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Do you think a Sonic Adventure Remake is a good idea?

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by Snub-n0zeMunkey, Oct 11, 2019.

  1. Gestalt

    Gestalt

    Sphinx in Chains Member
    Sonic Colors is, by far, the most well-rounded of the bunch. Maybe a little bit sluggish, but mostly fast-paced. It's an absolute shame it's exclusive to Wii. But if I had to choose I'd still choose Sonic Adventure.

    I'd probably hate myself for owning a Switch or rant about the startup screen being different from the original. Despite the phenomenal feedback regarding FFVII Remake even Square Enix has still to do a lot of convincing (for example, why does it run on Unreal Engine 4, not their Luminous Engine? It bugs me a little). Sonic Team would have to think of the original SA1 as some kind of prototype while also taking into account a certain familiarity on the part of the fans. The worst-case scenario would be a Star Fox Zero-like scenario where the game isn't bad by today's standards, just a little underwhelming (poor Shigeru Miyamoto).

    Is now a good time to remake SA1? Yes, probably. Remakes of popular games are everywhere. Avoid simple design faux pas and don't let yourself get screwed by licensing issues, "get it right".
     
  2. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    For the Nth time here, I'll say this: I hate Colours from the deepest of my soul, it's the most horrible mainline Sonic game I played, and it also falls behind a lot of side games. There can be worst examples I haven't played, but yes, I'm rating Shadow The Hedgehog better than this. I just don't get what others see in it I couldn't: maybe they needed even more Dimps in it (pit punishment everywhere!), maybe the boosting corridors for just sidestepping weren't long and boring enough, or maybe it's just they find great how bad is that double jumping in the Chaos Emeralds levels, or the endless ordeal to unlock said levels through red rings. The best parts of Colours are the ones that play like Sonic Adventure, and those are very few.
     
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  3. Gestalt

    Gestalt

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    Really? I'm not a priest, but after Sonic Unleashed and the storybook series fans were yearning for cool cutscene animations and a slightly less glitchy experience. I could be wrong, but this is where Sonic Colours comes into play with its lighthearted script and coherent graphic style.

    May your soul find peace and comfort.
     
  4. Dark Sonic

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    Colors was pretty close to the exact right move for them to take at the time. It was simple, well rounded, and took a gameplay style that worked and introduced a relatively unobtrusive gameplay gimmick. It also was the first non grimdark story in years outside of the story book games (which... yea those were bad ideas).

    Colors might not be perfect but it's pretty good, even if some of the levels are on the dull side. I think the issue was they took color's success a little too much to heart and it lead to wisps being shoved in where they don't belong and also lead to some more Mario esq platforming (looking at you Lost World).
     
  5. Josh

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    I'm with you on Colors' story, though I actually always preferred Unleashed's daytime stages to most of Colors' levels. It wasn't until Generations that they REALLY figured out how to make level design have both flow _and_ complexity/depth.

    Regardless, it's been fascinating to see the wheel turn on Colors and Generations over the past year or so. It's also kind of freakin' BONKERS to me, because those games were such unifiers. Colors was the first time since the 90s that just about everyone inside and outside the fandom actually LIKED a Sonic game, and yet now I hear such incensed RAGE about how it was they death of everything "right" about Sonic, especially in its story. But that's another long-term problem with all the spitballing the franchise has done. Even a game that was such a return to form for most of us might look like a deplorable abandonment of what Sonic is "supposed" to be to the kids who grew up loving the games the rest of us only tolerated, at best.
     
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  6. Pengi

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    I agree that Sonic Colours is extremely divorced from the Mega Drive Sonic games, but I don't think it can be characterised as a generic platformer. The homing attack, boost mechanic, grind rails and mid-air tricks are all distinctly Sonic gameplay features that you won't find in any other platformer. They just happen to be Sonicy features from the post-Mega Drive titles, in a game where the Sonicy features from the Mega Drive titles were absent.

    The Wisps are conceptually similar to Super Mario Galaxy's time-limited power-ups, but the execution is very much its own thing. In general, I think the Wisp idea was handled really well in the Sonic Colours, giving the player enough autonomy of when and how to use them, and really opening up the exploration aspect of the game. And they felt fun to use in their own right.

    It's similar to the FLUDD in Super Mario Sunshine, in that it's not necessarily something fans want to become a permanent feature in the IP, but the developers wanted to shake things up and make an off-beat installment in the series.

    The problem there is that the Mario series was afforded an off-beat game, whereas Sonic Colours was coming off of a string of mostly lousy off-beat games (two thirds of SA1 and SA2, Heroes, Secret Rings, Black Knight, Unleashed). On the other hand, there was a big sigh of relief that Sonic Colours' crazy gimmick was simply cool power-ups instead of something genre bending.
     
  7. Yash

    Yash

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    I do recall a small, but vocal "hatedom" around Sonic Colors back when it came out (including some saying they preferred Sonic 06 to it), but they were easily dismissed and compartmentalized as the wacky old cranks who just had to complain about everything.

    And now, as with everything else they have entered into the mainstream and are loud and numerous enough to seemingly represent a consensus opinion. Luckily in this case it's only as trivial as video games.
     
  8. I was probably one of the few people that didn't like Colors and Generations when they came out at launch, and I was actually hyped for them when they were announced. Colors and Generations just didn't have much worthwhile content, and they lasted way too short. The story in Generations was a waste of potential and I still hate that it started the whole '2 Sonics' thing (treating Classic and Modern Sonic as separate characters, I mean); and I don't like how Sonic Team has practically abandoned 3D gameplay to basically make 2D games with some occasional 3D sections that are really just there for 'spectacle' and little else. Their final bosses sucked, too, and it doesn't help that the Nega-Wisp Armor boss from Colors has been re-skinned twice for the final battles in Lost World and Forces.

    The problem, I think, is Morio Kishimoto for the game design (and Pontac/Graff/whoever wrote Forces for the stories), the lead game designer for Colors (along with the Storybook games, which also had awful gameplay), and the director for Lost World and Forces. From a story standpoint, Lost World was basically Colors 2, and from a gameplay standpoint, Forces was basically Colors 2. I think Kishimoto is a one-trick pony for Sonic, and he'd probably do better work with Nintendo.

    Another problem is that it feels like SEGA as a whole just treats Sonic as merchandise brand, rather than a video game series, and the games are basically just an after-thought now. It also doesn't help that the series is now being marketed as some meme that's laughed at for how bad its games are, and SEGA's basically cashed-in on that.

    That said, as much as I love the Adventure games, no I don't want an Adventure remake. While the marketing climate is ripe for remaking old games, I don't trust Sonic Team to pull it off well, and if Kishimoto is put in charge of the project, I fear it'll just be another Lost World/Forces type of game, with wisps somehow shoe-horned into it, and the Perfect Chaos fight just being yet another re-skin of the Nega-Wisp Armor fight from Colors. Not to mention that Sonic will probably be the only playable character, the gameplay will probably be more 2D empty hallway boost stuff, the Adventure fields and Chao Gardens will probably be removed, and the story will be filled with ironic meme humor.

    TL;DR: No, Sonic Team will probably somehow screw it up and turn it into Sonic Colors 4.
     
  9. DigitalDuck

    DigitalDuck

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    Unleashed (day) has the best levels we've ever seen.

    Colours was the best overall.

    Generations was somewhere in the middle.
     
  10. Nova

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    ha ha ha ha ha hahahha
     
  11. Beltway

    Beltway

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    I will never understand why people continue to question the capabilities of almost any proven developer/studio being able to make a 3D Sonic platformer in 2019. Games like Forces and Lost World contain design choices that are a. questionable if not unacceptable for even 2D games, let alone 3D games; and b. are so glaringly obvious that they can be easily fixed or avoided by any competent developer worth their salt, even so-called rookie designers.

    It's not 1998 anymore. There's been two decades' worth of 3D Sonic games and almost nobody else but Sonic Team has been given a legitimate chance to make one. The only real exception that didn't have STeam involved from a design standpoint from the start (e.g. Sonic 3D, Sonic R, Lost World 3DS) was a rushed-to-release Jak and Daxter clone with surface Sonic elements shoehorned in. A mess of a project that wasn't even trying to be a Sonic game to begin with.

    Everything regarding the development of Sonic games always has to be extremely hard or impossible to accomplish (up until it suddenly isn't). From recreating accurate classic physics to making Tails (and Knuckles) playable by themselves. From focusing game development on just one core gameplay style to just designing a good game on fundamentals alone. People need to stop making excuses.

    In terms of level design, I would absolutely agree about Colors being a me-too platformer in that respect. The 2D segments that make up the bulk of the game ended up pioneering the "block platforming" template that several Sonic games from this decade have been criticized for. For a series that's iconic for emphasizing stylized sloped terrain and fast-paced platforming; the heavy emphasis on slow, precise movement around flat, boxy platforms is a approach to gameplay the series has otherwise tried to keep to a minimum. Meanwhile there's not much you can say about the 3D sections other than they're empty boost/rail-centric hallways that are few and far in-between the actual meat of the game.
     
  12. sayonararobocop

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    I just don't get how you could go back to "Adventure" style gameplay when the entire series has been a garbage plate of ideas, playstyles and physics since. I'd like to see a complete reboot of Sonic in 3D, so in that sense I'd like to see another "Adventure" or even another "Sonic 06" if you will. Just reboot the thing from the ground up. I'm still not convinced Sonic really works well in 3D (of course Colors, Generations and Unleashed have pretty darn fun 3D sonic but it's still the same issues from the Adventure days, and really going back to the Genesis classics.

    Been trying to get my wife into classic Sonic for 10 years now and it only really occurred to me this year how unfriendly Sonic games are to new players. It's not that she's bad at playing Sonic games, it's that Sonic games are not designed to reward new players but instead to reward repetition and memorization. Those are things that appeal to me, but not to all gamers. The same exact repetition/memorization mechanic still exists in the games' DNA to this day, even into Sonic Mania and Forces. Frankly I'd love to see what a new studio could do with the Sonic gameplay if it was focused on the feeling of speed instead of speed/obstacle dodging/memorizing locations for shortcuts and collectables. I'd love to see something in the 2D series try that even, like a Metroidvania style Sonic game.
     
  13. LordOfSquad

    LordOfSquad

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    Have you played Sonic Chrono Adventure? It's pretty snazzy.

    Some good points made too. I've found in my experience that the best way to get someone new into classic Sonic is with Sonic Classic Heroes, specifically with combi-mode on so no one falls off the screen. Anyone who says traditional Sonic + Tails co-op is fun or works is a liar.
     
  14. Dark Sonic

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    Overall that mode is not fun, but I have had some fun with that when I'm playing with a person who is less experienced than me. I let them play as Sonic and I'll play as Tails, so I can help them out of jams but still let them figure out most of it on their own. After playing these games for years it's sometimes fun seeing the game through someone else's eyes.
     
  15. SuperSnoopy

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    I did the same thing with my little brother and it was surprisingly fun. If one player is drastically better than the other, it strikes some sort of balance and the two characters are on screen most of the time, almost like a normal coop game.

    But as a good introduction for new players, I'd have to say Generations is probably the best game. Pretty simple 3D gameplay, and you even have some 2D Sonic action in there.
     
  16. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Unless by "feeling of speed" you're referring to something else entirely, I think you're contradicting yourself with that comment. Learning to avoid obstacles and learn the routes of the stages is what results in the "feeling of speed" you're asking for. You learn/repeat/memorize/etc. the design of the stages well enough so that you have the skill to play through the stages quickly (or alternatively, know where to get to certain locations and items quickly).

    As for "rewarding new players"...that's honestly pretty abstract. What exactly are new players supposed to be rewarded with? What do they even do to obtain such a reward to begin with?

    Huh? How are they an evolution?

    Not the same limitations. Not the same approach to control schemes. Not even the same concept of powerups...
     
  17. Overlord

    Overlord

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    Millions of Mega Drives sold with Sonic 1 and Sonic 2 pack-ins would disagree with you, but eh.
     
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  18. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    They can still be unfriendly to new players. Just because it's bundled with the system doesn't mean you'll be good at it off the bat. I mean, sure I was 4 but Sonic 2 was the 1st game I ever played and I didn't finish it legitimately until I was 11 (fucking Death Egg robot).
     
  19. TheInvisibleSun

    TheInvisibleSun

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    Wisps are still power-ups that change Sonic's mobility options and vulnerabilities. Although they are temporary, unlike the shields, they take the idea of a power-up of this nature and push it further to affect the level design, more so than Sonic 3 did. Admittedly, Colors was probably a bit too on the nose with conveying how and where to use the wisps. This is unlike Sonic 3, which mostly let the level design show you how the shields work in a beautifully nuanced way (finding a bubble shield near water shows that you can breathe with it, having an electric shield in Flying Battery showcases the ring attraction, etc.). There's even nice little touches I noticed by mistake, like being invnerable to those electrified platforms in DEZ with the Elec Shield.

    Although it was different in execution from Sonic 3, the power-ups in Colors made the game interesting, and fun.
     
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  20. Rudie Radio Waves

    Rudie Radio Waves

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    I feel Sonic 2 is easily accessible control-wise, but not in the difficulty department. I installed the Sega Forever version of Sonic 2 on my little cousin's tablet, and while he gets how to play it and how to use momentum, he can't get past Chemical Plant.
    also @Dark Sonic did you not know the trick to the death egg robot