[Aerosol]

big smile, on 23 July 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

I'm not sure how I feel about having lots of playable characters in the classic series. That was one of the problems with Modern Sonic: It just had too many characters and I'm glad they've moved to making only Sonic playable.

One of the charms of Sonic & Knuckles was how well the level design took advantage of Knuckles and Sonic's unique abilities. Pulling something like that is a lot more challenging when dealing with 5+ characters.

Blue Blood, on 23 July 2018 - 05:49 AM, said:

Aerosol, on 23 July 2018 - 03:07 AM, said:

This reminds me. I'd like to see more differences between characters in the future. Give Tails a weaker spindash maybe, and remove it from Knuckles entirely. Things like that.

I've always been against things like this. What I enjoy about the way that different characters work (at least in 2D games) is that they are all fundamentally the same save for extra abilities. They principally share the same moveset and stats. It means that each character has options unique to them, but the core gameplay remains unchanged so that no character is better or worse than another. Knuckles has a weaker jump but so far it's the only example of such variation. I think it would be much less fun to add in more things like that is fine just for the sake of it.

If they are going to all have the same basic movies, then I wish they'd design them differently. For example, I was disappointed to see that Ray's Spindash was identical to Sonic's.
That was the nice thing about Chaotix: Vector and Espios's basic moves were designed differently from Knuckles, so they didn't feel like clones.

Yea at least this much would be nice. It just feels...odd to see every character do the things Sonic can do.

[Lapper]

Aerosol, on 24 July 2018 - 05:25 PM, said:

big smile, on 23 July 2018 - 08:56 AM, said:

If they are going to all have the same basic movies, then I wish they'd design them differently. For example, I was disappointed to see that Ray's Spindash was identical to Sonic's.
That was the nice thing about Chaotix: Vector and Espios's basic moves were designed differently from Knuckles, so they didn't feel like clones.

Yea at least this much would be nice. It just feels...odd to see every character do the things Sonic can do.

Yeah I've felt this too, then for example maybe they could make Mighty a little more balanced with a less powerful spindash or something similar. I honestly expected him to at least have the lower jump. He's OP. I don't hate it but still.

I think they should all have the same core gameplay, but I mean... Mighty... oh boy.

[Sir_mihael]

Blue Spikeball, on 24 July 2018 - 06:11 AM, said:

Sir_mihael, on 24 July 2018 - 05:13 AM, said:

I mean, look at how Marvel managed to make use of a huge cast of heroes for the Avengers films, and make everyone actually more-or-less relevant to the plot - something which you'd think would be a hard job to write. Compare that to Sonic Forces, where characters were just... there... Did Vector and Charmy really need to be in Forces aside from just to be there and.. be there? (you know Sonic Teams' goofed when Ian Flynn's prequel comic did a better job of using the characters than the core game did)

Honestly, Sonic Forces is the one instance in which I thought using almost the whole cast made sense, given the story. Eggman had finally taken over the world, forcing the heroes to form a resistance in order to fight back. You would expect the whole recurring cast to join in this kind of situation. I feel any inexplicably missing characters would have been be kind of akin to Nightcrawler's unexplained disappearance after the 2nd X-Men film; it would have prompted fans to wonder "Where's x and why isn't he helping the resistance? Was he killed, imprisoned or something?". In fact, I've already seen people ask these kind of questions about GUN and Blaze (despite the latter not even being from Sonic's dimension).

Oh believe me, I know why Sonic Team felt like the characters needed to be there, but to say they were used I would have a bit of trouble agreeing with (or at least, used effectively).
The problem is that Sonic Team decided to have a huge world take-over plot, but didn't really commit to the writing that would come with such a big scale story. Instead they opted for the shallow option - "Let's make everyone stand around purely for attendance and contribute not a lot".
(Come to think of it, most of Forces could have still happened nicely without the "99% of the world" stuff...)

You can still write missing characters effectively by showing that they're over the world helping fight Eggman's forces. That way, the cast that are part of the main HQ gang can be more crucial to the game and the plot as a whole, and only have someone (eg Vector) turn up when he's actually needed. This would have also helped show the worldwide effects of Eggman's takeover, spreading the heroes thin.

The other harder option would be to include everyone, but give each character a unique role that only they can do - like mentioned before, Ian Flynn did a decent job at this in the prequel comics with only a few pages.

It's kind of my problem with fan-service as well. Having things for the sake of just having those things kinda devaluates those very things if they're there purely for "Hey, <x> is here!" reasons.

[Laughingcow]

Sir_mihael, on 24 July 2018 - 05:13 AM, said:

I mean, look at how Marvel managed to make use of a huge cast of heroes for the Avengers films, and make everyone actually more-or-less relevant to the plot - something which you'd think would be a hard job to write.

Not a correct example in that Marvel has had other films to establish and build up characters before the big crossover Infinity War holy shit movie. Sonic Forces was NEVER gonna be able to do that even if there was a competent team of writers behind it. Sonic Forces failure in writing is that all the characters aren't seen actively contributing. Show me Espio going in Ninja style and stealing the plans for the Death Egg. Let me see Vector chomp some robots. Have Charmy (I know what your thinking but hear me out) being seen giving emotional support to refugees with the rest of his hive. They don't need to be playable, they just need to be seen doing something cool and/or useful.

Quote

Big the Cat running vertically up walls and loops is definitely a sight to behold however...

If there is a classic incarnation of Big the Cat, Doctor Robotnik needs to ROBOTISIZE his ass. He'd make a fine midboss.

[Sir_mihael]

Laughingcow, on 25 July 2018 - 03:47 AM, said:

Sonic Forces failure in writing is that all the characters aren't seen actively contributing. Show me Espio going in Ninja style and stealing the plans for the Death Egg. Let me see Vector chomp some robots. Have Charmy (I know what your thinking but hear me out) being seen giving emotional support to refugees with the rest of his hive. They don't need to be playable, they just need to be seen doing something cool and/or useful.

Yup. This was basically the point I was trying to make but you've summarized it much better than I did.