[PsuitablePseudonym]

Maybe this is old hat, but it's something I recently realized. If it is old, I'd like to read where this sort of thing has been discussed before.

I was watching someone play Sonic Adventure 2, and he got up to Rouge's first level, Dry Lagoon. Eventually, I realized I was watching Wild Canyon again. Not just in theme--I mean, I always had some notion that Knuckles and Rouge shared level themes (as do many characters). I mean structurally. Dry Lagoon and Wild Canyon both have a big vertical hallway to start with. At one end, it leads into a horizontal hallway; for Knuckles, that's at the top, and for Rouge, that's at the bottom (the turtle). The second hallway stretches in two directions from your entry point. In other words, the vertical hallway ends at and bisects the horizontal one. It's a T shape.

But it's not entirely the same. Knuckles can freely pass between the two hallways, while Rouge has to ride a turtle to get from one to the other. This difference is the main distinction between Knuckles' levels and Rouge's levels. Knuckles explores more continuous areas, while Rouge explores more discrete areas.

Take, for instance, Meteor Herd. Knuckles gets one huge vertical hallway which transitions smoothly from a meteor to space debris to the ARK. Rouge's comparable level, Mad Space, is a network of individual planets, each one separate from the last.

Or take Security Hall, where Rouge opens up cell blocks one at a time as she needs them. If you need cell block B open, no problem, just go and open it. In Aquatic Mine, on the other hand, if you want to set the water to its lowest level, you need to reach the top, which means first setting the water to its highest level. Plus, platforms float on the water, hampering your navigation further. When you open a cell block in Security Hall, you only open one area and lock all others. When you change the water level in Aquatic Mine, there's a series of changes that happen all throughout the level.

I can't speak to Death Chamber and Egg Quarters, since I don't know those levels too well--I'll have to replay them. I'm also pretty sure Pumpkin Hill doesn't have an equivalent (and rightly so, given its moving lyrics).

Thoughts?

[Sir_mihael]

Not just the Gem levels. A lot of the Dark stages in SA2 are more like alternate acts to the Hero stages, and vice versa.
Although the gameplay might be different due to the characters, the aesthetics tend to be similar.

Radical Highway and Mission Street
Green Forest and White Jungle
Iron Gate and Prison Lane
Metal Harbour and Weapons Bed
Route 101 and Route 280
Final Rush and Final Chase (also similar to Cosmic Wall, except with Eggman gameplay)

Some are less obvious. Pumpkin Hill and Sky Rail share similarities, except one has a Halloween theme and one doesn't

There's probably a lot more examples I'm missing, but you get the point. A lot of the Dark stages are like 'Act 2' versions of Hero stages. That's kinda how I see it anyway.

[RuRi]

And wasn't the game originally gonna only be playable with Sonic, Knuckles and Eggman? So maybe they was gonna be "Act 2" variants but when they decided to have Tails/Shadow/Rouge playable they split up the levels.

Or they just reused a lot of assests from other levels which is why they seem so similiar.

Who knows?

[Sir_mihael]

Another thing I did notice, which sort of supports the 'Act 2' theory, is that the stage theme of Eggman's Cosmic Wall is a much slower remix of Sonic's Final Rush theme (especially when it gets to the 'chorus' parts of both songs). Which made me think that it could've originally been composed to be an 'Act 2' remix of Final Rush.

Although Shadow's 'Final Chase' having an entirely seperate theme throws that idea out the window, but we don't really know what Shadow's role in the story would've been during the original 'Sonic, Knuckles & Eggman' era of the game's development.

[PsuitablePseudonym]

Sure, these are all notable features, and I appreciate the responses, but I don't think they get to the interesting part. Yes, most Hero levels have some kind of Dark equivalent, but what I mean to observe is that there is a consistent and meaningful distinction between the Hero level and its Dark equivalent. That is to say, Meteor Herd can't be a Rouge level because it's too continuous; by the same token, Mad Space can't be a Knuckles level because it's too discrete/broken up. If you swapped those two levels, it wouldn't work. Knuckles and Rouge levels may play similarly, but they still have unique feels--Knuckles gets the continuous levels while Rouge gets the discrete ones.

This post has been edited by PsuitablePseudonym: 12 December 2013 - 09:58 PM