Following the introduction of new characters Sticks and Lyrics, Sega have announced that addition of a heap more ally characters into the Sonic Boom universe, in a range of different positions.
The characters will appear in both the games of Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric for Wii U, and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal for 3DS in a non-playable form. They'll also make appearances in the accompanying Sonic Boom television series set to debut on Cartoon Network when the games release.
The new characters include a “happy go lucky farmer,” Old Tucker and Hayward, who assists Old Tucker on the farm. There's also a pair of sailing hippo brothers called Salty and Pepper with a broken relationship, Hokey and Pokey, an old married couple, Chef Woody, a beaver cook, Q-N-C/Quincy who acts as a guide in the games to our heroes and many more personalities to flesh out the Sonic Boom world.
I consider Sonic Boom to be a separate canon to the one we've followed since 1991, so introducing characters to help flesh it out seems logical to me. Only I do wonder if Sega have introduced too many at once this time. Without more information we can't be sure whether these new characters will act as quest-givers and background, or if they'll play a bigger role in the story.
Sega blog post: [x]