It does sound a lot like a debug feature. If we can tune ourselves, I also doubt it's going to have a significant enough influence to change the fundamental feel of Sonic, either. Gaining more speed upgrades as you progress is one thing, being able to outright try to tune Sonic to play to the player's preference is a whole 'nother can of worms.
I dunno, just doesn't feel right. If nothing else...it doesn't really need to be as big as Breath of the Wild. Hell, Breath of the Wild didn't need to be as big as Breath of the Wild. Most open-world games are bigger than they should be, that's why they get so mired in reusing content. Elden Ring is probably going to very-easily remain my game of the year, and I was sick to my fucking stomach of Avatars and Tree Spirits, Royal Revenants and Tibia Mariners by the end. If they're making a fuckton of terrain I'd rather that have gone into the action stages. Also, no particular reason to trust this 4chan post any more than the others. It got Eggman and the prototype name right, but those are things you could have guessed to one extent or another and a bunch of other stuff is either unconfirmed or seemingly contradictory. If the CG intro is a longer version of the sonic central teaser, then what's up with Sonic starting the game unconscious? The villain is stated as "some ancient primordial thing" but other info we got today lists it as looking like a human child.
I dunno about that leak. It seems like it might have just been piggybacking off of previous ones. The villain of the story is Eggman’s AI, AGES, not a primordial being. Well, I guess there could be a plot twist and said being is the true villain. That wouldn’t be out of place in the series. The customization stuff sounds fake to me as well.
I dunno, minor aesthetic customization options seem like exactly the kind of thing this series should've done years ago. Lost World and Forces really lacked incentives for doing a lot of their optional missions (yes, even with Forces' avatar parts), and now that they've got a big bucket of clothes from 2017 for Sonic to wear, they might as well put them to use. Honestly, they should have done that instead of the gross skins in Colors Ultimate.
Does the AI actually belong to Eggman? One of the impressions did say that Eggman shows up in a cutscene and appears to be just as confused as Sonic is, hinting that he may be unrelated to the AI. Of course, there could be some kind of Gen Urobuchi-style plot twist where the Fake Eggman is just a figment of his own simulation, but... y'know
I'm betting this is some ancient technology (maybe the canon people who built Emerl?) which was dormant, and Eggman found a way to survive but Sonic didn't yet.
Dunno how I missed this before, but this guy states that the control things are accessibility options, which tells me it's probably not a debug thing.
I was thinking that'd make more sense as an accessibility thing - personally, I think it's a great idea to let people who have less control over their motor skills be able to fine-tune Sonic's playing style to be as comfortable as possible. I hope it makes it into the final version.
If they didn't call dehydrated GHZ "Dust Hill" in Forces, they're never going to call anything that. EDIT: Yo, I'm just now realizing that the HUD doesn't have a boost bar.
I'm guessing that's because your boost/dash resembles the run mechanic in Lost World (just a lot faster) more than it does the traditional Unleashed boost. Which I'm totally fine with, I'd rather have a movement option that is balanced yet always on deck vs one that is insanely powerful but requires you to refill it constantly I'm struggling to remember a time where I actually ran out of boost too, so either way the meter seemed trivial IMO
You know I thought I remembered the Werehog controlling well to contrast the combat system shown here, but I forgot how much downtime almost every other combo had and how stiffly he moved. You can't even turn without some sort of really awkward animation lock, or turn quickly without Sonic having input buffer delay as he turns back around half a second later anyway. So by that merit this button mashy combat at least looks Sonic-ish and more refined with the better footage on show. With the leaks proclaiming this might try to tie into the Chaos Emeralds and with the Tailstube stuff emphasizing the Unleashed human designs and the world's persistence with its logic, I'm wondering if this is sort of a successor to Unleashed and the Dark Gaia plot too. Might be a good thing that I'm trying to play that game to catch up a bit on that.
I don't know why I never noticed this but is it just me or is the reticle for the homing attack seemingly removed from this game? if so, that's a WIN in my book. Never liked how inorganic that thing made the gameplay of the homing attack feel. This along with the Homing attack being on its own button is an interesting change for sure. I'm more impressed by the confidence. This is much different than in the Forces days were comments seemed either avoidant or like basic PR speak. He's pretty much saying "watch this game get 80-90s on meta critic, you'll see when it gets in your hands". That's Bold and I think I like it quite a bit. In general, I liked the new batch of footage and information we got all around. I don't wanna say I'm hyped, but I am looking forward to the game now.
You can hear a new click sound whenever Sonic can homing attack something in the initial footage, it's probably still there but altered. It's simply missing because the entire HUD was inexplicably disabled altogether for Sega's demonstrations. You know, despite leaks now showing that there's nothing spoilery in the core HUD, so they probably just took a hail mary solution to prevent objectives or story elements from potentially being shown at all. .. despite the newest footage briefly having the "AI voice" after the second battle. Dammit Sega, did they just have an intern play random tidbits without much oversight?
The reticle is still there, it's an inverted triangle now, I don't have the screens on hand showing this though. Personally, I think some sort of indicator of what you're going to hit is very necessary for an attack that flings your entire character around in a platformer. Maybe we don't need a reticle per se, Rise of Lyric made homing attack objects glow when Sonic was locked onto them, something like that may be more organic, but it is better to have some communication than not.
I still can't wrap my head on this yet, it's basically Sega telling the fans "Setup 3D Sonic yourself if you are so smart."
We know there's a reticule because the Fanbyte impressions mention that if it doesn't display, then Sonic's homing attack turns into the moment killing punch. Really hope there's an option to map the homing attack to the jump button so I can avoid that. I'd much rather double jump than punch if I screw up a homing attack.
Well one thing that was mentioned was that the boost was on R2, I feel like the control scheme is probably more robust to account for the new actions. Jump and homing might be on different buttons again but this time air dash might be on a different button as well. Kinda curious what the control scheme is where's the Unleashed esq loading screen when you need one lol EDIT: I was just looking at some of the recent footage again and noticed something about the animations I actually liked. It looks like Sonic finally can emote with his eyebrows again. Lost World and Forces did a lot of awkward looking emoting with eyelids scenes that looked really ugly (except they couldn't do that with Eggman, so he's the only character that doesn't look stupid in most cutscenes in Forces) so I'm glad they're finally addressing that. Damn if I'm not getting kinda excited for this one. This might not be everyone's game but I like Sonic, I like open world games, and I wanted something new from Sonic Team. Checks off those 3 boxes for me anyway and looks fun on top of it.
