This basically. I think we are at a point where honestly, I don't think you can really blame SEGA for this teaser, especially since we don't exactly know how far along the game is or if they're in a position to put out a trailer. We also don't know how soon they plan on showing more; maybe it won't be that long, maybe they're saving something for June. It feels like most fans are upset about things that technically were done in the past (ie. SEGA could've put themselves in a better position to show more in the presentation, SEGA could've given us updates earlier so we didn't wait so long for this, etc), but I won't blame them for the brevity of the trailer since a lot of people were suggesting that there wouldn't be an announcement at all. Not to name anyone specifically, but there are also quite a few rather toxic SonicTubers who have a pretty decently large audience and have been circulating the same information that there would not be a game announcement, or that there WOULD be 40 different game announcements, and suggesting everyone be negative and feel negatively regardless of what happens, unless their insanely unrealistic expectations are met. The rumor mill has also been pretty out of control, so I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of people have built up their expectations from those rumors and will inevitably be disappointed.
I'm like 99% certain that Ken Pontac and Warren Graff, the series' writers for every game with a voice-acted story from Colours to Team Sonic Racing, have confirmed that they're no longer working with SEGA. Someone who followed the situation better than I did could fill you in, but I think Pontac said something like "we worked on Sonic for ten years and I think we had a good run", along with maybe some other quotes of note. Basically made it pretty clear that they aren't still working on Sonic. They were brought in with Colours at the same time as the new voice cast when SEGA clearly wanted to take in a more comedy-focused and less plot-heavy direction. If the entire Boom initiative wasn't already in the planning at that stage, it certainly wasn't far off conception. I'm really curious to to learn about the plot for this game, the writer(s), the dialogue and the overall tone. Colours and Generations had total handwave plots and were mostly inoffensive even their dialogue was polarising. I'll say that after several years of a very boring and overly nice Sonic, it was super refreshing to see Sonic as a show-off and generally quite playful in Colours. It wasn't all bad jokes. IIRC Lost World is where they had more free reign in coming up with the entire story based on a scenario from SEGA and it blew hard. And then Forces suffered from its own case of split personality disorder mixing childish humour with melodramatic war speak, along with a rubbish plot that was riddled with holes. Pontac and Graff are (hopefully) gone from this series. Whatever we get next can't be any worse, but I hope it's actually good again. The plot is the one thing that the leaks don't detail at all.
SEGA put itself in this position, it's hard to blame the fans (even though spamming their social media's isn't justified). The best-case scenario for me would probably be something like Takashi Iizuka saying that they're not ready to show us the game yet, and they need a little more time. That's it. After all this waiting, a little transparency goes a long way, and in my experience, this fanbase is very understanding when they're shown transparency. The situation is still radio silence on Sonic 2022, just like it was before Sonic Central. I feel like they're terrified to show more of the game's general idea, in a CGI trailer or otherwise because they might be worried that it's going to get a negative reaction, similar to Classic Sonic in the Forces reveal trailer. You can't say the game is going to be bad or good because we know next to nothing about it, and that could be their intention (didn't stop me tho lol). Of course this is just a conspiracy theory from me but that's how I feel, and if it's true then yikes.
I'm not putting the blame on Sega or the fans in particular, but I gotta call it as a I see it. Like I said, it doesn't matter, Sonic's nature as a controversial series guarantees that its never going to satisfy everyone's expectations. So as I said, the only thing we can do is just wait it out. But I honestly don't see why we have to make such harsh judgment calls when we literally don't know anything. Fine, I get it, their track record has never been particularly good, but at least wait until we actually have something to critique and judge before claiming the game is trash. Sonic fans always jump the gun about the series, declaring something to be either the best or worst thing ever and it's such an extremist opinion, and at times, it's based off of literally nothing. Just chill out and focus on something else until more information is available basically.
Bowser's Fury didn't show any gameplay, or if you want to be suuuper strict, they did show some in-game teaser at the very end of this trailer, but didn't actually shows any gameplay, how it would play, or any general idea of what this is about, of course it was forgiven at the time cause it was announced with 3D world remaster which was the main focus, and people just assumed it's some little bonus anyway, not something really different . it's only after 4 months that they actually detailed what bowser's Fury is about with proper trailer and gameplay Nah the situation would be worst-case scenario, fanbase wouldn't be understanding at all, they would be angry,would probably accuse them of having nothing to show and not even starting working on the game. What they did was the right thing, just small glance at the teaser views in YT -now over 1.2 Million- and comments, amount of likes, would tell you that the general audience are actually happy and hyped about this new game, now imagine if the announcement was just iizuka saying yeah we have nothing to show right now, no one would care at all, if not actually angry. yeah cause the best way to hide what they are working on that they are terrified of what people may think about... is to produce expensive CG trailer, truly genius move there
I'll say one thing, if they plan to do more Sonic Central livestreams after they show off footage for this game, I hope they have dedicated segments where they put the game developers in the spotlight. I'd love to see the director for this game talk about their vision for this game and how the team plan to achieve it, be that Morio Kishimoto or whoever is directing 2022. Maybe they could even give a little developer walkthrough. That'd be pretty cool I think.
An expensive CGI trailer that communicates almost nothing about the game itself, while even Sonic Forces showed more and even teased the Avatar with the "Join the Resistance" thing. Compare this to games like Super Mario Odyssey, Sonic Mania, Ratchet & Clank: Rift Apart, and I just wonder why Sonic 2022 can't have the same magic as those reveals.
the CG give us the general tone of the game, that's like the purpose of 99% of teasers right there, we see forests and hints of ancient technology, that cycle thing is also a hint that will make sense when we see the final game. i just gave an example of Bowser's fury teaser that also didn't tell us anything, no one faulted it for doing that, or Luigi's Mansion 3 teaser that was just the logo, new GoW game did the same etc. etc. , don't tell me that Nintendo or Sony are terrified of what the general audience may think of their games. This is just basic marketing cycle, and as long as we getting new info soon, along different sonic games like Colors remaster etc, it's not a big deal at all, it's not like this new game is the only thing we are getting, it make sense from marketing standpoint to not overshadow the other announcements, Nintendo just did the same thing realizing that revealing new botw2 info at the last direct will overshadow Skyward sword remaster reveal, so they did state that botw2 info will be revealed later this year, while focusing on SS remaster showing.
I think this is something people overlook too much with Pontac and Graff. When they started, they went over pretty well and were pretty associated with Colors' position as a return to basic fun for the series, and in that game, they're still pretty decent. I watched Jabroni Mike stream both versions of Colors a few weeks back, and it was one of the first times I've seen genuine enjoyment of a 3D Sonic from him, including the cutscenes. (and yes, he is very mad that this game got announced so soon afterwards)
The simple answer is because those franchises have already proven themselves to be generally consistently good, so I can expect Bowser's Fury, God of War, Luigi's Mansion 3 to be good because they come from competent developers that have consistently done well before. You might be satisfied with the CGI teaser but for me personally, I would like a better reveal that communicates more clearly what the game is about and why I should be excited for it, especially in a franchise like Sonic which has not proven that it can be consistently good. This is why I originally said that the game should have been revealed properly in 2022 when they had gameplay to show.
You have made many posts in this thread over the last 24 hours about this one specific aspect. I believe we get the point by now.
I'm gonna agree with MH MD. Even if they didn't show much, I think the teaser is faring pretty well, and I genuinely think it's solely because it looks like something new and different. If it looked like more of the same, people would be pissed. But just seeing that this isn't "Sonic Generations 3 2 Battle + Classic Shadow DLC" is enough to satisfy a lot of people, myself included. Anyway, is anyone ready to talk about how this cycle ability basically gives Sonic the Paraloop? I am
Quality had nothing to do with showing nothing, GoW teaser doesn't tell you anything about it, it shows less than Sonic new game somehow, cause it was basically just a logo, not even a proper CG teaser. Not like Metroid Prime 4 with it's nothing CG teaser was any better.. when it's latest game was Federation Force, yet people didn't complain anyway, they were happy and hyped with a new metorid prime coming after all these years, rightfully so. And spoiler: people wouldn't complain about next Star Fox game being revealed with CG teaser either, despite the latest game being bad. and Nintendo shouldn't have revealed BotW2 in 2019 anyway since they didn't reveal it properly, not even it's official name , they just revealed it as "the sequel to botw", not even "botw2", and didn't reveal any single new information about it since. and what's funny is, i am sure that the period between botw2 reveal and it's first proper showing "2 years as of writing this, possibly more if it didn't appear in this E3" is longer than any period between any sonic game and it's release, with the whole marketing cycle in-between, no single sonic game got 2 years without unveiling it's actual name. but that's going in circles.
Right?! Colours was a decent albeit flawed start, Generations was too light on story and slightly disappointing, Lost World was a big disappointment in every level and Forces was by that point predictably garbage. I don't mean to speak for everyone, but I find that Colours is viewed worse in hindsight for the precedent it set. On its own it wasn't that bad. That's how I remember it at least. And funnily enough, that remark applies to the whole of Colours rather than just the writing. Pontac and Graff were never a good fit for Sonic because they weren't all too interested in what the series was before SEGA hired them. They turned Sonic writing into something that wasn't only low quality, but also quite unlike how it had been previously. They couldn't even be bothered to include a lot of basic continuity (although I'm sure that Sonic Team are to blame for this too). I'm so eager to see what actually comes of Rangers story, or basically any Sonic game story without them at the helm. I'm pretty open-minded really. I just want to see a story where something actually happens and the characters behave like themselves, without tons of contrived jokes and glaring holes. The reason this relates to Rangers is because from what very little we've officially seen of the game and especially from what we know from leaks, it sounds like this is going to be a pretty significant shift. Forces looked like it was going to be a shift back to more serious stories, right up until Classic Sonic showed up in the teaser trailer and the image was instantly muddled because it tried to hit every single note all at once.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but that's word-for-word how I feel about Shiro Maekawa, and the writing of about 90% of scenes in the 2000s games. But yeah, @Shaddy the guy is right on the money. I ran across TV Tropes "And the Fandom Rejoiced" page for Sonic Generations a few weeks ago, and this is one of the entries: "Warren Graff and Ken Pontac are returning to write the story!" Looking back now though, I think they got too much credit back then, just like they catch too much blame, now. Their dialogue in Colors was very well-received, but they only actually *wrote* the story for one game, Lost World. For everything else, their role was to write the English scripts, and in Forces' case, IIRC, that was pure localization, working from an already-written Japanese script. But they're often treated as if That Scene With Tails was *their* fault. So, I don't expect them leaving (if indeed they are) to substantially change anything on its own. I just hope Sonic keeps being snarky. :P As weary as the endless criticism of the 2010s makes right now, even *I* think it's a pretty damning indictment that even TO ME, the story and characterization in this series *peaked* with Colors. And I still enjoy it, but that should've been a solid foundation to build from, not a place to plateau.
Fair enough, I completely forgot about that teaser - trying to find it just led me to the Nintendo Direct where they explained/showed off Bowser's Fury.
not only was its latest game Federation Forces, but the last game it got since Other M was a surprise-announced Metroid II remake that a lot of people considered inferior to AM2R anyway... being a Metroid fan is suffering hahahahahha
Frankly I'm glad we got the teaser. It made the leaks more credible, and those leaks paint a picture of at least the most interesting Sonic game in a long while for me. I'm really not a fan of the art direction in the teaser or mentioned in the leaks, though. I just want the series to return to the surreal aesthetic of the classic games and Mania and this completely bland forest/island setting they're using does not paint a good picture. The fact that none of the leaks mention different biomes is worrying as well. Like...they have to be there, I cannot imagine the whole map is gonna be this bland forest, but like...why wouldn't the leakers say "oh there's a lava/ice/water/whatever part" if there were. The island setting also precludes any kind of industrial/urban part too. It'd be very cool to have a section with a city a la Speed Highway or something where you die if you fall down to the streets, but the city is so dense with these surreal skyscrapers that you can have fun parkouring between them, but that's clearly not gonna happen. Will we even get an Eggman factory/base-style area...?
Odyssey was shown off at the Switch reveal event. The trailer is the one where Mario pops out of the sewer. As for Bowser's Fury, its reveal trailer was just a zoom in onto the giant bell while it was dark and stormy with a lightning flash revealing its name. That was it.
Depends on how you define getting "revealed". Cause iirc, odyssey first appeared in the first official switch reveal as a snippet of untitled gameplay in the sand kingdom.
