Using natural elements to diversify each creature feels fresh and creative to me. I dig them, in an aesthetic sense. Gotta wait to see their relevance in the game.
I quite agree and it never helped that it came after Sonic Gen and had a 4 year development cycle, so hopes were high (for me) All that said, I enjoyed parts and didn't think it was a bad or terrible game, just not brilliant and a massive comedown after Sonic Gen. I did think Sonic Forces had some of the better boss battles found in a 3D Sonic game mind
It also didn't help Forces that Mania was coming out the same year. So it was a lot of "Who even cares about Forces? We're finally getting another actual Sonic game!"
Really, the context surrounding Forces is a large reason for the fans' overreacting. If it was just a mediocre game, I don't think anyone would care as much. But it was a mediocre game when the future of the series was uncertain. Remember, we had three whole years of Sonic Boom, with the last mainline game being in 2013. There was a LOT of anxiety. So to get a tepid game like Forces after such a long hiatus felt like a slap in the face. Especially if you weren't particularly interested in Mania. And let's be real here, a lot of Modern Sonic fans do not care about Classic Sonic. So having him in Forces plus Mania just too the wind out of the sails even more. Bottom line, a game as mediocre as Forces was the last thing anyone wanted to see after such a long hiatus. If it came out in say, 2015? Backlash probably wouldn't have been as bad.
Sadly, as games get bigger, and costs get higher, waiting 4-5 years for the next Sonic game is going to be the new norm. "Anniversary" titles are a thing of the past. People wanted Sega to stop rushing their games, and that's exactly what they're gonna get. And the people who wanted them to do so will once and for all understand that Sonic games don't come out as unpolished janky messes because of a lack of devtime, or a lack of budget, or rebooted gameplay, or new inexperienced developers, or the hardware they're making it on, or any of the excuses fans like to make every time we do this song and dance. It's simply that Sonic Team, and perhaps even Sega themselves outside of RGGS just aren't very competent at making video games anymore.
I don't think that's what people are complaining about in the way that you're presenting it. I just think the automation is concerning and disappointing because sonic could easily have been using the world he's in to traverse, instead we get bounce pads and rails that automatically do the travelling for you. The design doesn't mesh with what's supposed to be an open explorable environment (in my opinion). It seems totally disconnected from the world you're in and makes me wonder why they bothered putting you on an island in the first place.
Sonic Team has produced the majority of the Puyo Puyo games under SEGA, to great reception, as well as a Sakura Wars reboot in 2019. They are very competent with making video games. From a technical level the games they produce (post 06) are well polished and devoid of bugs as well. The Sonic games just haven't been that fun because the design philosophies but things like Forces simplicity was deliberate, just a bad idea. SEGA is doing fine right now. Persona, SMT, Phantasy Star Online 2, Two Point, Total War, Super Monkey Ball, and the mentioned Puyo Puyo and Sakura Wars have all well received entries in the past 3 years (as well as Yakuza but it's not the only franchise they have that has been well received recently) The only reason someone would think SEGA no longer makes good games is if they only keep up with Sonic.
I also wouldn't rule out the inexperience of developers as factor in this. Sure, it's not the only one and it main not even be the main one but it's objective fact that developers on Unleashed, Colours and Generations later left SEGA for Nintendo or other studios. Those left behind could be doing better and some issues are certainly by design, but there is most certainly correlation there.
I think it's a bit derisive to call every reason people come up with for their frustrations with Sonic an "excuse" while also saying Sonic Team, who aren't really a totally-consistent group of people, are simply bad at their jobs and that's the whole reason. There is obviously something deeper going on with the Sonic franchise than just needing to get rid of X person or Y amount of budget or Z dev time. We obviously struggle to figure out what that something is, but I don't think it's right to go after people for theorizing.
Here’s a list of people who worked on the boost games who left Sonic Team for other companies. This is built off of a prior post by me and a post by someone else. I included source citations in a prior post where I gave this info and I’ll add them to this post later: • Yoshinobu Uba (Unleashed Daytime Level/Generations Lead Level Designer; LW System Designer - Cygames, Drecom) • Tetsuya Kobayashi (Production Manager Sonic Unleashed - Mario Kart 8: Deluxe Course Design) • Ryoichi Yamagishi (field artist Sonic Generations - Course Design Mario Kart 8: Deluxe) • Makoto Yonezu (lead field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Planet designer on Galaxy 2 - lead landscape artist on Zelda BOTW, Mario Odyssey field art) • Daisuke Amakawa (field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Character modeling for Zelda BOTW) • Hideaki Hakozaki (field artist on Sonic Unleashed - Producer Xenoblade Chronicles X) • Keihan Fujii (field artist Sonic Unleashed - Landscape Modeling Zelda BOTW) • Masahiro Ukai (Programmer Sonic Generations - Programmer Xenoblade Chronicles 2) Game/level design wise the biggest loss was Uba. The majority of people sega lost were artists. At least in this list I’ve provided. I may have missed some other people who left. I’ve also heard that many of the best staff who worked on Unleashed and Generations haven’t actually left sega but are working on the Mario/Sonic Olympic series instead of mainline games. I have not looked into that claim. If someone else has or wants to, information would be greatly appreciated
Ah, alot of these are from Mobygames which are bullshit, because it is very often the case 1. the names are the same of the same person 3. the professions don't line up "field artist" and "production manager" and "course designer" is not consistent, or they jump from company to company. It's also possible that minor artists and programmers are listed on the backend and are not employed by Sega but a company like Planeta Inc. that provides services to many companies. It is true that the lead lighting artist of Unleashed was snapped up by Nintendo due to the great graphics work (similar happened to Hashimoto who made the engine for FFXV), but that is really the only notable person. Yoshinobu Uba, Hiroshi Miyamoto and other Generations developers actually entered the mobile industry (also within Sega) for reasons unknown. I actually made a thread on Resetera about this: https://www.resetera.com/threads/so...-games-mobile-and-sonic-boom-at-fault.611199/ Tbh Sega is actually competent at developing all kinds of games if you look out the comprehensive output of console, arcade and even mobile Platformers, physics and well made level designs are hard aspects for games to make. In Japan, only Nintendo is really capable of really well crafted level designs anymore imo. See also the trouble that Sega had with new Monkey Ball entries.
Brought it up in another thread, but Sonic Team also lost Unleashed's director in 2009 to Square Enix. Said director then became their Chief Technology Officer and lead development on the Luminous Engine, whose "sibling" engine powers Square Enix's most successful Final Fantasy game. If Sonic Team's devs "just suck", you'd think they'd "just suck" at other companies too, but they're evidently very damn skilled.
I've done this quasi-research before, when I've tried to trace departures from Generations and answer why the games afterwards fell flat, but it just isn't that clear cut at all. It's true that Hiroshi Miyamoto stepped down from directing the Boost games after Generations but a lot of the developers of Generations worked on Lost World. Additionally, Lost World had a much bigger team than Generations and was clearly intended to be a major project. Sonic Team put all of their effort behind Lost World and were probably proud of it and riding off the momentum of Generations. It just didn't work out. The TL;DR of the situation is that the Lost World team was predominantly made up of the Generations team. The Forces team had some replacements in certain departments (such as level design) but was also largely made up of Colors and Generations staff. I think it just doesn't fit with the public perception at all which is why people like to imagine all kinds of scenarios. People like to imagine the Generations' team as doing a mass exodus and Lost World being developed by a bunch of juniors. Which would explain to them why Lost World was so mediocre in comparison. It doesn't help either that there has been a completely unconfounded narrative over the past ten years about an A and B Team. But when you look at the credits of the Boost games, the same people have been working on all of the games since Generations. it's just that a few people left or went to work on the Mario and Sonic series. The A and B Team was a fantasy which people invented because they wanted to delude themselves into thinking that the A Team was about to jump out with an amazing Generations' style successor at any moment. It was never going to happen. People have a very binary view of game development. They just can't understand why people could make Generations and then create Lost World. They seem to think that developers only create certain types of gameplay styles. We don't have the credits for Frontiers yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if many of the people on Forces worked on Frontiers, despite the games being so different.
And that's probably one of the most consequential departments to have replacements in, when we're talking about video games, where the main thing the player/end user is doing is playing through levels. Even calling them replacements is being generous, because there's just flat out less of them than there had been prior. Generations had 8 game designers including the lead. Lost World had 7 (no lead, it seems). Forces had 3 including the lead; that lead (Jyunpei Ootsu) is the only one of the three to have worked on a mainline Sonic prior, and they weren't involved with Unleashed or Generations. I've said this before, but I'm pretty sure the "A Team and B Team" thing started because of the development of 06 and Secret Rings. All that said, and bringing this on topic, I'm eager to see what Frontiers' staff looks like. I hope they've got more than a skeleton crew working on level design this time.
The problem with Sonic is that we don't have well estabilished sub-series like Mario has. That's why it feels like forever, waiting for a new release. Paper Mario, Mario Kart, Mario Party, Superstar Saga, New Super Mario Bros, 3D Land and World Series. And most of these are pretty great too. What we have with Sonic? A racing game once in a while, mainline title and a one shot Mania. I would love to have an RPG series with Sonic (yeah, yeah, Sonic Chronicles was bad, I know) once in a while, and a 2Desque Mania game, to hold me over between "big" releases.
I'd kill for the Riders series to return. More Dimps/Taxman/Whoever 2D platformers would be nice too. I doubt we'll be getting many spinoffs unless the next couple games prove to be successes, though.
I’m going to double check my sources and provide more details later today or tomorrow but I want to quickly add: my main point was that there were significantly less departures from sega both overall and in terms of folks who specifically worked on game/level design. Uba was the big loss to Sonic Team. I didn’t realize that the mobile company he was working was a part of Sega. I’d like to thank trippled for that info. I will be reading his thread of info soon.
Ah, its not Uba who worked on mobile games for Sega. The lead character programmer (what I assume is physics and controls) actually got to work on mobile games from Sega. Gonna dig that up and post it later. And yes, I do think Forces and Frontier staff overlap very heavily. 60 people are said to be working on Frontiers. Same amount that Forces had.
The other characters genuinely need their own games. I want to see what hi-jinks the others deal with.
The Earth will heal when I finally get a game exclusively dedicated to the terribly violent adventures of E-123 Omega, complete with a Big the Cat fishing minigame.
