Tonal Clash?

[DaHeckIzDat]

A couple weeks ago, Yahtzee released a video on YouTube (yep, I'm basing another thread on Extra Punctuation) talking about how clashing tones can ruin a game for him. His foremost example is the Sonic franchise, which has been accused of taking itself too seriously by lots of people. The dramatic and edgy themes the developers always shoot for never really mesh with the fact that you're a blue cartoon hedgehog who runs really fast.

But on the other hand, there's Undertale, a game that's arguably even more cartoony than Sonic, but also features lots of serious and dramatic moments—and most importantly, manages to pull it off.

So what is it that Undertale does that Sonic doesn't? In my opinion, Undertale EARNS its serious moments. It starts out lighthearted and fun, then gradually works toward the darker bits, so it feels like the story escalated naturally to that point. Sonic dives straight into its edginess right from the start. The villains (apart from Eggman) have no subtlety. They dress like a Hot Topic imploded on them and talk the way a 14 year old Marilyn Manson fan thinks is cool. And of course Sonic is unfazed by everything and throwing out sarcastic remarks left and right. The game doesn't take the time to develop anything, it just expects the player to accept that this is just how everything is, which, again, creates a tonal clash between all the preteen edginess and the Saturday morning cartoon visuals.

But that's just my take on it. What do you guys think about this? Does it bother you? Do you have any other good examples? Also, if you want to see the video, here's the link: https://youtube.com/watch?v=Epr6tjvsivk&si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE

[Stalvern]

The difference is more substantial than that. In Undertale, the contrast is deliberate, ironic. In Sonic at its narrative worst (Sonic '06, Forces, Frontiers), it's just clueless. The former understands that it's outwardly a cute little video game and does unexpected and subversive things with that, a philosopher masquerading as a clown. The latter is the emperor in his birthday suit; it desperately pretends that there's nothing incongruous or farcical about a wise-cracking cartoon hedgehog's passionate romance with a Final Fantasy princess, or that hedgehog getting tortured to the brink of death for months offscreen (before jumping into the game none the worse for wear), or that hedgehog ending up in a morose blend of store-brand Shadow of the Colossus and dollar-store-brand Death Stranding. This is the point of the Yahtzee video. There isn't any way for Sonic to "earn" the gravitas he aspires to in these games because the character he is precludes it – for God knows what reason, the people writing his stories think they can turn a Bugs Bunny into a Cloud Strife.

[DaHeckIzDat]

If shows like Adventure Time and Gravity Falls have taught me anything, it's that cartoony stories can do serious moments really well. It just had to strike a very specific balance. Make it too silly, and the serious moments won't hold the proper weight. Make it too serious and you get something like Shadow the Hedgehog. So I don't think there's any reason why Sonic CAN'T have some serious moments in his games, it just needs to be balanced with the fact that he's a cartoon hedgehog in sneakers.

[ThePixelatedGenocide]

I think Sonic's targeting tweens, and younger teens, who are often getting a lot of dark things suddenly dumped on them, and do everything in their power to hide how much things can get to them, even if you've seen their actual overreaction.

Because that's what being mature means to many of them. They're still figuring a lot of things out.

How much depth can you add to that, without sacrificing the core appeal that Sega accidentally lucked into? It's why the franchise keeps making new generations of fans, while others, far better, are long forgotten.