I think I may be eating my words a bit. Spoiler Sunset Green Hill stage. NOT entirely 2D (not 2D at all, judging by this footage), which is weird given we thought there would be strictly 2D and 3D stages, but that shot from the trailer definitely was 2D. I guess they just...stripped the 2D sections out of modern Gens GHZ. Ditto for chemical plant. COULD they build a whole game out of cutting their other games up and stitching them back together? I don't know why you would even do that. I'm honestly, truly hoping this is not a trend across the majority of the game. Some beams of light build a bridge, I'm guessing to the rest of Kronos island. Finally, Sonic running through those fields of things sticking out of the ground. I'm not sure what to make of this. It is clear that something is...happening. I honestly don't know what to say. I guess the best we can hope is that this is padding out the stage count. A few reused stages don't necessarily destroy what is supposedly the longest game in the series (especially since you could just not play the ones that reuse design, I guess???), but cramming them all in at the start certainly isn't inspiring. I mean, what. We maybe cut Green Hill and Chemical Plant a stage for 3D and 2D each, so if we assume they do that with the rest of the levels (which, judging by sky stanktuary, they aren't?), that's eighteen acts from Generations, stretched to its limit? I'm still not seeing anything from other Sonic games, which is what I said would be a smart move if they were gonna be reusing content. I dunno what the fuck is going on. This game has routinely showed me things I love and hate at the same time, and I really really want it to pull through and be cool. It still DOES look cool! But then it goes and makes a decision so confusing I have to wonder what the vision was even supposed to be here. EDIT: Oh yeah, and the drop dash is an actual spindash, so that's nice I guess.
@Shaddy the guy 1-1 uses Windmill Isle Act 1’s layout and Sky Sanctuary apparently uses Windmill Isle Act 2. Not seen any assertions of the city stage reusing an old layout but I think it may be worth checking Colours and Forces for that just in case. At any rate, I very much agree with you. I’m not at all worried about the open zone portion of the game so on balance I’m sure I’ll have a fun time, and worst case scenario is that a lot of cyberspace stages will be pretty good given they’re taking from Unleashed and Generations, with the wrinkle of playing them with a new moveset and control feel. At any rate, I really hope we’re not looking at entirely reused stages with the memory excuse tacked on after the fact. This’d be cute if it were something like Kirby, but I don’t think Sonic as a franchise has generated nearly as much good will to try this and I think if they were set on doing it, they should’ve mashed levels together rather than transplanting the layouts wholesale. That’d still leave something of a bad taste in my mouth but at least it’d offer a more unique experience compared to what we seem to be getting.
I think it will be fine. Nice little stages to break up a open world. I assume that’s where the time went into and these are where they cut corners. Would it have been nice to see brand new stages outside of the open world? Sure. But I dare say after the levels in Forces I’d rather they just remixed stuff that worked. What I don’t get - and I know it’s Twitter - is the backlash to pointing this stuff out. The explaining it away as part of the story, tutorial, or tribute… like we are trying to convince ourselves it’s not what it most likely is which is shortcuts. Which is fine… Work smarter not harder I guess is their approach for these Cyber Stages. But we can’t just share videos of Mario Galaxy 2’s Throwback Galaxy and compare the choices made for their respective games.
Spoiler Titan. Not exactly a "boss fight" so much as a glorified cutscene, but Sonic gets absolutely bodied, thrown into a mountain and through a couple of rock spires. I wonder when exactly this takes place in the game, that doesn't look like a blow he should be getting right up from. I really wish that dude in front of the camera would stop swaying back and forth like that.
It's a shame that the cyberspace levels are looking so copypasty when they're literally the only thing I had any interest in about this game, between openworlds and writing showing echoes of the 00s. Looking like another not-until-under-£20 job again. *sigh*
I honestly never thought Sonic Team would just straight up take level design from Unleashed and Generations, simplify it, make minor adjustments, and just reuse those designs as stages. I'm just shocked honestly. Asset reuse is one thing and I'm actually pretty lenient on that. Always have been. But this is just outrageous. Honestly I'm speechless. No idea what to say. To say something positive, I think the Cyberspace levels look aesthetically very nice.
They've been pretty upfront about the fact that the open world is the main part of the game and the one with the most amount of effort. If you didn't care about it, then the game was never gonna really win you over when the cyber space levels are basically an afterthought.
I mean, you can excuse a lot of things by saying "if you don't like it, you're not the person who's meant to care about it". I was never that big on the idea of an open-world Sonic in the first place, but I am willing to hold out if I see more interesting stuff -- and to be clear, there still totally could be more interesting stuff in here. If we have an alleged 40-50 levels or so in the game, then even if we stretched the Generations modern levels to their breaking point, that'd still cover about half of them at most. If they reuse more than just Windmill Isle 1(Sky Sanctuary there isn't really Windmill Isle 2 by most metrics)...well, that could hurt things, but I still am not of the opinion that that's going to happen. Again though, it makes an awful first impression to anyone familiar with the level design.
No. I completely and utterly disagree with this line of thinking. The Cyberspace levels shouldn't be an afterthought. If they are going to be designed with minimal effort then they shouldn't be in at all. They should have used the development resources to make the open world better instead. I understand that the open world (zone) is the primary focus of the game. While I think it looks very generic and dull, it is possible that the open world will be better when it progresses. But that doesn't mean that Cyberspace levels being poor is therefore okay.
This has literally been this franchise's design ethos for about two decades. The only reason they added other playable characters in the Adventure games was because they felt the game would be too short if you just played as Sonic. The reason why Shadow has 10 endings and a million ways to get them, why the Werehog exists, etc etc. They have never once, dedicated all of their resources towards a singular part of a game. This is business as usual. That being said, this is probably least intrusive implementation of it tbh. The worst I can say is that its super unimaginative and creatively bankrupt, but people who don't play Sonic games religiously like us don't seem to recognize the level are reused assets and enjoy them, so clearly this game is doing something right for some people.
I guess it's ok in the sense that... this is a Sonic Team game? I think Forces really just lowered my expectations of what I think they are capable of these days. But the Sonic series is often renowned for up to 50% of the game being good, the rest being alright or bad. I could play devils advocate that they could have compared these to the Sonic Colour 'special stages' and people would be fine.... which I realise they wouldn't haha. But even then... for something that is being argued as so optional it doesn't even matter... they seem to still be quite tied to the stuff they are showing off. I'm hoping that the Open World makes up for it - in the same way BOTW spoke about Dungeons being part of their over world, with Shrines being mini puzzles (which also got the criticism of them being the same design each time) - which could be what these Cyber Stages would represent. So the open world being the Sonic fun and parts of it being the level design we would want to play.
What I'd really like them to do is to make a new game when they're supposed to be making a new game. That'd be something really cool and new for them to do.
Here's a Twitter thread of pretty good quality and good gameplay: https://twitter.com/rob_chp/status/1562787595049807872 Traversal and combat look really good. Especially against the Tower boss.
have we seen footage of the Switch version? does it look any different? I don't own any of the other consoles
The tutorial section of Kronos Island seems to have some sense of progression and design which is nice.
We haven't seen much footage of the Switch version, but the Eshop has screenshots. It mostly looks like a lower-res, crustier-texture version of the game. Not sure on framerate or load times.
