sonic and eggman are kind of like, elemental forces that represent ideas. they won’t change because they can’t change, let alone tell a dynamic story by themselves. instead, their presence acts like walls for other characters to bounce off of. pretty much all of the interesting sonic stories either involve sonic helping someone else through their own arc or him just kinda being along for the ride. and this is why when there’s a story select in a game and sonic has his own story it’s usually kinda just… the most nothing out of all of them? since it’s usually just “eggman’s doing something, we gotta stop him” with little more substance than that, because it’s very hard to give that more substance on its own.
basically my point is sonic needs his stupid friends so they can give his life meaning and vice versa
im not even insinuating heavyhanded sonic adventure type shit (which i do personally love) as much as like. sonic 1 had basically no story, right? that’s fine, but then sonic 2 happens and you get tails and suddenly you have an entire character that has an arc and a little plot happens where he goes on a little adventure and in the ending he does something on his own to save the hero and it’s much more interesting already!
then beyond the classic era we have blaze with sonic rush, marine with sonic rush adventure, chip with sonic unleashed, and even today we have trip with sonic superstars
so like, it doesn’t have to be anything fancy, y’know?
Yeah I totally agree with this perspective. Flat characters aren't inherently bad and any sort of long-running series that doesn't change protagonists more or less falls into this style of storytelling.
I think the Sonic series got disproportionately criticized for this for a few years due to a combination of:
- frustration at the games failing to adapt to rapidly changing standards in the medium due to Sega's financial troubles and poor management
- longtime fans struggling to grapple with the fact that they aged out of the series' demographic
- internet comedians' famous love of ableism and punching down on children (deviantart recolors, [your name] the hedgehog, etc.)