The Sonic Adventure 2 that almost was...

We'd need an alpha. A beta wouldn't be horribly different from what we have, except maybe instrumentless City Escape, no SOAPs or in-game SOAP ads, etc.

Pretty much, akin to the The Trial.

Frankly, I don't know how easy it'd be to get a hold of an alpha build of SA2. In the meantime, we may have more luck trying to reach out to people to talk to who were on the development team for the Dreamcast version.

Naka's not exactly a forseeable target and I doubt Iizuka will be much help while he's running around plugging Colors and 4. Anyone else?

 

Who's credited with the story? I'm sure they kept the same person on, they just had to cut and paste the shambles of what was left all together in what became the final product.

 

Battle fits the story well. From playing it, it's clear to me it's set well after Shadow The Hedgehog, due to the things that are mentioned and said. It takes place well after the non-existent 2006, but takes place before Advance 3, which is before the Rush games, which is also the start of the current Nintendo based games (Secret Rings, Riders 2, Unleashed, Black Knight and Colours etc.) and the Rivals series, which everyone who has played it should be aware that it's the second half of the Nega story, where we learn Nega, Blaze and Silver are from the future, not another dimension (also known in 2006 before everyone did a 'Dallas'.

 

Kind of weird how some of the games after SA2 still have some demonic references in them. In Islam Iblis is a name for the devil, the Ifrit are also evil spirits in Arabic and Islamic culture, Mephiles' name is based off of Mephistopheles, a demon in German folklore, and even the Black Arms are quite devilish in appearance for aliens (actually ShtH seemed to have all kinds of devilish implications all over it). I wonder if some of these ideas were reused and/or repurposed after the original story in SA2 was scrapped? Chao were supposed to be play a bigger role, and the fact that angel and devil appearances for them were introduced in this game seem to suggest a kind of heaven versus hell theme, as well as other bizarre elements.

But what I really want to know is if any of this got passed development? Still would be cool to get in touch with someone from Sega who was working on the game during its conceptual phase.

As for Battle, I'm not sure if anything left over from original SA2 concepts exist within the game, considering it seems to base some if its story from SA2's final product.

Edit: I seem to recall another example of the situational events that were planned for the game involving a jungle, in which you could continue to play the stage after a bomb had exploded in it (White Jungle?). I don't know if I read it in a magazine or online. Anyone else familiar with this?

 

Not to mention Maria's spirit being a hint guide would create an enormous plot hole where she could've just told Shadow what her last request really was.

I'm still simultaneously impressed that they put in the effort to giving that report completely relevant, understandable text with a texture high enough in resolution to read it, yet disappointed that it doesn't look like they proofread it.

That seems very possible. I could believe Knuckles' role suffered when they had to include more characters, giving parts of his story to others. It would seem odd otherwise if he was one of the original cast members yet felt the most tacked-on to the story (After his first cutscene with Rouge and Eggman he doesn't even interact with any other characters until after Aquatic Mine).

 

By the way

I've started to fill in a few things but it could use a few nice screenshots.

 

There aren't that many things that Shadow or Rouge did that Knuckles could have originally done, but I can think of at least one interesting guess: Eggman originally tricked Knuckles (it was on its way to becoming a running gag at this point) to taking the three Chaos Emeralds from Prison Island. The only problem is that this is incongruous with what I just said about Security Hall: that it was created at the last minute by copying geometry from Iron Gate.

 

Well, according to this magazine scan, Sonic collects whistles from badniks, which he uses to collect animals for the chao. Whether or not this was a misunderstanding or a different gameplay feature is unknown. Also, it appears that the dismembered Shadow concept art has never been seen publically.

 

My immersion! While I agree that omochao was annoying I don't think the "you're playing a video game" had anything to do with it. He just had a bad voice, and was no more "you're playing a video game" than the Tikal orbs. While I think it's important for some games not to remind you they're videogames, Sonic is not one of those games.

You're really overthinking this. There's no master timeline like Zelda. Yes there's some continuity among the handhelds but Riders and the Storybook games are each self contained spinoffs, 06 never happened, and Unleashed was practically a reboot as it minimized the cast and didn't refer to events from past games at all. Colors (Wii version) seems to be the similar to Unleashed storywise from what we've seen so far.

 

I don't find the "it used to be a 3-player game with Sonic, Knuckles, and Eggman only" theory very plausible at all.

Sure, they're the only ones shown in those trailers (unless you count Shadow), but only about 3 Zones were shown there, too. And no one would suggest that that was evidence that the game was only going to contain only 3 Zones...

Furthermore, Sonic Adventure had 6 playable characters - they probably wanted to match that amount from the beginning of development. As seen in those trailers, the whole "light/dark, good/evil" thing was a concept from the very beginning (lol at early B+W logo): what's more natural, then, than our 3 main series heroes, Sonic, Knuckles, and Tails, with "evil" counterparts to fill out a roster of 6 characters?

Also, since Shadow is shown in those trailers, he was planned as a concept from very early on. I find it hard to believe that he was planned as part of the story, but not playable - especially as Eggman was playable at that point, suggesting that the 'hey, let's have playable bad guys' idea was already in place. In fact, that's probably what led to Shadow - the idea of a playable evil counterpart to Sonic.

As for "Nails", one of Rouge's items is called the "Pick Nails". Basically, she climbs with her "nails" (as in, fingernails), while Knuckles climbs with his knuckles. Invented as a counterpart to Knuckles, "Nails" is a natural choice for the name. It has nothing to do with construction nails, of that you can be reasonably sure.

Anyway, the fact that Nails existed that early on, as well, also suggests that there was never a time in which there weren't 6 characters planned.

The sloppy, unfinished nature of some of the characters' scenarios (like dippy thrown-together kart racing to fill a Zone slot) can be chalked up to normal development pressures and deadlines. It doesn't suggest that the characters were at some point not planned - the most it can point to is that they were last ones to be worked on.

 

but one of the three (six) zones was sky rail.
And Sonic was the playable character in that level.

And then maybe they wanted to limit the characters because half the characters in Sonic Adventure were extra in terms of gameplay.

Tails was merely a slower, easier Sonic game.
Amy was much, much slower.
And then there was Big. Beyond the fact that fishing sucks, it probably wouldn't have went well with the dark nature that was planned (or speculated as the plan) for Sonic Adventure 2.

With that, I think the three playable character theory is pretty reasonable.

 

Well, since we are talking about SA2 proto stuff...

I have just found this file on the iso:

MSGCHAOKINNET_E.PRS

I've decompressed it into a bin file, and read the text inside. Its pretty interesting:

Maybe this has been brought up before, but I haven't seen it anywhere.

 

Also if it hasn't been mentioned a hundred thousand times already and if it has I apologise.

The budget on this thing was significantly smaller than Adventure 1 so maybe it's why there were so many ideas and not much to show for it.

 

I don't think I am overthinking it at all. It's not like I've gone and added additional information or re-arranged the titles drastically. It's clear from the games that there's a continuity. Perhaps not per-se an 'master timeline', like Zelda 'officially' has, but there's definitely a concise continuity in the games. Since Sonic was revitalised with the Dreamcast, and even more so since Sonic Adventure 2, when the series took a different turn, Sonic has had games with interconnecting storylines. The main series (SA, SA2, SH, StH, S2006, SU) have all been connected. The other titles which are exclusive to certain systems are also connected by and to these titles, and effort has been made to create a sense of continuity and story. Games like Secret Rings and Black Knight may not have an exact place, but that is because they don't need to- why would Sonic HAVE to read a book at a certain time in the series? Why would we need to know? We don't, and that's why we have to just assume those games come within the Sonic timeline between the 'normal' games which are released around them.

Why does Shadow have his memory in some games and not others? What other explanation is there other that the games do not nessaccarily appear in the order they were published? It makes perfect sense, and considering that future storyline games like Sonic Battle, Sonic Advance 3, Sonic Chronicles are realised alongside the 'normal' games, then it even further carries this notion.

To be honest, I don't particulary care what order the games go in, as long as they're good, but when there are blatent references and even hints within the games- especially ones including Shadow, a character created for the purpose of telling a big, complex story-and people seem to wash it off as 'SEGA didn't think', then I think it demoralises and diminishes the community. We should embrace these things.

I understand that a lot of people don't or won't accept things because it wasn't "How Sonic was or what Sonic was to them, or what it still means to them", but the facts are there.

I'm not trying to sound pissy, sorry, I really hate it myself when people try and piece together shit that really can't be pieced, or when people fill in the gaps, but that hasn't been done. The story is the story, and when one plays the games, it's plain to see that- no matter how much effort SEGA put in and making it 100% obvious.

Comments; I will 110% happily sit and write out a very formal, formative and credible work, detailing these things, and the evidence to support such notions. I love the Sonic games, and part of the fun is having some sort of story to play with.

 

You JUST trashed this thread. I am dissapoint

 

Alright, calm down, there's no need to get all stereotypical-internet-forum-member on my ass.

I was just making an overly-long comment. No need to continue it beyond in this thread. That's the reason why I was pretty careful in what I said, we're not exactly here to talk about the story, but it did come up.

 

How can Rush and Rivals exist in the same time line if Rush prominently has Nega from an alternate dimension and Rivals prominently has Nega from the future?

 

Why the hell are some of you arguing about timelines?

I think some of you are overthinking this whole "Chao will be more important" statement.

I don't remember right now whether you were awarded emblems in SA1 for winning Chao races, but that doesn't really matter. By saying Chao were going to be more important, they might be referring to the fact that winning Chao races meant getting emblems, which makes them more important than SA1 because this time collecting all emblems actually gave some reward