I personally have never had any issue with Modern Sonic's design. I merely pointed out how little Sega itself is representing that design lately. But in an effort to help thwart the devolution of this thread to that tired circle-jerk, I want to bring up whether or not people think we will see the return of the parkour system in any way for Project 2017 and whether or not they should bother. As it was, I think it should stay relegated to Lost World. It was too janky, and Generation's boost formula already had a pretty free-flowing form of movement and progression.
I liked Adventure Sonic's design except for when they drew him all tall and lanky. He looked great in the games (except for some spazzy animations).
Would much rather keep both the modern and classic designs, and simply forget that Boom exist. At least as far as the games are concerned. Personally, I don't like the Adventure "style" anymore than the boost style because the Sonic levels in those Adventure games, specifically SA2, were also like glorified hallways, just without boost. SA1 atleast tries to juggle between hallways and broad 3d environments, but its still very primitive and linear. That's why I didn't bother using those as a reference for a 3d alternative in my prior post.
Oh really, complaining about the "modern" character design? I thought that only happened in 2010 and everyone aggreed to forget about that ridiculous debate?? Let me just say this: there's a reason why they changed the character designs. And the Japanese character artworks for 3D (Blast) are almost identical to the ones in Adventure, the only significant difference being the eye colour. Still, I do think that the CG artstyle that has become the norm since 2006 should be replaced in favor of an artstyle closer to Yuji Uekawa's original artworks for Sonic 3D and Adventure. Sonic Adventure, Rush and Lost World had sort of a semi-celshaded 3D artstyle, and I always wondered why they never went for a fully cel-shaded style like Jet Set Radio or Wind Waker. It looks much more attractive than a realistic style and it won't look dated in a few years. Also, a cel-shaded artstyle doesn't mean that a game can't have a darker tone. Heck, if the trailer was cel-shaded people wouldn't complain that it looks like 06. Having two completely different artstyles for 2D and 3D games bothered me in the 2000s, and now with Sonic Mania (cartoonish 2D) and P17 (realistic 3D) that problem has returned. They will never abandon Modern Sonic, as long as Sonic Team exists, but they can change the way the games look, and that really does matter. At least much more than Sonic's freakin' eye colour!
As long as Modern Sonic continues to have a broken fan base and his games continue not to be received well by the public then there's always that possibility. People said Classic Sonic will never return or have his own game but look at where we are now. If every person loved Modern Sonic so much, would they even have to go back and give Classic Sonic his own game?
I think I said this before in the Sonic character design thread, but my issue with modern Sonic's design isn't completely his design. His biggest issue is how he's represented. His character model looks really stale and lifeless for example. Almost like they guys who made his character model didn't even care. It's not that it's badly modeled; the model and animations (sometimes the rigging) are well made, just they have no life or style in them. Meanwhile there's a lot of fanart of modern Sonic that looks perfectly fine, with a lot of personality going through it. It's more of a lack of style I feel rather than a complete flaw of his design. For the most part the issue is how he's represented in the end, and the little things really add up. That being said, I still feel Japanese CD era Sonic was some of the best blend of a western and Japanese style I've seen yet. Lately they seem to lean heavily on that western mascot style with modern that makes him look way too generic. As for the cel-shading idea, the biggest part of cel-shading is the model. Go look at Naruto Storm for example. I managed to replicate it's shading within minutes because of how simple it is, yet it works pretty well (for a PS3 era game). It's all about the way the polygons are shaped that really make a cel-shader work. The problem is, to get it to look right, we'd need to get another character design, or at least a large overhaul of his model. I know Sonic 4 was a mess, but it was an attempt to give him DragonBall Z Burst Limit shading (Dimps seems to do that look often) with an Unleashed style model. It ended up looking horrendous. Meanwhile, we look at Burst Limit and see it looks pretty nice despite being shaded in a similar way. Cel-shading is very dependent on having a good model, and falls apart easily when you use it with something that didn't have that style in mind. While I did say that modern Sonic's design isn't an issue itself, at this point changing parts of his character design to give him that style could be considered a new redesign itself. SEGA seems adamant about giving him his Unleashed/Colors/Generations look, and I don't think that will change any time soon. There are people who like that design, and that's perfectly fine, but there's just as many people who don't.
Nobody even complained about Modern Sonic's design at all. All I said was that I prefer Classic and I wouldn't mind if they retired Modern, I didn't say I hate the Modern design. I still like it. You're allowed to prefer one thing over another, that isn't complaining. Everybody just went off this dude's post and made assumptions: Ignore that whole post.
^It's kind of confusing to know who you were talking to; you should probably add a quote in there. I thought I said something wrong, heheh.
I was referring to your post and to Aesculapius Piranha's post, in which he specifically stated that the Sonic Adventure redesign was a failure.
I would rather not have Boom's off-model design over modern Sonic, so hopefully its not retired, though I think there is little chance of retirement anyway. I think Classic and Modern design can coexist for different games. The last game Sega actually did themselves was Lost World though. As for Parkour, I don't think the execution of it in Lost world should be used to disparage the concept as a whole. Lost World wasn't exactly the apex of game design.
I always liked Classic Sonic's look more. It's just cooler to give Sonic this child's appearance with swag. He always has this look that says "I might be small but don't piss me off". That's what drew me to Sonic in the first place. He does act silly from time to time but when he's serious the little guy means business. It's also cool he expresses his emotions through his body language. I have no issues with Modern but he comes off as this arrogant as teenager that thinks he knows it all. I can't stand teens like that. My little brother is like that haha. It makes me want to punch Modern in the face. He also talks way too much. His appearance is a little off. He has this lanky build with this giant head that doe not match his frame. It looks goofy to me. That's just my opinion. I did like Darkspine Sonic's personality even though that was a storybook game. I saw how angry he was fighting erazor djinn and asked myself where is this attitude when he's fighting Eggman?
Yeah, but I can't help but feel the reason most of those areas are even there is because they're usually very negligible. The amount of time you spend in them is short, generally because they're either dead space that's meant to be boosted through or areas that have that unleashed brand of bare bones platforming. I never felt the need to explore when I played Unleashed, I mean...most of the secrets were just sort of plonked in plain sight or placed in hard to reach spots. Half the challenge of finding them all was knowing when not to boost. I don't really count those sections because that's not what the game was built for, and the game purposefully attempts to mask that they're even accessible. They feel like they were added because it'd look nice in a shot rather than for gameplay. On top of that, while I'd love to not be mine carted through a level, I don't generally like it when an area is too big. Space is good, but I think direction and structure far more important. It could only work if the game's mechanics would mesh with it, and the boost games don't imo. On that note, I'd actually like to see the whole "parkour" thing attempted, but with less stupidity this time. The wall run concept was a very poorly thought out idea, mainly because it opened the floodgates for all kinds of wonky level design. If they let people have free reign over it, it could potentially become broken. So they limited it to a very basic, easy to plan for kind of system which sucked any fun the idea could have potentially had away. But I think it had the right idea, making it so that the gameplay becomes more about Sonic's interaction with the level. The boost games gave the finger to the levels, and instead made it a flashy reflex dodging sort of minigame every five seconds, that occasionally switched to a 2D platformer. Sonic barely ever interacted with the level around him. The closest it came was the wall jump, grinding, and stomp abilities. Other than that you just got to see how pretty the level looked, whizzing past it with little concern. They meticulously plan out scenes and decor in the background that gets ignored because the focus is on pressing forward. Something that could have potentially been a neat little level gimmick is a background prop. If they must do the parkour idea again, I hope there's much more interaction with the levels. Instead of Sonic climbing walls and leaping over staircases, why not give the player objects to play with in interesting ways, creating tons of options and potential paths through the level?
Sonic has the "Ninja Turtles" effect to me. When I was a kid, me and my friends looked up to Sonic. He was a teenager with attitude, he was hip, he was cool. But looking back, Sonic hasn't really aged or matured at all and he's younger than me. So now Sonic's character comes off as juvenile, but I don't see this as a bad thing necessarily. Rather than being annoying or cringey, he becomes funny and charming. I have a natural nostalgia for my youth whenever I see him. My point is I don't think Sonic's design would have changed any of that if he had always been in his Classic design. Maybe this is my ADD, but when I was a kid, I didn't notice a difference going from playing Sonic 1 to watching Sonic X. His character and the way he carried himself never noticeably changed until Colors came along. [inlinespoiler]I realize this probably should've gone in the aesthetic thread, but whatever :P [/inlinespoiler]
Would it be possible to somewhat fuse Sonic Lost World's gameplay (or probably more like the Adventure series) with the Boost Formula and still have the game play in a fun Sonic like manner? Decrease Sonic's base acceleration and max speed, but keep momentum a thing and not limit Sonic's running to a button being held down. Throw in the parkour simply to prevent annoying full stops then throw in the boost on top.
Yeah Lost World was a nice stage in Sonic Adventure. OH YOU MEANT SONIC LOST WORLD! THE GAME! N0! I don't want any of that in this game.
Forget what I said my post was pointless. I didn't want the thread to derail but that wasn't necessary either. :v: I'm hoping that Modern Sonic will have a Spin Dash in this game that will allow him to speed up downhill, so in certain areas it would be more effective than boosting. But most likely it will be weak as hell like the slide.
I don't like complaining about things that aren't 100% certain, but I am crossing my fingers that Classic Sonic has an actual reason plot-wise that makes sense to be in the game, and that his gameplay is the same as in Generations. I hope Sega realizes that people liked the return of Classic Sonic in Generations because of the gameplay, not just because of the character. Classic as a character can't just be shoehorned into a game to automatically make it great.
The same as it has been? 2D Modern Sonic doesn't make Classic's gameplay redundant, so why would 3D Classic Sonic remove purpose from 3D Modern? It very likely wouldn't play the same as the boost style levels, so why does 3D gameplay have to solely belong to Modern Sonic? Personally, I would love it if they could at a minimum get 3D Classic Sonic's movement to feel like it did in Sonic Adventure 1. *EDIT* Storywise, it would be kind of amusing if the "Resistance" included every incarnation of Sonic, ranging from the in-game versions to the cartoons. I doubt it would happen, but it would be hilarious.
I believe that Classic Sonic will definitely fill a role plot-wise. There are two Egg Robots that looks like that they would have been controlled by both Dr. Robotniks. But really, that is just speculation from me. I agree with you though, Classic Sonic's presence needs to be justified by the plot or else critics will definitely say that he is there just so SEGA can make Classic Sonic fans to buy the game. Although knowing SEGA they will definitely try to justify why Classic Sonic is there, which isn't a bad thing. Here is the picture of the Egg Robots from the trailer: Spoiler
Personally I think this looks pretty slick and cool. It's a Generations successor in everything but name but presumably with all original content (hence not calling it Generations 2 to manage expectations i.e. people expecting throwback zones again) set in a futuristic post-apocalyptic environment which is a promising and cool setting for a Sonic game. When I saw Classic Sonic appear over the horizon in the trailer I was elated. Sonic Team are for once, thank the heavens, not trying to reinvent the wheel yet again and instead building off their most well received and best selling Sonic game Sonic Generations and producing a pseudo-sequel. To be honest it's everything we could have hoped for. I can't think of anything I'd want more than this game outside of Sonic Mania. I was a little surprised to see the initial negative kneejerk reaction particularly to Classic Sonic. His presence assumes this'll be at least as good as Sonic Generations given it has had so long in development and is building off the mechanics and foundation set by that game. I'm infinitely more hyped for Sonic Mania but I'm still excited for this. Guess I might be in the marginal minority. From my perspective we have two awesome and promising Sonic games to look forward to now and that's exciting.
