Sonic Colours, The Death of Sincerity, and the Cowardice of Being Too Cool for Your Own Premise

I have spent the last week trapped in Dr. Eggman’s Incredible Interstellar Amusement Park, and I have returned with notes.

Let me set the scene: It's the year of Sonic Free Riders! You log on to Sonic Stadium, cyberbully some people who think Sonaze is a good ship, express your distaste for the Unleashed werehog stages, and hey, wait a minute! There's a new Sonic game releasing for Wii! And critics... love it? Hold on, did Sega actually make a Sonic game critics don't hate? Even IGN seems to like it, the guys infamous for hating Sonic!

Yes, in fact they did make a game critics didn't hate. Remember, it's 2010, and critics are just fed up with Sonic right now. Sonic's 'too many friends' had become a phrase critics were using with genuine contempt, and nearly every game review site hated the serious stories of Shadow the Hedgehog and Sonic '06.

In hindsight, most critics were practically begging SEGA to just have a return to form, and go back to the simpler stories of the 90s. And Sonic Colours delivered. It did so by listening to critics and the fans who had already left, while ignoring everyone who stayed.

It also provided a masterclass in what happens when you let irony overtake genuine love for a franchise, and what happens when you listen to critics, while listening only to the fans who had already defected.

It turned Sonic into a sociopath, and Miles into nothing.

Before I start...

I need to introduce something very important. We have learned from writer Warren Graff that they had 'very little say' and that every story point was handed down by SEGA. At first glance, you very well might blame Pontac and Graff, I know I did, but this tweet changes the flavor of the failure from cluelessness to cowardice. It means the people who own the legacy of the ARK and the tragedy of the Ancients were so embarrassed by their own history that they ordered their writers to mock it. It wasn't two outsiders making fun of Sonic, it was Sonic’s own parents telling him to stop being so "cringe" in front of the critics.

The existence of a 'Sonic Game Bible' used to mandate this tone is the ultimate irony. Usually, a series bible protects the soul of a franchise. Here, it was used as a hit list. Every character trait that made the Adventure era resonate was apparently highlighted in red ink and ordered to be purged by the very people who wrote the book.

An ice-pick lobotomy and a two-tailed fox

Miles has been lobotomized here, reduced from a modest, genius mechanic into a walking Wikipedia page. In Sonic Adventure, Miles earned his genius. He built the Tornado 2 and learned to be independent, ultimately saving Station Square from Eggman. He was a "mighty little man" growing into his own hero. In Adventure, the stakes felt personal because the characters had internal lives.

In Colours, the stakes are purely external data points on Miles' iPad. He’s been reduced to a Doctor House archetype, minus the actual personality. In House MD, House always knows the specific time it takes for a snake bite to kill a human, here, Miles is just a smug, overconfident, supercilious fountain of exposition regarding Wisps. He no longer exists as a character growing independently, now he exists only to hold the "Translation Device", the ultimate "tell, don't show" narrative sin.

Tails didn't just lose his personality because of a lazy script, he was dismantled by design. If SEGA signed off on every "supercilious" line from the fox, it means the creators of the character no longer believed in his capacity for a hero’s journey. They traded his heart for a translation mechanic.

You can't just say the writers didn't get Tails, and sure they admitted that they didn't know much about Sonic, but the harder truth is: SEGA understood Tails perfectly, and they decided he was better off as a sentient search engine.

A company’s shield and the loss of agency

In one of the first cutscenes of the game, when Miles asks Sonic if they're going to "wreck" Eggman's plan, he replies:

"That's pretty much how we spend our time."

It's not particularly funny when you're guilty of the things you're mocking. Right off the bat, this line does two things wrong. It strips Sonic of his agency, turning a heroic act into "just another Tuesday," as if this is a low-stakes 90s sitcom.

There is nothing inherently wrong with self-deprecating humour or a tongue-in-cheek callout. The game tries to be one big joke about the Sonic franchise, and that is actually a decent premise.

For meta-humor to work, the writers have to actually love the thing they are poking fun at (like The LEGO Batman Movie), whereas here it feels like they are mocking it from the outside, because SEGA is forcing their hand. It fails because it doesn't just poke fun at the tropes, it acts like it's too good for them, and SEGA it as a shield to say 'we know this is stupid', therefore avoiding judgement.

A yellow iPad and the screams of the enslaved

Miles mentions that Yacker (one of the main Wisps) was saying "save us" over and over again. "Save us" is not something you say in the same tone as "my coffee was bitter this morning." I presume it was more like screaming.

From this, we can deduce that the Wisps have thoughts, feelings, and communication skills similar to a human. Yes, there is a translator involved, but there isn't exactly a translator for dogs. These are sentient beings. Meanwhile, Eggman is using them for battery acid. Their life force (Hyper-go-on energy) is being extracted from them in tubes to power Eggman's mind-control thingamajig.

By giving Miles a translator, SEGA/Sonic Team removed the need for animation and empathy. It strips Yacker of all personality; he could have been the next Chip, but instead, he feels like a collectible that occasionally squeaks. He is a plot device trying to mimic Chip without understanding what made Chip work.

In Sonic Unleashed, Sonic and Chip bonded through shared experiences, eating chocolate and exploring. Chip had agency, fears, and a growth arc.

He was initially terrified of Sonic, but they became true friends, making his departure meaningful. In Colours, the "bond" is technical. Sonic and Miles stand there while Sonic talks condescendingly to Yacker and a black box tells them the plot.

The "save us" plea becomes a data point for Miles to relay, not a call to action that strikes a chord in Sonic's soul.

Here, it is a literal alien slavery operation where sentient beings are being drained of their life force to power a brainwashing beam. You’d think the writing would respect that weight. But nope, it’s just one big joke.

The game’s most famous quips are "Baldy McNosehair" and "No copyright law in the universe is going to stop me!" These might be "funny" in total isolation, but within the media itself, the Wisp situation is treated as a minor inconvenience for Sonic to make a remark about.

A supercilious hero and copyright law

I'd like to define a word I'll be using a lot: supercilious. Oxford Dictionary defines it as: "behaving or looking as though one thinks one is superior to others."

Earlier I called Miles supercilious in this game, and he is, but so is the entire game. It looks down on itself and the franchise it came from.

The characters essentially tear the world and immersion to bits, but the game doesn't actually dare to do anything to change the formula. If SEGA found the concept of a blue cartoon hedgehog fighting a 300 IQ evil genius so unbelievably embarrassing that they instructed their writers to poke fun at it at every opportunity, maybe do something to change it? There's a difference between a "fun adventure with high spirits" and "nothing matters, isn't this franchise embarrassing?"

The "no copyright law" line especially shatters the immersion because it ignores the actual suffering of the Wisps in favor of a quip that doesn't even make sense in the context of their world. Sonic is a cartoon hedgehog who values being free over anything else (there is a whole song literally named "Free" in Sonic Free Riders). Why would he know, or even care, what copyright law is?

This isn't just a bad joke, it’s corporate intrusion. Sonic isn't a legal scholar, he’s a force of nature. Take SA2, he didn't make legal quips, he just ran through the G.U.N. blockade because they were in his way. It's a joke that exists purely for the player, not for Sonic as a character. It's SEGA speaking directly through Sonic to make a reference, completely shattering any sense that this is a coherent world with its own internal logic.

And what's even worse is that the "no copyright law"" line isn't just a bad joke from Pontac and Graff, it’s SEGA using their icon to wink at the audience about their own intellectual property. It’s the ultimate sign that the "force of nature" had been successfully tamed into a brand ambassador.

Sonic shouldn't know what copyright law is. He’s not breaking the fourth wall in a clever way, SEGA was just using him as a mouthpiece. It turns Sonic from a character into a mascot suit. It doesn't belong in the mouth of a teenager who lives in a shack on a beach and fights gods. It shatters the verisimilitude of the world.

This tonal shift even affects how we perceive the voice. While almost anyone can 'be' Sonic if they capture that spirit, the Colours era lacks a certain maturity. It’s why a voice like Jaleel White’s worked for the zany 90s cartoons but would struggle with something like Sonic Adventure 2, a game with an extremely serious story - and for a story to have stakes, there has to be a grounded core. Without sincerity, the voice and the character lose their weight. He’s no longer a teenager who lives in a shack and fights gods, he’s a comedian doing a bit he’s already bored with.

I previously thought this was just something from two guys who didn't care. But with the new knowledge of that tweet, and that every word was vetted against a 'Sonic Game Bible' makes it worse. This wasn't a mistake, it was an execution. SEGA didn't just hire writers who were 'too cool' for the premise, they instructed them to be.

It's still authorial intrusion, it's still a comedian doing a bit, and it's still not breaking the 4th wall in any clever way. But they couldn't have done anything to change that, and SEGA wanted it that way.

A tragedy on the ARK and unprompted witticisms

The thing about Sonic Adventure 2's story, I didn't even realize how insane it is until now. That is because it treats itself in a humble and sincere manner. It's just happening, and you're a witness to it. I call Colours' writing supercilious because that's exactly what it is. It is not humble, and it is certainly not sincere. It is looking down at the franchise and saying "Isn't this so dumb, guys?"

Every "quip" that breaks the fourth wall is a reminder that the people in charge of the character don't seem to like the character. If Sonic doesn't care about the stakes, the player has no reason to care either. You cannot have a "hero" who thinks heroism is a chore.

To be a Sonic fan in the mid-2000s required a certain level of sincerity. You had to care about Shadow’s past, or Blaze’s duty, the tragedy of the Ancients, and the history of the Babylonians. Colours tells you that you were a fool for doing so. It frames the player's investment as the punchline to a ten-year-long joke.

You can’t make a good story if you don't consider the foundation to be good. "Supercilious" is the perfect word because it's not just self-deprecation, it's condescension. The game looks down at its own premise, its history, and the masterpieces that previous writers created. Above all, it’s making fun of you for caring. In Colours, the "joke" is that you, the player, are still here. It’s a "meta" commentary that nobody asked for, delivered with a smugness that implies SEGA is doing the franchise a favor by "fixing" it.

Colours is the result of mistaking smugness for cleverness, and a company gutting their own character because it wasn't "cool" enough: A game that thinks the worst thing a player could possibly do is actually care.