the most dastardly, vicious mad scientist ever. This DOESN'T mean Sonic has to be a boy scout, though. Nature is chaos; no straight lines, no laws except that the strong survive. He should be perfectly willing to flip Eggman the bird.
I'd like to add one more thing about the story. The old Sonic games were good because they left a lot open to interpretation. In a way no plot and no dialog served them MUCH better than giving Sonic a voice ever could. Everyone who played these games found something different in them. Some saw Sonic as a bugs bunny-like trickster with a love of chilli dogs. Others slated him as a freedom fighter in a post-apocalyptic war zone where Robotnik had already won. When Adventure was released and he turned out to be increasingly LESS like anybody thought that's when the disappointment started to set in.
In terms of gameplay, I'd add a couple more things:
-MAKE SUPER SONIC UNLOCKABLE LIKE HE USED TO BE. The "Super Sonic final battle" has become EXTREMELY stale and the Sonic series desperately needs some reasonably challenging but satisfying unlockables to make it worth playing again.
-IF YOU'RE GOING TO USE EXTRA CHARACTERS, MAKE THEM PLAY THROUGH THE SAME STUFF SONIC DOES. You can do a lot more having one single adventure mode with ONE GAME that has beautifully polished levels than you can with six separate games with rushed or recycled ones, and it's more interesting to go through the same stages featuring the same basic gameplay and consistent goals but with different abilities than it is to go through levels with completely different goals from one another.
