Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

I imagine (or wish) they’d reuse assets from the existing Shadow boss fight. It always seemed like a waste not to use those for a full ark level.

It would be hilarious if, yes, they just added a playable Shadow and that’s it.

 

Do they even have the dev tools for working with Hedgehog Engine 1 levels anymore? I remember that lighting and GI has to be prebaked on those and making whole new levels was a very lengthy process.

 

Maybe they’ll port to Hedgehog Engine 2. … but that’s effort (maybe?)

 

This is pie-in-the-sky but...

Imagine if they brought in Melpontro to realise the planned levels for Sonic Melponterations (Ice Cap, Sky Troops and Oil Desert) with a proper dev team. They won't have done. But it'd be cool!

In terms of realistic wants and expectations, I want the ground turning controls to be as good as Frontiers because good lord I don't think I can go back to the stiff handling of yesteryear. I expect the game to be in Hedgehog Engine 2 because that's pretty much the bare minimum for justifying a remaster of this game in particular, given that it still remains fairly accessible.

 

But what about Classic Shadow?

 

They'll probably announce the Superstars skin too.

 

I dunno, I don't think the Biolizard would play well in the Classic levels

(I may or may not have stolen this joke from @charcoal)

 

Classic Shadow should be this guy:

 

The Prototype of the Prototype of the Ultimate Life

 

I am excited, terrified, hyped, and nervous all at once.

I love being on the verge of a new Sonic release, it's like Russian Roulette Christmas!

 

I think more realistically it could be Generations with Hedgehog Engine 2 tech, a playable Shadow with stock floating platform minigame levels like in the base-game, some extra music in the sound test.

 

I know there's rumors this will be some new title and not a remaster, but I find that sort of hard to believe. That being said, I didn't think they'd go back to the boost style for Sonic Forces, yet here we are.

If they do though... how many eras are we up to now? Classic, Dreamcast/Adventure + Heroes, Modern worked well back in 2011, but I'm not sure it works to call the last 18 years "the modern era" anymore.

 

The Movie Era?

 

Nah, I don't like basing it on the movies.

I consider the current "modern era" to have actually gotten its start in 2017, as Iizuka said they'd be looking closely at reactions to Forces and Mania alike to determine where to go next, and we're now seeing the fruits of that. But it's not like it's a harsh line, there's always a degree of crossover with the previous era. Unleashed had a foot in the boost era and the Adventure era, same as Adventure had a lot more in common with the classics than the games that would follow it.

But we won't really know what else to call it until a new one starts, so "the modern era" works fine for now.

 

Yeah "modern Sonic" back then was already a melting pot of contradictory gameplay styles and aesthetics, and that issue's only gotten worse post-Generations. It's why I think using Shadow to delineate Adventure gameplay could actually be a sensible idea. Though I still just can't see ST doing something that interesting or elaborate for this. I'm starting to think maybe they just want to add a Forces level and are bringing along Forces Shadow.

 

They could add a Lost World, Forces, Frontiers era.

… not a lot I can praise about the first two though.

 

yasss, levels based on Green Hills, Montana, the mushroom planet, the cowboy bar from the first one, the wedding destination in the second, a mini-game based on the Bulgarian dance-off. The possibilities are endless!

 

Hey Pal, you forgot the Mean Bean Machine Shop with an Act 2 transition into a secret base.

 

I'll be really surprised if there are actual new levels... Boost-style levels with the visual fidelity of Generations and Unleashed are very expensive and time-consuming to produce, and it wasn't so long ago that they were working on Final Horizon. It's possible Blind Squirrel or someone else is working on it, but I kinda doubt it. Generations runs on modern hardware fine with some new Direct X DLLs, it doesn't need to be rebuilt in Godot or HE2.

I'd love for this thing to be expansive and awesome, but I'm keeping my expectations in check BIG time here.

Putting down my guesses and expectations while I still can:

The same game with higher rez textures, re-baked sharper shadows, higher poly models, better shaders, and more bugs than stock Generations.

There will be an Episode Shadow with new floating-block levels and music. After beating it you'll be able to play as Shadow in any Modern Sonic stage, and he'll actually play sliiightly differently from Sonic. There will be a #KnowingSmile tweet from Ian Flynn following the announcement, because he wrote the Episode Shadow plot, and it'll be a lot more homage-y to the first 20 years of Sonic than the actual Generations plot was.

There won't be a classic Shadow.

 

Yea floating block style bonus levels seem likely, but I want to believe we can get more boost levels on the quality of Gens. It's been over 12 years since and I'm starving. But realistically it will probably be Forces quality level design in the Gens engine. Wake me up when Sonic Team releases another 3d Sonic game with the polish and love of Gens.