Anyone who's played a 3-D Sonic fan game, you know that there's no story to any of them. That's not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make one wonder why no one has tried that yet. I've seen only one fan game try that and not with the best results, but I'm glad someone tried adding in that element. I think that's due to the framework, but I'm no expert on this so I'll leave that for any aspiring developers who would know this better than I do.
Didn't I see Mr. Lange mention somewhere that he plans on Sonic having a voice in Utopia? He's probably gonna do it. For what it's worth, I remember reading some script excerpts for planned cutscenes in Ashura: Dark Reign. Some hyper edgecore stuff about Ashura electrocuting Big the Cat so bad that he foams at the mouth and explodes. Really wish they followed through with that.
Well, with Sonic Incursion, I have a story, but it just isn't implemented yet. Stuff happens in the background during gameplay, so there is a plot, but the story isn't there (for anyone but me, except a few isolated cutscenes here and there). My plan was to do the major cinematics (intros, penultimate cutscenes, endings) when the gameplay was nearly done, and even then it is a monumental task. I'm not very good at animating or modelling, I can't write music, I can't voice act and I've not had much help. I end up with a lot of stuff that just looks outright shit, janky or otherwise low quality. I've restarted the intro twice already. With a team, 3D fangames can definitely do great stories and cutscenes. It's just that few of the 3D fangames out there seem to progress very far, or are made by individual people.
I would argue the reason why is that people are trying to concentrate on making a good game first before adding plot fluff that is far less important.
http://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?showtopic=32692 I tried to get a side team put together for AXSX, because there just don't seem to be any time to do the story aspects.. other than half the story penned out, and 2 pieces of concept art, nothing came of it.
You're right about that, as I mentioned that's not bad for it just to be game play; But I was wondering if some developers have tried to experiment more with adding that element in a fan game. I've been following your project for a long time (and can't wait to see to finished product) but great point on when people have time to work on it. Currently been working on a short story that's taken me a month so far given my own personal schedule. Wow, I knew Ashura was going to go for a darker tone, but I was not expecting that. By any change do you have a copy of that script interesting in reading it (unless you can't due to privacy reasons which would be understandable).