"Multiple" new Sonic games planned for 2021

Yeah, compared to SA1, I always saw SA2's shooting levels as worse (the mechs were clunkier, and the arcadey action of Gamma's stages was less of a focus), its hunting levels as significantly worse (though I'd at least credit them for having a variety of unique ideas), and its speed stages as significantly... different.

At the time of release, the vast majority of complaints re: SA1 were about Big's fishing levels, and (secondarily) whether a Sonic title should have featured so much time devoted to alternate gameplay styles. (Well, and the English script and voice acting. I remember plenty of people bragging about how they refused to play it with the English voices.) Still, the vibe I got was that the hunting stages were the second most-popular by a pretty wide margin, with some even preferring Knuckles' gameplay over Sonic's. This fed into why SA2's hunting was such a letdown: They got it right the first time, and dropped the ball the second.

 

Gamma was a lot more Sonic-like than SA2's Tails and Eggman. He was faster, closer to Sonic's size and had the traditional ring system. I can understand why they made the mech levels more distinct in SA2. After choosing to focus on 3 styles of gameplay instead of 6, it's natural that they'd want each one to feel as unique as possible, rather than just having Sonic with lock-on-missiles. But people liked Sonic with lock-on-missiles, because that really did feel like playing a Sonic game as one of Eggman's robots, rather than playing a different game entirely.

I think there were 2 problems with SA2's treasure hunting stages.

1. The radar didn't react to all three emeralds simultaneously like SA1's did. This was a necessity for the hint (and scoring) system to work, but it was less fun. (SA1's hint system wasn't great either, "this way" was too hand-holdy.)

2. Miyamoto has described Mario 64 as a "miniature garden" game. Knuckles' SA1 levels had a similar design sensibility, each one being a small, open, but densely populated environment that you can explore. SA2's levels abandoned the miniature garden approach and spread out and compartmentalised the environments too much. Instead of being in a field where you could go in any direction, you often had to run through long corridors or take a rocket to another planetoid, and if your radar didn't ping then it was a wasted trip.

 

I was kind of just throwing that out there as a possible option. Personally, if the different characters with overlapping stories approach is kept, I think the best way to improve the story (with the flashbacks specifically) is to have all the characters early on in the game see the destruction Chaos causes before being sealed in the Master Emerald, then let them each see a different flashback later in the game where they see a bit of what led up to that. Then the characters could talk about the visions they saw and try to reconcile them with the destruction they saw earlier. That's one idea anyway. I've always wanted to make a video explaining how I would reimagine Sonic Adventure, focusing especially on how to better tell the story, but that's probably just a dream.

I agree that a remake of SA1 should go for classic physics in 3D, since that seemed to be what that game was trying to do. But for SA2, I don't know that that would go over well or even work well. SA2 was decidedly not trying to be classic Sonic gameplay in 3D, but was instead trying to be a modern spectacle platformer. Physics were deemphasized and flashiness was instead one of the main incentives for replayability. Most people who want Sonic Adventure 3 (from what I understand) want Sonic Adventure 2 2. And I honestly think that's the approach SEGA would have to take if they DID make SA3, simply because that's what most people would probably be expecting, and they'd be heavily criticized (by the Adventure 2 fanbase anyway) for making the Sonic 4 of the Adventure games (even though people seem to think that's what Forces is...). A lot of the vocal Adventure fans don't seem to want anything that even resembles classic Sonic in modern Sonic games, so to make a modern Sonic game that had classic physics would be met with significant backlash (although I personally would find it hilarious and would enjoy a GOOD classic physics 3D game, like Robo Blast 2 in a 3D engine).

Also, I LOVED the emerald hunting gameplay (in SA1 anyway...), but I would be interested to see stages for Knuckles where the objective was just to get to the goal. One of the things I liked about SA1 was the sheer variety it had, but if it were re-imagined, making it more focused would probably be the best thing to do.

And like, that's the thing about remaking SA1. It (I thought anyway) was trying to be classic Sonic in 3D, so to me, it would make sense to remake it that way. But if the goal is to appeal to the Adventure fans, do you remake it to play more like SA2? Can you imagine if Emerald Coast played more like City Escape? It seems kind of weird, right? If SEGA wanted to make a 3D game based on the classic physics, then they really should just make a brand new game. But people keep asking for a Sonic Adventure remake, and unless they really try to capture the classic Sonic in 3D approach it tried to take, I don't know that it would really work that well. Because SA2 was so different from not just the Genesis games, but even SA1, the first Adventure game ends up being this weird in-between of classic and modern.

 

I'm pretty sure they weren't talking about the physics. They were talking about each character controlling the same as Sonic in the same kind of stages, like in the classic games. Of course SA1 was trying to be classic Sonic in 3D, and a remake should do the same, but he was proposing the removal of the alternate gameplay styles, not what the physics should be like.

 

I know that the topic on hand is an SA1 remake, but my hypothetical SA3 would have Sonic, Tails, and Knuckles playing like they did in SA1 (maybe Sonic and Knuckles get to keep their SA2 moveset), but their levels just involve getting to the goal ; meaning when you play as Tails you don’t race Sonic and you don’t play a short version of Sonic’s level, instead you get to play the whole fucking level as Tails. When you play as Knuckles you don’t hunt Emeralds, instead you get to play through the level as Knuckles. Any other potential characters such as Amy, Shadow, etc., heck even “modern” Mighty and Ray, would take the same approach.

I understand that some people might be frustrated if an SA1 remake took the Sonic-racing/Emerald hunting/run from evil robot gimmicks away, and I agree that if a remake were to happen then keeping them would be the safe thing to do.

But also, I can’t fully agree with the “Adventure era fans would be pissed”, because as an Adventure era fan whose first Sonic game was SA1, I would not be pissed, as the whole point of a remake should be to fix the flaws of the original. Back in the day me and my friends would have discussions like “I wish you could just play a normal level as Knuckles” and “I like SA1 better than SA2 because you can actually play as Tails.” And we weren’t old classic era fans, we were 10 year old kids obsessed with Sonic during the prime of the Adventure era, and even we didn’t enjoy the gimmicks but we still played just because of how “cool” Sonic, Knuckles, and Shadow were to us at the time.

So, my opinion is:
If it’s an SA1 remake then sure, keep the gimmicks for story mode, but give us a “classic mode” that lets us play the full levels as characters besides Sonic.

If it’s SA3, then give us a S3&K/Mania experience in 3D with none of this boost/parkour stuff, which is what SA1 was trying to do in the first place.

But most importantly, I just want a good Sonic game again. And to me we haven’t had a good one for 9 years now. I don’t care if it’s an SA1 remake or SA3 or something else, I just want a good Sonic game.

 

I agree with these sentiments completely (except for the "9 years" part, I'm thinking more like 19 years ).

 

We already got that twice

 

Maybe this is just me, but I thought we got a pretty good one three years, two months, and 18 days ago.

 

The most damming thing about Forces was the way it squandered, and almost seemed to invalidate, Mania.

The gap between the two was too short, the badly handled overlap in plot brought them too close together, the sour taste wreaked of mis handling.

I can forgive forces for being itself. Its not awful, it's not a potential franchise killer like 06 and Boom were. It is just so tepidly unambitious that, for the first time in years, I wondered where the spark had gone.
But Forces wasn't just so uninspired that is extinguished its own hype, it was like pouring cold water over mania's flames as well.

And a 3 year gap with just DLC and a racing game in the interim... A Mania 2 would (still could) restore that hope but it increasingly feels like it was a one off purely done to build hype 'for' Forces. And that... Irritates me. I actually am less likely to play Mania as every time I see the Phantom Ruby in the game I just sigh. Its like the well was poisoned. Maybe in a few years, when Forces isn't the latest 3D game I'll feel better. For example I actually couldn't get behind the mania plus DLC (I bought it, but then... Never completed Mightys playthrough) because it meant looking at that purple rock again.

I hope their plans for next year are ambitious. They need to be.

 

Nah, we got Diet Unleashed and Unleashed Zero. I need the full sugar stuff.

 

Not at all.

I've been replaying the game recently and the level design in Sonic's stages is FANTASTIC. Every level has so many routes, so many different secrets, and so many cool gimmicks that are very enjoyable. The only thing holding them back is the bugginess of the game but P-06 showed them at their full potential and they're a fun ride.

The game was rushed in all directions. The story probably would have been given a little more time in the burner, the missions would have had little things to make them less annoying, and the mechanics that weren't quite working would have been fixed or cut out. But the game gets defenders because it isn't a broken from the ground up experience. There's a lot of good in it that gets ignored and the fantastic level design is the one I notice the most.

 

Maybe it's just my biased memory, but I don't remember the level design from 06 being particularly memorable. I can remember Heroes and Shadow's level designs for obnoxious they were, but thats' still better than 06's. I really am drawing a blank on anything notable it did in terms of level design.

 

I think 06's level design was mostly kinda boring, but it was the last game whose environmental design felt interesting. As a whole, it felt way more organic and considerably less copypaste-heavy than other games of its era, with plenty of setpieces that at least provided some nice visual variety.
Of course, there are still levels like that one lava level that just feel like they go on for ages, with some segments being played over and over, until randomly and unsatisfyingly ending.

More inspired level design is what I want to see the most. SA1 didn't have that many unique levels and they weren't all winners, but there was some real variety in layout and mechanics. I'd like to see more of that, but with all the refinement it takes to put it up to a higher standard.

 

I think Colours, as much as I rag on it, was the last game to have truly inspired level themes. Lost World just had generic Mario stuff and all anyone remembers from Forces is Green Hill and Chemical Plant, ironically for the wrong reasons.

 

I actually really like the metropolis zones in Forces. I was playing it the other night and noticed some nice details in and around the buildings, and a "bright" industrial zone is still somewhat uncommon in this series. The sunset city zones are also fairly nice, I like the underground areas. The forest zones could've been really cool (they're very similar to a level concept I thought up years ago, glowing alien ruins in an overgrown forest, with act 2 taking you inside the main pyramid), but you don't spend any time in the actual casino buildings, so it's fairly dull overall.

Agreed on Lost World, Silent Forest is the only zone in that game that does anything remotely interesting aesthetically.

 

I loved the song used in one of the later Forces stages and was actually having fun with the whole game after discovering how much better the d-pad was for it over the thumb stick.

 

yes, and Sonic 4 is a sequel to 3&K because it's a 2D platformer where you play as Sonic and Tails, obviously. Who cares about the other details that make 3&K what it is that Sonic 4 lacked completely?

 

Sonic 4 is a sequel to Sonic 3&K because it's called Sonic 4

 

Shush! If I don't think about it it never happened!

 

Not if I hide in the classic timeline it isn't! *smoke bomb*