Boom was a fever dream and no one will convince me otherwise. (Joking aside Fire and Ice was actually decent)
And this is the reality for the current generation of development. Some developers even love certain engines for their ability to purchase assets.
I'm just disappointed that they hype this game up as a "bold new direction" for the series yet they keep on going back to the past. Ultimately, I guess it doesn't matter if the levels are fun but it would've been nice to see fully new ideas. This part is possibly copium, but maybe the first area is the only part that reused level tropes? The story deals with the characters trying to remember who they were, so perhaps the first act of the story is Sonic regaining his memories, and later on, the levels are original? I dunno, maybe we're jumping the gun. I feel those leaks would've pointed out that it's just revisited levels... especially if it came from 4chan, which would totally be on Sega's ass about it, lol. Cyberspace is a really specific word, you would think they'd say "Green Hill Zone again" or "Sky Sanctuary again". There could be more to it that we aren't seeing.
It’s not just the visual and gimmick variety that’s the problem here. Who here honestly believes the actual level design for Green Hill Zone and Sky Sanctuary in Frontiers will be superior to their counterparts in Generations? I can easily see myself playing Sky Sanctuary and thinking “Wow, I’d rather be playing the Generations version.”
It's not hard to beat "Straight line zone" when it comes to level design. Most anything would be an improvement over Gens' Green Hill (although they still somehow managed to make it even more shallow in Forces) As for Sky Sanctuary Zone, I'd kill to play a more expansive version of it with actual exploration and less 2D sections.
They could use Green Hill Zone visuals for every single cyberspace level for all I care as long as there's no 2D sections. God, please let there be no 2D sections (there will probably be 2D sections).
How about a third option: Spoiler Make entirely new levels. The last Sonic game to do that was Colors in 2010.
Not thrilled about the reused levels, but I don’t have much to say that hasn’t already been said. This is just a theory, but perhaps all the cyberspace levels are reconstructions of levels from Sonic’s memories. We know memories play into the plot somehow since we’re collecting Amy’s, and one of the earlier leaks said Sonic wakes up with amnesia (though I don’t think that’s true as of now)
With Yoshinobu Uba (the lead designer of Unleashed Daytime levels and Generations modern levels) long gone I have no interest in seeing boost stages reuse generations level themes. I highly doubt they will be the same quality.
They are doing that option. And they are making them so huge, they can include old levels inside them
We already know from the clip posted earlier that Frontiers will feature new level designs even in established locales. Sky Sanctuary didn't have that corkscrew rail in Generations.
I'm the opposite. This makes me angrier now than it probably should. I actually kind of hated this aspect of Mania, dare I say (despite loving literally everything else). Now I either have to rationalize this by hoping for more remakes of actual classic stages (Dreamcast would be fine too!), or get genuinely upset that major assets (not just a few objects or textures) are being recycled from an 11 year old game. I'll be more forgiving if it leads to a higher level count, but that really does seem like a bad step. Hopefully it's just a one off and not a major trend of recycling all of Generations/Forces assets as a whole.
I think I’d be more ok with it if it were different classic stages that hadn’t been done in 3D before. But nope, so far it’s just the same old stuff.
So, seeing the general theme of Sonic suffering from amnesia in the story and this being supposed to be an anniversary game before being delayed as well as the now almost certain inclusion of Green Hill Zone and Sky Sanctuary from Sonic 1 and Sonic & Knuckles, I wonder what the chances are of other levels appearing apart from what we've seen in Sonic Generations and/or Forces. There are so many other Zones/Stages from so many games that are fan-favorites.
This game only has a staff of 60 people. BOTW had 300. And that game STILL had a lot of asset reuse in terms of some shrines being copy pasted over the map. As much as I'm avoiding cutting this game slack where it doesn't deserve it some asset reuse is inevitable with the scope of the game they have in mind vs the amount of people they have working on it. I don't care if they reuse some level tropes as long as they're fun and the game is good. I thought that was the thing that was ultimately most important.
If an open world Sonic was to much work for such a comparatively small team then maybe they shouldn’t have made an open world sonic game. I get that people worked their ass off on this but at the visual level there is nothing unique about this game AT ALL. The open world is a generic realistic grassy plains. The cyberspace levels are a rehash of the classic stages from generations. They could’ve made a distinctive realistic location that wasn’t heavily inspired by Phantasy Star and Breath of the wild or They could’ve made unique absurdist cyberspace levels... but they didn’t do either. That is unless they have done one or both of these things and they’re not showing em off. Either way it does not make me inclined to purchase this game. MAYBE it’s only Sky Sanctuary being reused with a new “Green Hill” type level. But I’m not gonna hold out hope atm... maybe I’ll be proven wrong on the 29th... we’ll see Something I don’t see anyone talking about: we know that the SGF demo had a ton of jank, so imagine how janky the later levels are. The stuff they’re not showing off.
This recent tweet really demonstrates the attitude behind this constant reuse of stages from earlier games. I mean, it fits for Frontiers as a whole, but the endless, soulless mining of older locations because they're too scared to ever make anything new stems exactly from this attitude. And I'm getting really really tired of it. How long will this go? How long will they wring the bloodless, lifeless corpses of Green Hill or Sky Sanctuary or Chemical Plant? Will Sonic Team ever actually create anything new again? it'd be almost excusable if the open world weren't so utterly lifeless and devoid of Sonic charm, but it is so here we are.
