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How would you remake Sonic Adventure for today?

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Sonic5993, Nov 27, 2020.

  1. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Since someone mentioned character battles, I have to laugh when it comes to the Knuckles battle.

    You really do just homing attack the man 3 times and he's done, there's hardly any pomp and circumstance to it. It's so uninteractive that I hardly consider it part of the game anymore, like the Knuckles fight from Sonic 3 (although he actually kind of puts up a fight in that one). It makes me wonder how that kind of character battle would be received today. I can imagine reviewers being like "...that's it?"
     
  2. ChaddyFantome

    ChaddyFantome

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    This sounds nice on paper, but in practice what it really amounts to is making your point gains more inconsistent.
    Dunno how I feel about that. To me the addition of the reticle was a dumbing down of the gameplay, and actively contributes to the feeling of newer games feeling automated and "like a rhythm game" as many people often describe it. Its makes it feel unnarutal and takes away positioning and aiming from the equation. I'd go as far as to say it retroactively teaches people to play older games worse.

    Im fond of Tails having a Verticle Tail Attack in the air and giving him all the Tornado sections. He needs the breaks in gameplay more than Sonic does and piloting the Tornado is his thing, so if only one of em should get them, its him.
     
  3. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Idk how I feel about the reticle in particular, but I’d like to see them add SOME kind of visual cue that tells me when I can homing attack again.

    I’ve died quite a few times in Windy Valley doing that first homing attack chain at the start of the level. Sometimes I can press A again very soon after I homing attack the first badnik, sometimes I have to wait until Sonic is at the height of his “bounce”. It feels very inconsistent because sometimes I can time the homing attacks very quickly with no problem, and sometimes it won’t “lock on” fast enough and I’ll just end up airdashing forward into a bottomless pit.

    Now I just do a very “safe” timing to ensure the homing attack has time to lock onto the next enemy before homing attacking again. Maybe I get the timing slightly wrong, but it really feels like the homing attack is really inconsistent sometimes
     
  4. E-122-Psi

    E-122-Psi

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    I think in that regard they really just need to make the homing attack more reliable. I mean the Light Dash should have a path plain set out for it as well, but it still constantly botches it.

    Concerning Hedgehog Hammer, I wouldn't mind extra rounds of it really. I think the supporting characters really should have had more mini-games. Like maybe Gamma could have had a shooting gallery mini game and Big could have had Big's Fishing Derby type one.

    I think for Sky Chase it's just a case of what was mentioned before and changing it up for each character, like maybe Tails' version shoots, but Sonic attacks from the wing akin to Sonic 2. Even Big could have a unique Sky Chase where he evades the Egg Carrier and maybe uses his fishing rod to destroy incoming debris.
     
  5. ChaddyFantome

    ChaddyFantome

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    Lost World in general just had a very weirdly coded Homing attack. it's hard for me to even put into words.
    Not to pretend like the thing has never had issues, but in the earlier games, I notice a lot of newer who played games like Generations or Colors first failing with the thing more so because of bad habits acquired from playing newer game that use a less consistent Homing Attack, but compensates by having a reticle. In SA1, SA2, Heroes and even Shadow. The Homing Attack has a set radius around the character in the direction you are facing. It was something you had to feel out and get accustomed to the same way you would even a simple jump or enemy bounce in any platformer. The addition of a reticle changes the gameplay dynamic. It's no longer about judging your positioning in the air relative to an enemy or target, it just becomes about reacting to the appearing reticle on screen. Sure it means the player will mess up less often, but at the cost of depth.
     
  6. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

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    I've never been really interested in old stuff rework, save for a few exceptions. However, if I had to say what's the proper way to remake SA1, I would say to start by remastering both SA1 and SA2 together. My reasoning:

    1) People have said SA1 alone isn't long enough these days for a remaster. Well, just on the remaster level, I think the two-game bundle would suffice. You can upgrade graphics, polish code,and add stuff like additional graphic support and options, and this compilation would be enough for a full price package. But stopping here wouldn't be enough for me and other remasters put three games together, so let's go on.

    2) The three playstyles from SA2 were already present in SA1, and SA2 also changed a few things that would be worth having in SA1. Having both games remade at the same time would allow to get the best of both worlds and improve where they would still need, hopefully standarizing the adventure gameplay for new entries if they chose to make SA3 or whatever they wanted to keep on with Adventure fans.

    3) I'm not a fan of chao gardens, but I'm quite sure it would be nice to access the six chao gardens (3 per game) from either game, allowing less repetitive grinding and giving more room to sort them out, plus, since GameCube had the best chao system, you can just upgrade the mini-game for everything that needs it. It would also allow to have every circuit of chao races together. I'd make the station square garden to be the hero garden and the egg carrier garen to be the dark one too, so there's 2 gardens of each type.


    Now we have two popular games with a cohesive engine, but there's people who prefer how one game works over the other, and we have multiple characters and other stuff that are present in one game but not in the other, and so one. Let's start going beyond plain remastering but not too far into remaking, at least for the standard gameplay:

    4) Add "Original" and "Other game" modes. Original is self-explanatory: the standard game. "Other game", on the other hand, rearranges each game so it plays more like the other. So, SA2 would have separate gameplay for each character and new adventure fields as hub worlds to access different levels, and SA1 would feature "Hero" story for the regular trio and "Family" story for the side characters, having to play their levels mixed. Don't fear about fishing, there's more to come. Level missions and ranking modes would also change.

    5) Add a 2P mode for SA1, and unlockable characters for 1P mode similar to how Metal Sonic works in SADX. For example, play Eggman's levels as Gamma in SA2. It doesn't have to make sense, it's just skins for the most part, though respecting the kind of unique character tweaks SA2B 2P mode had (iirc, can't tell right now). They could use this so making progress in one game affects the other game. For example, Shadow in SA1 could be a reward for collecting all Shadow-related emblems in SA2.


    Time to go for some new design choices for the base games (well, for SA1 only, I haven't thought enough about the other one). Some of them have been already suggested, but I'd want to say how I'd implement them:

    6) Mini-games would be entirely optional, including those that were played during the main campaign. You can add the necessary cutscenes for sky chase, and unlock the mini-game to play later after watching (or skipping) said cutscene. Same goes for kart races in SA2.

    7) Now that we're at it, mini-games, chao gardens included, shouldn't give emblems except for playing them once, thanking for giving them a try and nothing more. You could involve player a bit more with chao with something like "make one evolve" or something, but something very short so we don't feel too forced to play with virtual pets if we don't really want.

    8) Fishing should be big's mini-game, not the main game. Any improvement on the fishing gameplay would be welcome if they didn't change it, but it's not really an adventure. My favourite part of playing as Big is Hot Shelter, where he does some puzzle platforming, and, if we really want to have a calm, peaceful gameplay mode for him, it should be one that requires moving around and messing with stuff to find where Froggy's hiding, but not too intelligent puzzles or it would be out of character for him and start getting hard and not peaceful for every player. Some sandbox gameplay using the rod, basically. Alternatively, if some speed should be present, he could have some stunt race behind froggy, less involved in movement speed and more in choosing the right path to avoid the obstacles and get his friend on time (much more fun than pursuing Sonic as Tails).

    9) For SA1 Tails, the enemy should always be, you know, an enemy. The only motivating level in vanilla SA1 was the race against eggman to save the city, not shutting the fucking Sonic up. Metal Sonic as Hedgehog Sonic's replacement is the obvious one, but having different kinds of enemies that require different movement strategies and pose some threat would be nice. Tails could try to stop Zero in a level where he sees the robot chase Amy, for example. Add the extra bonus of your oppponent not saying a single word because they're robots, maybe some noises in the style of R2-D2 like Gamma does sometimes.

    10) Adventure Fields should be fully developed levels so you can have standard Sonic fun traversing them. This would also be the place to make multiple routes and have that component of classic games present in these ones usually called out for being almost single-track routes. Being safe levels (except in boss fights), player could roam around and find easter eggs and so on.


    And that's all I can remember I had in mind. Anything else would be going too far, adding too much new content that doesn't belong to a remake. Hope you enjoyed my text wall.
     
  7. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    I was confused by the Lost World mention for a second until I figured out what you meant, but I agree. I just think something needs to be... changed about the Dreamcast era homing attack because it was REALLY easy for the thing to not work as intended.

    Glad somebody mentioned the light speed dash in Adventure too, because that also had a habit of sometimes sending you careening off into some absurd direction if you didn't align perfectly with the rings.

    The light speed dash felt a lot better in SA2, but I feel like the Dreamcast era homing attack was never really improved enough. The current iteration of the homing attack feels kinda stiff and uninteractive to me, especially with the noisy reticles. I'm sure there is some way they can "fix" the Dreamcast homing attack without just slapping a band-aid over it and saying "here, now there's no way you can mess up!"
     
    Last edited: Dec 13, 2020
  8. ChaddyFantome

    ChaddyFantome

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    Yea just realised Lost World would also refer to the SA1 level along with me mixing up Windy Hill with Windy Valley. My bad there.
    In general, I dont like the Idea of homing attack chains that you can litterally mash A through without having to make any aerial positioning judgment to do it.
    I view the ability to do that in newer games as a flaw.
    There are definitely improvements to consistency that should be made for the Homing Attack and Light Speed Dash in general.
    On that note, we would need a replacement for the Light Ring upgrade if wee are giving Sonic his SA2 Light Dash.
     
  9. hiadlzupfer

    hiadlzupfer

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    I think remaking this game without completely changing almost all aspects of it is futile...! Don't get me wrong - I LOVED SA1 to death, but it's a product of its time and wouldn't hold up today.

    I recently got the Mario 3D remakes and while replaying 64 and Sunshine the flaws became really apparent. They really didn't change anything about those games, except for the visuals... Only Galaxy was worth playing to me, because other than Sega with Sonic, Nintendo continuously built upon their very first 3D Mario concept (64) which WORKED (at the time) but took a few iterations to really become enjoable/playable (this process, for me, took them until Galaxy and was even MORE fleshed out with Odyssey!)

    If they had built upon what worked in SA1 (SA2 improved A LOT but also changed very much for the worse - the boost precursor with Sonic/Shadow's linear levels comes to mind, even tho the pair controlled better than SA1 Sonic) and evolved Sonic's gameplay over SA2 into a proper SA3 ('06 just took "the wrong turn" for me I think) who knows how the 3D part of the franchise would look like today...?

    What I read all the time is something along the lines of "...but what about the gameplay for Knuckles and Tails and Amy and Shadow and please don't forget Blaze..." - which baffles me bc they shouldn't even be thinking about other characters until they really have Sonic gameplay fleshed out - and then maybe add 2-3 characters (search for Emeralds with Knuckles, a Tornado "minigame" for Tails, or something!) but make Sonic the protagonist!

    I think what the series needs (apart from an all-new-level 2D game) isn't an Adventure remake - but something that takes the SA gameplay of Sonic, improves it to perfection and throws a myriad of different levels (yes possibly also including SA1 & SA2 levels, WHATEVER is possible, except for another Green Hill iteration...) at us. Maybe along the way, live up to the retro hype and make it "Sonic World" from Jam/Sonic R/Sonic The Fighters style "Saturn" 3D like (which I would LOVE!! When is X-Treme gonna come out? :P) - unlikely, but one can dream...!
     
  10. ChaddyFantome

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    Well, yea. Those aren't really remakes. They are just ports with minor enhancements. Even the visuals are barely changed. The DS version of 64 is a better example of a remake than the 3D collection.
     
  11. BadBehavior

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    That's the excuse that's been tossed around for why Sonic hasn't had other playable characters since Unleashed and it hasn't stopped the games since then from sucking, see Lost World & Forces.
     
  12. BadBehavior

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    While we're on this topic, you'll never guess who crawled out of the flaming dumpster fire of 2020 and dropped his first sonic analysis vid in nearly 2 years.
     
  13. Pengi

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    I don't think they were implying that the game would automatically be good if it's Sonic only. They were saying it's not good to put the cart before the horse. If the base character doesn't feel good to play, then the divergent characters aren't going to feel good to play either.
     
  14. I wouldn't know, who is this guy?
     
  15. Naean

    Naean

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    There are various things I would change in a Sonic Adventure remake, many of which has been expressed by others up to this point in the thread. Please forgive me if the following specific idea/concept has already been mentioned...

    I'd be very much in favour of splitting the playable characters equally across 2 categories. I'd probably call them Core Adventure and Extra Adventure, and divide the characters apart based mostly on overall player feedback/favouring of some playstyles more than others.

    I'd place Sonic, Tails and Knuckles in the Core Adventure bunch, with Amy, Big and Gamma in the Extra Adventure bunch.

    Like with the original, I'd provide the option to play each character from the menu just as before, and unlocked at the same points as the original game. However, the shake-up I'd do is make Sonic, Tails and Knuckles playthrough completion in the Core Adventure portion of the cast the only requirement for unlocking the Super Sonic option, fighting the game's true final boss, viewing the actual last cutscenes, etcetera.

    This allows the remaining notably more mixed reception cast in Extra Adventure to still exist in the game, but no longer be mandatory to go through the game's true final sequences, and I feel this is a solid approach to pleasing different players with different opinions; people who dislike playing as some or all of those characters can avoid them partially or entirely, while completionists and people who like some or all of those characters can also play through them if they desire.

    This cast-splitting decision also has the benefit of tying Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 together more, from both user interface and character categorisation perspectives, while simultaneously retaining Sonic Adventure's original flexibility with individual character selection.

    Speaking of U.I., widescreen capabilities would allow ample space for 2 side-by-side Core Adventure and Extra Adventure character wheels, as opposed to the original's 1 central character wheel.
     
    Last edited: Dec 15, 2020
  16. hiadlzupfer

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    True, but that's my point, you would have to change the game completely to have a "proper" remake - just polishing a few aspects is not enough, see 3D All-Stars (which I don't claim to be remakes!)

    Yes that's exactly what I meant - it's not about making a game Sonic-only, it's about perfecting the Sonic gameplay first (Which Lost World and Forces did NOT do!)
     
  17. Mana

    Mana

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    There's so many Sonic Youtubers these days that they are starting to blend in. Cybershell commenting on his video is just the solidification of that to me.

    It was a good video even if we've been saying the same talking points for nearly 8 months now.
     
  18. ChaddyFantome

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    But...the DS version of 64 exists and is an actual remake. It doesnt change it completley at all. Its why I brought it up.
     
  19. hiadlzupfer

    hiadlzupfer

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    Yeah I didn't say otherwise ^^ actually 64 DS is a very good example! It might have been fine for a handheld game in 2004, but an SA remake in the same manner wouldn't hold up either...! I know we don't like the word "reboot", but I think that's what the series needs...!
     
  20. ChaddyFantome

    ChaddyFantome

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    Then... why use SA1 remake as a guineapig for a reboot instead of just making a new game?