I mean the point's been stated pretty plainly - something is better than nothing, and the resources to craft a mechanically distinct character aren't guaranteed to be available. Episode Shadow told a story which was background for the main plot. It was a a fairly economic way to add more content to the game while giving another character the spotlight, reskin or no. With that work already done, it'd be a waste not to put Shadow in the game proper afterwards. It's the same logic with echo fighters in Smash. When resources don't allow for a whole new character to be made, a reskin is just the next best thing and preferable to those resources being wasted.
Like I said, depends on whether they actually provide something new. Shadow in Forces at least had his own levels and story. Something like Metal Sonic in SADX is just a pointless gimmick in my book. He got Sonic's levels and no story.
Sonic 2's Special Stages were always impossible for me past the 3rd one, so Sonic couldn't go Super for me either, unless I was using cheat codes. But, yeah, mechanically there's no point in playing as him, but given that it's a cosmetic change, there's a cosmetic point in playing as him. That's a harmless addition. I know I played as Tails alone fairly often, and I would have loved if Generations gave us Tails, Knuckles, Shadow, etc., even if they were just as skins.
They are certainly near-impossible with AI Tails running into bombs and wasting all the rings for Sonic + Tails playthroughs.
Reskins are fine for fanservice purposes, but having a character who offers a mechanical difference will generally be gratifying depending on the execution. That said, resources aren't infinite, just adding one playable character would take time and money. Its a quantity vs. Quality issue; you can't have a game with like 5 playable characters and expect them all to play mechanically different...unless its a mutiplayer game. But Sonic isn't a multi-player title so yea. I feel like for a platforming series like Sonic, focusing on a single style and putting the best effort is more ideal. Fans have been complaining about more characters but I feel like that's because the games haven't had any meaningful gameplay improvements lately. People loved Generations after all and you play primarily as Sonic there. If you make Sonic's gameplay as good as possible, there won't be much of a need for more characters imo.
Well, that and the fact that we've already been getting debatably "filler" gameplay styles since Unleashed, just with... other flavors of Sonic. As much as I liked the Boost gameplay in its prime, I hope Sonic's next successful formula will be easier to sustain from a development standpoint.
I feel like it's really boring (and a bit of a game design dead end) to say "this character is the exact same as Sonic, but ______, otherwise they are doing the exact same thing", especially if you're going to give that character their own story. In the 2d games, this "works" because the name of the game is outright replaying the whole game, but in most of the 3d games, this is switched out for wanting to provide a singular experience where you replay individual parts of the game and not the whole game through. People seem to express this with Sonic Heroes as a complaint, so it kind of makes sense why they would go other ways going forward. Side note, I wonder if people distinguish Sonic or Shadow in Sonic Adventure 2 in any way, or if they consider those two the exact same part of the game even though they're really not.
I'm fairly curious why you think so give they are functionally the same despite Sonic having the most levels and Shadow having the least.
As much as I want Knuckles to be playable in regular 3D stages for once, it's hard for me to ask for any playable characters when Sonic Team can't even get Sonic's gameplay right. Since Frontiers looks like it's going to have a new gameplay style, there's a very high chance it might end up being mediocre similar to Lost World which also had a new style.
Are we really going through this again? It's pretty much guaranteed that Sonic's going to be the sole playable character in Frontiers, at least in the base game. I do hope that, if the game does well, they'll later make a DLC/expansion starring Knuckles, purely to take advantage of the open world structure (or at least what we know so far).
To clear it up, I meant that Sonic Team probably doesn't need more piled onto them when they still need to figure out how to make Sonic play good.
I've been thinking about the scenario where if Frontiers succeeds, Sega will take that engine and remake the first two Adventure games. Mainly so they can revisit how to implement additional characters in a modern context. They've been adhering to the format of "every additional character has their own campaign" or "you constantly swap characters around in a single campaign" since literally the first Sonic Adventure and its plain as day that is no longer a viable strategy in this day and age and they can only ignore the extra characters for so long.
Honestly, I’m perfectly fine if they keep Sonic the only playable character. 99% of the time a Sonic game has had other playable characters (Adventure 1, 2, 06, etc.) all I can think is “man, I wish I was playing a Sonic level right now.” Adventure 2’s Knuckles stages are the biggest example of this.
Which is why people are asking for the return of alternate characters, not alternate play styles. Big difference.
Yeah sorry, misinterpretation on my part. Usually the two seem to go hand in hand so I guess I assumed people were asking for Adventure-style character stories.
Generations was the peak of Boost style, and when Fans asked "Ok, Sonic controls good now, can we have extra characters now?", their response was to deviate from that style with Lost World and then regress the style back a few hundred evolutionary steps with Forces, almost as if to spite those fans. "Sonic's not controlling good anymore, gotta spend a whole decade getting it right again, sowwy." Even if they knocked Frontiers out of the stratosphere first try, I'm not holding my breath for them to introduce other characters even if they played 1:1 identically.
In light of the whole Origins digital deluxe spreadsheet fiasco I wonder if SEGA are planning something similar for Frontiers? I wonder what sort of stuff they would plan on excluding from different versions.
