For me, the Sonic bosses in the original trilogy/CD serve as pretty simple pattern recognition tests that try to sharpen the player's response skills and give the player a bit more to chew on combat wise outside of 'hit this enemy once and you're done' deal. They're also a fun way to cap off each Zone since you're going head-to-head with the big main villain of the story. With those purposes in mind I always liked how Sonic games approached the 'damage boosting' concept that the player can exploit when they fight the bosses. Yes, they can do that if they're in a rush or don't want to engage in the bosses, but this has the consequence of leaving you unprepared for later bosses where Rings are more scarce. The player also loses out on an end of Act Ring bonus if they choose not to play carefully and do get a slap on the wrist. You're going to have to play more carefully next time if you are focusing on score! Basically what I'm attempting to say is that I feel the score system allows both approaches to co-exist with completionists/masters not being able to abuse the damage boosting route...Though I did like the Dimps game solution of Rings bouncing with higher vertical heights/disappearing quicker (I'm fairly certain the Rush games do this as well). Also sort of unpopular opinion but looking back at CD I really don't think many of the bosses are even that bad. They have some pretty cool concepts too since CD intentionally abandons the '8 hit rule' as well. Like I genuinely think Tidal Tempest has a cool boss with you having to fight the drowning timer while also picking away at Eggman's defense of air bubbles. The only real dud's in CD's lineup for me are Collision Chaos and Quartz Quadrant's bosses. I used to not care much for Metallic Madness', but I think that one is just underwhelming compared to what the Genesis games did for their finales and isn't a bad fight otherwise.
New unpopular opinion I guess: the modern Sonic model (circa Unleashed-onward) is good. Great, even. Sure, in 2024 it could use a mild touch-up (akin to the ones Mario got with MK8 and Odyssey) but I really felt like that design captured what I liked about the modern design while also making it softer and cuter, bringing it to a balance closer to how we view classic Sonic. Finding a form of consistency after eight years was good too; SA2-Secret Rings was really just Sonic Team redesigning the redesign over and over.. I say all this because Twitter has become Sonic Retro circa 2010 when we were all losing our mind at the minute differences between classic and modern Sonic's design and making a million tweaks a second to that one Unleashed render. But this time, it's about how the Adventure era was the peak we strive to be. Some of the results (like it was here) are pretty good, but most have been bad, and all of them have been excessive. I've seen some takes trying to say the 06 or Smash Bros Brawl models were onto something, which was enough to make me stick my head into this topic and scream into a void for a bit lol. It just annoys me because what fans are really caught up on is how poorly posed and animated it often is; which is apparent in both the common promo art as well as the in-game animations trying to make Sonic move stiff and realistically. But when this model is posed or animated correctly (like the Marza animations, or Unleashed and Team Sonic Racing's promo art) it looks great. If the in-game animation and more promo art allowed him to have personality and expressiveness, I don't think this would be a conversation. But it is, and a lot of the fanbase has fooled themselves into thinking it's the current design's fault, and I don't really get it.
His poses/animations look bad because of how overly large his proportions are. Weird to insist I don't actually dislike the proportions when it's exactly why I dislike the animations. Those giant shoes constantly kicking in the players face in the boost games just annoy me.
Slightly resizing the hands/feet is maybe the closest thing I can come to an agreement on, because that just makes sense for improving visual clarity. But that's also slight proportional changes, not really a full redesign like the loud minority is currently screaming for lol. A lot of the other common talking points (making all three spikes in the silhouette show up, making his muzzle curve into his eyes, moving the mouth position, being more emotive) are all things that can be done with the current model through good posing. That's really all it comes down to.
I largely agree, though I do think the shoes need work. The flat-soled grey design is really boring. Something slightly more curved (like the movie shoes) with red soles and white trim would just sell the overall look and visual *pop* of the classic era red leg-wheel much better.
I think the model is beginning to show its age to an extent but design-wise, it's a good design. Looks way better than all the lanky Adventure-inspired ones. I'm of the mind the lankiness of Uekawa's older art looks weird as shit when you try to replicate it as a 3D model so I think the proportions of the Unleashed-onward model are the way to go. Unpopular opinion: I always see people talking about how the Secret Rings model (which is the one they also used in Brawl and the Mario & Sonic games) of all models is the best one and I always thought that model looked hideous. Especially how fuckin' shiny it is, he looks like he's made of rubber.
About that- I had spent some time reverse engineering Sonic and the Black Knight a couple years back, and came to find that engine is pretty similar to Heroes and Shadow, likely because it and Secret Rings were Wii exclusives and the Wii is basically a beefed up Gamecube. I wonder if there's some sort of connection with the shiny character models. Probably not, but it's fun to think about.
Unleashed Sonic looks pretty lanky to me. Far closer to Uekawa's art than this guy ever was: Not to mention SA2 Sonic with his reasonably-sized hands and shoes.
My personal favorite Sonic model is the one from SEGA Superstars. Love that guy. Dunno how a similar model would look nowadays however. (Less shiny, I'd imagine.)
It's not just the "posing". The flabby round pixar-lite design also just sucks and doesn't get across his attitude and personality well at all. Any Sonic model that can't constantly reinforce the strong silhouette his head is supposed to give off or believably pull off the shark teeth is an L. If people are willing to accept that it's not changing because they've built a large part of their brand/merch around it fine but that's just about the only good reason to keep it to me. In an era where developers are pushing the boundaries and inventing techniques to bring us closer to 2D it'd just be interesting to see the series experiment with some of that, even if it was something as light as cel shading techniques employed in the next game.
The Unleashed model is lankier than either of the Adventure models. That's one of the reasons it looks so awkward and bad. Posing to fix baked in problems with the default shape of the model isn't really a solution, which is why a lot of people wish the model would be redone. Sure, you could probably pose Sonic's face to be the correct shape in the animation phase, but that doesn't happen. His face looks wrong because the base shape of the model is wrong by default. That problem would be solved by changing the model to look right from the start. A high poly recreation of the SA2 model (with some small tweaks) would look best I think. And please get rid of the permanent butt crack on his face.
TBF Joebro did specify Adventure-inspired models, whatever that exactly means. The Unleashed model still seems lankier to me than pretty much every preceding model besides 06's though. I agree there's nothing particularly special about Secret Rings' model. Those squid quills make me nauseous.
Nah, I'm actually just a little 3d modeling nerd and have been obsessing over how the pre-2007 model (and its relevant set of Sonic's friends) looks. Part of it's maaaaybe nostalgia but the other part is feeling like it would fit way, way better in the new environment style they seem to be going for. Especially when they seem to be WANTING to go for more "realism" in the model details, like with the fur effect all the characters in Frontiers have, it really is time to move on. Also for reference: the Brawl model and the Secret Rings model are... Literally exactly the same, just with different textures. This also goes for the Tails, Knuckles, Silver, Amy, and Shadow models that accompany him. This mod kind of gets at what I'm getting at, but I don't agree with a few of the choices so it's not entirely what I would like, but it's the closest thing I can show.
I had a feeling this conversation would happen in here lol. Wanting the model to change is definitely the popular opinion right now, so into the "unpopular opinions" room my take went.
Somewhat related but I'd like it for Sonic's quills to actually look sharp. I dunno, he hasn't looked like he could bonk open robots in a while. So I think my (maybe) unpopular opinion here is that I prefer it when his quills are stiffer.
Also an unpopular opinion: I prefer when Modern Sonic's quills are shorter. The ridiculous squid-quills model in the mid-late 00s looked terrible. The Unleashed-Lost World model was loads better, but still made him look weirdly top-heavy. Really, I'd like for his proportions in general to be stockier (the Adventure DC model remains my favorite rendition of Modern Sonic), but just giving Sonic a haircut was a step in the right direction, IMUO.
Shadow with guns has never been a bad thing. It's cool as fuck, absurd as fuck, and I don't find it out of place at all. It's just him using the tools that are available to him. He should combine his expertise in weapons with his innate Chaos abilities. Give him Chaos energy guns or something, I don't care, just give my man some heat. The only reason the idea of "Shadow with a gun" was tainted is because the game featuring Shadow with a gun was kind of dogass.
I assume you've been seeing the Tweets of Shadow with Chaos energy guns? I do agree it's an awesome idea to utilize his abilities more. But I don't mind it either way.
He also have always looked cool on bikes. Same for Sonic with a sword in Sonic and the Black Knight. It's bad-ass.
