Watching some other cartoons I used to watch I realized how much fun is to have a plot based around characters suddenly falling in love. There's some great chemistry between Sonic characters already, so there's tons you could do with this concept. Ah, I can exactly how'd it'd go...../thought bubble....
Sonic, a world famous hero, is attending a seminar to inspire children, when Amy crashed the party. She does something that embarasses him, and the children laugh. He's angry, but he doesn't want to let it show in front of the children so he suppresses it, and endures the shame until the events over. Then rather than directly confronting Amy out of fear she'll overreact, he instead goes to Tails for the solution.
Sonic tells Tails that Amy's obession with him has gotten, "Out of hand," and mocks, "Where's the off switch?" This gives Tails gets an idea.
"What if we could 'Turn off' Amy's love for you?" He then sets to work making an invention to do just that.
He gives him a special spray to use on her.
Sonic goes up to Amy reaching his arms out for a hug intending to spray Amy behind her back, but because Amy is so overjoyed by this, she squeezes him harder than Sonic expected and he ends up spraying himself and he falls in love with Amy. Amy is overjoyed that Sonic is finally expressing his love for her, and they go out on a lot of dates at amusement parks, restaurants, running across land and seas while Sonic carries her, and more. This makes Tails worried.
When Sonic finally gets around to visit Tails again, Tails is astonished to find out how Sonic has been acting. He tries asking Sonic what happend, but Sonic is too love struck to recall the details. Tails deduces Sonic must have sprayed himself, and after making Sonic take some tests, he realizes that his potion not only does his potion make some one fall out of love, but it makes a person fall in love too, as it reverses the love emotions of what the person naturally feels. Tails goes about making an antidote, but first he needs to test the love reverser again, So he calls in his good buddy Knuckles for some help.
Knuckles, who was guarding the Master Emerald, agrees to use the spray on someone so long as Tails takes his place while doing such. Knuckles asks who he should spray, and Tails tells him, "It doesn't matter so long as you know for certain that the person has love or a lack of love for another." After a brief moment of thought and a sigh, Knuckles takes off with a communication device Tails gave him, as he heads for GUN headquarters.
At the GUN HQ Knuckles meets up with Rouge, whose happy to see him as she's been stuck in her office all day. Knuckles then attempts to spray her, but Shadow Chaos controls in the way to inform Rouge of her next assignment and intercepts the blast. He's stuck dumb in love for Rouge.
Back at the scene with Amy and Sonic. Sonic's constant love and affection is starting to bore and annoy her, and she realizes that it was more fun when she was the one chasing him. Having no where else to turn she calls up Tails for advice as to what she should do.
Tails, being an absent minded blabber, lets it out that Sonic's in love with her because of his invention. In a fit of confused emotions she at first expresses relief, but then half waythrough her sign she bursts in to a rage. She then scolds Tails and demands an explanation. He explains, "Sonic was sick of your obsessive behavior so I invented a spray that would make you fall out of love with him, but as it turns out it actually reverses how someone feels, so Sonic..fell...in...love...with.....you." He then mutters, "Oops, as he realizes he's again revealed too much, and he's right as Amy breaks down in tears, having connected that this means Sonic doesn't truly love her at all like she had always imagined.
Back at the scene with Knuckles, Shadow, and Rouge things have escalated. Shadow, struck with Rouge, has taken her hand, kneeled on the floor, and begun uttering poetry. Rouge being confused and weirded out, but also flattered, attempts to ask Knuckles what's going on, but as she tries to do such Shadow is offended that she's giving her attention to another guy, and starts deriding Knuckles, "Back off, she would never be into a dim-witted, inferior lifeform such as yourself."
Knuckles is offended and retaliates, "Who says she wouldn't?! The whole reason I came here is because I knew she liked me." *Rouge lets out a shocked, "Oh my!"
Shadow, unaccept to even stand the possibility of this, lunges at Knuckles and a brawl comences. As the brawl is going on Sonic zooms in and hides behind Rouge, followed by a crazed Amy who crashes through the ceiling with Tails's hijacked Tornado, with him sitting in the back seat cowering and freightened. She then nose dives into the ground yelling, "SOOOONIC!" She crashes into the spray Knuckles brought along, and a cloud of dust and love potion perfume engulfs the room.
Coughing, and scuffed up, everyone gets up, and it quickly become apparent that Sonic and Shadow are turned back to normal, as Sonic looks startled and bothered by Amy's presence, and Shadow looks gruff and unexpressive again.
Everyone meets back at Tails Workshop to be tested to make sure all traces of the love potion are gone.While this is going on Sonic musters up the courage to state how he's been feeling and convess to Amy that he's been embarassed by her behavior recently, and he brings up the event with the kids. Amy then tells him that she wished that he would have just told her rather than put her through all the embarassment she's gone through. It would have been much less hurtful to find out that way. As she looks insecurly downward and away from Sonic while reaching over and grabbing her upper arm to comfort herself. Then feeling like a dirt bag, hints that, "But, hey, you never know, maybe someday when we're both older I'll genuinely like you. So don't lose hope!" He then gives her a reassuring, winked eye, grin and a thunbs up.
This makes Amy perk up, and says, "So, does this mean you're asking me to marry you in the future?!" having leaned in towards Sonic with a big toothed grin, and her hands clasped and held up to one side. Everyone looks over, and a shocked moment of silence occurs. Then Amy closes her eyes while remaining in the exact same pose in every other way, and says, "Just kidding!" To which all the characters in turn and round, begin to laugh. The camera slowly rises up and away from the characters, showing the sky with the laughter still being heard, as the screen fades to black and the credits play.
Saturday, May 24, 2014
Saturday, May 17, 2014
The Structure and Analysis of Sonic Unleashed: I can see why it was going to be called SA3
Sonic Unleashed
Now as for Eggman....
Unleashed Eggman is an improvement from 06 Eggman. Eggman's always had a silly side to him. He's not just a menacing badarze. This is the guy who names every robot he makes after eggs! He's crazy! No, not just crazy that's an understatement, he's a crazy megaglomania induced psychopath. Unleashed properly portrays him as such, and makes him intersting again. I disagree that he's portrayed as dumb, it's more so that he gets so over excited and overzealous about his plans that his overlooks the small details. That fits with his personality type of ENTJ. In case you're now wondering Sonic-ESFP, Tails- INFP (same as you), Knuckles- ISTJ (same as me), Amy-ESFJ, Shadow- INTJ, Rouge- ENTP, eh that's enough.
He's much closer to how he was in the Adventure games. In Sonic Adventure Eggman gives a enthusiactic speech to the robots HE programmed. In Sonic Adventure 2 he's a crazy war general who gives an ego inflating, enthusiastic speech to the world, and he blows up the moon!
The scenes in Eggman's ship where he talks to Orbot are really good scenes. As you already dissected, but I'll add that it's a very rewarding scene because it solves some of the mystery and thickens the plot, as well as give Eggman personality as mentioned.
Sonic is back to his oldself too. He's jokes with Eggman, he's emotional and personable with Chip and Tails. He's just very human, and interesting again, without becoming unhonorable like subsequent games. He acts very much like his adventuresome, fun loving, wise cracking, caring self.
So to recap: the beginning of the story is strong and great, then things slow down, but the tradeoff is a believeable, relateable, and emotional story, and beginning with the Eggman Ergo scene and onward the story picks up in intensity, and it starts becoming interesting again which carries through until the ends.
Critical Choice- Sonic must choose to face the dangers of the God like Dark Gaia to help out his new friend that Chip that he's bonded with or leave him to face the beast alone knowing now that Chip is actually really powerful.
Climax- Dark Gaia fight, a result of Sonic helping Chip
Reversal- Chip saves unconscious Sonic's live. The Earth's saved
Resolution-Sonic and Tails run along the Windy Isle continent as the credits play. The game leaves you with a great sense of closure: All the important mysteries are resolved, the day is saved, and Sonic and Tails return to normal life. The credits are really good too. Pictures of the adventure and emotional, moving music. Standard stuff, but good credits really help give and are an essential part of the closure process.
Design: I love the thrill and adrenaline fueled excitement. Visually and mechanically, it's constantly giving me new, exciting things to look at and do, and I agree with Clement that the levels are not terribly unfair and trial and error. Sonic Generations has more sucker punch moments than Unleashed, it's just that you don't die from them but get a less cool path and miss out on red rings, but I hate that more though. Failing at a challenge and then being unable to go back unless I replay the whole level over again is infuriating! I hate missing out on stuff and having to go back through a second time just to see what I missed.
I don't like much exploring in Sonic games. I hate knowing there's places to explore in linear levels when I have stiff control, am moving at mach speeds, can't control the camera, and can't backtrack; so, the linearity of Unleashed is perfectly fine by me. I like the level design. I do enjoy exploration as well though, so they can put it in the game, but I need the camera and controls to be designed for it, but then again if they design the controls for exploration by making your character really powerful at climbing and jumping, but don't change the level design to an open world format, things become boring like in Lost World and Sonic Heroes. So, expecting Sonic to be thrillingly fast and exciting, and control well, and have exploration, but not too much because you'll lost is unrealistic. You can't have your cake and eat it too. A game needs focus. So either make a linear SA2 and Unleashed, or make Sonic Lost have Super Mario Sunshine's level design.
So after the out-of-character Heroes and Shadow, and the Uncanny 06, Unleashed is very refreshing. It's believeably the same world as SA1&2. It fixed many of the problems that the story of the previous 3 games had, and more. It doesn't screw or mess up the canon like Heroes and Shadow, if we take Captain Theories theory about it, it enhances it infact. Well alright it kind of does because we have to wonder where Knuckles Shadow and Rouge are during this affair, but at least is doesn't establish drastic things like Shadow having amensia and being part alien. I still hate the designer doing that in Heroes and Shadow. That is my biggest problem with the Sonic series in general. It doesn't have just 1 fleshed out canon, the executvives tried to make spin-off games part of the main story line NO!!!! Because of Heroes and Shadow, Shadow's story still doesn't have solid closure.
/Sigh/ Contuinty ranting,
Well, that is all.
Stasis-Because the Sonic series is a saga this phase is actually unnecessary. Sonic Adventure showed us what normal life is, so sequels can skip straight to the trigger.
Trigger-Eggman's causing troubling and Sonic shows up to stop him. Power is actually pretty balanced here. Big threating fleet of ships and robots, Sonic smashes them +1S. Eggman Grabs and immobilizes Sonic +1EM. Sonic turns Super and breaks free causing Eggman to run +1S. Eggman tricks Sonic into lowering his guard by begging for mercy and drains him of most of his chaos energy, Sonic becomes monsterous, and Eggman blows open the Earth +3 EM. At the beginning of the story the villain should always be ahead otherwise he's not a threat, and there's no story to tell. This part of the story is incredibly well done.
Quest-Restore the Earth by collecting the chaos emeralds and restore chip's memory. You're right that the game spends WAY too much here It akes roughly 20 minutes just for the quest to begin; So we're a fourth of the way in and we haven't even reached the meat of the story yet?!; however,slow pacing itself doesn't ruin a story, it just makes it tedious. Slow pacing it the equivalent of a gameplay glitch.It's a technical issue.
Surprise- This is where the story is both strong and weak. It's strong because it has a lot of mysteries to solve: What the heck was that giant monster that came out of the Earth? why is Sonic a werewolf? What's chips back story? What happened to Proffessor Pickle? How can the Earth be restored? and by the end of the story all of them are answered. Although, The surprise catergory isn't just about mystery though, but, "pleasant events...obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist."(http://www.
So there are 3 main sensual and emotional value aspects.
Trigger-Eggman's causing troubling and Sonic shows up to stop him. Power is actually pretty balanced here. Big threating fleet of ships and robots, Sonic smashes them +1S. Eggman Grabs and immobilizes Sonic +1EM. Sonic turns Super and breaks free causing Eggman to run +1S. Eggman tricks Sonic into lowering his guard by begging for mercy and drains him of most of his chaos energy, Sonic becomes monsterous, and Eggman blows open the Earth +3 EM. At the beginning of the story the villain should always be ahead otherwise he's not a threat, and there's no story to tell. This part of the story is incredibly well done.
Quest-Restore the Earth by collecting the chaos emeralds and restore chip's memory. You're right that the game spends WAY too much here It akes roughly 20 minutes just for the quest to begin; So we're a fourth of the way in and we haven't even reached the meat of the story yet?!; however,slow pacing itself doesn't ruin a story, it just makes it tedious. Slow pacing it the equivalent of a gameplay glitch.It's a technical issue.
Surprise- This is where the story is both strong and weak. It's strong because it has a lot of mysteries to solve: What the heck was that giant monster that came out of the Earth? why is Sonic a werewolf? What's chips back story? What happened to Proffessor Pickle? How can the Earth be restored? and by the end of the story all of them are answered. Although, The surprise catergory isn't just about mystery though, but, "pleasant events...obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist."(http://www.
So there are 3 main sensual and emotional value aspects.
1.Interpersonal relationship moments: As Clement pointed out, Sonic and Chip have a great relationship with one another. The story spends a lot of time on the interpersonal relationship of characters; Primarily between Sonic and Chip, but between all the characters as well. The key is that when they with one another they are talking like normal people and saying normal people things along with plot relavent topics. The voice acting is also top notch everyone's tone andinflections sounding very natural and human-like. The soothing emotional music also helps set the mood and atmosphere. A step up from the very unnatural, uncanny interactions bewteen characters in Sonic 06. The scene where Sonic first meets up with Tails for example. In that scene their animations are very puppet-like and they say awkward things to one another like "I am going to rape you later" oh wait, wrong script, sorry, but you get the point. Another big thing is...
2.Believable characteristics and behavior:all the characters, main and side, feel like real believable people. They talk to people amicably and personably and exhibit a lot of normal human behaviors. Eating, dancing, going to college; the NPCs tell you about their lives and the town the live in. This helps makes the world of Sonic Unleashed feel like a real believable place despite having an imaginative artstyle.
3.A consistent, believeable, immersive world:The details and visuals are consistent inside and outside of the cutscenes. When you explore the hub it looks the same as it does in the cutscenes. It's all consistent and makes you feel immersed in Sonic's world. A, "living breathing world," as Clement would say, though he was talking about FFXIII-2 vs XIII, but digression.
2.Believable characteristics and behavior:all the characters, main and side, feel like real believable people. They talk to people amicably and personably and exhibit a lot of normal human behaviors. Eating, dancing, going to college; the NPCs tell you about their lives and the town the live in. This helps makes the world of Sonic Unleashed feel like a real believable place despite having an imaginative artstyle.
3.A consistent, believeable, immersive world:The details and visuals are consistent inside and outside of the cutscenes. When you explore the hub it looks the same as it does in the cutscenes. It's all consistent and makes you feel immersed in Sonic's world. A, "living breathing world," as Clement would say, though he was talking about FFXIII-2 vs XIII, but digression.
Now as for Eggman....
Unleashed Eggman is an improvement from 06 Eggman. Eggman's always had a silly side to him. He's not just a menacing badarze. This is the guy who names every robot he makes after eggs! He's crazy! No, not just crazy that's an understatement, he's a crazy megaglomania induced psychopath. Unleashed properly portrays him as such, and makes him intersting again. I disagree that he's portrayed as dumb, it's more so that he gets so over excited and overzealous about his plans that his overlooks the small details. That fits with his personality type of ENTJ. In case you're now wondering Sonic-ESFP, Tails- INFP (same as you), Knuckles- ISTJ (same as me), Amy-ESFJ, Shadow- INTJ, Rouge- ENTP, eh that's enough.
He's much closer to how he was in the Adventure games. In Sonic Adventure Eggman gives a enthusiactic speech to the robots HE programmed. In Sonic Adventure 2 he's a crazy war general who gives an ego inflating, enthusiastic speech to the world, and he blows up the moon!
The scenes in Eggman's ship where he talks to Orbot are really good scenes. As you already dissected, but I'll add that it's a very rewarding scene because it solves some of the mystery and thickens the plot, as well as give Eggman personality as mentioned.
Sonic is back to his oldself too. He's jokes with Eggman, he's emotional and personable with Chip and Tails. He's just very human, and interesting again, without becoming unhonorable like subsequent games. He acts very much like his adventuresome, fun loving, wise cracking, caring self.
So to recap: the beginning of the story is strong and great, then things slow down, but the tradeoff is a believeable, relateable, and emotional story, and beginning with the Eggman Ergo scene and onward the story picks up in intensity, and it starts becoming interesting again which carries through until the ends.
Critical Choice- Sonic must choose to face the dangers of the God like Dark Gaia to help out his new friend that Chip that he's bonded with or leave him to face the beast alone knowing now that Chip is actually really powerful.
Climax- Dark Gaia fight, a result of Sonic helping Chip
Reversal- Chip saves unconscious Sonic's live. The Earth's saved
Resolution-Sonic and Tails run along the Windy Isle continent as the credits play. The game leaves you with a great sense of closure: All the important mysteries are resolved, the day is saved, and Sonic and Tails return to normal life. The credits are really good too. Pictures of the adventure and emotional, moving music. Standard stuff, but good credits really help give and are an essential part of the closure process.
Design: I love the thrill and adrenaline fueled excitement. Visually and mechanically, it's constantly giving me new, exciting things to look at and do, and I agree with Clement that the levels are not terribly unfair and trial and error. Sonic Generations has more sucker punch moments than Unleashed, it's just that you don't die from them but get a less cool path and miss out on red rings, but I hate that more though. Failing at a challenge and then being unable to go back unless I replay the whole level over again is infuriating! I hate missing out on stuff and having to go back through a second time just to see what I missed.
I don't like much exploring in Sonic games. I hate knowing there's places to explore in linear levels when I have stiff control, am moving at mach speeds, can't control the camera, and can't backtrack; so, the linearity of Unleashed is perfectly fine by me. I like the level design. I do enjoy exploration as well though, so they can put it in the game, but I need the camera and controls to be designed for it, but then again if they design the controls for exploration by making your character really powerful at climbing and jumping, but don't change the level design to an open world format, things become boring like in Lost World and Sonic Heroes. So, expecting Sonic to be thrillingly fast and exciting, and control well, and have exploration, but not too much because you'll lost is unrealistic. You can't have your cake and eat it too. A game needs focus. So either make a linear SA2 and Unleashed, or make Sonic Lost have Super Mario Sunshine's level design.
So after the out-of-character Heroes and Shadow, and the Uncanny 06, Unleashed is very refreshing. It's believeably the same world as SA1&2. It fixed many of the problems that the story of the previous 3 games had, and more. It doesn't screw or mess up the canon like Heroes and Shadow, if we take Captain Theories theory about it, it enhances it infact. Well alright it kind of does because we have to wonder where Knuckles Shadow and Rouge are during this affair, but at least is doesn't establish drastic things like Shadow having amensia and being part alien. I still hate the designer doing that in Heroes and Shadow. That is my biggest problem with the Sonic series in general. It doesn't have just 1 fleshed out canon, the executvives tried to make spin-off games part of the main story line NO!!!! Because of Heroes and Shadow, Shadow's story still doesn't have solid closure.
/Sigh/ Contuinty ranting,
Well, that is all.
The Story Structure and Analysis of Sonic Colors and Generations
Sonic Colors and Generations
For Sonic Colors though I can see the dilemma, Stories need to be mysterious, but when you're told to write the story so that 6 and 7 years olds will understand, how do you convey it without directing stating it. That's probably why they kept repeating the obvious.
In generations they fixed this to extent. It wasn't so obvious that Eggman was controlling the Time Eater because his classic form gets sucked up by it. Only assuming metaknowledge would tell you that. So, in the context of the story, it's a decent plot twist. Again, the obvious statements in generations parts seem to be for out of worry that the audience won't understand. I won't defend how it handles the climax or lack there of, but it starts off and resolves well.
It has a
Sonic Generation's Structure
Stasis- Sonic's Birthday at a park
Trigger- Time Eater attacks and sucks up not only everyone at the party, but all of time and space.
Quest- Find friends, restore time and space
Surprise- It, at the very least, attempts to convey a mystery as to why everything is white and where everyone is. On some level the mystery works, the cutscene where the two Tails tells you the tale, I'm sorry, explains everything, still feels rewarding to some degree, even if obvious, because it follows the format of giving you very little information then gradually cueing you in on what's happening. I also like being rewarded with cutscenes about characters I already know and care about. That's another plus.
Criticial Choice???
Climax?: The best part about the Climax is the plot twist of the Eggmans, Eggmen? controlling the Time Eater. The failure is what you've said about it: A lack of energy and momentum; a cocky, over powered Sonic, but to be fair Sonic has beaten Eggman a LOT, in a sense he deserves to be cocky at this point.
Reversal?: Sonic shows young Sonic how to do the homing attack and tells him his future will be great which teaches his younger self to be cocky and arrogant, I suppose.
Resolution: Story earns points again, as it returns to the park birthday setting originally established.
Eh overall, I like it. At the very least, it's non offensive by being short. There weren't any moments that I felt like it was really wasting my time.
Now more on Colors
Sonic Colors
I like the concept and setting. In fact it's golden! There's a lot that could have been done with it.
The Concept:
Eggman builds an INTERSTELLAR amusement park to repay humanity for his crimes and Sonic needs to investigate.
-It contextualizes the story.
-It ties the story to the past and acknowledges Eggman's infamy the world know who he is and what he's done
-It makes Eggman smart again as he's trying to deceptive like Lex Luther.
-It could have been exactly like the Justice League Unlimited ark with Lex Luther. where he gets released from prison and says to the news, he's, "turned over a new leaf." A mystery revolving around whether or not a villain has changed is interesting.
So the execution then? You definitely don't need to feel bad about what you've said about this one. The structure really does suck for the bulk of it, the Surprise catergory. Ironically though, it excells in the areas Generations lacked: The Critical Choice, the Climax, and the Reversal.
Critical Choice- Does Sonic simply track down Eggman and go home or go out of his way, planet to planet, putting himself in danger, to free the trapped wisps who may not even offer him anything in return? I'm forcing this part a bit because the story doesn't convey it this way, but Sonic is stilling making this choice regardless.
Climax- Sonic beats Eggman and the wisps help him deal the final blow; however, he's caught in the explosion and knocked unconscious.
Reversal- The wisps repay Sonic by carrying him to safety.
Resolution-None, but then again a stasis was never established, so it's wasn't even possible to have one. Since Sonic games are a series though, the stasis and resolution aren't actually that important, so whatever not a big deal. The two most important parts to get right are the meat of the story, the Surprise and the Climax. The stuff before and after are just appetizers and dessert.
Briefly: While I do enjoy it when a game changes the pace, I've come to realize the Sonic Colors goes too far with it. Its problem is that the experience is too inconsistent.
For Sonic Colors though I can see the dilemma, Stories need to be mysterious, but when you're told to write the story so that 6 and 7 years olds will understand, how do you convey it without directing stating it. That's probably why they kept repeating the obvious.
In generations they fixed this to extent. It wasn't so obvious that Eggman was controlling the Time Eater because his classic form gets sucked up by it. Only assuming metaknowledge would tell you that. So, in the context of the story, it's a decent plot twist. Again, the obvious statements in generations parts seem to be for out of worry that the audience won't understand. I won't defend how it handles the climax or lack there of, but it starts off and resolves well.
It has a
Sonic Generation's Structure
Stasis- Sonic's Birthday at a park
Trigger- Time Eater attacks and sucks up not only everyone at the party, but all of time and space.
Quest- Find friends, restore time and space
Surprise- It, at the very least, attempts to convey a mystery as to why everything is white and where everyone is. On some level the mystery works, the cutscene where the two Tails tells you the tale, I'm sorry, explains everything, still feels rewarding to some degree, even if obvious, because it follows the format of giving you very little information then gradually cueing you in on what's happening. I also like being rewarded with cutscenes about characters I already know and care about. That's another plus.
Criticial Choice???
Climax?: The best part about the Climax is the plot twist of the Eggmans, Eggmen? controlling the Time Eater. The failure is what you've said about it: A lack of energy and momentum; a cocky, over powered Sonic, but to be fair Sonic has beaten Eggman a LOT, in a sense he deserves to be cocky at this point.
Reversal?: Sonic shows young Sonic how to do the homing attack and tells him his future will be great which teaches his younger self to be cocky and arrogant, I suppose.
Resolution: Story earns points again, as it returns to the park birthday setting originally established.
Eh overall, I like it. At the very least, it's non offensive by being short. There weren't any moments that I felt like it was really wasting my time.
Now more on Colors
Sonic Colors
I like the concept and setting. In fact it's golden! There's a lot that could have been done with it.
The Concept:
Eggman builds an INTERSTELLAR amusement park to repay humanity for his crimes and Sonic needs to investigate.
-It contextualizes the story.
-It ties the story to the past and acknowledges Eggman's infamy the world know who he is and what he's done
-It makes Eggman smart again as he's trying to deceptive like Lex Luther.
-It could have been exactly like the Justice League Unlimited ark with Lex Luther. where he gets released from prison and says to the news, he's, "turned over a new leaf." A mystery revolving around whether or not a villain has changed is interesting.
So the execution then? You definitely don't need to feel bad about what you've said about this one. The structure really does suck for the bulk of it, the Surprise catergory. Ironically though, it excells in the areas Generations lacked: The Critical Choice, the Climax, and the Reversal.
Critical Choice- Does Sonic simply track down Eggman and go home or go out of his way, planet to planet, putting himself in danger, to free the trapped wisps who may not even offer him anything in return? I'm forcing this part a bit because the story doesn't convey it this way, but Sonic is stilling making this choice regardless.
Climax- Sonic beats Eggman and the wisps help him deal the final blow; however, he's caught in the explosion and knocked unconscious.
Reversal- The wisps repay Sonic by carrying him to safety.
Resolution-None, but then again a stasis was never established, so it's wasn't even possible to have one. Since Sonic games are a series though, the stasis and resolution aren't actually that important, so whatever not a big deal. The two most important parts to get right are the meat of the story, the Surprise and the Climax. The stuff before and after are just appetizers and dessert.
Briefly: While I do enjoy it when a game changes the pace, I've come to realize the Sonic Colors goes too far with it. Its problem is that the experience is too inconsistent.
Sonic Heroe,s a.k.a Knuckles Chaotix 3D, has Great Writing
Heroes should have been a spin-off game focusing on the Chaotix. If you take as if the other storys weren't there then it satisfies many formal story telling criteria, using this as a template.....
http://www.dailywritingtips.
Stasis- They run a dective agency that isn't doing well as their laughably absurd policy is, "We never turn down work."
Trigger- A mysterious package arrives
The Quest- Anonymous client needs help, the journey begins.
Surprise- Very fittingly for a story about detectives there's a mystery going on that isn't completey obvious from the get go but gives enough clues spaced throughout to make you think, "Oh, I should have seen that coming." The key here is that it doesn't directly tell you any clues right away. It keeps things unobvious. This makes you pay attention closer as it makes your mind desperate for details, so when you do get crucial information for solving the mystery, it really stands out and feels rewarding.
So, then the story gives you all the clues you need to figure out it's Eggman with the fake Eggman scene, but again the key is vagueness. If the viewer still didn't get it, then in the next scene the person speaking from the walkie talkie says, "What I am the world's greatest.. I mean he is the world's..." This does two things.1.As state give people an additional, and 2. It rewards those who figured out it was Eggman with the assurance that they made the right connection.
Critical Choice- So now that the Chaotix have deduced they're working for Eggman they have a critical choice to make. Do they press forward and rescue someone they know is and consider evil in pursuit of money, or do they abandon the mission knowing freeing Eggman could ultimately cause havoc. Considering that Vector, the team leader, decides to plow forward, it reveals that he really is greedy and desperate for money.
Climax- The consequence of choosing to proceed is the continued danger they face throughout the rest of the levels, and epic showdown with the Egg Emperor. With Eggman turning out to be a fake again, Vector is sure that he was right, "after all."
Reversal- The player and the chaotix definitively find out if they had the right answer to the mystery as they Find Eggman in a bunker. Now, the consequences of Vectors critical choice bear fruit. He choice to be desperate for money despite knowing he was working for an evil person and it backfires on him. Eggman has squat. Cartoony violence ensues and the screen cuts to black.
Resolution- Ignoring the actual last story ending here, we can assume that chaotix went back to their detective hut, and hopefully learned their lesson.
The chaotix definitely have a lot of personality, character, and charm. They use a lot of plausible cultural speech and humor like Vector saying to Rouge, "Who's this broad." (That cracks me up.) The ninja thing with Espio, in the level he says, "Spirit's unite!." That's another thing it does well, makes efficient use of the gameplay time by having the characters talk. It's a great strategy as it give us more details about the story and characters that would otherwise have to be told scarce and expensive cutscenes. Lost World gets +1 for doing this too, except it makes no sense why the Deadly Six are standing around shouting at Sonic the whole level.
In general, again assuming that Sonic and the cast didn't already have established character traits and backstories, overall the writing for the character and story is all pretty good. Having silly reasons for fighting each other is deliberate so that's not a flaw, it's calculated. The game's TRYING to be funny, and I think a lot of the time it's successful. Just about everything Omega, Vector, or Big says cracks me up and I find "psychopath" Amy funny too as I told you before. Beyond that, probably every character has said something that made me laugh; however, Sometimes it's unintentional, like, me laughing at the idea that Sonic developed schizophrenia, post trauma stress, or perhaps best of all Megaglomania after SA2; Knuckles warns him of dangers ahead, Sonic says "Yes, we are. We are going out of our way to go into that dangerous place." Or, the infamous line, "Because we're Sonic Heroes!" Not to mention the fact that he wanted to kill to Shadow now for some reason. Shadow: It'll be a day to DIE for Sonic: "Hey that's my line."
The same writer that wrote SA2 wrote Heroes. It is decent enough. The reason we don't like or approve of it is because it messed up what we loved about SA2 because Sega executives wanted a light hearted game. It's not poorly written, but in fact shows a considerable amount of skill and attention to detail despite being short in comparision to the previous stories. It'd be nice of if it didn't mess up the canon by reseting Shadow, but other than that and overall it's a funny, light hearted, and well written story.
One more thing, In the last story Metal Sonic is presented as a legitimate threat, and his power isn't arbitrary. To paraphrase Eggman, "He's copied all of data and combined it with the power of Chaos. He'll be impossible to defeat. It will take a miracle." Then they beat him by, (cue cheesy emphasis) "The power of team work" and the chaos emeralds. It then resolves nicely with the character gags. Again, the fact that everyone is a bit out of character is a deliberate attempt to keep the tone casual, so it's not a flaw.
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Stasis- They run a dective agency that isn't doing well as their laughably absurd policy is, "We never turn down work."
Trigger- A mysterious package arrives
The Quest- Anonymous client needs help, the journey begins.
Surprise- Very fittingly for a story about detectives there's a mystery going on that isn't completey obvious from the get go but gives enough clues spaced throughout to make you think, "Oh, I should have seen that coming." The key here is that it doesn't directly tell you any clues right away. It keeps things unobvious. This makes you pay attention closer as it makes your mind desperate for details, so when you do get crucial information for solving the mystery, it really stands out and feels rewarding.
So, then the story gives you all the clues you need to figure out it's Eggman with the fake Eggman scene, but again the key is vagueness. If the viewer still didn't get it, then in the next scene the person speaking from the walkie talkie says, "What I am the world's greatest.. I mean he is the world's..." This does two things.1.As state give people an additional, and 2. It rewards those who figured out it was Eggman with the assurance that they made the right connection.
Critical Choice- So now that the Chaotix have deduced they're working for Eggman they have a critical choice to make. Do they press forward and rescue someone they know is and consider evil in pursuit of money, or do they abandon the mission knowing freeing Eggman could ultimately cause havoc. Considering that Vector, the team leader, decides to plow forward, it reveals that he really is greedy and desperate for money.
Climax- The consequence of choosing to proceed is the continued danger they face throughout the rest of the levels, and epic showdown with the Egg Emperor. With Eggman turning out to be a fake again, Vector is sure that he was right, "after all."
Reversal- The player and the chaotix definitively find out if they had the right answer to the mystery as they Find Eggman in a bunker. Now, the consequences of Vectors critical choice bear fruit. He choice to be desperate for money despite knowing he was working for an evil person and it backfires on him. Eggman has squat. Cartoony violence ensues and the screen cuts to black.
Resolution- Ignoring the actual last story ending here, we can assume that chaotix went back to their detective hut, and hopefully learned their lesson.
The chaotix definitely have a lot of personality, character, and charm. They use a lot of plausible cultural speech and humor like Vector saying to Rouge, "Who's this broad." (That cracks me up.) The ninja thing with Espio, in the level he says, "Spirit's unite!." That's another thing it does well, makes efficient use of the gameplay time by having the characters talk. It's a great strategy as it give us more details about the story and characters that would otherwise have to be told scarce and expensive cutscenes. Lost World gets +1 for doing this too, except it makes no sense why the Deadly Six are standing around shouting at Sonic the whole level.
In general, again assuming that Sonic and the cast didn't already have established character traits and backstories, overall the writing for the character and story is all pretty good. Having silly reasons for fighting each other is deliberate so that's not a flaw, it's calculated. The game's TRYING to be funny, and I think a lot of the time it's successful. Just about everything Omega, Vector, or Big says cracks me up and I find "psychopath" Amy funny too as I told you before. Beyond that, probably every character has said something that made me laugh; however, Sometimes it's unintentional, like, me laughing at the idea that Sonic developed schizophrenia, post trauma stress, or perhaps best of all Megaglomania after SA2; Knuckles warns him of dangers ahead, Sonic says "Yes, we are. We are going out of our way to go into that dangerous place." Or, the infamous line, "Because we're Sonic Heroes!" Not to mention the fact that he wanted to kill to Shadow now for some reason. Shadow: It'll be a day to DIE for Sonic: "Hey that's my line."
The same writer that wrote SA2 wrote Heroes. It is decent enough. The reason we don't like or approve of it is because it messed up what we loved about SA2 because Sega executives wanted a light hearted game. It's not poorly written, but in fact shows a considerable amount of skill and attention to detail despite being short in comparision to the previous stories. It'd be nice of if it didn't mess up the canon by reseting Shadow, but other than that and overall it's a funny, light hearted, and well written story.
One more thing, In the last story Metal Sonic is presented as a legitimate threat, and his power isn't arbitrary. To paraphrase Eggman, "He's copied all of data and combined it with the power of Chaos. He'll be impossible to defeat. It will take a miracle." Then they beat him by, (cue cheesy emphasis) "The power of team work" and the chaos emeralds. It then resolves nicely with the character gags. Again, the fact that everyone is a bit out of character is a deliberate attempt to keep the tone casual, so it's not a flaw.
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