Big Red Button talks more about Sonic Boom

Siliconera recently caught up with Bob Rafei, creative director and CEO of Big Red Button. Rafei discussed the various character characters in Sonic Boom, how Sonic Team reacted to the game, and more.

You can find a few excerpts from the interview below. The full thing can be read over at Siliconera.

On what the Sonic Team was most surprised by when they saw Sonic Boom…

I would say combat. That was a bit of a head scratcher for Sonic Team, but the more they saw what we were doing the more they helped us hone it. We knew it had to have speed elements because it is a Sonic game. That sense of exploration is going back to a Sonic Adventure feel.

[Feedback from Sonic Team] was really in terms of balancing and tuning. Part of the mission mandate at Big Red Button was to expand on Sonic. I would say that is something we brought to the table and Sega really digested and agreed it was a good approach.

On whether it’s hard to do joyous movement in 3D space compared to the 2D Sonic games where Sonic had one less plane to worry about…

I think Sonic Boom has found a good formula for that. We tried to make a subtle variation by having lane changing and the obstacle course. There are a lot of different paths too. Classic Sonic has the main path and for the more skilled players you can access the higher levels. That is also something we wanted to tap into as well.

In terms of navigating in 3D space, yeah it is more difficult because spatially you have to understand what is happening. That’s the challenge of any driving game has or flying game has. That is something we were also very aware of when we developing the course in Sonic Boom.

On Amy…

We wanted to have a strong, able-bodied female character. We didn’t want her to be fawning after Sonic. The goal was to have her be appealing on her own. She is very agile, she is very acrobatic, and very graceful. She’s the only character, from a pure mechanics perspective, that has a triple jump. There are some places that only she can get to.

On Knuckles…

He’s the most fun character to write for because he’s a little slow on the uptake. A lot of times, the things he is saying tend to be funny because he is trying to process what is happening. He’s our go to guy for the punch line and I think the show does that as well. In collaboration with the TV writers, we wanted to have a consistent approach with their personalities and the show really plays up on that.

On how Eggman fits into everything since Sonic Boom has a new main villain…

We wanted him to pass down the torch in terms of introducing a new villain. That’s a very fun dynamic that was very cool to create, these two guys have an uneasy partnership and we’ll be talking about that more at E3.

On whether we’ll still see a decent amount of Eggman in the game…

Oh yeah, absolutely. We wanted to tap into the best parts of canon and build on top of that. Eggman is in the game and there is a boss round with him here. Part of the narrative arc is being stronger with friends, which is what are team represents and that kind of discord the antagonist team goes through. They can ultimately never be able to work together, so that becomes their undoing. Versus the team, which learns to mesh together and use their individual skills to their best advantage.

On the collectables in Sonic Boom…

Because we chose to do a character adventure, part of the genre is the ability to explore and to find these rare items. That’s where that comes from, to be true to the genre blending, taking those parts of Sonic that we love and putting a twist on it by giving it a classic character adventure feel. You go to the hubs, you meet NPCs, there are unlockables there, there are missions that they give you. There are home improvement missions you’ll see at the hubs and those are satisfied by collecting robot parts.