Colours Ultimate received a number of post-release patches which it desperately needed (although not everything was fixed), so I hope SEGA also gives Origins lots of patch support. It's a mess and SEGA should feel embarrassed with the glitches/bugs players have incurred. Most of which (by the sounds if it) have been caused by SEGA when they implemented 3K into Origins and are not Team Stealth's fault. So happy to finally be able to play 3K on a modern console and I appreciate the effort and tweaks Team Stealth has put into this new version. However, in it's current state if it doesn't get patched I won't be playing it much-will just play 3AIR instead.
High profiled games have been broken on release since the 2nd half of the 7th gen, people shouldn't be surprised at all at this point.
This whole "should Stealth have said that" discussion just feels increasingly in poor taste. Dude sounds totally justified in everything he said, and if Sega decides to be petty about things that's on them. This is the same company that was content to rush out this product and hide the state of it for as long as possible, resulting in the people that are most passionate about these games getting burned the most. The most annoying thing about this situation right now, other than all of the bugs of course, is Sega's silence. They owe us some long-overdue communication here.
I’m hoping Stealth didn’t just burn bridges with SEGA by posting about this stuff on Twitter. He was pretty respectful about it, but I worry that they’ll see it as pointing his finger at them and consider it unprofessional. edit: full disclosure: I skipped to the last page of the thread and replied without reading the tons of posts since I last clicked the thread, but it seems people have been saying the same thing lol
People really are overeacting on Stealth speaking up huh? Isn't there more important things to have strong reactions to than a Sonic game being bad? Like priorities man.
Sonic forum mate, and the pressing issue of the day is precisely about Stealth speaking up. What do you suggest we talk about? The price of wheat?
For the record: I reread the tweets. It's amazing what a second reading will do. Was I wrong? I think mostly. It isn't as bad as I thought the first time. Still wouldn't have said it quite the way he did, but perhaps I reacted a bit too strongly before. I concur. It's not entirely off the beating path. I defend my big mouth with all that I am.
Stealth had every right to speak up. I was literally tricked into wasting money on a collection I'm now deeply unsatisfied it. I genuinely did not believe it could possibly be this broken. There are clearly people within the upper echelons of Sega (and no, it wasn't Iizuka, as he himself said it wasn't) who pushed this out the door for a post-movie release date with serious crunch and did not have the proper experience (and certainly not the time) needed to port these game into a collection. And that's truly unfortunate. The final patched (non-SegaForever) release of the mobile games were in a very good state. Porting them over to the new Mania engine without Taxman's involvement likely screwed things up royally, given that it's an engine created by an outsider where the core developer of it was not contracted to return, and the new team was told to throw all this stuff into a hedgehog engine 2 collection. At this point, unless they announce a full Stealth/Tax mania 2 type deal, I'm no longer buying a Sonic game at launch, and maybe not at all anymore. In the past 10 years, I've only purchased Generations, Mania (and Plus) (in total purchasing Mania 4 times, including one CE), the Taxman remakes (more than once), and Lost Worlds anyway. I can't refund origins (Because I used a 3rd party discount code) so now I have to hope it gets (heavily) patched and then likely further modded to be genuinely good, and that could take a long time. I'll keep lurking in this thread, but I have no reason to play this collection anymore. What a shame. I'll stick with fan projects/games until/unless Sega gets their act together.
I appreciate Stealth being so honest and open while Sega is just silent and misleading fans. Good for him for ensuring his reputation isn't ruined by Sega's decision making.
If you stand under the leaking water droplets in Hydrocity, they will splash onto your character's head- My god- I'm actually starting to feel terrible playing this thing. The team behind 3&K put so much love into what they created, and literally watched it get destroyed by Sega. I'm gonna see how long I can play before I start feeling guilty. Just focus on the 3&K team's efforts, Rhythm... just ignore how Sega massacred their boy...
I find it very disheartening to hear that SEGA gave Headcannon no clear indication of whether or not post-launch fixes would be possible, especially considering they asked them to develop the game on a time crunch from the very beginning and they were vocal about a delay or some kind of assistance being needed from early on. Sounds like they did everything within their power to communicate that there was an issue and SEGA did not listen. Even though Headcanon are contractors, this is how I imagine internal SEGA devs feel when they work incredibly hard on something and the end product ends up mediocre due to powers beyond their control. HC even gave them an early heads-up that they didn't think the project would be up to par in time for release, and I can't believe they would just say "so what, just get it done". I also understand that crunch is really common and don't mean to sound like I'm applying a double standard to HC and not the rest of SEGA staff, but come on... it's a compilation of 30 year old games and most of the content is already done from the onset. Give them some time to do the heavy lifting, you've already cut enough corners. That being said, just played it for the first time and I'm about to finish 100%-ing S3K... I've really enjoyed it so far. Obviously the collection itself is lacking in a lot of ways, but S3K has been a blast and I've loved all the little touches they added to help not only with the immersion, but with the continuity of the game. Things like the Spoiler: miscellaneous surprises extra turning and rotation sprites, the little water droplets falling on your head, the little additions to many of the cutscenes, the new intro to Hidden Palace, etc are all welcome additions to the game and make it seem a little more modernized for all the new players out there. I did notice a few bugs and some of those wacky "crushing" deaths people have talked about, but nothing that's broken the game. I did freeze completely in Hidden Palace while jumping up to a Super Emerald and was unable to move, but I was happy to see that hitting "Restart" from the menu actually re-spawned me in Hidden Palace rather than making me replay Mushroom Hill from the beginning. Tbh the first thing I was gonna say here is that Carnival Night is... really bad. It is clearly compositionally the same but they've chosen the most obnoxiously hard-to-hear lead synth and made it the most boring listening experience humanly possible. I have never been this starved for high-end in my entire life. Genuinely pretty sad about my favorite proto track being done dirty like that, but hopefully a mod will come soon enough. It was just really... bizzare (?) to experience and I have no earthly idea why they said that stuff about Jun looking through his demo tapes and all that, when not much has been changed and the changes they have made are arguably for the worse. edit: wtf the music mods are already here????? people are insanely fast at this stuff
It's pretty disappointing but this is the game industry in general now, I suppose. I don't think it's a very sustainable way of developing anything in the long run, but companies would actively need to break down under the crunch model before things start changing.
Stealth is not being unprofesional, he is premeptly protecting his reputation because he doesnt want his company Headcanon end like other outside devs that worked with SEGA and got burned by the near sightness of SEGA crunch deadlines that end up with subpar products. Had they hired Headcanon to work on the entire project early on of doing a compilation of all the Retro Engine games which added feautures I guarantee you that it would have been an overall better experience for Headcanon and SEGA would have saved development man power on their end that could be used on Sonic Frontiers. Being unprofessional is doing a Yuji Naka which Stealth is far from doing. Heck if I was in his spot I probably be closer to a Naka-san than anything cause as someone who loves and I mean LOVES Sonic 3&K (I consider said game my favorite game of all time) I would have been EXTREMELY pissed if I was treated like they treated Stealth. I would have gone nuclear which Stealth didnt do. He kept it professional but transparent of what happened, defended his team and even went out of his way to praise SoA and Izuka-san.
So it seems like I was right when I said that Stealth's team didn't get involved with the game until after the Central event afterall?
I don't blame anyone calling out sega, if my work was being broken to the point where i'm frustrated that my hard work looks like a mess, i'd risk not working with them again to bring it to light. Why would you want to work with a pub that ruins your work, it kills mood and performance for future work, it's like having a shitty manager that's all talk but no action. Mania and it's plus dlc was the one and only time sega did the right thing, seeing origins launch like it has tells me that sort of time was a one off.
