The Sally cameo was simply a nod to the few hardcore fans that'd remember her - SatAM is so far off the radar for 99.99% of people who bought Forces that they'd not even know who they were. And also a Western invention so not a chance in hell Japan would consider it regardless.
Please don't. The Satam continuity has been butchered enough with Archie and the pendering, last thing I want is Sonic Team incompetence in the mix.
Yeah this is super interesting, and the first I've heard of it, and I've been following this thread for months (and Retro for years). Any insight here?
I posted this sometime ago in this thread when SSMB was talking about how a member from there overheard someone from SoE talking about how the Sonic Forces pitch went with SoA and SoE. From some interviews, what was going on around those years with the franchise and that rumor this is what I think happened during the development of Forces. Now, a lot of this is speculation but I think it makes the most sense then the "Boom Sonic was really the avatar and they had to change it because of feedback and that's what screwed the game" theory. First, from looking at the credits, we do know they definitely did not have the manpower as they did in Generations so that confirms they didn't have as many resources as a team. Second, we do know that Nakamura talked about how they hit a wall at first with the Switch but were able to overcome it: The big thing is the SSMB rumor, if it's true then that makes this theory more plausible. This was the original post: So like I said, there are things that fall on Sonic Team, but then there's also other things that they can't control. Sonic Forces, at least to me that has also gone through the corporate grind as well, looks like a project where they had to compromise on a lot of things due to high ambitions, lack of resources and circumstances. And I really sympathize with Sonic Team (especially if this happened) because it really hurts you when you pour your passion and time into a project only for it to fall short. Also feel bad for Nakamura since it seems that history repeated itself for him like it did back in 2005-06, I really hope he gets to do his Samba de Amigo project. Though, Sega should really look at what they did right and wrong for previous projects and take that in mind going forward. "What did we do right for S1-3k, Adventure, Generations, Mania etc etc etc? And what led to projects like Shadow, 06, 4, Forces etc etc?" Also, perhaps so many Sonic/Sega projects take a toll on Sonic Team and they can't perform as well as they should. Bring back some of the talent and give them the time and resources they need to make a great game. A lot of people want the Mania team to do their own thing, but I wouldn't mind them join forces with the rest of Sonic Team to give us something awesome. After all, they're all professionals so I don't see how they can't collaborate together.
There's a lot of "IF this is true" and "IF this were the case" there. We're not big on speculation here, please try to stick to what is provable.
None of that speculation is important or relevant. The fact that it begins with the failure of Sonic Runners and Sonic Boom would %100 justify any budget reduction measures by Sega meaning Sonic Team should NOT have been thinking big anyway.
-We know Sonic games have not been selling well for a while. -We know this game had a smaller team and some of the members don't have a lot of experience from the credits. -We know how long the game was in development along with the engine from the Famitsu interview (especially the part of them putting the game together during the last year and the Switch hurdle) and the Sonic Channel journals. The part about RoL/Runners affecting the budget of the brand is speculation on my part. And the pitch meeting story can be a lie, though I believe the member from SSMB because he is trustworthy. But the rest is not speculation. The facts do point that the game did have a rocky development cycle.
Hopefully Mania's success leaves Sega a little more optimistic about Sonic. This game might have been a mess but I bet Mania blew their expectations out of the water. Doesn't look good for Sonic Team though that's for sure. They've been floundering since right after Generations. Lost World, Runners, and now this. How many more chances do we think they'll get? Also anyone else think it's time to scrap the current physics engine? It seems like they've been picking apart and tweaking the same engine since Unleashed now, it's probably a mess. The Hedgehog Engine 2 seems fine at least.
For what's it worth I really appreciated your post Casshern. I had been checking Retro constantly last night hoping you'd post that insight and you ended up so, so much appreciated man. To echo everyone else hopefully Mania's stellar reception and Forces' negative one re-defines Sonic moving forward. Sonic Mania 2 needs to be green-lit and 3D Sonic needs a complete re-think.
...Their job is to get people hyped for any game, as terrible as it may be. I... don't think that anybody here suggested that the project's tagline was "Let's make a bad game". :v: Unless you're counting "not getting fired", doing your job doesn't equal "good intentions".
I agree but hopefully not something as exact as a Sonic Mania 2. Rather, an original new game made by the Mania team that doesn't rely on old levels coming back. Of course knowing the upper management, they might be thinking "Mania sold better because it had more old levels, we need more old levels, especially Green Hill and Chemical Plant!!".
Reviews are still trickling out for the game, and they aren't necessarily getting better. Official Xbox Magazine UK - 5/10 (Only a quote from the review [Jan 2018, p.82] is online, courtsey of MC) (from Jan 5th, 2018) gamesTM - 4/10 (Again, only a quote from the review [Issue#195, p.84] is available, provided by MC) (from Dec. 31st, 2017) DarkZero - 3/10 (from Jan 17th, 2018) Forces was also one of five highlights of this GameSpot video of the site's worst-reviewed games of 2017.
https://twitter.com/sonic_hedgehog/status/956292949641281536 Super Sonic cost 2 dollars for all of a day. It's free permanently now.
I still feel like review scores between 50 and 70% (5 to 7 out of 10) are fair game for this entry. Below 50 is a tad harsh and above 70 is too high. I do understand the extreme low scores though. Game is uninspired at best. Also feel like the standard should be 2 magnitudes higher than it is. Anywhere between 70 and 90% for big title releases. And 70 only in the most catastrophic, short-on-time development scenarios. If SEGA committed to that level of quality, the Sonic franchise would recover quite nicely in every meaningful metric. Forces really should have been a absolute guaranteed 70% type release, after 4 years of dev time. Sonic is easily capable of this, even without reinventing the wheel. In fact, it doesn't need to reinvent the wheel at all to be consistently good. I think Sonic could be even better than that. Like, 3D Mario good. Lots of faith in the blue ring boy to be that good. But it'd take a different vision from the company and Sonic Team than what they've seemed to have in the Modern Sonic era.
Taken on its own I can see it being a 60-69ish game, but when you take what's come before into consideration it's infinitely more disappointing and I'd say deserves the low scores.
Not exactly related to Sonic Forces, but in Sonic Forces: Speed Battle news, apparently the game has been renamed to "Sonic Dash 3" in some countries. I'm only going off some stuff I've heard from Twitter but I can certainly say that I'm sure they only took that move because the Forces branding is not helping their cause. For what it's worth I've probably got more hours out of Speed Battle than I have Forces proper.
I did feel like it was part of the 'Dash' family, muchhlike how I consider Colours DS to be 'Rush 3' aka 'Sonic Advance 6'. Speed Battle works well as it's own thing, so renaming it definitely makes sense even now that Forces is no longer hot topic (whether that be for good or bad reasons :v: )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xxb8RwETGJA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bnvMakV2nrc (More here: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCMNaGdBY5v-8s2snlty-htg) Huh. So this is actually kind of interesting. Apparently Forces has a bunch of early object layout files for some of the stages, most notably the two above (Sunset Heights appears to have gone through a major overhaul at one point, the object layout doesn't even match the geometry after the first like 40 seconds). Some of these layouts appear to be harder, others combine what ended up as two stages into one. Either way it's pretty neat. But wow what kind of development hell did this game go through?
