New article by Retro gamer on the making of Sonic Adventure

Yeah I see your point - but we also know that the higher ups at Sega have made changes to whatever Sonic Team is now presumably in response to Forces' under performance - ergo it's unlikely that this current iteration of the team that has produced mediocrity like Forces even exists in the same form any more - and even if they do they're been assigned a new original IP that's not Sonic. For the time being.

We also know Sonic has shifted to America complete with Iizuka moving - so perhaps the next game will be made there under a new team that's not Sonic Team Japan - old school Sonic 2 style?

The point I'm making is that Sonic Team Japan won't even be responsible for the next game. At least based on the information we have at the moment until more news comes in.

 

Hasn't Iizuka been relocated here since 2016? I feel like the details we have about the actual state of Sonic Team are pretty nebulous to be stating anything with authority right now. We know Sonic Team itself has been disolved for some time now, but is there any indication that this happened after Forces' completion? Or was the title developed with this new format?

 

All things considered, this is a pretty nice interview. It really goes to show that, though flawed, Adventure 1 was a major passion project for the team and was their sincere attempt to create Sonic in a style that worked logically in 3D. Was it the best approach for him? Obviously not, but I frankly put countless hours into SA1 and 2 and was genuinely amazed by them upon their release, even while acknowledging the glitches and flaws.

People can knock Heroes, Shadow, 06 and other titles all they like. But Adventure 1 & 2 produced an experience for me upon release that were no less magical than their genesis counterparts, even as I dearly loved those. Adventure 1 has aged poorly, yes, but I truly loved it back then and still do on at least some level. I still consider Adventure 2 to be a technically competent sequel which fixed many of the former's issues, even if it did still have problems. I would never rush to complete all 180 Emblems back in 2001 if the original game wasn't reasonably playable.

Call it nostalgia goggles if you like, but the games were technical marvels of their era as was the DC as a whole.

 

This reads less like an interview and more as a pointed rebuttal to every criticism the game's received over the past 20 years, something I've been wanting to hear for about as long. Iizuka's got a well-reasoned justification for every sin. I accept that the game couldn't have been made any better at the time.

 

I didn't quite intend it as a rebuttal of the criticism the game has received. That being said, I do believe that while Sonic Adventure isn't perfect, the game takes a huge amount of retrospective shit that it doesn't necessarily deserve. There are very few video games of any kind like it from the time, and given that the team was working with an unfinished platform and a genre that was still finding its way in 3D, I too believe that they did the best job possible. I recently streamed the game and still enjoyed it, even if I did fall through the floor once or twice.

For what it's worth, I used almost everything I received from Iizuka and Hoshino - but there was one thing that didn't make it in, because it was a bit woolly and I was short on space even with ten pages. So here's my own unused content. =P

18/ Likewise, an enemy like a dragon was also shown in Sky Chase. What happened to this one?
Iizuka: I don't remember all the details about this, but I don't think there was ever a plan to put a giant dragon enemy in Sky Chase, but the person in charge of Sky Chase took it upon themselves to create that model. Sky Chase was made at the last half of Development, during a busy time, so it may not have been completed in time to the level we felt comfortable implementing.

You can buy the issue here.

 

Personally I'd like to see an Adventure remake. I know a lot of people are worried about the quality but you're all acting like SA1 and 2 are the holy grail of gameplay and they're not. They're glitchy, the presentation is eh, the cutscenes are all garbage, and a lot of the improvements from SA2 could be passed along to SA1.

So I say bring on the SA1 remake, and throw in SA2 and 06 remakes for that matter (debate it all you want but 06 is closer to an Adventure game than anything else).

 

As a big fan of SA1 I'd be happy to see a high quality remake. However, who will this remake actually be for? There are a good number of adventure fans out there but it's not as if the adventure games were industry influencing ground breakers that the wider public is clamoring for the return of. In some small ways they were, but not nearly as much as other popular 3D titles from the time. If I were SEGA I would not worry about trying to cater to adventure fans and focus on trying to do what's best for the brands future. I know that sounds harsh and I don't intend for it that way but the series does not need to open up that can of worms brought by the adventure series again. Sonic needs to focus on primarily remembering his identity and building on it. What really needs to happen, is that they need to double down and build on mania and mania adventures in 2D and figure out how to bring a very similar vibe and foundation into 3D rather than trying to remake a game that didnt really ever work. Not necessarily easy, but it is a simple choice to make.

(Again to be sure, there were good ideas in Sonic Adventure, but the series never had a solid foundation with that and thus it doesnt make a lot of sense to remake something as fundamentally problematic. The series would be much better off thinking critically about how best to create a solid foundation in 3D than to retread territory that didnt work.)

 

I think a remake for Adventure would actually help rebuild a foundation. For a while it seemed to be like the boost formula was it and I was so hoping Generations would be that foundation but then we all know what happened there. So they seem a tad lost at the moment. Maybe rebuilding those games would provide a good base to move forward from, and maybe that with some of the lessons they learned from Mania might lead to something even better after it. The Spyro and Crash series weren't perfect either but those remakes did wonderfully, and I think the original Sonic Adventure games are held in a similar regard to many but were brought down by shoddy port after shoddy port.

The Adventure games were their first attempt of bringing Sonic to 3D and they probably were the closest to the 2D games in 3D that we've ever got, so them playing around with a new engine but familiar territory might be a good thing. Plus a remake of Adventure would come hand in hand with the chao garden coming back and it'd finally shut people up about that.

A remade collection of SA1, SA2, and maybe 06 could be great. SA1 and 06 could take a mission system similar to SA2, SA1 could take SA2's light speed dash, the multiplayer levels could be greatly expanded, 06 wouldn't play like garbage anymore, they could change the button configurations so you wouldn't bounce into a death pit when you meant to light dash, and all the games could share a unified chao garden system which would ease up on the grinding of raising chao in SA1 and SA2. Hell there could be online chao races or something. There are a lot of possibilities here for cleaning these games up and bringing them to modern times.

 

I would love to see an adventure like game with some of Lost World's parkour mechanics. Lost World was a weird game but some of those mechanics were a good idea, even if the execution was a bit eh. It would add a lot of possibilities to level design if implemented properly.

 

I used to like the boost formula, and I still like Gens, but after playing too many 3D fan-engines that show incredible potential, such as that Hill Top re-imagining in the Bumper Engine, I just can't get behind a style with as many limitations as the boost formula. An unfucked Adventure style would have so much to offer.

Not that I expect modern Sonic Team to actually be able to do that of course :v:

 

I actually just tried Lost world recently with that humble bundle sale.
The game had some good ideas and I see that Sonic Team was interested in doing, on some level, what were talking about here. It's just that....the controls in that game are horrendous. On top of that, there was absolutely no reason to include a run button. Very rough game, even though it had lots of polish and showed deliberate thought in many areas. I definitely thought ST was doing the right thing by going in the direction back towards 3D platforming. But they really needed to learn and understand what they were doing wrong.

Again regarding Adventure though: the intention of that game and spirit of what they were trying to accomplish, I was 100% in agreement with. It's what sonic needed, to reestablish his basic gameplay in 3D and find a way to expand on his world to make better use of 3D and story elements
. Most of the flaws.fdom that game come from its scope and ambition, since they didnt focus enough in areas they needed to....and also from the limited tech of the time. Again though, I don't think that Adventyre has a monopoly on the 3D sonic concept. If you reworked that game (or even SA2) structurally to make a better foundation for a 3D sonic, you'd end up changing an awful lot especially in regard to the alternative gameplay, and even some of Sonic's level design and physics. And at that point, why even call it sonic adventure?
So my point is absolutely not too poo poo those games, but merely to point out that starting fresh with good ideas in mind would probably be better than trying to force that to work.

 

I still think the tight, locked-on and full control over Sonic in SA2 is the best Sonic has ever moved in a 3D space. Easy to learn and difficult to master - but once you've mastered it Sonic controls like a dream and the game is just a wonder. I think there's a reason so many fans love SA2 and in particular the Sonic and Shadow stages even today with such reverence and it's because they nailed how Sonic controlled in 3D way back then - but thanks to the disaster of Sonic 06 abandoned that style of engine permanently for the boost games.

So I think that's the most exciting prospect about this. A return to that engine with boost finally falling to the way side - and that's principally why I'd love to see Adventure remakes.

 

Sonic controlling smoothly is not the only barometer of whether or not his formula works. There is so much more that goes along with it, most importantly whether or not the controls harmonize well with the level design. Sonic Adventure 2 in many ways was the progenitor of what people don't like about the series extremely linear hallway like level design in 3D and was as linear as any boost game. What good are smooth controls if they don't add much to your ability to explore the levels? In fact I would argue that sonic generations is the logical conclusion of the gameplay and level design presented in SA2 and did it much better, despite not "feeling" as satisfying.

I think because sonic adventure is the only real example of the series trying to approximate the classic gameplay in 3D, most fans attach a sense of importance or value to that design. I say it again, there is no reason to think Adventure = 3D platforming Sonic, particularly when it didnt do it all that well to begin with. It made an honest attempt at it and approximated it somewhat, and Sonic felt mostly good and smooth when he moved around the environment....but its standout only because what has been done since has only gotten much worse, and at some point ST completely abandoned the approach of translating Yuji naka's smooth physics gameplay.

I don't think people should make those games out to be more than they were. I'm not saying don't be a diehard fan or anything, and no comment on the story, nothing like that. Strictly from a gameplay perspective, the bar for 3D platforming set by those games is only high compared to the complete non-attempts since, not because they were a shining example of 3D sonic nailed just right. Because they absolutely were not.

 

It's interesting that they could never get the physics closer to a 3d approximation of the 2d gameplay. I know that the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater series is an entirely different kettle of fish and that combining that with platforming might be difficult, but the series at least showed that you could get decent ramp/half pipe physics.

 

Always felt this way too, and I'm kinda under the impression that every SA1 release since the original (okay, every version of SADX to be exact) has only served to do more harm to the original game.

People will download SADX on their PS3/Steam and go "See? I told you Sonic Adventure isn't good."

Rather than a remake, I would just love a fully polished HD release of the game. Maybe just with updated assests Bluepoint style. Or at least something that shows the true SA1 in the best light without trying to remake every asset from scratch.

 

The idea that creating proper slope/rolling physics is some insurmountable goal is honestly not really that true, I feel. It's just something people say to convince themselves that Sonic Team's refusal to do so is out of competence and not because...they don't want to. Because as you said, Tony Hawk already did it. An internal SEGA team (Amusement Vision) already did it with Super Monkey Ball while Sonic Team was floundering on their ass with Heroes. Nintendo nonchalantly implemented rolling physics into Super Mario Odyssey and they didn't even make a big mention of it. I bought a game on Steam for three bucks that has better rolling physics than anything Sonic Team ever created, for chrissakes! (Polyball, for the record)

Sonic Team not doing them is because they don't want to do them (which is a problem, but different from "they can't do them").

 

Would someone who dislikes the PS3/Steam version of Sonic Adventure DX really be swayed by the Dreamcast version? As hardcore fans, we can analyse all the little differences, but to 99% of people they're the same game with slightly different graphics.

I think it would be cool to see an M2 Sega Ages version that's Dreamcast accurate, with all the DLC and the Chao Adventure VM game.

But for a proper remake, I think they should go all out. Not just a Mario All-Stars or Crash Bandicoot N-Sane Trilogy style graphical update, but a complete overhaul, like Metroid: Zero Mission.

As others have said, Sonic Adventure was perhaps too ambitious and limited by the technology of the time. There's a lot to be improved upon - the camera (like almost all 3D games of the era), the bugs, Sonic's somewhat slippery controls, the finicky homing attack and light speed dash, the primitive fishing, Sky Chase and Twinkle Circuit games, the limited interactivity in Chao Garden, some wooden English dialogue and voice acting, the frankly inept sound balance and scoring of the cut scenes (and the menu BGM changing with every selection).

There's plenty of room for new content too. Sonic Adventure 2's scoring/ranking system was the best the series has ever had, so they should copy that, and add Sonic Rush Adventure style extra missions. Tails/Knuckles/Amy/Gamma/Big's campaigns could be extended, utilising all of the game's levels. They could add a Sonic version of Hot Shelter, or rework the story to have boss battles with Chaos 1, 3 and 5. A 2-Player Versus mode ala SA2 Battle. If they wanted to go even further, they could add an "Act 2" to all of Sonic's levels.

Diamond in the rough games, like Sonic Adventure, are the ones that stand to benefit the most from being remade.

 

I have no faith in Modern Sonic Team but there are two things that are notable to me in this particular situation:

1. Modern Sonic Team as we know it has apparently been dissolved in the last restructuring anyway. We don't know what the ramifications of that are yet though.

2. Sonic Adventure is a known quantity. For better or worse I already know far ahead of time that I will like the story because I know the story, I already know I will like the art style because I know the art style, etc. That's not something I can say about a completely original project because frankly I've been wholly uninterested in these design decisions from every game since Colors.

Maybe I'll like it, maybe not, but the truth is I'm more interested in the idea of it than an original Sonic project because Mania aside I haven't found a single one of those even remotely interesting in the past decade.