Farewell! (Sonic writer changes)

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big_smile
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Farewell! (Sonic writer changes)

Post by big_smile »

It's strongly rumoured that Ken Pontac and Warren Graff will no longer be writing for the Sonic games. I'm so happy.

Ken Pontac and Warren Graff were awful writers. They just wrote generic cartoon stories without any care for the character's personalities. The best example of this were Cubot and Orbot which they proudly boast about how they had to fight to include because Sega felt Eggman wouldn't have such sidekicks (and Sega were spot on, they shouldn't have backed down). Sure, Eggman always had a comic side, but Cubot and Orbot just made him feel like some bumbling single parent.

Tails was another example: He was turned into a snarky know-it-all.

To be fair, their comedy was funny. And Colours and Generations were written by Sonic Team (they just fleshed it out), so it's not like everything is their fault. However, Lost World was more their doing and it wasn't a good story.

I hope Sonic Team go back to doing the stories by themselves.
Sonic Runners was wholly written by Sonic Team and it nailed the characters while also working in a strong sense of continuity with Sonic's world (even explaining things like why Knuckles isn't stuck to the ME 24/7). They even managed to make Cubot and Orbot work.
M&SatLO was also done by Sonic Team (I think) and that also managed to be decent.

They should just start the next game with Cubot and Orbot being upgraded into boss characters that Sonic finishes off (with Eggman joking about how he's finally over his midlife crisis).

It's certainly true that SA2 to 06 suffered from being overly convoluted. But what followed just went to the other extreme. Games like Colours and LW set up a big threat, but then the characters spend most of the time goofing off with puns until the final boss shows up. Hopefully Sonic Team will finally get the balance right (which Runners mostly does, it's just that it's plots tended to lack a sense of scale and could be repetitive at times).

In other news, it's been confirmed that Roger Craig Smith won't be voicing Sonic any more. I actually though he was an excellent voice actor and found all his performances to be flawless, but when Sonic Team picked him, they changed Sonic to have a “surfer dude” type personality, which I don’t think suits the character at all. So, even though I am sad about his departure, if it means they are dropping the surfer personality, then that's a plus too.

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