In other words, "we all know that it's real, but it might not be real". :/ The fact that they didn't specify that Sonic Rangers wasn't the name of 2022 is telling.
No it's not. It's really, really not. "Rangers" is definitely the name being used internally to refer to the game. And it's a name that the public should not yet be aware of. Whether it's the final name or a placeholder remains to be seen. Nobody at SEGA will be allowed to comment on rumours and leaked information. Silence is the best policy when it comes to rumors; they won't dispell false rumors and ignore accurate ones, because that then would lead to a situation where not commenting on rumours would confirm them. So in other words it's real, but nothing else has changed. We still don't know the significance of it.
God, so much this. These last few games announcements reeked of the 2005 "show a 30 second teaser and never mention the game again for 3 years" attitude Capcom loved back in the days lol. It wasn't fun back then and it's not fun now. I really hope we'll see something new at E3 at the very least.
You can only pull off a teaser if you have clout to maintain hype. Like them or not, Sonic Team hasn't had a critical success in a decade. They had the chance to put up or shut up, and did neither. Impatient Youtubers and hardcore fans demanded something. We're likely not going to see any gameplay until the end of the year, at the earliest. Colors Ultimate is their focus this year.
You know, I remember about a month ago half the damn forum was screaming "Please SEGA give us something! We'll take even a Forces-esque teaser, anything!" and now, it's just not enough. The fuck, you guys? Ninja'd by Jason but posting this anyway.
It almost sounds as though you're talking about multiple different groups of people. Can I get some receipts to prove that the same people that said that they'd be fine with a short, CGI teaser are the same people that are now demanding more because the CGI teaser wasn't enough? I can't speak for anyone else but I said that I'd be fine with just a teaser and, guess what? I'm fine with the teaser. Several people didn't want that though, and were quite clear that they wanted to see more (or would rather have seen nothing than just a teaser). They're the people who aren't satisfied with the news we got.
I'm actually one of the people that said that I'll be okay with a Forces-like teaser and ultimately was disappointed with the teaser, so I can see the point Sid is trying to make. I genuinely was okay with the concept of a vague teaser but I wasn't ready for how...nothing it ultimately was. Literally goddamn nothing. At least with Forces we had classic Sonic, the return of a more serious tone, and even the vague tagline "join the resistance" that hinted at a 3rd customisable character. What do we have with the Rangers reveal? Realistic trees? I agree that Sega absolutely needed to show something soon but that doesn't magically make this teaser okay. It blew, big time.
I am among those who asked for a simple teaser, got it, and am satisfied. I have nothing more to add :D
You set a low bar and SEGA still stumbled. Lol. How typical of them. But still, you wanted something on the same level as the Forces or Generations teasers, both of which gave us an idea of the basic premise of their respective games. And that's simply not what we got here. We got something less than that. I'm just fed up with the entire "unpleasable fanbase" narrative cropping up at every juncture. The community isn't a hive mind that all want the same things and receive things in the same way. It's pretty clear that the teaser trailer was too vague for most people, and needed to either be held back until a later date or that it should have shown off more. It failed to meet expectations. It's that simple. The people who were fine with the teaser won't have much to say, and those who wanted more are naturally going to be more vocal about that.
Yeah, ST going on a hiring spree could likely just result in the team being flooded with noob interns, pretty much like Forces. Something something the more things change...
Thinking of the unpleasable fanbase trope, it's never really rung true with me. I think it's even less true now though, when the fandom has very clearly shrunk as Sonic has become less relevant as a cultural icon. My impression of the fanbase nowadays is that it has very low expectations and tend to be disappointed when ST fails to even meet that. Sonic Mania is proof that even the 2D/3D divide is often exaggerated. It's true that there were some fans disappointed that the game which was getting attention was a throwback to the Genesis, but it was also very apparent that even those fans who weren't really on board were happy with the end result and enjoyed it for its own merits. To be honest, I think the Sonic fandom is incredibly mellow now. I'm currently a big fan of Total War: Three Kingdoms and that game had its DLC support cancelled on the same day the disappointing Sonic 2022 trailer launched. Now the TW3K fanbase is fucking insane and what I would call unpleasable . I remember thinking that day "man, the Sonic fandom is very chill about that awful trailer and the TW3K fanbase has exploded with rage and is sending hate message to CA's social media staff". There was no comparison between the two. When people say the Sonic fandom is unpleasable and toxic, I think they are still living in 2006.
I'm usually the first person to scoff at the "unpleasable fans" garbage that people throw around a lot, but this case I saw differently. Because I hardly saw anybody being vocal about a desire for more than a title reveal, a minimal teaser, or heck I even saw people saying they'd accept a spoken announcement without any fanfare. Of course there were people who said they would need to see gameplay or whatnot in the announcement/teaser to be satisfied, but the ratio of "give me anything Sega" people to "I need gameplay etc." people was practically opposite from the ratio of people who are now perfectly satisfied with the Sonic Central presentation to people who are upset or incredibly disappointed with Sega for not meeting their expectations. I just saw this immediate flip, which leads me to believe that there are in fact people who changed their minds about what they wanted when the teaser actually happened.
I don't do much interacting with the fandom outside of this place. But yeah, the fanbase has come a long way since the noughties in terms of whininess and self-entitlement, at least from my experience.
lmao, I and others have certainly not just started being critical of the game reveals being not enough! (I’ll give Sega props for not leading us on with another damned silhouette teaser though!) But I also wasn’t among those crying out for new information either. I admitted that the radio silence was (for what’s pushed as a prestigious IP) unusual, and hard to ignore with news/rumors of new games for other platforming series. But I had no problem with it otherwise, specifically because of the starving dog marketing techniques that have been in play over the past decade. I’d rather the Sonic marketing team shut up until they actually had enough material to show instead of continuing the “announcement of an announcement” and “puzzling clue” dog-and-pony shows they’re been leaning on as crutches for ages. The only reason I don’t consider the 2022/Rangers CG teaser an absolute waste of resources is due to the preceding leaks that were outside their control!
This made me wonder — is the Sonic series a "prestigious IP" though? I mean, I understand we certainly think so. But does Sega? I'm not sure that Sega sees Sonic as "prestigious" so much as "king of the bargain bin." Most of the releases for the last decade have been budget titles, and so will Colors Ultimate — which looks to be Sonic's only game in 2021. I would imagine this 2022 game will be full-priced and ambitious but who knows? And especially by the time it releases, with a BOTW 2 likely already out, how will Sonic's open world venture compare?
I think the last time Sonic was arguably a "prestigious IP" was 1994 (three and a half years into its life......), and I think the last time Sega treated Sonic as one was 2008. Between Mania and the film they seem to be taking some baby steps toward rebuilding a positive image in the zeitgeist (as they periodically begin to do), but I'm not confident it will last, given Sega and Sonic Team's rather consistent inability to "read the room", so to speak. Always thrilled to be wrong, though.
I'd say Sonic was still a prestigious IP during the Dreamcast era, or at the very least around the release of the first Sonic Adventure. What we know, alongside what we think we know, about Sonic 2022 indicates that Iizuka and co. are attempting to re-capture the magic of that title. Only time will tell if what they release manages to get Sega and the world at large to re-evaluate Sonic's status outside of the nostalgia market.
When they played Unleashed's soundtrack for summer games fest, all the normies started whining like "Eerugh, why are they using music from the shitty Sonic game?" They can't comprehend the idea that Sonic has moved on since then. Their brains just short circuit when they think about it for more than a few seconds.
actually, come to think of it, MonolithSoft pitched in on BOTW and then later on Pokemon Sw/Sh, with the latter having like, twenty other teams listed in its credits to supplement GF's small dev team. It wouldn't be impossible for Sega to ask for other teams to help out with this. (A really old example is how when SM64 wrapped up development, that team was put onto Ocarina of Time's to help those devs finish that title, which had been delayed a lot by that point IIRC)
