Board Thread:Sonic Boom/@comment-25273542-20151111202527/@comment-24658561-20160524185130

Setriex wrote: Sometimes I wish they kept it in the game, so, who thinks a darker sonic game would be good? And I don't mean shadow the edgehog, I mean a funny, yet darker and more mature sonic game I'm all for "darker" or better, more serious stories though looking at the recent games, some sense of reality would probably be considered dark already.

I can already hear some fanboys screaming because it always happens: "Oh, but dark is bad! We'll only get games like Sonic 06 and Shadow the Hedgehog! Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations were lighthearted and they were good! Sonic is for kids! If you don't like the current direction, you're not a true Sonic fan!"

So I'll be courtegous and debunk this argument before it even comes up while at the same time commenting on what I think makes a good story.

Yes, Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic 06 are not really the best games in the world, but what do people mostly complain about when talking about them? Well, Sonic 06 is glitchy, the story is a mess and the kiss with Elise. And Shadow has guns, ridiculous swearing, confusing plot threads and Shadow's brooding all the time. We can already take out the glitches because that has nothing to do with the tone. The stories in 06 didn't connect well because Sonic, Shadow and Silver were doing completely different things. Romance, Action, Silver's time travel whatever, and somehow that's supposed to be one big story. But that's not about the overall tone either, more about the inconsistency of it. Just like the plot threads and the brooding in Shadow the Hedgehog, it's a problem with the writing and not the tone. There were guns in Shadow, so what? The Powerpuff Girls had guns, Tarzan had guns, The Great Mouse Detective had guns. The soldiers even talk after you "killed" them. Actually, there's no weight in most "deaths" in Sonic games because you know the character's gonna be back at some point. (Shadow in SA2, Blaze and Sonic in 06, Chip in Unleashed, all the petrified characters in Generations, they all came back in later games or in the same game.) Now to the kiss and the swearing stuff: The only real problem with both is how ridiculous it is. A human girl kissing Sonic's death away, what is this, a 12-year-olds fanfic? And "damn" and "hell" are the best swear words you can come up with? Really? It's like that one episode from Caillou where Caillou learns the word "stupid" and everyone acts like it's a real swear word and "it's not very nice" and the episode got banned because parents complained that it was 2edgy4kids. It's just plain ridiculous.

Yes, Colors and Generations were fun to play, but what about the story and the atmosphere? Did it make you feel in some way?(Nostalgia doesn't count.) Were you invested and wondering what's going to happen next? Did it make you care about the characters? Did it leave an impact on you? Probably not. It wasn't even used to tie the levels together, it was just kind of there. The story doesn't have to be dark and edgy, but it has to do the things I mentioned before in order to turn a game that's fun to play into an experience. Tetris, Doodlejump and yes, the Sonic mobile games as well, may be fun to play, but they're nothing but time killers you will get bored of eventually. And being mobile games doesn't excuse anything. Steven Universe: Attack the Light is a mobile game and and even though it's story is simple and obviously doesn't hold up with most console RPGs, it gets the characters right, has some sense of ongoing investment and also a really sweet ending. If the "lighthearted games" weren't joke fests and instead had investing stories, nailed the characters and had more heart than jokes, people who want more than just gameplay and nostalgia wouldn't complain about them as much.

Saying that something is for kids so it doesn't have to be good or doesn't need effort actually makes things worse. That's like saying: "Children should eat McDonalds fast food all day. Sure, it's not really healthy, but it's okay since they're stupid children and don't know what's good for them, they haven't yet developed the ability to knowingly create an opinion. They will eat it if you feed it to them." Things that are made for kids should be made with special care, no matter if it's food, a toy, a videogame or whatever. Cartoons, videogames and movies are actually the best way to make darker themes like death more relatable for children, so when they get confronted with it in reality, they will take it better.