"Multiple" new Sonic games planned for 2021

This is a fair take, but I feel like the Boost games address the main issues those other games had; mainly how Sonic controls at higher speeds. A big problem with the games from that time is that the faster Sonic went, the harder he was to control. His controls were perfect for platforming, but in order for Sonic to control better at high speeds, they needed to dictate where Sonic went through the use of, you guessed, dash pads.

That's the part about the Boost gameplay that gets really overlooked, it actually makes Sonic way easier to control at high speeds and I don't think dropping that entirely is a good idea.

 

You could just.. you know. Make Sonic's turning stiffer at high speeds in that gameplay style. It's not rocket science.

 

That's not how physics work; the faster an object moves, the less control it should have. Unless you want Sonic's speed to feel somewhat artificial like it did in Lost World.

It's why the levels became more linear over time, to account for how fast Sonic has to move and so the player doesn't have to think about making jumps that are likely to kill them.

 

That's literally what I just said, though.

 

Do you mean stiffer in that he should be able to turn on a dime even when moving high speeds or...?

 

No. I mean literally stiff, as in it's harder to turn him because his movement is held close to the course of where the physics are pushing him at that speed. You're conflating that for tighter movement, which isn't the same thing I'm getting at.

 

That's literally what they did in the Boost style though; you're asking for a solution that was already implemented.

 

...Are you being thick-headed on purpose?

So you don't want to get rid of Boost because it does a thing better. We implement the thing it did better into the other thing, and yet that renders it pointless because Boost already did it.. what in the world is this argument. lol

 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I never said that the Boost should never leave, I was addressing the original point about how the style was poorly designed and talked about it's merits that benefitted 3D Sonic gameplay that shouldn't be scrapped with the style wholesale.

I think you misunderstood that as me saying "Don't get rid of Boost ever" when I was saying more "Keep the parts of the Boost that worked and benefit the gameplay".


Communication is hard...

 

So anyway, on a different note, I wonder when we're going to start seeing all this promotional stuff from the horse's mouth. I figured seeing some promo material would mean we're getting closer to... actual news, but we haven't even gotten this material from SEGA yet.

I suspected they may release some kind of promotional artwork or something for Hedgehog Day, but there was nothing - save for the Sonic Prime announcement the day before. I guess the next big date to look toward is June 23rd lol

 

I don't know, I'm (barely) of the demographic that would be saying that since I was 11 when Colors came out and played it. But for me and my friends who played it (most of whom are a couple of years younger than me), we really liked it, but we also understood that it had problems (blocky 2D level design specifically; we were well aware that those stages weren't amazing at the time). But we still enjoyed it. I think my generation (at least based on the friend groups I've had, so this is a very small sample size) as a whole is more interested (generally) in hearing and giving more nuanced opinions of things than just listening to someone rant about why something sucks or praising something without acknowledging its flaws. Which isn't to say that we don't have passionate opinions, but rather that we're interested in hearing someone else's perspective while realizing that it doesn't invalidate our own. For example, I was just too young to have really grown up with Sonic Adventure 2 and never even played it until last year. I never understood why those who did grow up with it loved it so much and were willing to defend some of the things I disliked about it (mostly the treasure hunting and mech stages, some of those are just not fun for me). It was KingK's video on SA2 that made me realize why someone would like those stages, and I really appreciated his take, because it allowed me to see that game through a different lens as opposed to one that's like my own. On the flip side, the Sonic game I did grow up with and love was Heroes, and while I still love it, I can understand why other people don't like it after hearing their takes on it. That's why I'm enjoying reading everyone defend/criticize Colors in this thread, because I'm getting a better idea of why others don't like that game beyond the bland 2D stages.

 

They didn't actually address anything though. They replaced one set of problems with another. Nothing was fixed. And no, I don't think boost Sonic is easier to control at all at high speeds. I just can't control him. Boost Sonic is a tank, and I have to fight the controls at every turn. It's designed to move in a straight line, hence the levels being empty hallways.

The real problem is that Sonic moves too fast. Nerf the speed to a reasonable level and the game is better off for it. Then build a physics engine that doesn't suck and allow the player to use that engine without being restricted by automation.

 

Generations and Unleashed do not have empty hallway level design. Levels like Sky Sanctuary, Seaside Hill, and both versions of Rooftop Run have multiple routes and a skill they focus on to get a best time.

Rooftop run , for example, rewards you for managing to stay on top of the roofs with a faster route while falling off of it makes you have to take the longer street way.

Has anyone who says that actually played those games?

 

In older games, when Sonic moved at high enough speeds he was just as uncontrollable, hence the use of dash pads or there being chunks of gameplay where you don't actually control Sonic aside from moving forward; Windy Valley Act 3 is a pretty good example of what I'm saying, where when you're running down the pipes, there's not much else to do besides just hold forward and this goes on for about 30 seconds, or the Going Down section from Speed Highway.

Boost Sonic is a tank when the game forces you to actually do precise platforming, and sure I agree on that front. But as you said, the game is designed for Sonic to go fast and that's where his controls excel at; those parts of the game where you used to be doing nothing but going forward have actual control now with moves like the Quick Step and Drift, giving the player much better control at how Sonic moves at such high speeds.

Like, even the Classic games have parts of the level where you do nothing but watch Sonic go fast, but they're much shorter and last for about 5 seconds at most. Sonic's speed is part of what makes the series unique and while its true that going too fast has been a consistent problem with the 3D games, I don't think you should nerf it so much that you lose the spectacle aspect of it. Lost World does in fact nerf Sonic's speed a bit, and that ended up being such a contentious decision that they immediately dropped it and went back to Boost with Forces.


Whether we like it or not, people do play Sonic games to go fast.

 

Yes, it's called hyperbole. Generations and Unleashed are still built out of "running in a straight line."

It's a platformer, and yet the controls show weakness when platforming. I honestly don't like the quick step and drift.

Lost World nerfing Sonic's speed isn't the reason that game was contentious. Everything about the game was bizarre with weird design decisions. I'm not saying that Sonic shouldn't go fast, I'm saying that Sonic has gone too fast in most of the 3D games, especially the boost games, since they were designed around a very shallow speed spectacle.

 

I think you can find a medium between Sonic actually showing off his trademark superpower, while still being a platformer.

But I will once again point out that the Classic games also kind of run into this problem balancing Sonic's speed and platforming at times. It's certainly worse in the 3D games, but it's no less a problem that the devs have struggled with.

Personally speaking, I love it when Sonic games do use the spectacle of Sonic's speed to it's benefit and it makes speed running some of these games absolutely fun.



Now going forward, I don't mind if they nerf Sonic's speed a bit to focus more on platforming, but I also don't wanna lose the spectacle that these games brought as well, because that is also an integral part of the series' identity imo.

 

I don't think the Adventure gameplay would necessarily need the Quick Step or the Drift to work with the stiffer controls at higher running speed.

One mostly because Sonic will never move as fast as he does in the Boost games to need it, and two because SA1 & 2's control issue was rather that you had too much control of Sonic at higher speeds. Any time Sonic jitters around a tube-shaped path like in Speed Highway or Green Forest it's because the slightest nudge of the stick made him yoink every which way. Tighten that up and it's been rendered a non-issue. None of the faster level design in those games really ask for that much control either.

At most I can see the drift being an animation/state Sonic goes into when pulling the stick at a dramatic angle while moving fast, but that's about it.

 

I think the quick step is a good move, it could act as a dodge of sorts to avoid quick attacks. Rather than remove that move I say repurchase it.

 

But they don't do that. They just make Sonic run about as on-rails as you can without running on rails.

Look at the 3D sections of the boost games. They are almost always extremely thin and consist of either straight lines or shallow curves where you can run into the wall and the game guides you along the path. The times they do actually do 3D platforming like Dragon Road's spinning circular sections or parts of Seaside Hill Modern, they're always insanely short and often let you skip a bunch of the platforming with homing attacks. That's not improving Sonic's control. If anything, they intentionally made it so that these 3D sections are shallow fluff: setpieces, but you don't really do anything, you just let Sonic do cool stuff. When they do actually make you platform, it's often hard and annoying because the controls are so highly constrained.

Like the quick-step? The quick-step (and drift) are basically Sonic Team admitting "yeah Sonic basically can't turn while boosting" so those exist. The QS so you can dodge obstacles (reduced to "get in the right line" like it's a rhythm game or something) and the drift to take tight corners if Sonic needs to do a hairpin or something (but usually they just automate you through it with dash pads). The stomp? The stomp is a concession to the fact that Boost Sonic when he's blastin' takes a million years to stop so they give you a instant downwards move to make platforming not insufferably slippery. That's a straight-up refutation of the physics-based controls that Sonic was built upon. At least make it like the bounce attack in SA2.

The problem with this is that the Boost games degenerate into effectively a string of QTE's. Boost here, jump there, slide there, quick-step here. See a breakable floor? Stomp through it. See a hairpin? Drift through it unless you're playing forces then just get automated through it. You don't platform so much as hit the right buttons when the game puts them up. Clever use of physics, something the Adventure games definitely allowed for even if it was annoyingly de-emphasized, is basically gone. They are impressive and fun your first few times around, but afterwards, you're just left with a QTE procession.

Think of all the gimmicks in the classic games--hell, the gimmicks in SA1 (because SA2 basically got rid of level-specific gimmicks outside of a few instances and most of those were not good anyway lmao). So many of them would just not work in a boost game. Unleashed and Colors basically don't have gimmicks in that sense (Colors has gimmicks but they're awful and not level-specific). Generations actually has a lot of cool gimmicks but mainly because it's re-imagining levels from games that did have them. Forces reverts back to having basically zero gimmicks whatsoever. Very little makes Rooftop Run distinct from a gameplay perspective than Starlight Carnival, or Savannah Citadel or Tropical Resort. And no, stuff like Rooftop Run having swinging scythes or Starlight Carnival having those light trails doesn't count: that's set dressing. That's fluff. Those things when boiled down are "timed obstacle" and "straight-line with pretty graphics". That starlight trail is literally identical to that quick-step section in Rooftop Run. It just looks different, and that's not a valuable difference in my eyes.

I want 3D Sonic to do what 2D Sonic does. I want levels that feel truly unique. I want levels with charming gimmicks that make each one novel. And we can have that. SA1 had that. Sky Deck and Windy Hill feel truly unlike each other. I want that again. Part of the fun of Mania when I first played it was seeing what each new level brought. Chemical Plant's bouncy gel, Press Gardens bouncy belts, Oil Ocean's submarines and smog, Metallic Madness's foreground/background switching. That kind of stuff is so charming and I want 3D Sonic to be like that. And you can't have that in a Sonic game where he's so rigid and locked down that every level has to be the same procession of hallways with sweeping curves and then 2D sections because oh god we ran out of money for the 3D sections.

It should be telling that Seaside Hill Modern only puts Sonic in water when he's in 2D. Because water slows Sonic down, and Boost Sonic in 3D straight up cannot interface with the limited scope of actions he can do when he's slow. No quick-step, no drift, slide would barely get you anywhere, the stomp is pointless. They'd have to actually design 3D platforming in water and not just a procession of QTE's.