Yeah, I had only watched the first five minutes or so when I posted that. I made it 45 minutes today, and damn, is it captivating.
Re: Tails trapped in Mecha Sonic I'm vaguely reminded of the 8-bit version of Sonic 2. You have to give up the emeralds to Mecha Sonic in order to rescue Tails in the otherwise inaccessible final zone. It's a bit of a stretch, sure, but you can see where I'm going with this, right? Perhaps that concept is one of the notes shared with the Aspect team and that could've played a loosely influential role.
I'd think the idea was simply that Mecha would use Tails as an organic battery (just like the badniks and their small animals) and the player would free the latter by defeating and destroying the former.
worth pointing that if metropolis really was an influence, the cut they'd likely have seen in 1992 would've been the Giorgio Moroder reconstruction/recut from the 80s, with a lot less footage than we have nowadays, colourised visuals (perhaps explaining all the brass tones in Metropolis Zone, as the movie uses a lot of brass and golden tones?) and modern 80s music. Check it out on youtube, it's IMO another really good way to watch the movie and stands on its own as an interesting take alongside modern full reconstructions of the movie. Forcing myself to stop here, Metropolis is one of my favourite movies so I could go on for ages here lol
I thought we went through this - the concept art even says "industrial revolution factory" (twice, even).
I know it is probably entirely unintended but that is exactly where my head went to after reading it. It makes for an interesting thought at the least.
Hold on, where exactly is Hidden Palace supposed to be on the map? Because if it's supposed to be the Warp Point like that timeline concept says, then that would mean that it's near the pyramid structure which presumably represents Metropolis. However, this document from Tom Payne labels Oil Ocean as an alternate time period version of "Secret Palace". When looking at the island maps, this would mean that Hidden Palace is Olympus.
I feel like we are going in circles. Nobody knows where Hidden Palace is on the map. But Olympus is a very good guess. The pyramid is considered plausible in that it's apparently a warp point. But what we really need is for someone to just tell us "here's Hidden Palace".
We already went over this. All points to Hidden Palace/Shrine being Warp Point, and the pyramid is most likely its representation on the map. That's why the pyramid is all maps other than the future; because Sonic needs Hidden Palace/Shrine to time travel, and the design documents confirm that it's used in more than one timezone. Olympus is only depicted in the original past map, and we know Sonic uses Hidden Shrine in other timezones too.
But you're relying heavily on your own interpretation of what the facts are. There are still many gaps in all of this. I reiterate that nobody knows for sure where Hidden Palace Zone is. I think it's Olympus. Some people say the pyramid. But we'll go around and around in circles using cyclical arguments with no new information to go on. That was the point I was alluding to in my previous post.
First of all, I think that the pyramid is supposed to be Metropolis. https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_2_Level_Map_Concept_02.png Not only can you see what seem to be gears and other mechanisms through its gaps in the "ruined present" map, but the future map directly replaces it with Genocide City 1. https://info.sonicretro.org/File:Sonic_2_Level_Map_Concept_03.png And on the topic of "Warp Point", who's to say that it refers to one, specific location? This document from Yasuhara's presentation shows that Eggman escapes to the past at the end of the game's first present segment with a time machine. Not via the Hidden Shrine, which is mentioned separately, it explicitly uses the term "Time Machine". So if the game's first stretch in the present ends at Metropolis, then wouldn't said Time Machine be located there? And more importantly, wouldn't the present map's "Warp Point" therefore be that Time Machine?
My own interpretation? I'm just going by the evidence we have. Did you miss this? Or the many references to Sonic using Hidden Shrine to time travel from other time zones than the past? If Olympus is supposed to be Hidden Palace/Shrine, I don't know how Sonic could possibly use it to travel from the ruined present to the ruined past when Olympus only exists in the original past. I used to believe that Olympus was Hidden Palace myself, but after looking into the evidence, it doesn't hold up against scrutiny. And the more we learn, the least that assumption it makes sense. I don't see how you can claim that those look like modern gears when the image is ambiguous and isn't colored. Those could be anything. They could just as well be part of an ancient mechanism made of stone or wood. They could be crumbled pieces of ruins. They could be stones. The first map has an arrow between Metropolis and Warp Point. Just like the arrows between zones. Implying that the player travels to Warp Point after Metropolis. There is also the fact that they went through the trouble of including it in every map other than the future, even the decimated island from the ruined past. You only visit Metropolis in the original present, but visit Hidden Palace/Shrine more than once.
Didn't Yasuhara pointed out that Hidden Shrine was located specifically at the center of the Ancient map when these documents first emerged? That's where Olympus is in the concept art.
He did, but the design documents contradict that, implying that he misremembered. The documents refer to Hidden Palace/Shrine as the warp point, and the maps place Warp Point in the south east, rather than the center. Olympus is also only in the original past, but the original present has Warp Point, and the documents state that Sonic uses Hidden Palace/Shrine to warp from other timezones than the original past.
I really wouldn't hop on board the "He must've misremembered" -train if I were you. It's such a bad faith argument. We should not assume that a literal developer of the original game is misremembering or intentionally lying unless we have 100% foolproof evidence of such being the case. Not unless we want another Angelfox situation on our hands, that is. The last zone you go through in the ruined present is Oil Ocean, isn't it? And which level is the past version of Oil Ocean?
I can't help it if the design documents contradict his word. He pointed to Olympus as Hidden Shrine, but according to the documents, Hidden Shrine/Palace is Warp Point, not Olympus. According to the documents, Hidden Shrine/Palace is accessed from timezones/maps where Olympus isn't present at all. What is more likely: That the multiple design documents from back in the day are wrong? Or that his memory is a tad bit faulty about that particular detail?
I just edited my reply to include my hypothesis about the time travel logistics. I wish to hear what you think of it. And while I'm not strictly against the idea of Hidden Palace being the pyramid, I just think that currently we have way more evidence of it being Olympus and that we shouldn't dismiss the original developers' claims just because they may contradict with our assumptions. Besides, the "Warp Point" -label isn't even present on all the maps that feature the pyramid.
