"Multiple" new Sonic games planned for 2021

Forces is a mixture of good ideas executed badly, and plain bad ideas. I'd love another "dark" or serious Sonic game, in the vein of SA1, Storybooks and Riders ZG. But Forces goes down a really awkward route of trying to shove in content from a each end of the tonal spectrum with absolutely no coherence between the two. And they way in which they went about the serious and lighter aspects individually is still bork and jank as hell.

 

I wouldn't say bad, so much as uninspired. The same type of uninspired ideas that led to Shadow and 06.

There's nothing inherently wrong with the idea of a more serious Sonic game, and its been executed well in the past in the games you mentioned. But Sega, in their infinite wisdom, decided to play themes of war completely 100% seriously with furry woodland creatures and never considered how tonally dissonant that would be. Apparently completely forgetting the last time they tried to play with themes that they were not equipped to handle.

So then they decide to shove things that general audiences would be familiar with. Its just a frankenstein monster of poorly thought out ideas with no cohesion whatsoever.

One has to wonder if this started as a spin off before Sega demanded they retool it into a "proper" Sonic game somewhere in development.

 

Not just a military prison, a SPIDER military prison! Words cannot describe how tired I am of this motif. I could swear I've seen it at least a hundred times in the last console generation. (*SPOILER* Hell, even BotW did it.) Glad they stuck with something more conventional tbh.

I also doubt spiderwebs would have added something to the gameplay.

 

Right. But that's not nostalgia being used as a theme, a hook, or a selling point. That's rarely what recycling assets is about. Sonic Generations was was a nostalgic game with almost entirely new assets. Sonic Forces was a new game with a new theme (war) that was noticeably reduced in scope and ambition compared to Lost World, Generations, and even Colours. And so, cut corners - recycled art assets, tiny levels, talking head cut-scenes and the gameplay being a shoddy transplant of Sonic Generations. It was clearly the product of a compromised development.

It's like how Death Egg Zone and Chemical Plant Zone have the same background in Sonic 2. They weren't trying to evoke nostalgia for the thing you were doing an hour ago, they just needed to get the game into stores before Thanksgiving.

Or, for an example of recycled assets used well, Zelda: Majora's Mask. None of it was done to make you nostalgic for the game that came out two years earlier. They'd sunk a lot of time and money into developing a game engine, environmental graphics and character models that they wanted to get the most out of while the N64 was still active.

 

Forces' reused levels aren't there just to save resources though. Death Egg is entirely new assets, copied directly from SK with a few outdoor sections in the Modern Sonic act. It's a Generations-style recreation.

Forces attempts to nostalgia-bait and cut corners. Classic Sonic falls into both categories.

 

But it gave them the opportunity to re-use the existing Death Egg model for the exterior of the space station, rather than having to create something new. A small time save is still a time save.

It's a huge stretch to characterise Sonic Forces as a retrospective, nostalgic entry in the series. Was Death Egg even featured as a selling point in any of the trailers or promo material?

 

Like, you're talking about a tiny background graphic got the Death Egg's exterior. That's entirely a non-issue and realistically wouldn't be part of the decision making proces.

One thing you're completely missing here is that people responsible for marketing the game pre-release are often not the same people who are actually making the game. The people who chose to feature Knuckles, Tails and Metal Sonic prominently on the boxart are not the same people that designed and developed the game, for example. And let's not get started on Chaos and Shadow being billed as villains only to be offed in their second cutscenes without ever showing up anywhere else in the game.

That and the fact that I'm not characterising Forces as a straight-up retrospective. I've not even used that word or anything like it. As I keep saying, it's a new game that relies way too heavily on old material both as a cost-cutting measure and as a selling point. If all of the retro aspects wasn't a selling point at all, the game wouldn't have included so much of it and it wouldn't have been featured so heavily in pre-release material.

And regardless of all of this, the reason for all the "old" stuff and Classic Sonic in Forces is besides the point really. The fact is that Forces included Classic Sonic and old ideas, and not to just a small degree. That's what I'm fed up with and absolutely do not want to see again.

 

So it's all Aaron Webber's fault we got Classic Sonic? Now I know where to direct my gamer rage!

 

By the time the script comments were made, Classic Sonic was already in the game.

I think this is a pretty reductive reading of the criticism. From what I remember of viewing the early script, the commenter (presumably Aaron?) called out things that either didn't make sense or that they anticipated complaints about, such as:
- Sonic's friends allowing things to play out as they did (with Sonic getting captured and such)
- Silver being there
- calling the custom character "Buddy" (thought this sounded childish)
- Tails not standing up to Eggman's robots
- Tails making some comment about "seeing Sonic in the afterlife" when encountering Chaos 0
- the whole cast cheering the playable characters on during the final boss, which had already been done in SA2, 06, and Generations

edit: link

 

it's not even just the levels and Classic Sonic, they also brought back old villains like Chaos, which IMO only made it even more...anniversary-like. Legitimately until reading today's posts I didn't even realize that the game wasn't even billed as that.

Re: Aaron Webber, I'm under the impression that literally every comment he had on the leaked script was ignored in the final product, and that they mostly consisted of line changes and questions about character motivations?

 

I don't think the game feels like an anniversary celebration, as you put it.

I agree that Sonic Forces re-used too many old Zones and bosses. I completely disagree with the notion that the heavily recycled assets were there to bait people into buying the game. If they were, then the marketing team did the devs a disservice by not showing anyone the Death Egg. The game reportedly changed directions during development and clearly ended up having to be rushed out the door before Thanksgiving, in time for the Christmas period. I don't think I'm going to change your mind on this, or that there's anything further I can say.

I don't think there's any evidence to support this. I certainly don't recall anything like that from the leaked script, which already had Classic Sonic in place.

 

When three out of the seven stages in a game are reused from previous titles, you can be pretty sure it was intentionally done so to bank on familiarity. Sonic games have been doing that so much lately that the pattern is clearly laid out. I honestly don't see how it's even a question when it's so blatant. The very hook of Generations, that being the turn of Classic Sonic and old levels, is reused here verbatim. It's feels like an anniversary celebration because it follows so hard on the footsteps of an anniversary celebration. The parallels between Forces and Generations are there because Generations was so well received, whilst Lost World and Boom were not. The bait was simply "look this game is just like Sonic Generations with a new villain and a custom character".

I'm probably not going to convince you either. I just don't believe that the game would reuse so much from Generations without intending to ride it's success. Forces doesn't just reuse raw assets from Generations either; it's creates lots of new assets for all of its recycled ideas and content. It's all intentional.

Agreed that there's nothing further I can really say here either though.

 

Are the spiders mentioned in the interview, or are they just an interpretation of the concept art? Because I figured the spiderwebs were just cobwebs to give the place an abandoned, desolate look, rather than a gameplay mechanic or a sign that you would fight spiders.

 

While it does have some original level themes, Forces very clearly looks back to Sonic's past and so does Lost World. I think Lost World does it in a more aesthetically interesting and consistent way, but it also does it.

Sonic games have been chasing the past ever since Generations. I'm not really interested whether you want to call Lost World or Forces anniversary titles, because either way it's evidentally clear that they are trying to bank on nostalgia. Forces does reuse level assets for non-nostalgia reasons (I'm pretty sure that even Sonic Team don't think fans are clamouring for the return of Silent Woods from Lost World). But when the characters shout out in delight or despair about Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Death Egg, you can tell that they are trying to play upon your fond memories and not just reuse assets.

 

I think we are all mostly in agreement here about Forces' design concept, just drawing slightly different conclusions.

While the game relied heavily on nostalgia, reused a metric TON of assets, and brought back a bunch of super-overused classic locales, I think that could be attributed to the direction of the world Sonic Team was trying to create. Definitely a product of the shoehorned nostalgia-circle-jerk we all have grown quite tired of... but also maybe an attempt to reign in some world elements and establish some consistency in the series.

From what I remember of the promotional material, the game was very clearly marketed as the next step forward for Sonic. This also kind of tied into the game's theme of being a "revolution". It seems like they were aiming to create a world that heavily centers around a few of the series' most iconic locales, staples of sorts. It's almost like they were trying to create some consistency in the modern Sonic universe; we'd seen Green Hill and Chemical Plant and Death Egg in their modern iterations before, but Forces wanted to remind us "hey these are part of the modern sonic world, and they're not going anywhere". This is definitely well-outlined in the concept art posted above. As Blue Blood said, I imagine from an environment artist's perspective - as well as from a time-saving perspective - they cut a lot of corners compared to their original design concept in order to make things easier. But Death Egg, imo... is a somewhat decent recreation, for what it's worth.

Of course, it's entirely possible they'll just throw this entire Sonic Forces world-building experiment out the window, and they'll go some new wacky direction for the series. Heck, I imagine we won't be seeing any of Forces' new locales ever again. But they have definitely done their job - with Forces, Generations, Mania, and TSR - of reminding us "hey guys!!!!! Remember Green Hill? And Chemical Plant? And that one from Sonic Heroes? And the Death Egg? Good because they're here AGAIN"

As plenty of others have said here, it feels like every time they attempt to establish that consistency, it comes across as a cheap and lazy reuse of assets and locales. And it feels like the ONLY 2 reasons they keep returning are to create a new "baseline" for the modern Sonic universe and its world, or just to nostalgia pander.

 

if they have to reuse locals again, they should have them destroyed in the opening cut scene.

 

Admittedly, I haven't read the interview yet but this place reeks of spiders. Mainly the windows above the entrance. Almost getting halloween vibes from this.

 

Anybody got an idea when they'll drop us a crumb of news, by the way?

Obviously the whole "new Sonic news every month" thing didn't pan out (not sure why they announced that and then never dropped any info after-the-fact), and the SXSW reveal had to be cancelled.

Are they just going to wait for Spring 2021 maybe? Supposing a game is released in mid-to-late 2021, that would make the announcement schedule similar to Colors' or Generations'. It'll be a much shorter gap than the 12+ months between the announcement and release date for both Mania and Forces.

I've heard some people getting excited about the "Sonic month" starting tomorrow for Sega's 60th anniversary site, but I'm not betting on anything coming out of that. Probably just a bunch of Steam discounts and free wallpapers, like every other week thus far. Maybe an announcement of an announcement (Sega's favorite advertising practice).

 

All of their plans they had were cancelled due to the pandemic, so I wouldn't expect much of anything until the Pandemic is dealt with unless they just suddenly drop something.

 

Yes, Covid thwarted their grand ambitions to reveal 4K 60th birthday wallpapers that probably have wisps tucked into a corner somewhere for Sonic representation.