Sega: Future Sonic games to be inspired by classic Sonic series

Oh, wow.

I'd love to see this hold true. They marketed Sonic 4 the same way.

 

And here's hoping we don't get a repeat of that

On a serious note, if they're gonna play ball and look back to the classics, I'd love to see a proper Tails' Adventure sequel. I honestly think that if Sega can't get Sonic working, the least they can do is try the next best thing. For some reason I keep thinking of Wayforward's Ducktales remake as a great example of where Sega should draw some inspiration from.

 

How can anyone believe a marketing director about the quality of a future game who most likely hasn't seen the game nor has any real input. Also this PR speak is nothing new from Sega. You should all know by now that trusting words like these is like believing your partner isn't going to abuse you anymore after giving you black eyes 50 times before.

Excuse my cynicism, I think I will just take the stance I'll believe it when I see it.

 

3D titles "inspired" by Classic Sonic. Sorry, but for the most part it just won't work right. In my opinion they actually did finally get the 3D right with Generations, but than just disregarded it all when they did Lost World.

What I want is for them to make a full fledged Classic Sonic series separate from the main 3D series, kind of like how Nintendo has New Super Mario Bros as well as the 3D Mario games (except in Sega's case hopefully they will be a lot better done than NSMB).

 

Honestly, with the direction Colors, Generations, and Lost World were taking, I'm not surprised at all. It's been pretty clear that "Modern" Sonic has been taking some notes from the Classic era lately, at least as far as art direction and game structure goes. I don't find this particularly hype-worthy (nor does it make me pessimistic, to be clear) - I just hope the next mainline game is good :v:

 

Get ready for the new era where we chug nostalgia more than ever, strip whatever tiny remains of coherent storytelling out for reasons that were never legitimate (the whole "Sonic never had a story" thing), and every game from now on is 2D. After all, that's what they mean by 'inspired by the classics' right?

Pessimism aside, if they actually learn from those games then we'd be in for a great game but I'm just gonna keep doubting that... since Sonic 4 and all.

 

How do we define Classic now? I mean Adventure is pretty old now. So many types of fans to try to cater for so many different playstyles.

 

The Sonic Boom cartoon really speaks to me with this news:



"You should expect the expected, and nothing more...

..cause you've all heard this song and dance before..."

 

What annoys me most about the series is that it's always stuck shifting back to the same gear. It never really *moves* forward.

I don't care for the "We're going back to our roots!" talk we've heard over and over again. Sonic doesn't have to play exactly like a twenty year old game to be fun; Colors is a fine example of that. Sonic Adventure had its high points too, besides a few things that its sequel could have improved on. (And didn't.)

All they need is to consistently release finished products that are legitimately finished to wow people and maintain the quality of the brand. (Maybe hire a decent writing team too, because while Lost Worlds as a game looks okay to me, the story was beyond embarrassing to watch clips of.) It's not really much to ask for to keep the critics in journalism at bay.

A game that plays like the older games would be fun either way. What I really want to see is a fun experience. Doesn't matter how they do it, as long as it has lasting value.

I say this a lot, and I'll say it again: Metroid Prime's Morph Ball Mode. Classic Sonic in 3D can work, but clearly nobody with an understanding of pin ball physics has taken the reigns.

EDIT: Seriously? The word pinball was tagged in the filter? That scared me silly because I was sure I don't normally type in all caps on a web forum.

 

The communication between countries within SEGA is bad, but it's not that bad. SEGA Europe/West does know SEGA Japan's plans for the franchise, if they didn't they wouldn't be able to make their own. Them wanting to make the SEGA brand like it used to be also lines up with what the SEGA Games CEO said earlier this year.

 

This is what makes me believe they're somewhat serious this time. Normally we get these comments from Iizuka but he's just lying through his crooked ass teeth. But we've heard this from 2 sources now, and with the classic emphasis for Sonic's 25th and Runners being a bit more retro feeling than modern, I'm inclined to believe them.

I hope they make good of their words this time. I don't want Sonic 5 as I truly imagined it.

 

I'm sure that the new CEO does intend to give studios more development time. We've already seen this with the delays for Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice, Total War: Warhammer, and possibly Persona 5. Relic is also taking their time with their new Dawn of War game, which still hasn't even been announced and is the first game that they started making while being owned by SEGA.

Though of course it'll take some time for us to see how Haruki affects the quality of the games SEGA puts out, as he only started being CEO of SEGA Games since earlier this year. It seems like he did a good job when he was a part of the mobile and digital departments though.

 

Plus we don't even know what normal console Sonic is being worked on. Whatever it is, it seems to have had Sonic Team's almost complete attention since Lost World, save for the people working on Sonic Runners which can't be that many. If it does come out next year that'll give this game a, what 3 year development cycle (When did Lost World come out originally, 2013)?

 

Not just that, there's also the possibility of it being delayed if it's not good enough for launch this time around. :v:

 

Wow. Getting really the vibes of being thrown back to Pre-Project Needlemouse era again.

I mean, it gets even more ironic now that we have likes of Generations and Colors along with other "Classic-pandering" side games being out there already which more or less have done everything that is being promised to us here. Sounds like whatever these guys might attempt again will just be met with less favorable reception due trying to live up to the standards set by Generations these days. So yeah, them bringing out a quality game would be still a bit of a lose-lose situation if people will compare their new game as "Generations 0.5" incase Sonic Team aspired to go higher than that with their possible next console Sonic, or even worse, being regarded as inferior to Generations or similar games due not building on the gameplay further or taking steps back in some departments (less than Lost World, but not just having the same amazing quality or tacked with some side gameplay to pad the game up like in Unleashed)

But again, I digress - can't really wish to see another Unleashed when requesting "something to round out the regular Sonic-gameplay". I guess it means Sonic's potential in 3D has already been exhausted out in means of discovery and polishing which lead us to Generations. Yet that felt mostly just taking everything the fans wanted from their ideal Sonic 3D-game and making a fanservice anniversary game at the same time. It's like Sonic Team could just use to be run by the fans instead of the crew inside when it comes to any remotely good ideas to make Sonic marketable and successful in the 3D market he's been trying to catch up with since the 00s. (Starting from Shadow the Hedgehog, me thinks).

Kinda shame however, as I still think the Adventure 1 felt more or less best translation of Sonic-gameplay in 3D.

 

Oh okay the speculation about games we barely know anything about has started. I guess this is why we generally don't do these topics about games we don't know anything about.

I mean, we don't know anything outside of "New Sonic games will be inspired by classic Sonic games", which really has been the case for all Sonic games in the past five years outside of Sonic Boom. It's just a tiny nugget of info that just confirms that Sonic Team's still trying to pander to nostalgic fans.

 

I can't even bring myself to be bothered enough to make a proper comment. Everyone's already said just about everything I could say on the matter. We've heard it all before: the series is always "going back to its roots", Lost World is an attempt to get the Classic look in 3D, the actual problems (like a poor understanding of what made Sonic good in the first place) are never addressed so they focus on the louder but less significant complains like story and 'shitty friends', the series hasn't progressed since Unleashed...

Ugh. I'm just fed up. Come wake me up when SEGA have something to show. This spiel has gotten old.

 

I guess - but I'm just looking through what all we've got so far in means of the games with this very mindset in place. But again, yeah, that would just open another can of worms when now trying to correlate that to what could be the gameplay we don't honestly have any idea about. I guess went quite ahead of myself when laying my thoughts on this matter.