Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

I thought of the Squid Guardian.

 

Personally, from a narrative and thematic standpoint; I think that Sonic doesn't "have to be like this" or "have to be like that". Sonic's too cool to be stuffed inside of your boxes.

Obviously, this is just my opinion, but hear me out:

Sonic is an incredibly versatile IP. You can do anything in Sonic's world with Sonic's characters, and in my opinion, that's it's strength.

I don't think Sonic is bad when it "does X" or "does Y"; I think it's bad when it's boring.

Exhibit A being Green Hill Zone.

Green Hill Zone in Forces wasn't bad because "it was Green Hill Zone"... it was bad because they kept on reusing it over the past several games and we were tired of it. It became boring! People thought it was really cool to see Green Hill in modern 3D graphics back in 2011! That horse was just completely beaten by 2017.

This is a hotter take, but I also don't think that Color's story/dialogue/tone was bad. Most people didn't at the time! It was a break from how melodramatic the plots had been for the past 10ish years prior. ...But by the time we had seen the same silly tone in Generations, Lost World, and Sonic Boom, we were tired of it and wanted more.


I personally think SEGA and Sonic fans make a big mistake when we try to pin down Sonic to just be this thing or just be that thing. We're missing out on flexing the breadth of tones and styles Sonic can deftly utilize.

That's why I say; I want to see them do it all! Give me a jokey story with low stakes, give me a game so melodramatic is hurts, give me a game with zero dialogue, give me a game filled with meaty monologues, give me a game in a photo-realistic city, give me a game in a trippy cartoon world!

If it doesn't 100% work out, it's alright. At-least it was different and the next game can be something else. If the writing and art direction are good, then in my opinion they can do anything.

Clarifications:

I always hear people picking apart my comments in my head while I'm writing and it's hard to smoothly address them all...

• Yes, some things aren't bad because they're boring; they're bad because they're bad. Force's story is bad because it's bad; but it was also boring. The Warehog concept was NOT boring, but was bad because it completely broke the pace of the same IMHO.
  
• Of-course the gameplay has to be good, and I'd prefer if Sonic's gameplay was kept fairly consistent between games; I'm talking about wide narrative/thematic/tone variety, not gameplay. (See my Warehog comment above)
  
• I get that some people just don't like it when a game is "like this" or "like that"; not everything floats everyone's boats. My "pro-variety" argument would be that if Sonic keeps on trying different things, the elements you don't like won't be around for long.
• "But this was cringe!" "But that was cringe!"; embrace the cringe, and it will set you free! This world is a brighter place since Elise kissed Sonic, Shadow was fine with taking candy from a baby, and Knuckles reflected on the horrors of war, and you can't tell me otherwise!

 

To keep it short, I agree with you full stop, the worst a sonic game can be is boring and sonic teams enthusiasm to try new things is something that I sorely miss in many of my favorite game franchises.
To move the thread back to the original topic: I suspect chaos island is to tie black doom to The End or the ancients in some way. I don’t remember the exact quote, but at one point Flynn divulged that he pitched the concept of them in frontiers and he was told something like “Let’s not get too crazy yet.” Well, I think we’ve hit the crazy, and I’m excited to see what they do with the idea, if that is in fact what will be present in this game.

 

Is TT Games exempt from this rule? Because their Lego games have been coming up with brand new molds and Minifigures for ages.

 

Classic/Modern pandering discourse on Retro? Must be a Thursday…

Anyway, I basically agree with what @Lambda has said - speaking as someone who regularly advocates for blurring the lines and introducing Mighty, Ray, etc. into the modern setting of the comics, it doesn’t matter to me to see each side of the franchise cross-pollinate so long as it’s done with respect to what’s being referenced and makes sense in context.

As has been said, the spate of classic stylings post-Generations were very much SEGA leaning on the cultural cache of yesteryear to prop up a brand largely bereft of new ideas. The problem there is that it compromised new games with content that ultimately was also a disservice to the classics (Lost World butchering Mega Drive aesthetics, Forces making people sick of Classic Sonic).

Shadow Generations is of course making a lot of references to the series as it was in the early 00s. Difference here is that what’s being brought back makes sense for Shadow and expands upon those old ideas with something like the Doom Powers. Granted, I don’t want the next ten years of Shadow content to be the greatest hits of the Dreamcast era, which was the trap fallen into with classic stuff post-Generations, but whatever returning elements are seen in the future should be reintroduced with a view to genuinely breathing new life into them and creating interesting stories and settings with forward momentum rather than trying to invoke memberberries.

Also, Lambda got a bit confused: Sonic’s monster form is the Werehog - the Warehog is the form he takes on when he starts his weekend shift as an Amazon warehouse worker.

 

Yeah I'd agree. Although I think Sonic is provably on the more extreme end it is fair to say?

 

I used words like I think and recently because that's about what I think has happened. I don't think a lot of TT's games until Dimensions were that concerned with being accurate or something LEGO could actually produce. But now it seems like that's what they wanna do, make sure everything is accurate to the real thing, or make someone they could make real themselves.

 

Sonic turned into a monster?? I WAS talking about the mind-numbing gameplay of the Sonic: Amazon Fulfillment Blast trilogy for 3DS, what game are you talking about?

I mean, the parts of the game where you actually ran around delivering the packages during the day were fine but the nighttime forklift-driving warehouse box puzzles were such a slog.

Shame they were all eShop exclusive. I mean, they weren't great, but it's nice to preserve games regardless of quality.

Jokes aside, I agree with your wider point; there's a difference between reusing old concepts, and expanding upon them. Shadow Generations really feels like it's expanding upon prior ideas, not just waving them around saying "See?? Remember this??"

 

Regarding Lego, what are the chances that this game is gonna get skins like that too?

We already have Minifigures of both Sonics, just got a Shadow figure and are getting that absolutely hideous Shadow bust.

 

I am once again imploring my fellow Classic Sonic Elitists™ to be better.

These points are absolutely grasping at straws for reasons to pretend that Classic Sonic fans are oppressed and neglected despite Superstars, a game that came out less than a year ago, being unambiguously a classic game for classic fans. This is not the first user to whine about a new Shadow game existing, and pretending that Sonic Team doesn't care about them anymore, despite Superstars, a game that came out less than a year ago, being unambiguously a classic game for classic fans. I know you wish to move on from this conversation, and that's fine, but the amount of times I've seen Superstars ignored amid whining about this game's existence is getting under my skin, and there are some points I didn't see others bring up.

Like, "the plot beats aren't classic enough", or "the Emerald Shrine is a Modern thing", are such hyperspecific complaints that seem to miss what is meaningfully "classic" to most anyone. I know that's subjective, but we're not even being consistent about it here. For instance: are the Chaos Emeralds now having a standard amount, shape, and color "not classic"? I mean, I guess, technically, yeah. Does that actually matter? Should anyone actually care? Does that actually meaningfully render Superstars (and Mania!) "not classic" or "not classic enough"? I mean, yeah, you're allowed to think so. You could indeed say that they did Classic Fans dirty by not having, say, 9 Emeralds with some new shape we hadn't seen them in before. But if that's the way you're trying to justify the claim that "Sonic Team doesn't care about us anymore!" then you really gotta do more. Or not, I guess it's valid to just shout unhinged things into the void. But it does make you look unpleasable, and by extension it makes other people who are primarily (or even solely) fans of the Classic stuff look that way by association.

As for the skins, I'm seeing people bring up Green Hill in Forces, or the classic life icons in Lost World as points of comparison, but I don't think that works, because unlike the Lego and Shadow skins in Superstars, you have to play through Green Hill to complete Forces. You have to see the classic life icon while you play through Lost World. In Superstars, you can complete the whole game without even looking at those skins. Skins which are 100% not "creative decisions"; they tie into a popular children's toy brand on the one hand, and to an upcoming game and an upcoming movie on the other hand. You actually should also be complaining about Mania, too, because the game's true ending is a deliberate tie-in to Forces, a Modern game, and the Egg Reverie music references Fist Bump.

But I guess to answer your question, using your own criteria, the last time classic fans were pandered to, and classic fans alone were pandered to, was, I dunno, Sonic R? I'm sure there's some incredibly specific minute detail in the Taxman remakes and Origins that disqualifies them. If you ask me, it's having incorrect hitboxes.

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On topic, I like how they're really leaning into how much like a shark or an orca whale Metal Overlord looks. Specifically, by having you fight him in a big body of water.

 

honestly the "cartoon character gets a job" style spin offs are something I want to see for Sonic.

 

Sonic's an older franchise, so that's expected. Only other franchise that can be compared is Pokemon.

It's the same phenomenon though of people being more interested in the ideas and concepts than the exection of them.

 

So according to an IGN interview with Iizuka at Gamescom, Shadow Gens' story will intersect with Sonic Gens at several points.
That should be interesting to see how it plays out. Seems like the most likely thing to happen would be the Sonic rival fight from Shadow's perspective.

 

Yeah I agree it is a part of a wider phenomenon. I don't think it is necessarily bad either. Art should be interpreted. I definitely do it with Undertale and Chara which is why I made that comparison. But I'm also aware I'm probably largely projecting my own view of the game's themes with that one.

My problem with focusing so much on concepts and potential is that if it strays too far from the actual execution of the art. I think the fandom of Sonic games post 2001 are very guilty of this point. There is stuff Sonic Unleashed does well which isn't often discussed because of the game's 'potential'. And then the game's poor execution of that 'potential' is often waved away as if it is inconsequential or something. The truth is everything has 'potential'. It doesn't have as much value as I think some people think it does.

I do like Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 a lot. I also like the look of Shadow Generations. But I also find myself sharing a lot of @Overlord s frustrations honestly. Especially after Frontiers which I think is just a textbook downright bad game. I know why people think it is all disgruntled Classic fans or whatever. Or that Classic fans want to ruin the fun of everyone else. But I wish that just at least a few times I wouldn't see so many 'Modern' fans (for lack of a better word) place almost all their game values on concepts, potential, and suiting their own tastes. And I say that as someone who counts myself among them.

 

Also a diagram of the game's controls were spotted at Gamescom

I'm just confused though because it says that boosting with right trigger is exclusive to Shadow Gens, while right trigger is still drifting in Sonic Gens... Even though in previous demos we clearly saw the boost mapped to right trigger. In fact it doesn't seem Sonic can boost at all? And the homing attack is back on X/A... But also still on Square/X? What the fuck is happening here. And camera controls are black which this diagram says applies to both games but Sonic Gens never had camera controls? This is weird.

 

Did we know the Drop Dash was in?

 

Since the game's reveal yes, the metadata of classic Sonic's footage of City Escape had drop dash in the title.

 

Could just be the settings they used for the demo. Didn't they say the classic controls were an option before?

 

There's a tweet showing the menu options, you can straight up change the buttons even without the Normal/Legacy controls settings.

There's only one slider, for deceleration when moving.

https://xcancel.com/StartZ_HHK/status/1826628491565301814?t=m6XORxd3gp2Ucs7rmMTslg&s=19