Guess I'll post mine as well, since I spent so much time on them. Paula the Bunny Razzle the Cat Anther the Parrot Mellie Toal (a friend's OC) Sonic the Boom Winnie the Pooh Can't think of a name, but I liked how she turned out. When you're trying to recreate an existing character, the results are pretty much always lackluster. When you're working within the limitations of the character creator to make something original (which I did for the last one), I think it works pretty well.
I, too, made a bunch of Avatars. I posted them all on Twitter. Contrary to most, I wasn't going for any specific characters, I just sort of picked attributes and clothes based on feelings. I made one of every race, because I went for (nearly) 100% completion. Collecting all the different types of rings wasn't too bad, what really got me was the time trials on Classic Sonic's levels and the bosses. I've since uninstalled the game, and I feel that it's unlikely that I'll go back to it any time soon, unless some kind of really cool mod comes out.
There's a million things I could say about this game, but right now I'm curious about one thing: looking through the last few pages of this thread, people seriously think this game looks amazing? Nothing really stuck out to me. I can usually see the difference between Gen 8 and 7 visuals when it comes to photorealistic games, but with cartoony stuff like this, it felt to me like it had all just hit a limit. Like, what am I missing?
The game has a number of nice visual effects like like scatter and reflections, and the detail in the backgrounds is impressive. But the game actually has a pretty bland overall art direction, including very flat and basic textures which bring everything down. The character models and their animations really blow too. It's a decent looking game, but that's all I can say.
The environments during gameplay are the only areas where I'd say the game looks consistently great. Everything else either ranges from passable to looking outright unpolished. The environments and character models during cutscenes are the biggest offenders IMO. It's been said that this game was made on a new Hedgehog Engine built from scratch, but it really doesn't look like it to me. There's a March 2017 Famitsu interview with Iizuka on the game where he says the HE2 is actually the existing HE upgraded with added rendering capabilities and I think is the far more believable reality. Nothing about this game looks like something that couldn't had been done on past-gen hardware. Maybe it could had if the game's aesthetics were more inspired; but as it is, I think Unleashed and Generations are visually superior. Even Colors looks like a game that's graphically taking more advantage of the hardware than Forces if you ask me, and that was a Wii game. And speaking of aesthetics and art direction; this game is a big offender of real is brown if you ask me. It's not only the basic textures that makes the game look bland, the overall color scheme for the game seems to revel in utilizing beige, brown, gray, or darker variations of those three colors in all of the game's level settings. Outside of Classic Sonic's Green Hill level (due to actually living up to the name, the other Green Hill levels may as well be Dust Hill levels) and the Metropolis level (due to its heavy use of white for its architecture, as well as secondary bright green colors); the rest of the game looks very desaturated. Casino Forest is to me the most egregious example in the game; due to trees/shrubbery everywhere and the zone taking place at night. If it wasn't for the neon casino colors, the entire place would just be a mush of dark gritty browns and greens.
I thought the Death Egg and Chemical Plant Levels were fairly colorful to be fair. Although the "city" levels were just a gross mixture of the worst of Spagonia mixed with the worst of Crisis City. And Generations Rooftop Run was the prettiest level in the game imo, so it's a real shame.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rCNqinIXHNo Well these are some lovely glitches. Some good skips though.
And now Boundary Break's getting in on the game. I was surprised to see how much stuff was made that would never get seen during normal gameplay, like the back sides of buildings and stuff behind the camera in Classic Sonic's stages. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kU_WX7fdrFw
Member Sonic Forces? Oh yeah, that was a thing. Out of nowhere, it re-charted on the Nintendo eShop very bottom of the list for two weeks earlier this month. A comment on the site apparently said the game was on sale during this period, I can't confirm myself. As one might expect, it's since left now. Will add to the wiki. Speaking of charts, the game has also been quietly hanging around the official UK charts after all this time (it did end up falling out of their top 40, but it eventually resurfaced); as of the previous week, it's brandishing its' squatter's rights on the charts at #31 (dropping down from #25 the week before). The UK's pretty much the only regional foothold the game has, while evaporating shortly after its release in other territories. If the game does reach (or has reached) one million sales as unknown sources have claimed, it's probably due to the lone British ranger doing a truckload of heavy lifting. (If a game like Forces has been able to do this well there; then Mania Plus better become one of the UK's best-selling games of this generation when it releases this July >) (P.S. - Six months since release, and we still don't have a Retro Review for the game? Even Boom: Rise of Lyric was able to get one, c'mon guys :v
Thanks for insightful sales update Yeow! Sonic has been mega-popular in the UK since the nineties. I think he and Sega were more popular here relative to the rest of mainland Europe. Everyone I knew in my childhood had a Master System (the NES was nothing here) and then upgraded to a Megadrive (the SNES fared better than the NES but bombed relative to its success worldwide) and almost everyone I knew had copies of Sonic 1, 2 and even 3/Knuckles. Point being Sonic has the same retro-nostalgia here that saw Crash's remaster light up the charts (as the UK eventually became Sony land with the PS1/PS2 as Sega faded away) so I'm not surprised in the slightest to see Forces actually selling well based on name alone. Hell I even know multiple people here that bought it. Bodes well for Mania Plus. Though hopefully Forces being a disappointing car crash won't dishearten Sonic's fanbase here too much and they'll still take a chance on Mania Plus which at its heart is the best Sonic game since the Megadrive days so hopefully it'll fly off the shelves at retail. It should do well on budget-impulse purchases alone I would have thought and therefore hope.
Surprised nobody's talking about this more. Windii apparently got her hands on an early Sonic Forces script (January 2016), and translated it? https://twitter.com/SPEEPSHighway/status/1007404002475200512 https://pastebin.com/vDubsVhN The broad strokes are very similar to the final version of the story, but there are a lot of little details that make things a lot more coherent. Things like: - There's no description that Green Hill Zone is already destroyed when the game starts, it's implied Sonic is just chilling out there when he gets a call from Tails that they need help. - In the final game, Sonic doesn't really seem to be taking that much of a beating from Infinite; he just sort of collapses kind of at random after being thrown around. Here, it's implied that Infinite warps space to obliterate Sonic with a flurry of blows almost instantly. Sounds like it was probably kind of violent? - Sonic and Tails disappear at the same time, which is why Tails isn't in contact with the rebellion. This is one of those things you could just assume, but having it spelled out is nice. - Infinite is handled a little more intelligently. He's never really clearly shown until around halfway through the game, and the script is big on treating him like a mystery. - No Phantom Ruby in this script; instead it's a piece of technology called the "Valtron" - Instead of being "banished to space," Sonic was scheduled to be executed. It's outright stated Eggman waited to kill Sonic so he could taunt him with having conquered the planet first. - It's clearer that Sonic's prison break is part of a larger battle the entire resistance is launching on the Death Egg instead of just being a solo mission lead by the Avatar/Rookie - It's clearer that the rookie is totally inexperienced and kind of a wuss. A lot of the rookie's early cutscenes imply the rookie is unsure of what to do or is outright afraid. Sonic finding/rescuing the rookie on the Death Egg makes a lot more sense. - The Death Egg and surrounding asteroids were supposed to resemble Eggmanland from Sonic Unleashed instead of the bland "space station" tileset we ended up getting. - When Sonic fights Infinite in the jungle, not only is that the first time the audience gets a good look at Infinite, Infinite is also supposed to nearly kill Sonic. - There's a line to set up that the attack on Sunset Heights is a recent development; Eggman JUST launched an offensive there, which is why everything is on fire and there are Eggman Robots tearing the place up. (in the final, I think Classic Sonic's first level is there, and it's never really touched on otherwise) - Sunset Heights is meant to be the rookie's first real successful solo mission. Think about it: they fail to save Sonic, and in this script their next mission after that is a team-up with Sonic to assault the pyramid in Green Hill. After finishing Sunset Heights as the rookie, everyone congratulates them on a job well done. It's meant to be a moment where the rookie proves themselves. That's as far as I've read, but so far, it just makes everything so much more coherent. It really feels like the final script had a lot of the details shaved off. (Also, I wasn't sure if this deserved its own thread)
Interesting, I wonder which Phantom Ruby came first then. Did the Mania team came up with it and then Sonic Team changed Valtron to it to tie the games even further or was it the other way around?
It's a bit heartbreaking that a lot of these things didn't make it to the final product. It seems more evident now that Sonic Team put a lot more thought into the story than 'not a lot'. The idea of a whole new power that wasn't the Phantom Ruby makes so much more sense. Let the Ruby do it's space-time thing for Mania, and let the Valtron do it's VR thing for Forces. That also makes me think - did Sonic Team originally plan to have Classic Sonic as a 'Valtron' VR illusion before Taxman and friends proposed their Classic Sonic project? Then again, I have no idea when the concepts for Forces started in relation to Mania...
For what it's worth, a lot of the lines in the Japanese script of the final game are the same as this script's. I translated all the lines and put it up on Pastebin as well, though there might be some typos.
I don't know if I should be surprised or not that the classic Sonic still doesn't play any significant role for the story even before Mania was greenlit. He's still just a supporting character to Tails and his presence still doesn't have any weight to the overall narrative. They really could had axed him and had another character not part of the Resistance fill his role as Tails' partner, and let Forces and Mania be their own self-contained games; and junk their quarter-assed classic Sonic gameplay. Hell, they could had made Shadow save Tails and decide to work with him; rather than doing the baiting rouge gallery illusion shit and have him be a no-show for half of through the game despite being the series' most powerful characters (and one who swore to protect the earth). I mean, Shadow was the only one who fought Infinite prior to Sonic's defeat/capture, they could explain his absence from Eggman's takeover through him trying to figure out the secret to Infinite's power by himself but running into dead ends, and then reluctantly agree to have Tails help him figure out what makes Infinite tick (and then you can reinforce the teamwork theme through a parallel story). Maybe go full SA2 with him using the Boost gameplay and level assets into giving him his own levels in the same locations; rather than the Episode Shadow DLC route of him be playable in Sonic's levels. Complete with him being the one who reluctantly saves Sonic's ass in the teaser trailer. I'm sure those wishing for another Adventure-styled game would had appreciated that approach much more from a game that's clearly doing its damnedest to throwback to that era in story and presentation compared to the final product we got. But they apparently needed a baiting tie-in connection asspull to sell the game, so... /smolrant Of course, it goes without saying that I speak under the assumption this script leak is indeed legitimate.
It's legit. The original text comes from a protected Excel document, similar to 06's script that Cult has released to the public back in the day. The doc cannot be shared at the risk of exposing the guy who originally leaked it or the guy listed in the revision history because they still have close connections to Sega. All I did was take out the meat that people would actually care about. Forces leaking was pretty bad before its release. Lots of people had knowledge they shouldn't have had.
That does explain a lot. The Phantom Ruby's powers were pretty consistent within Mania itself, and Forces fucked that up. Merging it with this "Valtron" would be the problem (the ruby may have even had a different name before this merger).
Since some people out there still don't believe me, this is a section of the doc on the "overview" tab called "regarding the Sonic Wars voice recording draft", requesting translations of the character names, lines and remarks to be added, as well as how many lines each character has. Spoiler
