Sonic Team: Sonic Adventure 3 may never happen

The only reason Sonic Mania happened was due to circumstance. Clearly Sonic Adventure 3 is in the same boat.

Modders get to work.

 

Has anyone in this community besides Dude and MainMemory even dabbled in Adventure shit to the extent it would take to make a Mania-type game?

 

They'd need to create a new 3D engine that replicates Adventure well enough to be considered an extension of that. Then they'd need to port Sonic Adventure levels over, or remake them all, in the new engine.

 

Not even that as UE4 and Unity are readily available.

Have the Sonic Adventure games inspired anything from a game development standpoint? I don't think so.

 

I agree with Iizuka that the series should move forward, not backwards. The Adventure series was fun, even impressive for its time, but it hasn't aged that well IMHO. I'd dread to go back to its formula, with over 3 playable characters and a bunch of mediocre alternate play styles that are mandatory.

 

It already happened several times, etc.

 

Sonic Team: Classic Sonic won't return after Sonic Generations.

 

Yeah, Iizuka's pretty likely to change his mind within a few years for sure. Though I don't think an Adventure Formula title is next on the docket, I think an Adventure 1 remake is likely to happen sooner than later. Then using it as a framework, they'll develop an original title.

 

I thought people were asking for a Sonic Adventure 3 ironically...

 

For a huge amount of people, SA2 on the gamecube was their introduction to Sonic. Was for me, even! They just don't tend to show up around here because they're more the often-mocked "deviantart fanbase" or whatever.

A Sonic Adventure 3 with ONLY speed stages and Sonic Adventure 1's more open level design would be pretty great.

...actually, that would just be Sonic Utopia as an official game. Get to it SEGA.

 

Yeah man, that thing with one stage.

 

I still stand by my feelings that Adventure 2 was the perfect game engine for the Sonic speed stages. You had flow, moumentum, and physics still being applied, but in a 3D space, all in a constant 60FPS, and while it still had glitches, it was far less glitchy than its much more heavily scripted predecessor. Were the stages too linear and in that sensed deviated further from the classic formula than I'd like? Did I miss the zany artstyle of the classics even in 2001? Yes. and Yes. But the engine itself was tossed out so soon after being nearly perfected.

Don't believe me? Watch this final rush speedrun.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LATq36Kw3BE

This one isn't a TAS, and stuff like the wallrunning trick is absolutely something the classic games would use, while also not really being possible in later games.

We'll never get this engine back because it was Naka developed and largely a product of its time, but I wish 2006 could've been built with this engine rather than whatever abomination they coded for it.

 

I truthfully don't even know what the Sonic Adventure Style is, tbh. The 4 "Sonic Adventure Style" games are all pretty drastically different, with Sonic Adventure 2 and Sonic Heroes being probably the most similar. Even in terms of Tone, Sonic Adventure 1 was much closer in tone to Sonic 3 & Knuckles than the later games, IMO.

I clearly understand what the "boost" games are - they're basically Sonic Rush in 3D. I just don't think most of the other 3D Sonic games had that distinctive a style, other than being poorly-playing, angst-toned games.

 

Yes, absolutely. Given funding I could easily assemble a community team to make a legit gameplay successor to Sonic Adventure.

 

I'm genuinely curious, people have been clamoring for years for more Adventure but all the fan game engines and 3D things usually go for Heroes-style, more of a freeform Boost formula design, or so forth. Even '06 was accurately recreated in terms of core engine by Gistix. Those that do try for more of an Adventure formula never seem to understand what makes Adventure tick, either, and they may as well be Sonic Robo Blast 2 except even more awkward usually. Is it because it genuinely is pretty damn hard to recreate the Adventure 1/2 gameplay style, at least for Speed and its physics, or people constantly sidetracking into adding all sorts of other things and never managing to keep their ideas firm?


It's weird that only when Sonic Team officially announce they have no interest in returning to the Adventure style combined with the fan reception to Forces do people begin setting up trying to take things into their own hands.

 

I'd say the main reason you'd see this is because replicating the character movement behaviour of the first Sonic Adventure, as well as the level design, is a fairly challenging task. It requires a mastery of 3d math/logic & 3d gameplay scripting that the other gameplay styles don't. it also doesn't help much that in terms of game engines, the popular prebuilt choices don't make it easy. I mean, it's easier than it's ever been, but making Sonic 06, Sonic Heroes, or Colors gamplay in Unity is much, much easier than making Sonic Adventure.

 

That would be quite the valid criticism if Utopia, in one stage, hadn't demonstrated more understanding of the 2D Sonic formula translated into 3D than any game, even Adventure (the only 3D game in the series to even attempt such a feat), official or otherwise.

Unfortunately for you it does.

An Adventure 3 with tightened up controls, more emphasis on physics, and better level design would inevitably just be an official Sonic Utopia (at least in mechanics, not music or art-style).

 

Can't the Retro engine do that already? I'm just going off what I remember from an old chat but Taxman said he can do 3D and 2D with his engine, its just what 2D is what its known for. I'd love to see a proof a concept video ala Sonic 3 video of his engine attempting SA1.

 

Almost any 3d engine can do it. The hard part isn't picking an engine (and building one would be a colossal waste of resources), the hard part is the character controllers & level design. What you would probably have to build yourself that *might* count as engine-ish (but not really) would be rapid prototyping tools for world geometry and interactive object layouts. Just about everything else technical can be done with pre-bought software.

Edit for clarity: The most important take-away from this post is that the statement '3d engine that replicates Sonic Adventure' is nonsensical. What makes Sonic Adventure has nothing to do with the engine.