New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

I'll just left it here:



Btw, It's very... surreal how we didn't like Metropolis and Wing Fortress (at least I heard that players-beginners doesn't like it), and currently we found, that THE WHOLE ZONE was made as quintessention of this booth lmao

 

I noticed that the laser you fight in WFZ has similar palette cycling to the Metropolis Zone background.

 

I also found a similarity in Act 1 with the concept art.

 

I'll add this to what I said previously:

Some of the similarities between GCZ and WFZ may be purely coincidence. I think we all agree GCZ ideas/assets came before WFZ. But take a look at what's similar here:

* The color (based on the chunks as colored) is very similar. But WFZ is an airplane. That's a perfectly normal color to associate with an airplane.
* The conveyor belts are nothing too interesting, because Scrap Brain Zone, Wood Zone, Casino Night Zone, and others all have them.
* Turrets are interesting, but WFZ is a battleship. I would expect guns on a battleship.
* Fans are an interesting connection, except an airplane naturally has wings and propellers. So having spinning blades whatever the direction, is not at all unusual.

It would be *more* convincing if WFZ was the scrapped level and GCZ came afterward. But these similarities really aren't unusual, and in many cases, to be expected for the type of level it is.

I am open to the possibility of a direct connection. But I'm not sold on it yet.

 

I always assumed those were meant to be turrets coming out of the ship, facing the camera, which makes sense for Wing Fortress, but less so for Genocide City.

I would still put money on the vast majority of Wing Fortress' art being created specifically for Wing Fortress (or Sky Chase), but I guess the documents will have the final say!

 

Anyone else think there might be a connection between Cyber City and Launch Base Zone?

 

I may have found another connection.

 

Can you explain what the connection is? It's not at all obvious to me.

 

The top half of the platform and the Veg-O-Machine have a similar structure. Mainly where the black dots are. Both were also used for a boss fight.

 

I feel like there's suddenly a lot of reaching going on in this thread - it's probably worth waiting until the full set of scanned assets are released before going too far down the path of trying to theorise what, if anything, may or may not be reused in other Zones in the final game.

Having said that, I must admit that the WFZ hanging bars do bear a striking resemblance to the sketched-in handrails on the Genocide City map - the highlight shine being inverted from where you'd expect when seen in-situ in Wing Fortress makes me consider that one a possibility. I'd also be very surprised if the spherical turrets from Wing Fortress weren't the same ones originally conceived for Genocide City, though if that's the case their art will almost certainly have been revised to better use the Wing Fortress palette, as we've seen from the available prototypes that enemy art was being revised until quite late in development.

Unless any boss development sketches surface, I'd say it's not possible to confirm whether the Wing Fortress boss was originally developed with Genocide City in mind. We also know from Yamaguchi's recent comments about Mecha Sonic that at least one boss was stripped down and repurposed compared to the original plans for it, with a much wider array of attacks conceived than made it into the final game - so even if the Wing Fortress boss is based on assets developed for Genocide City's intended boss, it may not function in the same way as originally intended. The fact it involves a giant laser cannon - not really based on any hazard otherwise encountered in Wing Fortress - does make me wonder, though...

 

hmm, I'm not sure that DEZ music feels fitting for GCZ.
When I take a look at the DEZ concept art the music just fits the mood.

 

And this feels more.. um.. "space" or "cosmic" menace:

But this.. this is universe disaster XD

Probably, beta was the result of wrong converting/adapting of demo and thanks to God, that final is better

 

Sounds like something went wrong, the tempo is way too fast.

 

Merely the opinion of someone with an untrained ear, but WFZ's music sounds an awful lot like someone's attempt at a lawsuit-proof copy of the Star Wars theme for their Death Star-inspired zone.

 

That's exactly what it is. The chord progression is extremely similar, and the demo sounds like it plays at the same BPM as well. It's obvious to me the music was meant for DEZ.

 

That’s a reach if I’ve ever heard one lol. I understand the excitement but I don’t hear it. Star Wars theme is a fairly complex song and sure they both sound grandiose but that’s the only thing I’ll give that credit.

 

If Cyber City was replaced by Sky Chase & Wing Fortress, then I can see why it was. People are already exhausted with 2 acts of Oil Ocean and 3 acts of Metropolis, so imagine another 3 act mechanical inside stage followed by Death Egg (which assuming is a full level, is another mechanical stage). That feels severely unbalanced in level variety.

The theory about the music doesn't sit with me completely, either. The final DEZ music / assumed Cyber City track feels too creepy and panicky to be anything but a final stage. Going from that for 3 acts to WFZ's triumphant, kinda corny theme for the last stage titled "Death Egg" would feel off, imo.

 

I suppose the thing to consider instead is what WFZ's BGM was for, rather than what DEZ's (in the retail release) might have been for, as you could imagine that one in a couple of legitimate places. I know everyone's tired of ye old maps and that timeline, but just to crawl back to them for a second, is there any level that WFZ's BGM could have worked? That's what I'm stuck on, myself. Zone wise, I can only come up with Death Egg, it's a little bombastic for "Cyber" City, but I'm open to consider other placement. Maybe a cutscene? "Last Battle in Space"?

On the thread's topic, excellent discoveries all around. Glad this is getting preserved in some form.

 

I think WFZ's may have been for Sky Chase, if that were initially planned. It fits a big triumphant soar in the skies, and that stage was probably still gonna exist to transition the player from the Earth to the Death Egg. It's not hard to imagine cutting WFZ out of the picture and just have Eggman's ship at the end of WFZ pass by Sonic & Tails, where Sonic hops on and goes to space straight from there. In fact, it kind of makes more sense that way lol. But that's pure conjecture.

Meanwhile WFZ probably got it's track to seem more like an epic setpiece, and SCZ gets the scrapped snow level's theme just to make use of the track. Idk. Again, pure guesswork, but it sounds reasonable to me.

 

I just think it's nice we're getting closure on one of the oldest mysteries in gaming.