K, then how about Secret Rings, where you got such amazing abilities as better steering? I'm always down for skill trees, but if you decide to gut the basic movement options for your character to do it, you've done it wrong.
Yeah, I was literally on my way in here to say exactly that lol. I'm not opposed to skill trees in sonic, but they better not infringe on basic movement options :p
I dunno. I love Wario Land 3, and it basically made most of Wario's moveset from 2 into Metroid stye upgrades that you had to collect as you progressed through the game.
Sure, Secret Rings' system was pretty trash when "make the game playable" was a unlockable option. Lol But even so, it was an on-rails runner. The entire idea of a skill tree was a bunk idea in that game. I'm only remembering a few skills that were worthwhile beyong control enhancements. I still think it's far from an apt comparison though. Rangers sounds more akin to games that have and benefit from skill trees as means of progression.
I mean, most 3d Sonic games have had unlockable moves, usually as upgrades. This doesn't need to be very different from that.
Regarding enemy encounters, I’d argue the solution is to focus on enemy formations rather than individual fights. You can bop a Motobug in one hit, practically be running through it, but what if there’s a horde of them charging at you, being ordered around by an Egg Hammer? They could race alongside you like that one Asteroid Coaster Act in Colours, attacking by weaving into you in telegraphed formations that would require to time jumps. Accelerate to run a ring around them and attack them in spin cycle, time your jumps so you take them out as they weave underneath you, or lead them to crash into a wall. After that, you can go and take on the Egg Hammer, who’d probably serve a similar function as in Sonic Heroes. Make them 4 hits to defeat via homing attack or two hits by running a spin cycle on their hammer when they slam it down to send it flying back at them. Egg Wizards could be used as support for the enemy, not only firing off projectiles but casting spells to speed up the enemies or make them tougher to take out. Then you’ve gotta make the choice of if you think you can take out the wizards to make the fight easier without being harassed by other enemies as you do so. I doubt they’d structure combat in exactly this way, but I do think one of the strengths of BotW was the ecosystem that was built up in creature AI - things like Moblins picking up Bokoblins to use as weapons. I think Sonic’s established set of enemies has the diversity to be able to put a spin on something like that.
A skill tree may not make sense in an open world Sonic game, but you could do something like the upgrades from SA2. For example you eventually unlock the ability to light dash and that allows you to follow a trail of rings to a different section of the map previously unreachable.
Yeah but that's stupid in the Adventure games too. It makes a little more sense if it were used as an organic, metroidvania-style way of getting around SA1's hub, but that game just blocks-off whatever levels it doesn't want you to get to most of the time anyway. In both games, the upgrades don't usually let you reach anything meaningful.
I agree, I thought it was annoying in SA1 and a real bother in SA2, but it could work well in an open world game, similar to a metroidvania game.
How big do you think the staff for this game will be? It turns out you need A LOT of people for a good open world game. BOTW and Odyssey which are both from Japan both had numbers in the hundreds of how many workers were on the game. BOTW peaked around 300 towards the end of development. Hope SEGA gives this game the amount of workers it needs.
I just realized something. If these leaks are true and we're getting a game plot that involves cyberspace, the IDW comic might be trying to set some of that up. The most recent arc involves Eggman running tests of robot designs in a virtual reality that he traps Sonic, Tails, & Amy in. Could be establishing this cyberspace the leaks keep mentioning since the comic will very likely have a tie-in of some sort with the game. Still just speculating at this point of course. We still don't have confirmation on the leaks, but if true it seems to indicate Sega is trying to coordinate the story with the comic a little better than they did with Archie.
One thing I really don't like about upgradable characters in a series of games is how the slate is wiped clean every new game. Why did X lose all of his upgrades from the first game by start of Mega Man X 2? Why did Sonic lose all of his upgrades at the start of Sonic Adventure 2? Oh, wait, he was captured by the government. Still doesn't explain Knux losing the claw powerup, etc. Or say, Adam Jensen in Deus Ex 4. I realize they couldn't account for all the different upgrade paths, but did the dude really just forget all of his hacking and combat skills just like that? It feels like there's no real character development and it's all for naught. It makes sense in a per-game vacuum and the difficulty progression, but the continuity of the story suffers. The Shadow of the Beast trilogy had Aarbron slowly lift his curse and become more human by each game, that felt right.
I really don't see an issue with this, as upgrades and such are not really integral to plot. What does bug me however, is how chip's bracelet thingy has never been seen again (outside generations). How much would it cost to put that on sonic's model? It would add a tiny bit of continuity, and it wouldn't even confuse new fans as they would just think it was there because it looks cool. I'm not even a fan of chip. but really? Are the like 10 polygons and a texture to display that bracelet too performance intensive?
How do you make circles while boosting? Easy answer: LT: ) - RT: ( You change the straight movement with some preset angle through shoulder buttons and that's all. You can stop whenever you want, but not escape of a preset circle size and route. Not so automated, not so free. It won't sound honest but I had this open world idea past year. Well, it was in fact a dream, but quite a complete one and I took notes of it. In my case, the game itself was a dream-like state, Sonic trapped in his own mind after Doc hit him with some memory eraser or something, so he had to relearn moves (unlocking spinning just by completing tutorial or first mission), and there was a memory palace where he had to go to deal with the skill tree and unlock stuff he progressively remembered first and learned for the first time at higher levels. The game started in a rocky desert with giant mushrooms like the MHZ ones, as if Sonic's memories were scrambled and he was running through mixtures of places he had visited before. Mushrooms here didn't prevent free movement but it was way easier to follow paths than going through a bunch of them. Now, about the wisps... I've never been against the little aliens and their varied powerups but how they break the pace and steal the scene. They're like elemental shields that don't protect and wear off after a single intense and uncontrollable use. If they worked like the elemental shield skills, they would actually add a lot when playing in 3D mode, and substituting the classic little animals with these inside the badniks to power enemies would make sense to destroy badniks to get your exploration powerups as long as they're not randomized and specially if enemies respawn after a while. Alternatively, they could also work like temporary powerups like the power sneakers and the invincibility stars, and with that I mean enhancing standard gameplay instead of replacing it. Oh, for the guy that suggested Chaos as a water elemental in a game you'd fight other elementals as well, I'll go back to my pokemon ranger reference, since Guardian Signs was a game in which you rode Raikou (lightning), Entei (fire), and Suicune (water), legendary beasts that share elements with S3K shields, so they could use Chaos along another two elemental monsters and the shields to create some lore for this game and keep on feeding my theory.
So in the Sonic Official live stream today, they mentioned the upcoming sonic games. They talked about how everyone up there got a laugh at people calling 2022 "Sonic Zap", yet they were radio silent while floods of people were asking about "Sonic Rangers". Food for thought.
So I heard (don't remember where) that in this open-world we will see a tribe of equidnas. I mean, how? EDIT: echidnas***. I spoke in Portuguese for some reason.
I mean... It's not really. "Rangers" is a name that came from both third-party leaks and that SEGA accidentally left in multiple lubes of press mean. They're allowed to comment on information that has been officially distributed, and nothing else. It's that simple. The title "Rangers" was just not supposed to have reached us at all in any way. We all know that it's real, but at this stage it's still not confirmed and could be a placeholder ala "Sonic Wars". That's news to me, and isn't in any of the leaked info I've read so far. I'd doubt that's true, but could I ask you to think about where you heard that?
I'll only briefly come in to spread doom, but this is my greatest concern. I don't think Sonic Team can pull off an open world game and the number of staff needed is a great reason why. Sonic games typically have small development teams and they have gotten smaller more recently. Forces had a very small dev team. Unless SEGA are going for broke and are adding at least one hundred staff to Sonic Team then I have no idea how they are going to pull it off.. it could very well be another dreadful open world game by an inexperienced and short staffed dev team who ran out of ideas and just chased industry trends (think Dynasty Warriors 9). But on the other hand, part of the reason I haven't really contributed to this thread is because we haven't really seen anything. I did like the aesthetic of the trailer, so thats something. So while I dont really like open world games and I doubt Sonic Team are capable of doing it, there's not much point in me crying out doom and gloom when I haven't really given the game a chance to make an impression. I really hate it when games don't show gameplay at announcement. If it wasn' Sonic I would have just forgotten about it. I think a big flashy announcement with no tangible gameplay is a very outdated concept nowadays. Feels very PS3.
