I think an abridged version of the story in-between stages and bosses could work like it was done in Unwiished.
Unleashed still had every regular cutscene from the HD version, just no hub worlds. Even still, 06's story itself is the problem, picking up the pace can only do so much.
P-06's modus operandi up to this point has been to clean up and polish everything about the game, yet also to never omit or outright change anything (no matter how deeply flawed). So them just bringing back every story beat and hub world, regardless if they're good or not, sounds par for the course to me. The hubs could be just as dull and the story just as abysmal, but at least it won't be buggy and the cutscenes will be animated better. This sounds like a really negative spin but it's about as straightforward as I can be about P-06 and my problems with it. It's respectful to see someone try to shape this up into the game it would've been if finished, and the sheer amount of talent and achievement on display can't be denied. But it's still Sonic 06. You can only butter that up so much. And I've seen a lot of people in recent years try to push P-06 as "history preservation" as it allows people to play 06, but.. does it really count as that? Emulation has always been an option, and Xenia can play it just fine. If anything, this being most people's main way to experience 06 has been painting a false narrative that it's more visually/mechanically polished than it really was.. but I digress.
No, I think that's a fair way to put it. I'll go as far as saying there's some definite value in 06's stage design, but my biggest gripe with Project 06 is that it almost always feels like it should be doing more. This brings us back to the age-old argument, of course: how do you "do more" while still having it recognizably be Sonic 06?
If you were to make Sonic '06 "good" you'd be making a completely new game with the same soundtrack and some similar concepts. P-06 elevates a flaming trashfire to a merely average experience with pretty graphics. And you know what? That's fine. It is pretty novel being able to play a take on what a properly finished Sonic '06 would be like. But at the end of the day, it's still Sonic '06 and you can't really change that unless you're completely redoing the level design, structure, and mechanics. Acting like P-06 redeems Sonic '06 and proves it would've been good with more time in the oven is... generous at best, revisionist history at worst.
I mean like everything it always ends up being about personal preferences anyway, right? I've been saying for years 06 has by far the best level design of any 3D Sonic game, and the absolutely broken state of the game is what really held it back. P06 fixed it, and so it instantly became one of my favourite Sonic game ever. I'm not ashamed to admit it: while I wouldn't dream of calling retail 06 anything less than an unplayable broken piece of shit, P06 absolutely fixed most of its issues and made 06 into a pretty good experience that every Sonic fan should play for themselves, I think. I mean, there's no fixing the story so the game will always have that going against it, but I suppose the start button was invented for a reason lmao
The huge disconnect that this game consistently causes is that when I see statements like that, I'm wondering exactly what the flaws were supposed to be that Project 06 fixes, because even though I think the original game has some strength to its level design, I think that so many of the core mechanics and underlying design philosophy are fucked-up that there's almost nothing that just a bit of polish can do. The gap between Project 06 and a modded playthrough on Xenia with some fixes and improvements is not so wide that I feel shaken in this judgement. What exactly is the huge overhaul here?
-Improved physics/handling for all characters/stage gimmicks -Improved buddies movesets (Rouge, Amy etc.) -Drastically reduced loading times I've highlighted the first part because that's the real gamechanger here: while the stages themselves had pretty stellar level design in the og game, the physics were so unbelievably fucked up there was no way to really enjoy them, lol. The characters were stiff, the spin dash and homing attack were at their absolute worst, the light speed dash worked whenever it damn pleased, and interacting with any stage gimmick (be it grinding, snowboarding or the vehicle sections) brought me nothing but pain. And last but not least: Sonic was the best character in the game, and every other character just felt like...a shittier Sonic, lol. Also I hope you enjoy having to wait 20 seconds everytime the game needs to load something. I know it's a dead horse at this point, but it needs to be said: the loading screens in the retail 06 are absolutely inexcusable. P06 fixes all of the above flaws, by making the characters and stage gimmicks actually fun, making each character unique and banishing the loading times to the hell they came from. There was a LOT to fix, and this project did exactly that: I don't really feel like "they didn't change 06 enough", because all these changes really make the project feel like a completely different game at points. A good game I agree, but...you're talking about a modded playthrough in Xenia here: it's still night and day from the retail release! I'm not familiar with emulators that much, but I'm pretty sure playing on them already get rid of the loading times issue, therefore automatically removing one of the biggest flaw from the OG release. And that's not even getting into the physics and bugs fixes these fancy mod managers come packed with. Believe me, I recently did a playthrough of vanilla 06 on my 360 slim (because I guess I hate myself like that), and then played P06 right after: it really is a completely different beast. I'm not pretending like P06 is a gift from the gods that came out of nowhere: it's the culmination of years and years of project of making 06 into something playable. From the xbox 360 mods of the early 2010s, to the Generations 06 project, to what we have now: an overhauled, "fixed" version of 06. And I think what this project accomplishes best is finally answering the question for every Sonic fan: "do I like Sonic 06?" If you played it and you still think the game is dogwater, then it's official: you never would've liked 06, no matter what. If you played it and you think the game is...actually decent, maybe even good? Then yes, P06 does show that 06 could've been a good game for you, had they just had more time to develop and polish the final release. To repeat what I said in my original post, "it always ends up being about personal preferences anyway". (Also can we please, please stop using the term "revisionism" when talking about the reception of cartoon blue rat games? whether it's for colours or 06 i just wanna throw myself out the fucking window everytime i see it)
See, that's the thing. I know it's all down to personal preference, but I feel like regardless of what we like or dislike, calling Project 06 a wholesale "good version" of 06 misunderstands what made 06 bad, or at least provides an incomplete understanding. I can actually deal with fucked-up physics. I like Forces and Lost World just fine, my problems with Shadow the hedgehog don't begin with it's controls, and while I'm not turning down improvements, there's more to the games than that. And the thing is, Project 06 still kinda does have weird physics. Like, sure, the acceleration follows a more normal curve and the terrain can actually effect your speed, but the game is still inevitably designed around a very stiff Sonic, and thus Project 06 has to make one. The gravity is the big culprit here, where characters have a rather-low terminal velocity despite the cramped level design, which means their horizontal speed in the air has to be cut to keep them from totally overpowering the stages. The game still frequently locks you in rooms where you have to do bland button-mashy combat, Sonic still has to have his weird upward homing attack, because a lot of the levels depend on it, et cetera. And this is all just Sonic. Shadow and especially Silver fare a lot worse because their levels were kind of bad from a conceptual standpoint. Shadow has become better in the most recent update, with his combat being sped up, but it means his levels end up feeling like a mix of repeating Sonic's sections half the time, and a load of hot air the other half, as well as invalidating a lot of his combat upgrades by basically just making him feel like Sonic. Silver, in an attempt to make his gameplay closer to the intention, loses the one thing that was fun about his gameplay, breaking it to speed through the levels. No matter how much you polish it, a slow guy who can't attack normally and has to find physics objects to pick up and fling at enemies is going to feel less thrilling than the entire rest of the cast who can break through it all with a single button press. The point is, if you're agreeing with me that Project 06 and a modded 06 install can be compared, and you also believe that these are somehow worlds away from the original, it feels like you're saying it doesn't actually take that much to make 06 bearable. Like, sure, I played the PS3 game and the loading times sucked, but so did everything else about the game. I feel like the declaration of "finally 06 is good" can only come from a place of not needing as much work as Project 06 puts in to like the original.
P-06 is a better game than 06. That much is clear. But is it a good game? Eeeehhh. The level design has the potential to be good because the maps are spacious enough to possibly make room for player expression, but for some reason the layouts remain just as extremely automated as the original. Controls are improved and closer resemble SA1/2, yes, but Sonic's steering still yanks around in air and on ground erratically, making your movement kinda untrustworthy. Sonic still instantly dies in 3 inch deep water. Ramps/springs still launch at wildly inconsistent speeds and often end with Sonic losing all forward movement and dropping straight down. The Mach Speed sections have been upgraded from "unplayable" to "borderline unplayable". And the game still segments stage chunks for no good reason (ie: Crisis City still puts a loading zone halfway through a loop at the start). These problems, although included for accuracy, actively hold the game back. As for more subjective thoughts.. The game still loves to interrupt the flow of levels with cutscenes, and is going out of it's way to add some. Amigos are better to play as but still kind of unwelcome to me; I'd rather run through a whole level as one character. Characters still talk nearly non-stop, in fact they added even more dialogue in (yippee!). And as much as "press the start button lol" does work to skip story, sometimes context justifies or even elevates what's happening on screen. A bad story is gonna poison the well no matter what you do there. And the character models remain fuckin uuuuuggglllyyyyyyy oh my God they're hideous LOL. Improved animations aren't going to change that. So for me, the best we can buff 06 is up to a.. 5. Maybe a higher 5 on a nice day, but a 5. I mean, it's playable. It's got some goodness in it. But it's still Sonic 06 at it's core. If the best Sonic 06 can be is subpar, I don't think it was worth it. I kinda wish Sonic fans spent more time rebuilding / remaking the Adventure games or something. But I also can't tell people how to live their lives, and I don't wanna disrespect the work put in. Ah well. I mean it can be revisionism if it convinces an entire generation that the game's ideas or execution were only held back by being unfinished. It's also def fueled a rumbling underbelly of fans online (not here, think Twitter and other pockets) that think 06 may have been always good, actually, including the story and aesthetic choices. It's kind of a slippery slope. And I could write that off as "personal preferences", but "personally" I gotta draw a line somewhere, yeah? People can have their takes on it, but a rise of fans siding with this game of all games is uh. Concerning. Especially for how much Sonic Team loves to cater to fan response. lol
Lots of good points here, I'll only reply to a couple of things because I'm currently balls deep in school work but I agree with a lot of what's been said. Or rather...I don't disagree with it, to be more accurate? These are all good point. Vanilla 06 is bad. There's no guarantee the final product would've been anywhere close the P06, too. And if you don't like 06, there's a good chance you probably won't like P06 either. That being said... Be careful what you wish for Because yes, that exactly what I think: while Sonic 06 was astronomically fucked-up upon release, due to a variety of reasons...I feel like it didn't actually take much to make the game fun for me. But again, different strokes for different folks, yada yada... Really why I love this project so much is because it showed me people disliked 06 for a varity of reasons. I thought everybody agreed the game sucked because of the loading times and glitches, but it seems a lot of people have problem with the game on a fundamental level, which kinda...surprised me! The discussion surrounding this project has been so interesting and peaceful (for the standards of the fanbase, anyway), I've enjoyed reading each and every post about it. I guess we need around 17 years for us to cool down and talk about a Sonic game in a civilised manner, uh? Can't wait to finally be able to tell I loved Forces in 2034, lol
I think my biggest conceit with it is that it's a remake, made with no source code, straight from the ground up. It didn't have to 1:1 copy 06's problems and boldly cling to them, it could've taken another approach and made a far better game. Maybe that wouldn't have been Sonic 06 as we knew it, but... that's good! It shouldn't be, imo! lol It's something I've seen far too many times in the weird phenomenon of fans remaking 06. Almost all attempts want to painstakingly recreate it, warts and all. We have the Generations mod that makes everything move, sound, look and behave like it did in 06 verbatim. Before P-06, there was a whole 'nother Unity-made 06 remake also trying for a tooth and nail recreation, before the two fought out for relevance (and P-06 won). And before that, badog2002 made a 2D sidescroller version of Sonic 06 with extreme accuracy in 2011. I just.. don't understand. Over and over we have talented folks that can resolve this game's deep-rooted issues and they just.. continuously refuse.
It seems to be a common trend to the Sonic fangame and modding scene. Like I've said before, fans love to mod the crap out of the official games, creating custom levels, implementing new characters, fixing glitches, adding bells and whistles, but... they rarely seem to show interest in addressing the games' greatest shortcomings. Like, it seems to be generally agreed upon that level design is a weakness in Sonic CD, Chaotix and Advance 3. And yet I've yet to see any hacks for them created to specifically fix or improve the level design. The 06 remakes you mentioned take that one step further, recreating the flaws and all as you said.
I think the problem with these games is that they aren’t well documented so hacking them is still sort of difficult. (Fortunately that seems to be changing for CD, and it seems likely it’ll change for Advance 3 since the Advance 2 decomp is making great progress.) Thought the sentiment absolutely does apply to Sonic ‘06, which is pretty well documented.
If you care about a game enough to completely remake it in another engine, its broader flaws probably bother you less than they bother others. And, making bigger changes to the original game's structure requires more work, even if those changes seem obvious. So I'm not completely surprised to hear that most projects don't go that far. Not to mention that, once you cross that point, there's no clearly defined end goal - you could easily end up chasing the moving goalposts of a "quality product" until the end of time.
We don't have hacking tools for Chaotix or Advance 3, and while CD's levels are pretty sparse to go through if you're not searching for generators (y'know, the actual meat of the game), it'd be pretty unfair to claim it's on the same level of blandness as Chaotix. Frankly, I was considering trying something exactly like this just for the back half of Advance 1, just didn't find the time (and I don't know how robust that game's editor even is).
CD's level design is much more divisive than it is derided. Just as many people like it's level design (me) as they dislike it. Even if you view it under par to the other classics in that department (I don't), it's nowhere near as bad as Adv3 or, god forbid, Chaotix. If one sees a game as mostly fine, I see even less reason to remake it from the ground up. Why not just go for improvement mods instead? Refiguring out a game's structure may be extremely difficult, but there's no way it is harder to make one's own 3D Sonic physics engine (see: youtube search results for "3D Sonic engine") and make it vaguely Adventure/06-esque than it is to 1:1 replicate every little quirk in how Sonic 06 moves down to an extreme pinpoint accuracy. Like, superhuman levels of replication. It's spooky how close it is. No source code, no nothing! Guy didn't even play 06 before he made it, he just watched videos of it! It's extremely impressive, but equally baffling to me lol.
Is there an interest in a level hacking tool for Chaotix? I probably still have my notes somewhere on the layouts and I think I just saw some sort of open-source SonED clone I could probably easily modify to support it?
I mean, I don't think anybody's gonna say "no" to it. But I was just bringing it up since there's been discussion of Chaotix recently and the stage design is at the center of a lot of criticism. Don't feel obligated to do anything on my behalf.
