Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode II Prototypes Found with Unused Ending

Considering Whitehead's CD proof of concept was showcased before Sonic 4 was even announced; I'm going to say that's probably not what happened.

 

Just sounds like Ken Balough era SOA marketing where they’d say things like that thinking it would appeal to fans but often ended up just pissing them off and/or falling apart under scrutiny, who can forget Webber’s infamous “speed is something that is not given” post?

 

I'm having trouble figuring out which archive in the release contains it. Any hints?

 

Yeah sure thing, it's in the 14854/Sonic 20th Anniversary folder. Any of the rar's will do (Aside from Screen Shots.rar), since this was a compilation app after Sonic 4's release I don't think there's any differences between them. Then navigate to Classes/Sonic4/Game/src

 

Thank you kindly!

 

The thing I most distinctly remember from the Sonic 4 press/marketing blitz was Sega talking the game up at some trade show, and the person interviewing their rep kept trying to ask about Sonic Colors, and the Sega rep was just kind of like "yeah but don't you want to hear about Sonic 4? Sonic Colors is our stupid game for babies"

 

IIRC, Taxman made his CD proof-of-concept and then pitched it to some pitch program SEGA was doing. That was how we got CD2011.

 

Not only that, but the shit they were saying about Sonic 4 was just buzzwords. All of the marketing guys and community managers knew that Sonic 4 was only going to upset and and disappoint fans, but they had a job to do. An impossible one, even.

Mind you, there was some genuine ignorance. When it first released, S4E2 was locked to a low resolution for some reason. When people complained, Ken Balough claimed it was intentional and the game would look worse if it was rendered at higher resolutions because the textures were low resolution. A month of two later it got patched and, as expected, the game looked better at higher resolutions because that's how resolution works. Dude honestly didn't have a clue what he was talking about half the time and was the wrong person for the job.

 

I think Sonic 4's marketing and pr resembles the absolute lowest moment for Sonic. Especially the lead up to Ep 1 when they did the posts crossing out Sonics friends. Imagine if they did that now. Lol!

 

Just kidding, but a certain part of this community really deserves to be humbled every now and then.

 

I don't understand what you mean? The Sonic community deserves to be told by SEGA that the characters of the franchise suck?

 

I think he's talking about all the fans who want the franchise to return to the Adventure formula, multiple playable characters and all.

 

The Sonic community deserves to be told that they can't always get what they want.

Hell, I learned this lesson back when I wanted a genuine follow-up to the Genesis originals and got Sonic Rush: Rehashed Levels Coated In Vaseline Edition instead.

 

I've always wondered if the lukewarm reception of Sonic 4 is part of the reason why they've never attempted to make Sonic Adventure 3 proper. I know it sounds kind of dumb but a name can be a very powerful tool and "Adventure 3" is one that fans have been demanding for years lol

 

I think that can be applied to a very vocal sector of the entire internet gaming sphere.

 

Honestly I don't think Sonic Team meet fan demands all that often. There are times where there happens to be cross over between Sonic Teams direction and fan desires like Generations and Mania but a lot of the time they just do what they want. Colors and Lost World were not at all in touch with fan wishes either at the time or now. Both have been blamed for doing the opposite of fan wishes. Forces maybe - could argue either way. But while Frontiers has been very popular I don't think it's something fans were demanding. Fans just took to the approach Sonic Team wanted to do themselves.

 

Forces' biggest criticisms from fans were its linearity, not acknowledging previous games' narratives, and humorous dialogue. Hell, these criticisms got so big that both Tyson Hesse and Aaron Webber were sent to comfort the creator of an extremely popular video "essay" where he spoke about this subject with such utter hopelessness and desperation that he almost sounded suicidal.

So when Frontiers comes out with open world gameplay, constant forced callbacks to games from 1999-2009 and dialogue so utterly serious and lacking in self awareness that it sounds borderline robotic? Or how about that cutscene where Tails looks directly at the camera and says that he was written poorly in Sonic Forces? Yeah, that shit was 100% done for the fans.

 

I still can't believe that a game like Forces can seemingly traumatize this fanbase. Like it committed some grave sin by being a mediocre, badly-written game in a series chock-full of them.

 

No, that's because Sonic Adventure 3 was Sonic 06.

What I find funny about it is that the problems with Forces were so radically different from the big problems with Sonic 06 or Shadow 05 that they're not even comparable. What the fans want in one era vs another completely changes on a whim. Mania led to a bunch of adventure era fans criticizing the classic era fans despite otherwise having universal appeal, something that would've been unthinkable in the fandom climate 10 years earlier.

 

This us vs them mentality ain't gonna get anybody anywhere, especially on the sonic 4 episode 2 prototype thread.