Senoue & Ohtani Speak On Current SEGA Involvement
Today’s official Sonic stream had an interview with Sonic composers Jun Senoue and Tomoya Ohtani. There were a some things mentioned that were of note. If you want to see the whole interview, you can find it here.
- When waiting for the two to arrive, Aaron Webber said they “weren’t in the stream yet, but in LA recording stuff for Sonic Forces”. Later in the stream, it was mentioned that they, again, are doing this. When asked what their recordings involved, Ohtani said “stay tuned”.
- Ohtani says that the inspiration for the Sonic Forces soundtrack was a serious tone that Takashi Iizuka wanted the game’s music to have.
- Jun Senoue says there were 8 versions of Open Your Heart that were made before the final version was done.
- The music for the level we saw gameplay of is already done, according to Ohtani. Aaron says to “give us some time” for any possible samples from other tracks.
- Ohtani says it takes him about a year to do a Sonic soundtrack.
- When it comes to making a song based on a level, both said it depends. Sometimes they’re shown a picture of a level beforehand, sometimes they’re able to play it, sometimes they are told what the level is about, sometimes not at all.
- Jun Senoue says that sometimes his involvement is behind the scenes, as he and Ohtani are like a team. He was a vocal coordinator during Sonic 06, Unleashed, and Colors. He says it was his idea to bring Zebrahead for Sonic 06, Bowling For Soup for Unleashed, and Cash Cash for Sonic Colors, and he’s been the one bringing them on. He says he’s doing a similar thing for Forces, bringing in singers for Sonic Forces. He doesn’t say who these singers are…but Jun Senoue is somewhat involved with this game. It’s behind-the-scenes involvement.
- Ohtani mentioned that teamwork is the theme of Sonic Forces overall.
This post was written by the author for TSSZ News.
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So Iizuka may have jumped the gun a little bit.
Maybe he just meant in terms of music composition.
Yeah, I think that’s what he meant.
If not and the game continues to reminds people of that dumpster fire than Iizuka needs to be axed. The attempts by Webber and crew to pull the series out of the hole that Iizuka and Sonic Team buried it in gets thrown out of the window if it actually is spiritual sequel to the trash heap, being self-aware and zany poking jokes at the terrible years of the series doesn’t work if Iizuka and co are furiously trying to recapture it, this is also going to hit hard for people who aren’t following this too hard but until release will just assume it’s Generations and not a possible love letter to the Shadow game and 06.
Guy really needs to learn how to use his words more carefully. o-o”
Still, good to know that Jun actually IS involved to some capacity. Maybe not to the one we’re all in love with (I still get shivers from his epic riffs at last year’s anniversary party), but I can’t express how pleased I am to learn that he was the one who got Zebrahead, Bowling For Soup, and Cash Cash involved on the games that got me hooked onto the franchise (well not so much Colors, but the music for that game was still top-notch).
I still get Crush 40 vibes from the instrumental, so I’m still hopeful that they’re at least involved with the main theme, but then again, it sounds like they may have gone for another band, which I’m still fine with, considering the last 3. I just hope they can match the tone and beat of the instrumental well enough, but again, considering Jun’s tastes, I think we’re in good hands.
And again, the talk about the music for the game needing a bit of a serious tone, and the opening stage they’ve been showing off, and the way the whole trailer was handled, I’m still pretty convinced that this game is going to have a decent air of seriousness/drama attached to it. IGN might be hesitant to admit that with the apparently humorous radio conversations, but all that tells me is that this isn’t going to be a total edge-fest, just a game with a slightly more serious tone than say Lost World or Colors (hopefully something more along the lines of Unleashed), but still filled with enough lighthearted or humorous moments to balance the tone out.
So long as the writers know what they’re doing (or in this case, are NOT Pontac and Graff, hopefully), I’m sure we’ll have a fairly fitting Sonic title that hits the kind of flavor of serious tone that most of us have been looking for: not excessively heavy and dark, but not mindlessly goofy and ridiculous with no weight to it. I mean, I’m hoping it still leans a little more towards the serious side since that’s what it’s been advertising so far, but I’m pretty certain there’ll be a decent amount of humor in there, it’s kind of unavoidable with Sonic.
@Hero
Agreed! And yeah, what the game needs is a good balance of humor and drama, it can have both light hearted moments and dark ones, it doesn’t have to be either Sonic Colors or Shadow the hedgehog in terms of tone, personally I like the direction they’re aiming for and I’m glad they made a story with higher stakes and bold decisions.
The theme sounds more like a cooler Sonic Lost World than it does Crush 40.
Also, to the guy that said Iizuka was furiously trying to bring Sonic back down, I don’t see it. SEGA maybe. But Iizuka was behind SA and SA2. After Heroes – 06 (in which case 06 wasn’t even him), he gave us the awesome Sonic Unleashed, which ppl loved before hating. Then Colors, which ppl really loved before hating. Then Generations which, aside from the lacking story, ppl REALLY REALLY loved before hating! That’s continuous re-rising from at least 2008 to 2011. And with Lost World being so-so but not bad per se, Boom not really counting (tho that also got a tad better over time), then I’d say Sonic is still rising if Mania and Forces mean anything in the end. But that’s just my perspective and we’ll just have to see on those last two.
Eh, I still get a Crush 40 vibe, but I guess it’ll all depend on who we actually hear playing it.
As far as Iizuka goes, there’s no doubt that he’s contributed a huge amount of positive things to the series during his time with Sonic, most of which I’m totally in love with (SA, SA2, 06…guilty pleasure, and ESPECIALLY Unleashed, and the good parts of Colors and Generations). But you got to take the good WITH the bad, and there’s still plenty of bad, or at least questionable things that he’s connected to. For one thing, the fact that he’s really trying to Mario-morph the franchise into something safe and retreadable, which I don’t think is something the series should try TOO hard to lean towards.
Don’t get me wrong, some stable recognizability is a good thing, even for Sonic, but not to the point where you’re more proud of admitting that you borrowed too much from Super Mario Galaxy than you are willing to admit that you may have taken some inspiration from Sonic X-Treme for Lost World.
Between an extensive cast that’s barely used in anything but party games like the Olympics, wanting to make the Wisps the mainstay power-ups, and with their latest main series attempt at making a set of Koopaling-like bosses with an artstyle that barely fits the Sonic franchise, it’s pretty clear that his flavor of what Sonic should be is different from what Yuji Naka’s was and what most fans tend to look back on.
Though perhaps most of that really depends on individual tastes when you get down to it. I personally don’t think any of those choices were good moves on his part, as my feeling has always been that Sonic should feel like a slightly edgier alternative to Mario, not a very similar one. He’s supposed to be cool, radical, extreme, and a bit unorthodox, as well as cocky and snarky. I guess he’s been getting the cocky and snarky parts down pretty well, but lately it feels like all he’s focusing on. It feels like we have less of a balance these days.
But one thing I can’t understand, whether it was his decision or SEGA’s, was the decision to make Pontac and Graff the main writers for the series. They hardly have had any experience writing for games before this, and the only exception was the Happy Tree Friends game, which only made sense because they freaking wrote for the Happy Tree Friends show. I don’t understand what could have made them think they were a logical choice for Sonic. They may have barely done an at-best decent job on Colors, but they’ve consistently slipped up on every Sonic game since then. I could have excused them for making a mistake if they realized the problem early enough and replaced them after Generations, their most important game ever in 20 years that ended up only being half as good as it could have been due to it’s dull contrived story, but for some reason or another they are keeping them aboard as if they were some golden goose you had to wait patiently for to make another egg. So whoever’s decision it is to bring them aboard and kick them off, however much respect I have for them is kind of hindered by this unfortunate negligence.
Even with all of that, I feel like I could live with Iizuka’s expectations for the series a bit better if the writing were much better and more supportive, so I guess I have more problem with the writers than I do the head of the series himself. Still, as questionable as some of his choices have been, Iizuka has contributed a good deal to the best of the series, and I still respect him for that. I just wish he was a bit smarter in how he handles some parts.
I can’t wait to hear the vocals. This should get the ball rolling.
Sounds really interesting, I like how they were for a more serious tone for this game, also I’m surprised at Jun’s heavy involment in past Sonic games, as if I didn’t have reasons enough to love the guy!
And something that really caught my attention is that they are working with -several- singers and that the theme of this game is -teamwork-, maybe is too soon to discard the possibility of other playable characters…
That’s right. You show them the real super power of teamwork!!!
Hopefully it’s a bit less contrived and random than that. XD””