Hey everyone. So i been researching for Sonic Adventure's background, and after countless google searches and documentaries, i can only find the dev team referencing the Central and South America trip, regarding texture collection and inspiration. I never found anything on Station Square. Can someone chime in? You know which city inspired Station Square? If you don't, have you ever been to a real place that clearly looked alike? Even considering the pre-rendered city wildly differs from the in-game one? Thank you in advance.
I think that Station Square wasn't design like the pre-rendered one because of hardware limitations. The Dreamcast had a very low on-screen polycount, so simplifying the geometry was probably the best option. About the city's inspiration, I did some research and found this: http://www.thedreamcastjunkyard.co.uk/2009/10/station-square-pennsylvania.html . Despite being improbable, it is interesting. I watched the promotional video about Naka's trips and it doesn't say anything about Station Square. Maybe it is entirely original.
I've always assumed it's just sort of a mish-mash of different big cities. The skyline shots are very New York, or perhaps Chicago, to me. However, the city is also clearly on the ocean with palm trees, which gives it a more Los Angeles or maybe San Francisco vibe. It's known that Sonic Team worked at SoA in the 90's, so maybe there's some San Fran inspiration there? But I feel like it can't be entirely one or both of those cities, as buildings in California never get that tall due to the earthquakes. Though, most of this is biased towards American cities, since that's what I'm most familiar with.
I can see it being based on one area of San Francisco, where City Escape in SA2 uses the more commonly known district. This would also imply that City Escape is set in Station Square. Now, if there's any evidence otherwise, do put me straight, otherwise this is now going into my headcanon.
The "Capital City" is unnamed in SA2, but in StH the Central City is called the capital city. But to be fair Central City in StH looks nothing like City Escape. Station Square does look like City Escape. In Sonic X, Station Square was destroyed by Perfect Chaos and they moved to a different city.
I always took that as further confirmation that City Escape isn't in Station Square. Even if it's not canon, Sonic X was closely supervised by Sonic Team and was pretty faithful, and it depicted the two places as separate cities. It even went as far as to refrain from giving a name to the SA2 city, since SA2 never mentioned its name.
Exactly, we just don't know how extensive the damage was or how much time had past between SA1 and SA2. The Perfect chaos level is only like a couple city blocks long. If Station Square/City escape is San Fransisco, Then it's easily believable that it's large enough that other parts of the city weren't damaged.
I mean the background stretches for miles though. It looks like everything in a 10-mile radius has been leveled.
I'm not talking about San Francisco. I'm just saying the Perfect Chaos area looks like way more than a couple of blocks.
Omochao does mention San Francisco in SA2B, so I think the idea (at least initially, before they arguably renamed it Central City) was that the SA2 city was simply supposed to be San Fran, not Station Square or some other fictional city. I know it's rather weird for a real life location to show up in a Sonic game, but it does seem to go with the fact that SA2 tried to be more "realistic" and grounded than previous games, relatively speaking. And it's not even the first time it happened, seeing how old Sonic lore mentioned Christmas Island and the Pacific.
I always saw Station Square as a mix between New York, San Francisco and Mexico City. (Dare I say that Mexico City is almost the perfect match since it has ancient ruins, snowboarding, and the beach is just 3-4 hours away.) Going by the old diaries in the Sonic Adventure website, the hotel pool area and Emerald Coast seem to be based on their Cancun trip. And there's a photo in the New York diary that suspiciously looks like the scenes in the intro/Perfect Chaos part.