You'll find that people just...automatically assume the Japanese scripts are just inherently superior regardless of the merit of it.
Seems to happen a lot with other things. New York? That's just a bleak hell hole full of ads. Tokyo? That's a super duper kawaii paradise! Swords? Get that away from me! Katanas are the real deal! I wonder why this happens.
In hindsight I also have to wonder if the CGI trailers were an earlier draft of story. Sonic outright tries to punch Sage in one of the trailers from earlier this year only to be knocked back, whereas in the final game he never once actually acts hostile towards her. Spoiler I genuinely wonder if Sage WAS the big bad at some earlier point, only for them to add The End later on after everything else.
I mean, I thought Classic Sonic wasn't planned to be playable, just a story element, until fan reception to the initial reveal had them revise it? Not quite the same, but comparable.
I mean, I think a lot of the time, it's correct. SA/2/Heroes were mostly similar but mistranslated a bunch of stuff and added some corny lines for Sonic, so it makes sense to prefer the JP scripts unless you think Sonic has no personality otherwise (which is an argument you could make, and which I have seen, though I don't necessarily agree). Shadow had all the awful attempts at "maturity" added like light swears and such, plus it misunderstood that part of the ending is about making sure the ARK disaster never happens again. 06 is just horrible in all versions, though I don't know what specific comparisons there are to make since no matter how many times I play that game I can barely even remember the plot. It's with stuff like Secret Rings, Unleashed, Black Knight where you can actually argue that the English script stands tall by the JP ones, as they both portray a lot of the same feelings and atmosphere (though I DETEST Chip's English voice, holy shit). But from Colors on, you've got Pontac and Graff, who can be funny, but the lack of tension is apparent (note: this is a bigger problem with Sonic cutscene direction post-06) and anytime the JP version tries to be sentimental or serious, the EN script tends to bungle it (not that it would save Forces). I think the question with Frontiers is not whether the JP script is worse, but why it's worse.
Usually scripts are one of the earlier things to lock down in game development if I remember right. Things can change, stuff can shift around, late re-recordings might be necessary, but games like Final Fantasy VII Remake and its sequels have had their plots effectively tuned through entirely well ahead of their full development. So seeing what some JP fans assume to be machine-translated English-to-Japanese word salad garbage amidst some things being 1:1 and some things being completely changed, which includes characterization and story context altogether, makes me wonder if Kishimoto and anyone else effectively had full time for the JP localization or not, and just when it was done in the game's development cycle. Like, there's straight up problems that make no sense unless whoever handled it didn't even have their own game as context and didn't really read most of the English script mid-interpretation of the English script. This sort of thing doesn't really happen like this. JP Sonic has always had significant differences in handling how characters react to things, but even endgame character-important conversations are broken or replaced with exposition here. I think I remember something or another about adjusting it for Japanese audiences, especially since they're not as familiar with Sonic thanks to his more western-oriented success, but I think at this point the better goal would to just.. stop trying to do that. It clearly didn't work here. It's like all those censoring or rewriting JP-to-ENG localizations people complain about, except done in-house by the team members responsible for the script in reverse.
What? What on earth are you talking about? Nothing has ever once suggested that Classic Sonic wasn't supposed to be a part of the gameplay in Generations. Nevermind the fact that the Generations Classic Sonic teaser and gameplay reveal were only about a month apart...
Finally finished the game! It took me quite a while, thanks college After around 26 hours I can say my thoughts haven't changed much compared to my initial impressions I posted a while back. Exploration is solid (if a little clunky), soundtrack is godlike, controls are amazing and the plot is lovely. The latter is not perfect by any means, but having an actual real plot again makes me so happy I can ignore most of its flaws, if I'm being honest. I will never overstate how surreal it feels to have Sonic and co. being back to their old selves after so long. Seeing them all together on the plane in that final cutscene had me with the biggest grin on my face. The gang is back! Now if only they could fix Shadow... After finishing the game I replayed through the entirety of the cyberspace stages with arcade mode, and man, I gotta say...I really do love this. I know I'm a minority here; most people don't seem to care very much for the boost stages in this game. But as far as I'm concerned, putting aside all the open world stuff, on a pure level to level basis this is actually one of the strongest boost game...ever lol. It easily beats Forces and Colours at the very least. As for Gens and Unleashed, well...I'll have to see how they fare once the honeymoon phase is over, but while Frontiers' stages are shorter and less complex for sure, they're an absolutely joy to blast through. So...iunno. As for the game's flaws? Too much 2D, what are the odds? There's entirely too many 2D cyber stages, and they're also waaaaaay too fucking much of it on Chaos Island, yuck. I appreciate the fact that they segregated them in cyberspace but what excuse do they have for the overworld? I genuinely thought we were finally rid of 2D stuff when they showcased the main gameplay loop, but I guess I should've known better. Oh well. Overall? An easy 8; 8.5/10 for me and one of my favourite Sonic game ever, period. This is an incredible new direction to take the series in, and I can't wait to see what's next.
this is what happens when you get filled with misconceptions about shit and no one corrects you for 11 years on it
No, I definitely remember someone in the know saying that the classic gameplay as it is wasn’t part of the original plans for Generations. I was under the impression that both Sonics would have had similar gameplay but I don’t recall if they got that specific about it. Also, that Japanese script, yikes… I understand why Japanese fans are upset. I hope somebody there makes a mod to add Japanese subtitles to the English script or something.
I thought I remember hearing once that modern Sonic was alone in the game at one point, and it was called "Sonic Anniversary" beforehand. That was probably some game of telephone we were all a part of, but I don't know for sure.
I remember hearing that the 2D/3D stage split was always part of the plan, but you would have just played as modern Sonic in both acts. This was always jut hearsay and speculation based on early leaks though. I don't remember seeing anything backing it.
Yep, the earliest leak of it said it was a bunch of old levels remade and called it Sonic Anniversary. It didn’t mention classic Sonic but that doesn’t necessarily mean he wasn’t in there.
I finally got around to playing this, I have a lot of thoughts but can we talk about he draw distance? It's atrocious and it really hurts the game. Half of the game is "how do I get up there" and the answer is 9/10 some spring or rail you can't see until you walk all the way up to it.
FYI about the draw distance thing: it's not an "engine issue" or anything like what that one video essay would have you believe. The video made a convincing argument, but that turned out not to be the problem. The problem is some objects just have a set low draw distance. DeaTH discovered this a few days ago when he found a value that controlled the draw distance of objects, and was able to crank it up to about 3x. See this tweet. The early object layouts for Kronos Island have a much more reasonable draw distance in general, so... what gives? My theory is they turned down the draw distance on things like platforms and collectibles for optimizing the Switch version, and then just forgot to change it back for other version. Or this was the intended draw distance all along. Who knows.
If I were to guess, I think they just didn't want a huge disparity between versions. Everyone takes a hit so one of the biggest demographics of players don't feel like they got ripped off.
I think it is very possible they reduced the draw distance on objects because of how horrible the game would look with all rails, boosters, springs, and platforms visible floating in the air at once.
I've heard this suggested too, but when I'm playing I can still see a lot of these rail structures a lot of the time, more than enough to distract from the imagery they created. If they were actually worried about the game looking cluttered, wouldn't they have erased all of it instead of ruining my artsy photos with shit like this? Besides, they have to show you that that stuff's there so you know where you need to head next.
