The younger fandom, and how they learned from exactly none of our mistakes.

That's because it hasn't been updated in years. They stopped after Unleased and then added Sticks.

 

it does boggle the mind how they keep pushing Zavok from the game that only dedicated Sonic fans with a Wii U (or those that paid attention to the silent PC release) managed to play. Which isn't exactly a high number to be blunt. That's one thing that seemed to be universal with Forces, everyone was confused as to why he was there or why he was the only Ruby illusion that seemed to speak and everything, and got a boss fight where Shadow and Chaos didn't.

 

I wonder the same. Though I will say that the music that plays during the fight is an absolute banger.

 

I particularly don't see any true problem with games from Heroes to Generations (regarding story at least... If you consider the Storybook series as canon, Sonic & The Black Knight is among the ones most true to the characters).

What I do have issues with tho' are Iizuka's retcons and alterations, and if you get rid of those some of the problems can be solved regarding lore and story. I mean, it created more holes than those round cheeses Jerry always chased for in the Tom & Jerry cartoons. Two worlds? Classic Sonic going from younger Modern Sonic to "that Sonic from another dimension"? Really, then how in God's name the Angel Island detached itself from the land which is curiously in the human world, or how it went from Sonic's world to - screw it, Imma callin' it - Earth and then back to whatever planet Sonic lives in? And really, Sonic Mania could fit into the main timeline just fine, after all you could create countless games with Classic Sonic and still fit it between S3K and Sonic Adventure (or the entirety of Sonic 4 if you wanna include it) with no problem at all. Now using that excuse of Classic Sonic being a completely different Sonic to make games not interfering with canon or whatever is the excuse is utter nonsense.

And there's another problem here as well - the Sega/Sonic Team mandates! Shadow, Tails and Knuckles losing their character traits and development just so they have to always act like a flandarization of themselves. Or that Sonic cannot cry, or there can't be other inventors besides Tails and Eggman. Flynn commented about the issue where Shadow was in the last saga where he went all "hurr durr only cowards run, I overpower anything! I are da ultm8!!!11" and how he wrote that differently, like, how Shadow would actually behave - not as a angsty teen version of Vegeta.

How to solve that all? Wipe out ALL the retcons, alterations and mandates, ironically making a big retcon to fit everything in place, and last but not least, making the characters get their development back and act like they should and having more liberty (both in games and in every other media) with stories and new characters. If there has to be mandates, maybe the only one is "keep everything coherent and cohesive with the lore and characters' traits and development."

As for gameplay, I talked about it a few days ago:

 

Recently it seems the older fandom's priority is good games and the younger fandom's priority is tight story continuity.

I think Sticks was added in 2015, then Eggman Nega and Orbot & Cubot were added in 2016. This would have been around the time of the 25th anniversary Sonic Comic strips, which had spotlight episodes for them.

 

And here I am, the odd middle man that wants both. Sucks that Sega can't seem to do both for some reason.

Ideally, I'd want a game with good gameplay that also has an interesting story, but not have the cutscenes drag out for too long (SA2 and Heroes were pretty good at keeping the cutscenes short for the most part). I'd also would like to see a seamless transition between story and gameplay, similar to S3K and Mania, to keep the flow more natural.

 

Well, of course both would be best, but if someone put a gun to your head and said "pick one", which would it be? I know I'd pick gameplay every time.

 

I think misspelled "either"...

 

Good gameplay should always be the priority. A good story is nice when they're going to dedicate time to having one. If the next Sonic game was actually fun and well made, but had zero cinematics, I'd be a happy man.

I don't want an in-depth story if that's what's stopping Sonic Team from being competent developers. It might actually make things simple enough for them to focus on what matters in the gameplay.

 

Yeah, that's true.

Going by most attempts at 3D in the series so far, I don't think having a story is stopping them from making good games. They're just painfully incompetent at both the gameplay and story departments.

 

People just seem to act like you must decide between if you want better gameplay or better storytelling.

They're not mutually exclusive features, and improving one does nothing to harm the other. It's just more people taking sides for the sake of it. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

I think the chatter comes from the fact that the series for the most part hasnt done either right consistently for a long time (in the case of story, I'd argue that this franchise has never been strong in that department since the beginning). If "Sonic Team" has been struggling to find a consistent direction to build on with success, it would be better for them to focus with as few distractions as possible on getting the basics right, especially given that they may not have the same budget/resources they had in the past.

Contrary to the opinion of many, ST definitely does listen to fan outcries (which is why a Sonic Adventure type game will inevitably be made again eventually, if it's not happening already, you can book it) and always have, even though they generally only seem to address surface level issues and instead of the franchise's deeper issues across the board. So while we would like to get a game with all.of the above criticisms addressed properly, it may not be reasonable to expect that to happen all at once given the condition of the main series now and the track record of the developers.

 

@gameplay: Maybe we should ask for another attempt at the '06 formula for a change…

@storytelling: It's not that easy: What would you say is it, that keeps you hooked and invested? Lots of plot twists? The flawed protagonist? At the end of the day, I don't care about all that tbh. As a child, I didn't care about all that either. "What if X was real?" "Is person B good or evil?" "Did I learn something new?" Those were the questions. Those were the fun ones.

 

I'd simply like for the gameplay to be good and varied (not just Sola Sonica), and the plot engaging and within a specific, progressing continuity.

Hence me still hoping, to this day, for a remake of the Classics that could start a proper continuity of new games. With the modern cast, of course.

 

Please no MegaDrive remakes. Those games are perfect as they are and remaking them would be a sin. I wouldn’t mind them releasing the Taxman remastered versions for consoles but even then we’ve played them all to death.

No re-introducing the same levels anymore, and no rebuilding or enhancing previous games and slapping ‘DX’ or ‘Remastered’ on. We just need a game that adheres to the spirit, the world-building, the aesthetics of the originals whilst not being a complete copy/paste. They managed this with the games up until recently so I’m not sure why they can’t continue.

Previous games in the series built levels and gimmicks around real life locations mixed with impressive artistic choices. Green Hill Zone is famous for being simply a tropical island mixed with 80’s computer graphics, and Sonic Adventure’s Mystic Ruins was based on Sonic Team’s trips to South America with added flair. When they weren’t based on real life they were based on pop-culture icons like the Death Star or dreamy serene locations like Starlight Zone.

When they did need to re-use level tropes they upped the ante considerably, such as going from Marble Zone to Marble Gardens: making levels more interesting, bigger, crazier, but whilst still keeping consistency with the existing world and creating a lore concerning the locations and their links (I.e with the Chaos Emeralds and the ancient tribes).

The locations can still be wacky without stripping them back to look like they’re actually from a video game and somehow trying to break the fourth wall - basically everything from Sonic Lost World which looks like a rehash of other levels but curled in to tubes and cubes floating.

Sonic Mania - whilst using Green Hill Zone again - managed to pack in so much new content to the level that other than the look of it it was completely new. The same went for each other rehashed level, and then there was the Titanic Monarch which blew me away with it’s concept of running up and into the body of a giant being. I remember getting far enough up the level to see the giant mechanical face in the background for the first time and it made me grin - what great artistic style, design and concept. Imagine seeing a huge death robot staring at YOU specifically from a mile away - it’s the shit nightmares are made of and at the same time was also a cool callback to Launch Base Zone without the need to re-use it’s assets.

Sonic’s gameplay doesn’t need to constantly change to be interesting, it just needs great design that weaves in to the themes of the series and keeps things fresh enough to be enjoyable but not too alien to be unrecognisable.

I didn’t expect this post to be this long nor did I really want to rant on so hopefully what I’m saying resonates with some of you and isn’t just complete crap.

 

Don't blame me for seeing remastered games like Spyro and Crash, and reboots like MK9 onwards, and wishing to see the same applied to the origins of this franchise and from there build up a proper continuity, which kinda got lost from SA2 onwards.

I'm the kind who enjoys a game with proper plot, especially if it's interesting and engaging.

 

One note for Sega, taken from the words of Neil Gaiman: don’t make Sonic modern. Make him inspiring.

 

This is really a very interesting topic to me, as someone who like others in this thread was born in 99, but still grew up experiencing the classics as well as the modern games side by side.

I don't know about America, but in the UK on one channel Sonic X would be showing and on another it was SatAM, Sonic Underground and the adventures of sonic. Basically what I'm trying to say is, as a kid I never differentiated between all these different versions. There wasn't one time I felt, "these are two different Sonics" because overall they all kept to the general ethos quite well. Although in truth I really didn't much like the Adventures of sonic the Hedgehog cartoon, because of how childish it was. Also, I think it's incredibly weird to see people hold up colours as being reminiscent of a Saturday morning toon when SatAM was... Pretty different tonally.

My first Sonic game was also Adventure 1, but I had the opportunity to grow up with my dad's megadrive too. Sonic Heroes, Sonic 2, Shadow the Hedgehog, Flicky, these were all my bread and butter as a kid. It was only when I started using the Internet I was told quite incredibly viciously (perhaps you older guys forget how horribly toxic you could be, I haven't as those were the more defining experiences of me growing up on the Internet) how wrong I was. I was also told how utterly wrong it is for Sonic to have green eyes, also the homing attack was truly an aberration and even Knuckles and Tails were 2 too many friends for Sonic to have.

You just had to shrug it and deal with it, there was no point ever even trying to put your pov forward because you'd immediately get shouted down. I don't think it should be a surprise at all that the backlash of people in this generation is so strong. Not too put too fine a point on it, but we were treated like shit XD. And a lot of us were barely out of single digits at the time.

Of course its totally wrong for us to perpetuate this, I try not to, but at the same time I can understand the mindset of fans who do. I suppose its learned behaviour or something like that. It's all very interesting.

For me, I stopped being invested into Sonic at Unleashed, the aesthetic of that game really put me off as a kid, looking back on it now it's not too bad at all, but I wasn't a fan of it. Every game that came after, spin off or not, I waited patiently to see if at least Tails would be playable and have his own story. But no, it's just more Sonic, Sonic, Classic Sonic, and then your OC. These were all fun, I can have fun with games that are less than good, but it's not exactly the (relative) highs I was looking for.

I do think that the speed of Sonic in Adventure 1 is the perfect one, and more care should be put into the level design, on a similar scale to lost world (the level of course, not that travesty). But I also really disagree when people say sonic should just point blanc not have a story. How do you expect people to get emotionally invested then?

For people, kids especially, who play these games the first time it's essential to get them something to latch onto. Being 5 years old and watching Tails who was a similar age to me grow into a character that can take on Eggman (which I controlled!) resonated with me deeply, and to this day I have very strong positive feelings associated with Believe in Me and Tails is still my favourite character.

Also, E102's story brought me to tears, and that simple yet effective storytelling should be enough for Sonic. Nobody is asking for the scale of Final Fantasy, they just want something they can mildly suspend their disbelief in.

On the topic of KH3, these are two very different series to compare. Every single KH game upto this point had a strong original identity where the vast majority of the plot happened in original KH worlds, among various other staple elements of the series that weren't included at all in KH3. The Disney worlds have almost always been an afterthought.
The issue is that KH3 is an almost 100% Disney game, which sounds stupid to an outsider but its a real problem. The whole series was building up to an epic finale and instead the game was a solid 20 hour jaunt in almost solely Disney worlds, with the original KH worlds being smaller than their DS counterparts (not hyperbole, this is 100% factual). The backlash was warranted.