Do you think a Sonic Adventure Remake is a good idea?

I don't understand this "don't make me play through Sonic Heroes four times" argument. If you don't want to replay it, then... don't? Nobody is forcing you.

 

But you can if that is what the team decides to do . Overlooking the basic 1 to 1 remakes of SOC on the PS 4 or Dark Souls on the PS5.

You just need to look at Conkers on the Xbox . Other than the LIVE part, it's a basic 1 to 1 remake of the N64 game and plays exactly the same only with eye popping visuals making full use of Xbox visuals and a massive increase to polygons budgets and a more stable frame rate and using the right stick to move the camera

Same goes for the Halo 2 remake on Xbox One , it's the same Halo 2 just with new visuals

It can also work the other way. Virtual Fighter on the Saturn saw a massive decrease to its polygon budget it's running on a completely different engine and code and yet it's plays exactly like the Model 1 original.

The trouble with a lot of remakes or a remaster is some teams look to add new content or change controls and how the game plays trying to moderise the game and so on Just like SEGA done with a few of their titles like Daytona USA CE or MonkeyBall 1/2 remix.

 

The game is. I never liked collecting emeralds in special stages to see the real ending of a Sonic game as-is, but in Sonic 1 and 2 you can argue it's not necessary, and even in 3 it's more reliable and achievable along the path of a bigger game. Heroes is the first game to have every campaign share the same basic gameplay and stages (with some layout changes, admittedly) but still force you to use everyone to see the normal ending. It's like if everyone in SA1 just played like Sonic, or if you had to play Sonic, Tails and Knuckles in S3K just to see doomsday zone. It's dumb, and if the game is good, it shouldn't have to arbitrarily segment itself because people who like the game will go back to try another campaign anyway. It's blatant padding.

 

Around Sonic Adventure is when the philosophy of multiple characters in Sonic shifted. They're not just supplementary to get a little extra bang for your buck. They are the game. They're front and center in the advertising, they all get equal billing on the stage select, and they all have the same amount of effort put into them (to some degree and only for the main trio, but still). One would argue you need to play all of the stories to get the complete experience. You can't even play the final boss without beating every campaign.

Adventure 2 streamlined the character selection into 3 distinct playstyles, but amplified the idea of you needing to play as all characters to get the full experience, with a Hero Story and Dark Story that interweave and directly influence each other.

Heroes feels like it's trying to do the old style of "every team is only a slightly different experience", but it still has the Adventure philosophy of needing to clear all of the campaigns before actually reaching the final content. To get the intended "complete" experience, you need to play as all four teams. In fact, at the end of a campaign, the game outright tells you to try another one.

Same for Shadow, except it's even worse because there's only one character.

 

The problem is even just playing through one Heroes story isn't a great experience. And then the game goes out of its way to taunt you with the Metal Sonic mystery until you beat them all, something neither Adventure game did with their final story twists. At least the SA1 character stories and especially SA2's hero story had satisfying endings in of themselves.

 

I know this is unrelated to the topic at hand, but Sonic CD 2011 being a port is debatable, because it was pretty much created with a lot of guess work and doesn't really reflect what the original source code actually does. It's definitely a remake, in my opinion.

 

So were the ports of, for example, the Mortal Kombat games, and lots of home computer ports like the Commodore 64 version of Golden Axe. Would you call those remakes?

If you would, then we can just agree to disagree.

If you wouldn't, I'd really like to know what the difference is.

 

My definition of a port involves whether the source code (or some form of detailed documentation of how the original game worked, like a disassembly/decompilation) was available to use at least as a reference so that the gameplay can be implemented as accurately as they can. If they don't have the source code and just guess how the game works, then they are effectively remaking it using their own intuition from the ground up.

With the Mortal Kombat games and Golden Axe on the C64, if they just remade how the original game worked by just looking at gameplay and approximating what they saw, then yes, to me, it's a remake. If Christian Whitehead was able to adapt the exact behaviors of the original Sonic CD to the Retro Engine, it would be a different story, but he clearly didn't. It definitely shows based on the various behavioral differences that can be pointed out, such as how Sonic maintains time travel, the Collision Chaos bumpers physics, hitboxes, and more.

So yeah, my opinion is that a port is a reimplementation of the original behavior found in the original code (note "reimplementation", I am not suggesting it is as simple as "copying and pasting" the original code into whatever engine, because I am aware it's not as simple as that at all), while a remake doesn't do that, and instead approximates/redoes it from scratch, or just completely disregards all of that.

Definitely just a case of agreeing to disagree.

 

This is definitely true, and I'd add that in SA1 and SA2 each story feels like an essential piece of the plot that clarifies things in their more-complex narratives. Heroes really only has two significant pieces, Shadow and Metal Sonic. The fact that Eggman is kidnapped and hires the Chaotix to get him out is not super-essential info, nor is the fact that Metal Sonic kidnapped the Chao (yeah I know it gives him Chaos's DNA so he can transform, but that's not relevant to his actual character arc in the game, and hell, he's become a big monster before in 32X Chaotix). The game is too basic overall.

So yeah, I guess alternatively, a Heroes remaster could make totally original levels for each team & massively complicate and rework its story to truly differentiate the campaigns, but I think letting me play the final boss after just one story is a lot quicker and easier.

Exactly. I have to wonder if giving each team its own unique final boss might've helped this somewhat, but ultimately leaving it as different options to one definitive ending increases the overall impression that players have freedom in how they approach the game, and never grinds the pacing to a halt just to restart all over. Even if you do play all four stories, it's because you want to!

 

I'm fine with "You need to see the entire storyline to get the end of the story" as an unlock requirement, especially since "true final bosses" are rarely substantial level content and usually spectacle laden victory laps anyway. They feel like narrative rewards, so tying it to narrative progression instead of just handing it out was never a big deal to me.

Heroes just spreads it's story too thin and structures it very poorly, and I'm not convinced that's something a remake or a port could fix. Some games are better left preserved for reference's sake and little else.

 

Heroes has a good concept and aesthetic but it really needed better level design and overall pacing to flourish. I think the game we have is alright I guess, but itd benefit a ton from a RE7-style overhaul. But Heroes is the last game SEGA would choose for that level of intricacy.

If nothing else, I would like Heroes, Shadow, 06, and Unleashed to come to Steam with proper ports sometime in the far future so we dont have mainline games rotting on 20 year old consoles. And fix SADX while theyre at it.

 

Yeah, it's better to have mainline games rot on 20-year-old PCs.

 

I'd definitely like to see the games be re-released, and I'd honestly like to see them make drastic changes to both Heroes & Shadow even if they are ported.

Gonna go on about something that is kinda personal for me, but I struggle with both Heroes & Shadow with how they handle both flashing for boss battles, and the general effects in Shadow being incredibly intense for muzzle fire for guns, *especially* with the alien weapons. I seriously worry about having a seizure with these games.

I'm not saying to make these mandatory or anything, but it'd be nice to have a bunch of changes as an option to reduce effects in these games. They did this with the GG/SMS games in Origins Plus and that was good (allowing originals as well would have been good). They are literally unplayable to me and that sucks, even with low brightness and contrast.

 

Funny how we've had ports of all the mainline 3D games before and after, but those four just have to sit there like awkward middle children. (Though I suppose Heroes did have that physical PC release back in the day.) It'd certainly be nice to see them make their way to Steam, even as the most straight-forward ports imaginable. Just don't leave out Remote Play Together if proper online for the multiplayer modes is too big of an ask. Bonus points if that Shadow co-op mod is made to work with it.

Now that you mention it, it's kind of interesting how many different ways they played with multiple characters/stories in pretty much every mainline 3D title (or hell, even Riders) prior to Unleashed. It'd be neat to see a Sonic game tackle a multi-perspective story again.

 

I agree, I liked Heroes bar the horrible shiny look on the characters Loved the music and also some of the levels, some of them were great fun to race around in.
But this would be a Sonic game I would favour a Capcom style remake with changing or adding to some of the levels, but I would like the music kept the same.

It would be nice to get a remaster of Unleashed that game had seriously impressive tech for the time and Apotos stage had such amazing art direction, I still love to play through it now on the Series X update . For me, it was the last few buggy day sections and the iffy controls that let the game down a little and where a Remaster could fix them

Nothing wrong in that we also have personal views on Sonic. For me I didn't like Shadow the game it just felt so wrong to see guns in a Sonic title, even if it was a spin-off and where I think the team were trying to reach out to a more mature audience. I also disliked Sonic The Fighters as it was violence against each fighter it just looked so wrong to see Sonic punching or kicking another animal character, when in a Sonic game you never killed or hurt anything It was all about freeing the animal inside the robot casing and that for me was always one of the best aspects of SONIC you didn't kill or hurt anything at all. Very few games are like that, but that's my silly Sonic view

 

My biggest problem with Heroes' approach is it wants to do it the Sonic 3 & Knuckles way and the Sonic Adventure way at the same time. In the former, you need to get all the Emeralds. In the latter, you need to clear the game as each character. Here you have to do both. Honestly, I don't think that would be as big a deal for me if the levels weren't extremely long and the Special Stages weren't extremely ass.

 

It's not just that the special stages are bad, it's also that getting into them requires playing an entire stage and not taking damage to get in and have just one try. I hate most special stages but the #1 thing that made me tolerate all of them enough to get 100% was Origins' token retry feature. If Heroes had that, the emerald gathering wouldn't be nearly as excruciating (ditch regular lives along the way like Origins, as well).

 

I much prefer the approach of having the characters get all the emeralds throughout the story, less hassle and it makes the inevitable Super Sonic Final Boss feel more warranted and less out-of-nowhere. I like the emeralds having more story presence.

 

glad to know it's not just me. unfortunately, in my case i'm regularly seeing a neurologist, taking photosensitivity meds, and learned like a month ago that i probably have genetic epilepsy so, shadow kinda presents a more scary risk when the last time i watched my friend play the ps2 version, i think i had an absence seizure (or that's at least what my doctor thinks).

it's a shame because i last played the game as a kid, and i've always wanted to go back to it. but it's a game that has the potential to cause actual harm for me at worst, and a incredibly bad migraine at best.