Would You Rather A Modern Or Classic Style Game For The 30th Anniversary Game

What I mean is that Sega's decision making when it comes to this series focuses more on the micro rather than the macro.

Like the Boost formula. At the time, it was good and well loved, but it was something that wasn't sustainable for the long term, and by the time Forces came out, you can tell they were stretching themselves thin with trying to expand and add content to it.

Obviously, they can't be expected to account for every contingency ever, but as a business their decisions have always been pretty questionable. Now we have this nonsense with two world and Classic and Modern being two separate entities, among other things.

 

I fully understand the hardships of game development, and I'll admit a lot of that is speculative on my part. The bottom line is, none of us really know what's going on behind the scenes when these games are being made, so all we have to go on are our own assumptions based on the final products that we get.

It's incredibly frustrating and mind numbing not understanding why this series is the way it is now, and what could have been done to change that. I don't think its a stretch to say that most of us here don't really like where Sonic is at right now, and that's an incredibly ugly feeling to have about something you used to be so passionate about. There are a lot of other franchises I've grown up with along with Sonic that I can still appreciate and love what they are, but it often feels like Sonic is the only one who refuses to live up to the standards everyone has for him, and it's hard not to find something to blame for it.

 

Something like another reboot or so?
Could become another can of worms...

 

At this point, anything the series does is a can of worms. Even when it does nothing, it's upsetting someone. We're in a no win scenario at this point.


So yea, fuck it. If they wanna nuke the whole series and start from scratch, by all means. If they wanna continue down the path they set, then do that. But for fuck's sake, whatever they decide to do, just make sure it's actually competent and thought out.

 

As long as it's done with love for Sonic games and not rushed, anything can do just nice, but it might be too much to ask in the rough modern times lol.
Although I'd rather prefer a classic game with multiple playable characters, Rouge and Shadow for example, we still haven't seen them in any of the official classic game.

 

In terms of the art style, I still think Tyson Hesse's styles are the perfect mix of classic and modern. Modern should use the Team Sonic Racing Overdrive style, Classic should use the Mania style. Both styles are distinct yet similar enough, and accentuate what makes modern/classic so appealing (whilst still being visually distinct designs), with expressive designs that are boiled down to what they *need* to be (rather than just adding superfluous elements just for the sake of it). I also really love how the shading is done, it harkens back to some of the old Adventure-style shading but toned down and more natural to look at for long periods of time lol

Within a 2D game, I think that's the next evolution on from pixel art if you *have* to change it. That's not to say I don't want pixel art, but a hand-animated style similar to the Mania cutscenes would look absolutely gorgeous.

Within a 3D game, I know that'd be pretty impossible, but I think they definitely need to do something different. Forces looked markedly worse in terms of art direction, where nothing really felt inspired and instead just felt boring and flat (even with the new lighting engine). Cel shading would be interesting to see explored, but it'd come down to whether they could pull that off.

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As for gameplay... yeah, I don't care to be honest. I want:

• I want a 2D game, whether it's inspired by the classics, Advance, Rush, or even Rivals, if it's fun then I'll take it.
  
• I want a fully 3D game that feels like an evolution on what we have. But again, I don't care whether it's Adventure or Boost style, or a mix, or even something that uses more physics-based interactions. I just want something that is an evolution on what we have, so we can see they're actively *trying* to make a fun game. Forces felt like a step back from Generations, when it should've been a leap forward.

My faith isn't very high for Sonic right now, we've seen nothing that shows they've actually learned from Forces or Mania. I would like remasters/ports, but I'd rather them have released those during the previous few years with no news, rather than now dump them all in the same year we're probably going to get a new game. The whole point of ports is to give you something to play whilst no new game is released, not as a "it's an anniversary release! Have everything!" release. Periodic small releases with a large release every so often is a lot easier to wait for, than a huge content drop at random intervals.

 

The other recent 3D Sonic games just haven't felt like they've been up to par with modern game design, even in the triple A world. So many games nowadays give you an array of fun tools that create a bunch of dynamic possibilities (in addition to dropping you in a free world, but that isn't necessary) but Sonic Forces stuck with a really lame binary style of gameplay that would only be acceptable back in 7th gen but is hardly attractive now with all the other choices of games we are given in the mainstream space. Like, man, think of all the fun possibilities that a grappling hook mechanic alone could give you in a game that Sonic Forces absolutely squandered in favor of just not really being a mechanic at all, really.

 

I would like to say I would rather a classic style game...

...but I think my opinion is wrong, because I feel as though I am too old to play these games, even the classics, I almost never play the originals anymore and rarely play any other games either...

Am I just an old man in a rocking chair now?

 

I actually agree with your point that a lack of foresight contributed to Forces turning out as it did, but my reasoning is kind of the reverse of yours.

I think there's plenty that can be done to refine and improve the Boost gameplay and Boost games in general, but I'll be damned if I saw anything of the sort in Forces. Both the Boost gameplay (and the Genesis gameplay for that matter, especially so) are so far regressed from past installments, that it makes me ask if anyone on the production team during development even remotely noticed enough to blow the whistle as to why that is. That's where I say a lack of foresight contributed to Forces turning out as it did.

It feels like a game designed by a team who worked in total isolation and had minimal and/or muddled experience and awareness about the decisions they were making for the game; and each decision was signed off on without much--if any-- debate or second thought. The whole game reeks of it, across the board; from "withsonicgoneeggmantookovertheworld.jpg" to whatever instruments the composer(s) thought qualified as "authentic" retro music for C. Sonic's stages, and everything in-between. Now some of it may be a result of the game being scaled back from what it was originally planned, based on development rumors. But even so, the end product just feels too lackluster and riddled with strange choices that make you ask "why?" to completely forgive it for that, at least for me.

 

Yes, and they paid the price for their lack of vision.

 

Definition of "vision", 3b(2):
"unusual discernment or foresight"

Definition of "foresight", 2:
"provident care : prudence"
Example: "had the foresight to invest his money wisely"

Definition(s) of "prudence":
"the ability to govern and discipline oneself by the use of reason"
"sagacity or shrewdness in the management of affairs"
"skill and good judgment in the use of resources"
"caution or circumspection as to danger or risk"

So, if we go down the pedantry rabbit hole and come out the other side, I think that, yeah, it kinda goes without saying at this point that the Sonic the Hedgehog brand has, for X amount of years at this point, suffered from a damning lack of shrewd management, skill, good judgement, and wise resource management. X can be whatever you want it to be.

Refining an existing gameplay structure is refining an existing gameplay structure, whether that's for a big budget computer game to be sold on the market, or if that's for the home rules you and your friends devise to make your guys' game of tag or chess or Super Smash Bros. more fun.

Whatever the case, if the goal is to take an existing gameplay structure (which, let's say, is fun), and refine it and change the rules and move things around to create a newer and more fun gameplay structure, then it would probably be wise to put in charge of this refinement process people who actually have experience with the existing gameplay structure. More than that, you want those who find this existing gameplay structure fun. These are the people who are going to be able to detect the fun in the existing gameplay structure, so that they know what to follow, and how to follow it. I'm not trying to gatekeep and say that only people who have the most fun with a game are qualified to know how to make it even more fun, but Forces didn't feel like it was designed by people who had a lot of fun playing Generations, and wanted to see the more fun parts of Generations really blossom.

Honestly, I'd love to know more about which games in general that the series' different game designers personally find fun to play. I know Naka is a fan of Super Mario Bros., but that's about it.

 

It isn't? I don't mean to get in a semantics argument (and Zephyr beat me to the punch with his own response), but the definitions of the two do overlap, to the point that both terms are considered synonyms for each other.

Even taking your word for it, I'll actually disagree in that I think the developers did stick to certain visions they had for the game. But I think my response was more about whether the developers stopped and thought again about the visions they had in mind before continuing, not if the developers had a vision at all. Perhaps I wasn't clear in my previous response, but what I'm trying to focus on in my commentary here is the thought/consultation process behind the design of the game.

I think it is a given that if anyone in development would want to raise a red flag on a game's production, one of the reasons would likely be in anticipation or prediction of how the game would be received if it was released as is, without (meaningful) changes. Like assuming people would, say, take notice of a game's controls and level design being much weaker than previous entries. Or customers probably being disappointed in a story that, due to characters put out of focus and inability to stick to a coherent tone (among other things), ultimately doesn't deliver on its core premise.

To me it feels that such raised concerns were either overruled or just didn't happen to begin with, for a lot of properties pertaining to Forces. That is my main argument in citing a lack of foresight in the final product we got in 2017.

I personally really doubt that, to be honest.

 

That...that was a Star Wars reference. I was not expecting a serious response.

 

I guess I should had realized as much with the winking smiley. My mistake.

 

I think when you are using dictionary definitions to argue about the meaning of words then the argument is getting too pedantic. Dictionary definitions aren't objectively correct and are just a representation of modern day usage of language. The same applies for synonyms.

Sorry, I just get agitated when I see people arguing via dictionary definitions