Sonic Unleashed: The Post-PC Port Discussion Thread

Needing to talk to an NPC at two different moments is apparently a crime to the game's pacing... I mean God forbid we don't run and jump for a moment.

Like it'd be one thing if it was asking you nonstop to engage with everything but it really isn't; the game's ultimately just wanting you to take a second to look at the people and environments they made and don't want you to go ignoring it completely. I guess that's too bad for the people seem to loathe it all so much, but I understand and very much appreciate what they did, idk.

It's just hard to justify these as major complaints when it largely comes down to people being unwilling to meet with what it's putting down. I thought if we were gonna talk ill of pacing it'd be about how you gotta talk to Prof Pickle after every level. That's a bridge too far, sure. But this? Really?

I don't really get the complaints on the entrance stages either, outside of how squirrely daytime Sonic moves in an enclosed space. They're not hard to navigate, either way.

 

That's what the Wii/PS2 version wants you to do, but no one ever complains about that.

 

Urgh, so you mean I've gotta go to all those shops and mash A to buy items to go to Pickle and mash A to give him items just so can upgrade my camera?

This is one of those things that just rubs me the wrong way. I quite enjoy the flavour of the hubs. They try to be quaint and cultured. NPCs have their little story arcs that you can follow. Some are purely in the background and progress with the main story, whilst others only progress as you talk to them and clear their missions. But its not clearly conveyed at any point that souvenirs will upgrade the camera, and nor is the investment really worth it.

If the hubs just somehow weren't broken down into 32 parts (8 countries each with 1 town and 1 entrance stage at both day and night, Eggmanland excluded), with half of those forcing you to walking speed, they could have been really great fun. But it just didn't work out that way.

We're doing that thing again where we hyper-fixate on one point so it appears to get blown out of proportion. Nobody has said that needing to talk to an NPC on two occasions is a crime. It was simply pointed out that it's among a list of many annoying things in the game.

Having to return to Pickle to unlock new levels constantly is terrible design. That's tedious and intrusive. Having to stop to engage with NPCs on other occasions is... far from the worst thing but it's still annoying. If you're already annoyed at the prospect of these hubs effectively forcing a third "walk-and-talk" gameplay style on you when you just want to get to the next level, it's not really a welcome experience.

 

If this was true, Shaddy should not have worded their post so poorly because with how it's worded, that's exactly how it comes across!

It's all optional. You don't need like the 5 flashes you get from the upgrade. I think there's never more than 2 in a hub? Also, Pickles assistant in Spagonia also refills your camera and he is right in front of the entrance to the hub.

 

Yes, it's all optional. But it's also like, really kind of just a nuisance to have to get the camera recharged. They should have just done away with the limited flashes.

But also this isn't a big deal lol I'm done talking about this point.

 

I'm just speaking from experience with other 3D platformers that walk-and-talking through hubs to progress story and/or do side-missions isn't exactly unfitting or annoying material to me.

Even if I were to pretend it wasn't commonplace in Mario, Banjo, Rayman, Jak, Spyro, Tony Hawk etc, it's already a part of SA1 (and 06) just previous, and I'd argue it's far less intrusive than the latter. Maybe a little more 'invasive' than SA1, but SA1 also notably has an entire cast of NPCs that have their arcs and no one knows about because people whined about them and brushed right past. If the developers noticed that and wanted to nudge you to take a further look in Unleashed, I couldn't blame them.

I guess I just dunno what's such a problem with it's presence. Is it because it's Sonic? I won't argue against putting these kind of interactions in environments more attuned to Sonic's speed. But I get the feeling that it existing at all is the annoyance people have. Frontiers sure seemed to feel that way, and the end result are maps completely lacking in life. If the future is open zone, I sure hope people don't scare them away from dipping back into this kind of energy. Idk. Just rambling at this point.

 

One of the things I noticed while playing Unleashed was that I think Sonic Team has been chasing the high of the Adventure fields from SA but hasn't quite replicated it in 06, Unleashed, or Frontiers.

Station Square and Mystic Ruins felt better integrated into Sonic’s world and the story. The Egg Carrier is a great example—serving as both a climactic setting and a place you could revisit. They felt like locations that existed long before the game, and we were just visiting them for the first time.

Soleanna, on the other hand, felt like something out of a Final Fantasy game, with little connection between the hub world and the story of Mephiles and Iblis. Frontiers felt like a barren budget version of the Mystic Ruins.

Unleashed had great production values, but the settings rarely connected with the story—Spagonia being the exception, since it served as the game’s headquarters. It doesn't help the stakes were massive, with the world literally split apart, but exploring the hub worlds and talking to NPCs rarely conveyed that scale.

If Sonic Team ever brings back hub worlds, I hope they take a serious look at SA and what made those environments stand out, despite their late-'90s limitations.

 

That's fair, and FWIW I do think SA1 did it best as far as convincing me of their place in the story. That said, I'm personally not bothered by how the people of the planet aren't TOO concerned with the world falling apart because I find the narrative of people being too silly or caught up in their own affairs to be charming and quaint. But I do think the environments themselves could've had more relevance to whatever plot there was. Not sure what they could've done without complicating it too much, though.

 

I'm pretty sure the desolate nature of Frontiers' islands was deliberate, given the lore behind them. But yes, I hope the next open zone Sonic game has towns and NPCs.

On topic, as I said before I found the Unleashed humans annoying and kinda ugly for the most part. And even I didn't mind the hubs, or having to interact with NPCs, or having the option to buy items for bonuses. I like having a place to chill between levels. I like having stuff to do outside of the levels, and getting to know more of Sonic's world and its inhabitants. And as said above, having NPCs to interact with in hubs is commonplace in 3d platformers. Just because Sonic is more speed-oriented I see no reason it shouldn't be allowed to have those - especially when they're optional.

 

Any Arid Sands Act 1 fans here? You know, for the main night stage? No...?

Good.

Playing this level brought up some bad, dormant memories of this place. Pretty janky and repetitive fighting-gauntlet stage with a camera that insists on being uncooperative. And then at the way end they throw out some collectibles behind a one-time use collapsing ledge lol. Granted, this is definitely the worst main night stage of the bunch, and I know that it's basically unfinished, given how the door at the end blocks the rest of the dummied-out level (which I remember was eventually used in dlc to great effect).

Anywho, I beat the game yesterday and loved it overall. I think this is maybe the 3rd time I've ever done a full playthrough. Happy to say that I never ran into needing to backtrack for medals, despite barely doing any optional acts. Honestly, I don't think I've ever been stopped by the much-maligned medal gating in this game- I enjoy poking around for the medals and make sure to grab the ones in the hubs, which I'm sure helps.

Also happy that I still want more from the game, so I'll definitely be going for the remaining acts, achievements, and DLC. Always loved this game and I'm glad that it's now better than it has ever been. Coming back to this at 30fps would have been really rough after all this time.

 

Also...

Just want to throw this out there.

The hub world themes of this game are absolute fire, and always have been. They were the big thing I fell in love with even back in 2008. Having night and Day mixes for each hub was sublime.

 

Not sure how true it is that devs from Unleashed later worked on Super Mario Odyssey, but the latter seemed to solve the problem of plot relevance for different areas while maintaining the "global road trip" vibe both games are going for. In Odyssey, various national treasures are being stolen for a wedding, whereas there's a search for hidden temples in various parts of the world in Unleashed.

The idea of a world trotting adventure is a good one, but I'd argue they do little with it in execution. Eggman is largely absent for a majority of the plot following the Egg Beetle boss fight so you lose a driving force in the race to the temples. Dark Gaia's slow corruption of the world at night also has potential but likewise isn't further developed beyond some random boss fights that, while containing context in text descriptions of the bosses, isn't portrayed in the plot. Chip's lack of memory isn't touched on outside of Apotos and Adabat. All in all, the plot just kinda stops after the first emerald is restored and doesn't pick up until Eggmanland. The only real thing narratively that's fleshed out, arguably, are the NPC storylines that are there as an excuse to do the small challenge levels (which are now presented as is in games today).

 

Great examples. I totally forgot how awesome these Shamar themes in particular were. And yeah, the rest are stellar as well.

This game's soundtrack is insane overall.

 

Can't speak for everyone, but in my case, this definitely is not the reason I dislike the hubs in Unleashed. I personally love hubs in Sonic, just not Unleashed. It does hubs differently to just about every other platformer I can think of, even Sonic ones.

How many other hubs cut down your moveset and speed to a mere fraction fraction of standard fraction and outright remove all forms of platforming? Because that's what the town sections do. They're just a pain to bother with. I don't feel like the SA1, 06 or ShGens hubs feel quite so stripped away from the regular gameplay. Imagine playing playing through Sonic's story in SA1, but every time you went into the hub you had were forced to play as Big instead. That's what Unleashed's town sections feel like. That's why they're a bother.

You then have the entrance stages. They grant you full movement, but you're in these open. areas with controls and a camera that aren't really suitable for what's being put down. Both Sonic and the Werehog are far too slippery to effectively run and platform. They're designed for linear, focused platforming rather that sandboxes.

And as I said in a previous post, theres so many of them. You have to do tons and tons of back and forth through entrance stages and towns to go from level to level as you progress the story. You sit through several screen transitions and menus every time. It's irritating, no? That's unlike the other games where you go from A to B in the hubs to get to levels.

Unleashed is hub overload. I respect what they tried to do. But the end result is relentlessly intrusive and unfun.

 

Yeah, granted Sonic Adventure has the advantage of setting a familiar tone of having Amy live in Station Square, Tails living in Mystic Ruins, Angel Island being close by, and the story treating Sonic as almost "returning home" which helped cementing their place in the story better than other games.

The hub worlds are also smaller so a lot of action and stages are more to the point.

And that's the thing, I think the scope of Unleashed was too big for its own good. It doesn't help that it was made under the conveyor belt production timeline of that era so it's amazing that they were able to do what they did with that time.

One of the things I think they could've done is have some parts of the hub worlds and levels where you could see the edge of the continent with debris floating in the sky or hints of the earth's magma.

I think it would've been a nice contrast with the beautiful locations but a grim reminder that the world is messed up.

I think another thing other than the NPCs, which if they didn't want say explorers on the island, they could've made the Koko npcs if they were going to go with the whole seeing their memories anyways.

But the Mystic Ruins themselves are barren too, but where I think Frontiers fails is that there's no real centralized locations like say the Mystic Ruins temple, Tails workshop or the Master Emerald Shrine.

We know how those locations clicked within the story either in present time or the flashbacks.

A lot of the locations in Frontiers are just generic other than the towers and the defensive setups, even some places that appear in the Koko flashbacks don't get enough context, so we never really clicked with the place.

Adventure, 06, and Unleashed also expand their hub worlds through the levels.

Windy Valley, Red Canyon, Ice Cap, Lost World, and Sand Hill expand on the Mystic Ruins area. In Frontiers Cyberspace doesn't really expand the area of the islands and instead show us unrelated places like Green Hill even if the story tries to justify it.

 

Here's the real question. Is it just me, or does there not feel like a notable change when you level up Sonic's speed? Now, it's hard to notice since you can't go from 1 to 11 (the max level), but even still, I don't feel that much faster than I was at the start of the game. Maybe I need a closer comparison, but it doesn't feel visually any different.

 

First time playing the game, and I agree with others who say the daytime stages are the best part of the game. I suck at them, but they are the best. I really dislike Sonic in the Gaia Gate hubs, though. He's way too slippery for some of the tight platforming you have to do to get to the stages. The bobsled portions were also entirely unneeded; I didn't feel in control of any of them, especially Eggmanland.

The werehog stages aren't that bad (except Arid Sands, fuck that one and it's fire mages and QTEs), but my word, they are a slog and a half for the most part. The platforming could have been better, more specifically the tightrope sections. I really liked the earlier stages having safety nets, so to speak, for the tightropes and wish they stayed for the rest of the game. Adding to that, the camera is probably the worst part of the stages. Sometimes I found myself falling off platforms and the tightropes, because the camera decided to suddenly shift angles, causing the controls to shift with the camera. I played the entire game unmodded up until Eggmanland, because I just didn't have the patience to grind the werehog up to par for the boss fights (or any fights, really), and it still took me 41 minutes to get through it.

The Dark Gaia boss is one of the weakest final bosses in the entire franchise up to 2008. The Light Gaia sections weren't too bad, nothing a little trial and error couldn't fix, but the Super Sonic part is the worst I've played Up till now (SA2 and Advance 1 come close). It starts you off with almost no health and you have to build it back up by collecting rings that you can barely even see (and people complained more about the Time Eater rings?) and you have no option to build it back up after reaching the shield. At the shield, you're forced to wait 20 seconds before you're able to move again, only to find out the camera is far too zoomed in for you to fly around safely and attack those worms. If you failed, it meant having to wait almost another minute before getting a chance to kill the worms (longer if you didn't collect enough rings).

The presentation is where the game truly shines (and is probably why so many people loved this game despite never playing it). The soundtrack is one of the best in the entire franchise up to today and the cutscenes, pre-rendered or not, are grade A. The story, while not my favorite, is also well done. I wish the games between this and Frontiers had the same amount of love the story writers gave this one.

All in all, the game's alright, but it is very flawed. I'm not coming back to it for quite a while, but when I do, it'll be to replay the daytime stages. Maybe some of the early werehog stages, too.

 

Perhaps it's an unpopular opinion, but I think Unleashed started the barren storyline approach that Colors and Generations continued.

It's just that it has more of a flashy presentation so it at least doesn't make you notice it as much.

But you're right, like say in Colors, the story just pauses. It started the whole standing around talking>level>standing around talking>key point story progress>standing around etc etc.

It presents issues that get resolved right away like Tails getting hypnotized/turned into a robot and solve within the same cutscene like Colors/Lost World.

Even if the other games's stories weren't great they still kept the characters progressing through the story. (Minus Heroes)

Eggman just goes away. Seriously, compare how many setbacks he put the characters through in Adventure to this game or any game after that.

He actually felt like he was smarter/competent and more of threat in that game and has never reached those heights again. Well maybe in SA2 he had his moments as well.

But again, since you have the hub worlds/npcs/side missions/medal collecting you at least don't notice it as much since they keep you busy.

 

There's a lot of things Unleashed established that the following games continue, but to this day Colors gets almost all the flak for those elements because Unleashed dressed it up better and Sonic Team "cared". So yeah, very much an unpopular opinion.

 

I think I respect the hubs the least of all of Unleashed's disparate gameplay loops. Slowly sauntering around getting scavenger hunt advice from NPCs is the last thing Sonic needed in 2008. It very obviously exists just to fill in time between the actual gameplay. The Werehog could be made much more fun with just some speed and damage values tweaked around, but the hubs would need a whole conceptual do-over to be acceptable to me.
I imagine SA1's hubs were conceived back when it was in development as 'Sonic RPG', probably with slow movement and mandatory NPC interaction too, like a real RPG. But they then took that concept and properly fit it around the final gameplay loop. Unleashed does the opposite where it forces you to engage with a lame village minigame that has almost nothing to do with the main gameplay loop. The Chao Gardens are often derided as excessive but even those let you have your base movement untouched, hell the Dreamcast versions let you roll around murdering your chao if you so please.
How cool (and a proper use of 7th gen tech) would it have been to give us a big open main town to boost around in? Maybe with even a day/night cycle that would force familiarity with both gameplay styles in a safe environment. I think the hubs bother me more than the Werehog because the potential was even more obviously wasted. Everything the game makes you do in them is just shit literally nobody asked for.