Obviously, no one deserves to be shunned for working on plots for a children's franchise, but it makes sense why Pontac and Graff's work was disliked.
I haven't looked at any of their non-Sonic work, so my opinion strictly relates to their work within the Sonic franchise. They did bad. Not even just from a "Sonic story" standpoint, but as writers in general. In Lost World, there was so much forced conflict that stood for no reason, especially when it came to Tails just being a jerk to Sonic instead of accepting the situation at hand and working with it (something he had done in previous entries, such as Sonic Adventure 2), simply for the purpose of having conflict. Another aspect of their shoddy writing nobody seems to touch upon is that in Forces, Operation Big Wave was thought of in 2 minutes by the leader of the Resistance, where he would deploy all of his troops into one attack. Not only did the rest of the Resistance stand by that idea, but they were surprised that it didn't work. That's ridiculous. I understand that this is supposed to be for kids, but c'mon, kids aren't this stupid. Pontac and Graff eliminated what Sonic was supposed to be - a kid with a thirst for adventure and freedom, and lived life his own way. Now he's just some wisecracking, generic character with no layers or dimensions to his character.
Pontac and Graff are (probably) not bad people, and don't deserve to be mocked. But they can't expect to work for a franchise with a VERY passionate fandom, do little research on said franchise by looking at Wikipedia pages, then write shoddy stories with no character development, contradictions and forced conflict. The voices in the franchise that shunned Pontac and Graff as people were wrong to do what they did, but any real criticism they receive is completely on them.
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Re: Sonic Writer Talks About His Love-Hate Relationship With The Fandom
Obviously, no one deserves to be shunned for working on plots for a children's franchise, but it makes sense why Pontac and Graff's work was disliked.
I haven't looked at any of their non-Sonic work, so my opinion strictly relates to their work within the Sonic franchise. They did bad. Not even just from a "Sonic story" standpoint, but as writers in general. In Lost World, there was so much forced conflict that stood for no reason, especially when it came to Tails just being a jerk to Sonic instead of accepting the situation at hand and working with it (something he had done in previous entries, such as Sonic Adventure 2), simply for the purpose of having conflict. Another aspect of their shoddy writing nobody seems to touch upon is that in Forces, Operation Big Wave was thought of in 2 minutes by the leader of the Resistance, where he would deploy all of his troops into one attack. Not only did the rest of the Resistance stand by that idea, but they were surprised that it didn't work. That's ridiculous. I understand that this is supposed to be for kids, but c'mon, kids aren't this stupid. Pontac and Graff eliminated what Sonic was supposed to be - a kid with a thirst for adventure and freedom, and lived life his own way. Now he's just some wisecracking, generic character with no layers or dimensions to his character.
Pontac and Graff are (probably) not bad people, and don't deserve to be mocked. But they can't expect to work for a franchise with a VERY passionate fandom, do little research on said franchise by looking at Wikipedia pages, then write shoddy stories with no character development, contradictions and forced conflict. The voices in the franchise that shunned Pontac and Graff as people were wrong to do what they did, but any real criticism they receive is completely on them.