What would you want to see in a 3D Sonic Game?

Gimme a WORLD. Yes. A WORLD to explore. Caves, mountains, beaches, towns, cities, rivers, oceans, Islands...

NO LOADING. I want it ALL streamed. And I want this to be the ULTIMATE collaboration of Sonic media.

That means Knothole, Station Square, Robotropolis, Green Hills, EVERYTHING is on this one world. Yes, every Island that has appeared in a mainstream Sonic game would be represented in full, with each zone present. Every city ever mentioned, every Robotnick base ever built still stands (if it has been destroyed due to age/Sonic that would be shown as well)

Plot...Eggman has made a super city and is sucking the worlds resources dry. Gotta destroy his energy suckers at key locations around the world. Of course he will be there every step of the way to destroy you with a different machine EVERY TIME.

Bosses? EGGMAN, EGGMAN, EGGMAN! Nothing else hogs the spotlight, except Eggman and his Robotic creations. Yes, this means Metal Sonic!!

Characters? ALL OF THEM. Make most of them NPC's, but they are all here.

Playable? Sonic, Tails, Knuckles. All Optional. All have special abilities, which help in different situations.

Chaos Emeralds? YES. But Eggman isn't going for them this time. If you want them...GO AHEAD. It's completely optional. In the style of Sonic 2, except with all of your moves at your disposal to get them. Of course collecting all of them will give you nice bonuses, but these emeralds are challenging to get. This is no cake walk this time.

Moves? Classic Sonic to begin with, new moves to be added later. This is how you keep people from going too far. They need moves to reach their next location. You start out with simply rolling. Yes. Moves like the homing attack (to reach high places), Boost (for water and wall running), and other moves. They can also help fight off badnicks, but use it sparingly, for now there is a SP Gauge. Called the Special Gauge, this is what makes it so Sonic can't do everything he wants all the time. You can only do as many SP moves as long as the bar lasts. When it's gone, all you can do is run, roll, and do normal unlocked moves.

Special moves don't count here, but they could possibly be upgraded (like Tails can fly from the start but needs to upgrade to be able to lift Sonic).

Multiplayer? Yes, but only with Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles.

...Yeah, I might have exploded with Ideas...:P

 

A free roaming Sonic game with a huge map, lots to explore, and the momentum working beautifully with Sonic's speed. I guess GTA Sonic or something, just a very large and fun sandbox game where you can just run around at incredible speeds up mountains and cliffs, and roll off ledges plunging yourself at dizzying heights after revving up a spin dash off a cliff.

Agreed, as much as I don't like the homing attack, it's necessary to have for the 3D games.

 

Sandbox game?

 

Compressing all previous worlds of Sonic into a single game may not work out, since it would require a lot of redesigning, and would inevitably result in missing areas which just couldn't be made within a reasonable timeframe. Instead, I would be satisfied to have a brand new island for Sonic to explore.

Now, to determine how big the island would be, let's first get Sonic's top speed (in normal blue form).

He can exceed the speed of sound, so I think 1/3 of a mile per second would suffice, or 1200 mph.
Let's assume the island's shape is circular for now. If Sonic were to run directly from one side to the other (longways), I would want it to take about 20 minutes. So it would need a diameter of 400 miles (a radius of 200). Such an island would have an area of about 125,660 square miles. (To compare, that's halfway between the sizes of Sumatra and Honshu, the largest islands of Indonesia and Japan respectively.)

A round trip around the circumference of such an island would be a little over an hour.

If we squish the island one way, say down to 150 miles, then you have an ellipse with an area under 50,000 square miles. To put that in perspective, that's larger than the North Island of New Zealand, but smaller than Java. Cover a quarter of the island with impassible mountains, and you've cut that down to 37,000 square miles of explorable world.

A round trip would still take over 45 minutes, which is promising.

But... I dunno... I'm starting to think it's not very feasible.

 

I've always been partial to the way Jak & Daxter (the first one) handled the concept of being "open world" while at the same time firmly remaining a Mario 64-styled platformer.

Sonic would do well to follow a similar example.

 

Originality if you ask me. I'd like to see a full 3D remake of Sonic 1 with all of its zones. Hell, throw in 2 and 3&K too. Perhaps one of these days we'll see it.

 

I also think that, yeah, to some degree, Sonic needs to be about acrobatics and looking to games like Prototype, Hulk: Ultimate Destruction, Mirrors Edge, and even Assassin's Creed are all probably very good ideas.

The concept of a single, fluid, unbroken "line" of acrobatic tricks would bring us closer to actually playing the Sonic CD intro. Sonic Adventure 2 kind of does this a little bit, but Sonic's range of abilities in that game is very simplistic.

 

Havok physics.

 

The question is, would that require controls too complex for a Sonic game? I wouldn't mind complex controls, but some people here are really adamant about keeping Sonic to a maximum of 3 action buttons. (There are some that say 2 or 1, but they're not all there, so disregard them.)

 

Zelda-style context sensitive button? Then again that might probably turn the game into a complete QTE fest. Still it would at least be fairly forgiving under most circumstances, I'd imagine.

 

Surrealism. And don't confuse surrealism with hyper bright colors and patterns.

I want the world to look photo realistic and bizarre. An alien world that looks so completely impossible, but is rendered in complete realism.

I loved that about the old sonic games. The real star of the classic games were the wonderful levels, and part of the charm is how bizarre and weird they were. With modern technology, they could really go nuts.

Assassins Creed maps all the crazy fluid acrobatics to a single trigger, and you only need to hold it down, not actually tap it. So you hold this trigger and just run towards walls, waist-level obstacles, planks, beams, etc. and your character automatically flips out and hops all over them like a parkour. Literally the easiest controls I've used this generation.

Now, Assassins creed was, IMO, a very boring, repetitive game. But that mechanic was cool at least. It's been copied to an extent, too, in other games.

 

A jump button, that's the only thing I need. S3K Controls are just perfect and they may be nice for a 3D test.

I suppose you like Earthworm jim games, I cannot even describe the levels... For example, the First level in the 2nd game...with orange shaded "trees", a bright sun in the background, with no clue on what's happening or why you're there, or why the fuck some green enemies are attacking you, man! Even pigs! haha...and the level name doesnt help at all! "Anything but Tangarines"...That's just surrealism to the extreme, and it rules.

 

It's a start but I'd like more simple geometric patters.

 

Oh man, no joke, the earthworm jim games were a HUGE influence on my gaming tastes. I played the ever loving shit out of both EWJCD and EWJ2. Completely love those games; top 10 games for me. I've been working on an XBLA game for a while now, and my main 2 sources of inspiration are Sonic and Earthworm jim (the game is basically a cross between the two, and shinobi).

Speaking of EWJ, the HD iphone remake came out today. Gotta pick it up.

Anywho... back to the subject at hand. I'd like to see Fang the Sniper come back. I loved that dude, and thought he was a perfect example of a classic era Sonic villain. His personality and design fit in very will with Dr. Robotnik, Knuckles, and Metal Sonic. I say bring him back, give him another chance. And for the love of god, don't mess him up!

EDIT: If you'd like to discuss more about surrealism, I'm all down. It is my favorite type of art and I consider myself pretty knowledgeable. Specifically, I think Sonic enjoys a more light hearted, colorful type of surrealism, similar to Dali's The Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory:



By contrast, I'd say Earthworm Jim is almost more like Hieronymus Bosch, with twisted stuff like The Garden of Earthly Delights:

 

Rolling physics that behave like Metroid Prime's morph ball, amongst other things.

Nonlinear levels that aren't simply a setpiece-filled rollercoaster.

Badniks based on animals.

Art Deco/Futurist menu presentation, with Surrealist landscapes in game that boast Pop Art influences with their repeating geometric patterns, broken out of being too repetetive by a good choice in secondary patterns and shapes.

A handful of playable characters, no more, who all play markedly different to each other.

Traditionally-animated (2D all the way, baby) opening and ending.

 

Yeah, actually, the pop art style probably should be embraced by the sonic series. It works wonders for the Mario series, and really ties the games together.

 

Alright, brace yourself for a potentially huge post;
In my Ideal 3d sonic game, it would be 2.5d like this;

It'd control like s3K, and feature these 3 as the playable characters, looking like this.

The storyline would follow a "Robotnik's got a huge evil base thing, go find it and jump on all his shit till it breaks"
Good mix of types of levels, like different themes, and different gameplay styles, the badniks would be a mix of 'upgrades' on old ones, and some newcomers. Maybe the special stages could be a bit like Nights?
I'm not crazy on most of the voice cast, so maybe the *few* cutscenes would be music-based with no/little other sound. Also hand-drawn animation, like sonic CD's ending.
It'd have an awesome Metal sonic, then Robotnik's robot, then Unlockable super sonic boss ending.
oh.
And it'd be longer than the other sonic games.

yeah, you get the picture.

tl;dr S3k in 2.5D and longer with a few other things.

 

Hmm. Déjá vu.

I don't mind a big bunch of characters, as long as they aren't clones and are fun to play with, but at the same time don't go to far away from the basic gameplay (E-102 is an example perhaps of one that was maybe too different). If they are too similar, then they should be unlockable, and optional.
The levels should also be actual levels, none of this strafing slightly left and right stuff. It's like the freaking Cha Cha Slide. They should be more along the lines of... well, I can't think of any great examples. The last part of Speed Highway. Except better.

 

You guys seemed to miss my gigantic "game bible".

Yes. Read it all. I want a game just like that, and if they could make it before I can, then by jove I think they'll have it.