New Sonic 2 development lore drop - Genocide/Cyber City palette and art!

Wait, where did we hear Sand Shower was an *American* desert? —backing-up here.

 

So what about Death Egg itself?

Did it just reuse the same music as a lead in to the boss fights?

Edit:


Interestingly, this remix with a faster tempo does sound more like a theme for a full deadly mechanical zone, rather than just the ominious space themed lead in that it's used for. I know they never intended to use this tempo, but I suppose it does at least show one way the song could fit as a more general zone theme. I very much could get behind a version of the song that sounded like this in GCZ.

 

Who knows? The original concept art showed a full level, didn’t it? I doubt they’d use that boss theme for the whole thing

 

That's not confirmed. If that's confirmed then Wood Zone was definitely going to have the same theme as Metropolis. The drowning theme was also going to be the Death Egg theme.

There's so many reasons for why certain levels has different songs in the prototypes. Just like Hidden Palace.

 

Not to sound completely off my rocker but, a lot of the subjectivity to where select music tracks fit the best falls a lot on how we were exposed to the tracks first and how used we are to those tracks in that setting. Whether intended for it originally or not the fact it ended up being what it is in the final has players associate that theme with that stage, especially since some have been playing the game and hearing those tracks in that context for 30 years. Same with the Nov 19th Sonic 3 music (although admittedly there's a lot more music swapping on Sonic 2 than 3), it might've been originally intended, but it doesn't stop it for many from feeling wrong due to the association of the stage with the final game's track.

Not to say it's definitely *not* the intended theme, but more until we get direct confirmation or all of the concept art (Sand Shower concept art specifically so we can see what kind of desert Masato composed for) we can only rely on what feels right based on clues and personal subjectivity.

 

Yamaguchi's recent comments on Twitter certainly seemed to imply that Death Egg was intended to be a full stage, as from memory he confirmed that Mecha Sonic was originally conceived as a mid-boss for the stage.

 

I'd also like to remind people that the documents may contain more details that answer a lot of our questions and speculation when they drop, or at least give us more hints. There could be textual hints and other details that talk more about themes, atmosphere, and ideas. Until we've examined them all, I still suggest not going too far with speculation. Hopefully we're only a few days away (at most) from getting everything released.

 

I always assumed the music was mixed up because development was disorganised

 

The

Fact that were potentially mere days away from having our wildest Genocide City Zone dreams answered blows my mind. Biggest Sonic 2 lore dump since the concept maps?

 

1) EHZ-2P is clearly regae-inspired, which would place it well with a beach zone (Tropical Sun?).

2) I've said it before, but when someone tells me they want a song for a desert, the first thing that comes to mind is the desert scenes you see in movies where they're walking for miles without food or water. I don't think about whether there are cactus plants or not. I don't think of specific regional differences. I suspect most people are the same way. So it's not at all impossible that an American desert gets the Arabic music. The level artist isn't basing the design on the music, and the musician probably isn't basing music on graphics. They each likely received a basic concept sketch or idea on paper. That paper might not say anything about region-specific things.

3) I think it's absolutely possible that song reuse was considered. Wood Zone has Metropolis music. Why? And Genocide City Zone has Chemical Plant music. Again, why? There aren't enough songs to cover 17 zones. Include HPZ final music or not in that mix, the result is the same. The other possibility is they didn't get around to having additional music composed. So we might not even have a song that was ever composed with GCZ in mind, or likewise WZ.

4) I feel like I had another bullet... but I can't think of it. Gah!! Stupid brain. I'll get back to it if I think of it.

 

This might be the biggest revelation on the game in 25 years, in some ways. We've never gotten documented details on the making of a Sonic game that will be this extensive.

The stream said that the dump includes all the materials Tom had for making Metropolis as well. Whatever we don't learn about GCZ, we will at least get a much more indepth look at one zone that was completed. No matter what, that should give us a lot of very unique insights and help clarify a lot of theories. Plus there could be other leftovers that are interesting as well, like a better look at the unused enemy designs. Maybe even more unreleased digitized graphics (in paper form).

 

Whew! Having the metropolis documents can massively help to compare and contrast realistically how much a stage in Sonic 2 changed from conception to the final retail version

 

Music is so subjective that the song may remain unchanged but being presented with a different image will change the context of it. One motif common in a genre or context doesn’t mean it’s only going to be that way. The time spent arguing over intention doesn’t matter in the end simply because, well, if they wanted it like that then they would’ve kept the music the same between revisions.
How do we know songs weren’t put there in the beta just to make sure music played? Maybe it was to test their sound engine and they just used whatever song was finished.

Basically unless we get a “USE ARAB SONG IN OIL LEVEL” in notes then your personal bias/interpretation is affecting the actuality, and debating the intent is just going to spin us in circles over almost nothing.

 

Well wood zone has transport pipes like Metropolis’s.

 

The usage of music in the Simon Wai prototype tells us nothing about Masato Nakamura's original intentions. He could have been writing for levels that were scrapped, or never technically existed. We don't know how far in advance those tracks were commissioned (any if it's anything like Sonic CD's, it could be a while ahead).

The best it can tell us is how the development team once planned to use those songs. Although it doesn't even fully tell us that, because Wood Zone and Genocide City share music, Death Egg has none, and there are a bunch that are sitting around waiting for homes.

And as much as some might want to, we can't say "hey the DEZ music for 1-up is a mistake, but everything else, that's clearly spot on". Song IDs might have changed around, and it might have messed with some of the unfinished levels nobody was working on yet.


p.s. the first prototype with a working Death Egg is our September 14 "pre-beta" build, which indeed uses Wing Fortress's music... alongside Sky Chase... and Sky Fortress. We don't have a prototype with a working DEZ and no WFZ.

 

I know prototype music usage doesn't tell us much, but logically speaking, it makes no sense why they'd purposefully assign WFZ's music to DEZ in the September 14 prototype, only to change it again at the last minute. If they had DEZ's music already in the game, there's no reason why they wouldn't assign that instead, if it was truly meant for that zone. The only reason I can think of is the one that's obvious: they had music tracks that weren't being used otherwise, and it made more sense to use them than have the same repetitive song spread across three zones.

So while we can't say conclusively whether WFZ was ever meant for DEZ, I think we can at the very least safely say that the track that's there in the final game wasn't intended for it.

 

You can't say that definitively. Maybe they thought of the last three zones of the game as being three acts of the same zone. That wouldn't be a stretch and is logical considering they're all way up in the sky. If so, then maybe to follow suit with other zones, they decided to use a single song for all of them and felt WFZ music worked best (because DEZ music sounds quite strange with Sky Chase and Wing Fortress).

 

If you're defining "intention" by what Masato Nakamura was thinking, then anything is possible, because we don't know how he was working. "I indend for this music to be used in Sonic 2".

As far as the day-to-day development intentions were (as in, directors, designers etc.), I don't think we can safely say that at all. Naka might have wanted the team to put it in a space level from the minute he first heard it - we don't know.

Things don't have to be implemeted in a sensible order during production - they could have copy-pasted three level slots at once and not changed the music straight away. They only way to infer real intentions is to ask the people involved - the prototypes just offer a snapshot of how things were, not necessarily how they were meant to be.