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(DC) Sonic Adventure 2 Pre-Release (2001-05-03)

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Orengefox, May 21, 2013.

  1. Lanzer

    Lanzer

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    Hell after that find I believe anything is possible if we just keep sifting. We found Windy Valley Beta one of the greatest beta finds in our time!

    At this point, Sonic 1 alpha doesn't sound like a pipedream anymore.
     
  2. Shoemanbundy

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    I don't remain as optimistic, considering both this and the SA1 proto weren't internal development discs that somehow stayed in someone's hands, but rather were preview discs that were distributed to, well, wherever. Point being they're more like store demos rather than dev discs.

    I sure hope more internal protos somehow get out there :)
     
  3. ICEknight

    ICEknight

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    Ahh ok... But that makes it even more odd to see two slots for Amy (Super Amy? :v:).
     
  4. SpaceyBat

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    Wow, they barely have anything made at that point. xD You can tell because they keep repeating the same gameplay of Sonic running through City Escape and Green Forest (albeit different camera angles) and only quick glimpses at Knuckles and Eggman.

    Finding prototypes in general is a very rare occurrence that requires either a lot of luck or the right connections (or outright theft in the case of the Sonic 2 beta), so obtaining one is definitely an accomplishment. We'll just have to cross our fingers and hope for the best.
     
  5. AeonicB

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    I remember that from how many people thought Shadow was a miscolored Sonic.:v:

    I'd love to see that demo, too, but I doubt we'll ever will
     
  6. muteKi

    muteKi

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    I'm curious if that was ever really the plan outside of them not being quite sure what do with Tails or if they only showed them because they each represented characters we recognized most easily.
     
  7. Shoemanbundy

    Shoemanbundy

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    I'd bet they were just saving the other characters as a surprise for later on in development, since like with SA they didn't want to reveal too much of anything until the game was only a couple months from completion.
     
  8. SpaceyBat

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    I think I heard somewhere that they actually didn't want to include Tails in the game as a playable character, but decided late in development to add him. It could explain why he pilots a mech like Eggman instead of being more like his SA1 counterpart, and why he largely seems to have no effect on the course of events in the story; He tries to bust Sonic out of prison but Amy gets there before him, the whole purpose of Mission Street is to just escape and find a place to hide, and Hidden Base and Route 11 may just as well be offscreen events. xD
     
  9. Rosiero

    Rosiero

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    Or why Mission Street is such a godawful level. Hell, if it really was just Sonic/Knuckles/Eggman originally, I'd bet Radical Highway was a Sonic level and they made Mission Street to fill the gap when they gave the former to Shadow.
     
  10. AeonicB

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    I thought the 3 characters only thing was confirmed via old GUI elements?

    This was on XCult, but the images seem to be missing now. TCRF lacks them, as well.:argh:

    EDIT: I found them on Retro's Wiki after all. Whoops. Didn't find them there either, I guess I must have misremembered that one. Still, there was word that they only intended the three, and included the rest later at popular demand?

    Also, if I remember, Adventure 2 does have references to a World Ranking System. I was wondering if AdvSong3.adx appears to be played elsewhere in the menus, because its contained on this beta?
     
  11. muteKi

    muteKi

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    Mission Street was OK minus the bit about 2/3 of the way through the level on the curved path upwards to some crushers where there's a perpetual ambush.

    Now, Eternal Engine, on the other hand...
     
  12. BlazeHedgehog

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    The "only three characters" thing primarily comes from old SonicHQ.com news posts - I feel like I'm the person who primarily references them, but not long ago I think DavidTL ended up going through and digging them up for stuff he was writing for the Sonic Retro Wiki, because I know he contacted me about it for source verification.

    Initial footage for SA2 seemed to imply a more serious game much more focused on the dichotomy of light/dark. We only ever saw Sonic, Knuckles and Eggman as playable characters in footage and screenshots (which I speculate were to represent Light, Neutral and Dark), which lead people to ask where Tails was. It ended up coming up in some trade shows, and members of Sonic Team would never confirm he was in the game, leading to a degree of uproar on the subject (can't have a Sonic game without Tails, they said).

    Sometime in late 2000 or (very) early 2001 they confirmed that they were going back and adding Tails as a playable character, as well as some other "familiar faces". This is also around the time the logo changed from this:

    [​IMG]

    to this:

    [​IMG]

    I think it signaled a pretty significant retooling behind the scenes. The addition of Tails (and I figure Amy as our "familiar face") meant a lot of things had to change. Parts of the storyline had to be re-written to insert new characters, and the addition of Tails more than likely tipped the scales enough to give us the "Hero vs. Dark" rivals aspect we have in the final game - meaning playable Tails gave way to playable Shadow and Rouge. That meant the structure of the game had to change, too, because suddenly they needed levels for characters they did not originally plan to have (hello asset re-use).
     
  13. Ch1pper

    Ch1pper

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    Reading that, two thoughts struck me:
    - Perhaps "familiar faces" included the additional 2P characters as well.
    - Do we have any idea of how far into the game's development the deal with Soap Shoes was struck? I'm wondering how much their financial involvement would have played into such a retooling. (Apologies if this is fairly obvious to the more business-minded.)

    Suddenly, Amy's involvement in the story mode makes much more sense...

    In that early trailer, anyone else notice Sonic's use of finger-pointing in Green Forest? Obviously that wasn't in the final game. That's got me scratching my head.
     
  14. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

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    Sonic does point in the final version, however it is vastly less animated and shot from a wide angle. "I found you... faker!" It was a cutscene that went directly into the Shadow boss fight as opposed to being a full cutscene (maybe because they didn't want to cut to loading?) Perhaps there was not an initial intent for you to fight Shadow at that point and you were intended to go directly from Metal Harbor to Green Forest. Otherwise, I can't think of any other reason for them to cut an identical but better made (assumingly) cutscene like that.

    That's the only scenario I can picture.
     
  15. Ch1pper

    Ch1pper

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    Ah, damn, that's right. Oops!

    Well, at the very least, the camera is closer to Sonic, who's less 'front and center' and pointing more towards the left side. Other than that, it's hard to tell if he's making the same pose in the final version.
     
  16. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

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    I definitely think they re-did the entire cutscene, animations and all. Sonic's movements in the beta trailer shows him standing still and moving his mouth during the scene, while the final has him take steps forward before pointing, and his mouth does not move (awkwardly, since he's speaking during the scene). Also, it seems as though Shadow was directly in front of him rather than above him in the final, judging by where Sonic was pointing and looking in the trailer, indicating Shadow would not have been up in the tree during their exchange.

    Even these little alterations make me wish we knew more about SA2's development previous to the overhaul :( .
     
  17. GeneHF

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    Only thing I can remember, apart from what Blaze posted, was that Iizuka was planning stage and story progression not dissimilar from what we got in Shadow The Hegehog with branching paths, but the idea was ultimately scrapped for a streamlined story.

    Besides the blatant asset reuse from time to time, this is why I jokingly call it Sonic Adventure 2.5.

    I'm not sure when it was killed, the branching idea, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was around the time the game basically changed up entirely. I would like to know how the original plot was set to progress, though it wouldn't shock me if it progressed the same way, just without heavy involvement from anyone who wasn't Sonic, Eggman, Knuckles, or Shadow.
     
  18. big smile

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    There was never a branching path structure. Iizuka was asked this at Summer of Sonic 2012 (and in particular the submarine example that is always referenced) and said he knew nothing about it. It's just something that some magazine published (and no one has a scan of this magazine) and it's became a part of Sonic lore.

    I also think that Tails, Rouge and Shadow were always planned from the beginning. They just didn't show them until later on in the development process, becuase they didn't want to reveal everything in one go. The whole hero vs dark concept is central to the game. It wouldn't really work if you just had one dark character and two hero characters.
     
  19. Fred

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    Why can't anyone see the whole light/dark axis applied to a single character alone is beyond me. It makes perfect sense: Knuckles is a good guy but gets tricked by Eggman into doing something bad. Sonic is the hero but he's forced to go against Knuckles in order to set things right. Eggman is the bad guy but ends up having to team up with Sonic when he inadvertently taps into something that is way over his league. And all the while Shadow is the puppet master pulling away at the strings and turning everyone on themselves.

    I know it's complete speculation, but there's more ways to interpret the whole hero/dark faction system other than HURR DURR ME GOOD YOU EVIL WE FIGHT NOW.
     
  20. GeneHF

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    Because Sonic writing never gets that complex.