And this means that any game that sets some kind of standard for one form is going to necessarily be compared to everything before and after. So if a game is trying to set up something as a threat and doesn't bring Sonic to the point of using whatever his strongest power is, it's failing to portray that threat. They're not going to figure out a workable explanation every single time. And again, your argument here is that it doesn't necessitate escalation, but that doesn't mean they wouldn't do it anyway. My point has only ever been that the rationale and ruling against this sort of thing being normalized in for Sonic is absolutely in the series' best interest, for everything we know about them. I don't need to have unwavering faith in Sonic storytelling to not want it to get even dumber. Empty spectacle can exist without needing to compromise things that barely work as-is.
This damage has already been done via different means. Some final bosses have required 2 Super form characters to defeat it, and one of them has even required 3. If a game is trying to set something up as a threat and doesn't bring the cast to the point of having more than 2 or 3 characters going Super, it's failing to portray that threat. They already don't do this. They also, again, already don't have Sonic go Super at the end of every game. And that's fine! Part of the reason I'm arguing that this stuff doesn't necessitate escalation is based on the fact that they literally aren't always escalating this shit. Escalation would happen sometimes, and other times it wouldn't. The way it already plays out. That's fine. I don't care if an inherently dumb thing gets dumber, and think you're exaggerating how much dumber this would actually even make it. Like, no, honestly, it doesn't bother me that Metal Overlord was apparently a smaller threat relative to the Final Hazard insofar as it didn't require two (actual) Super form characters to beat. Same with Devil Doom. It doesn't bother me that the final bosses of Sonic Colors and Forces didn't require Super Sonic to defeat. If this stuff bothers you, I understand why you don't want additional headaches. But for me, they're not really causing headaches.
All the concerns about powercreeping and power levels go way, way over my head because each Sonic story is more or less thematically self-contained and the universe isn't nearly cohesive enough to warrant direct comparisons between power levels of any kind. Unlike Dragon Ball, in which attaining arbitrarily higher power levels is pretty much the whole point across all sagas, Sonic has very little in the way to measure threats. Hyper hasn't been back to avoid powercreep: it hasn't been back because no other story has ever touched the theme of mysticism in Sonic's world as much as S3&K except Sonic Adventure. It makes it very difficult to compare the scale of threat when everything threatens the existence of the world, but for a completely different reason. Sonic Adventure 2 didn't need two super forms to defeat Biolizard: it needed the synthesis between Hero and Dark. Even if Sonic Heroes had Ultra Sonic plus Ultra Knuckles and Ultra Tails fighting Metal Overlord, the point wouldn't have been needing more power to defeat it. It'd still have been needing the power of friendship vs. a threat that tried to become more powerful all on its own. So normalizing Hyper Sonic, bringing in Super Sonic 2 or whatever seems like a non-issue to me, narratively. "Oh but they'll fuck it up eventually" isn't an argument. They can fuck anything up, at any time, for any reason, whatever form they decide to use. That they decided Super Sonic could lose a certain number of rings upon being hit is already a change that could fuck things up and engender some sort of powercreep too. But it still matters very little. In short,
I genuinely don't understand why some people wouldn't want hyper sonic back. The series' lore isn't some tolkien level of worldbuilding with incredibly detailed character powers and abilities, it's about cool characters doing cool shit. Hyper sonic is a cool character doing cool shit. Please bring it back.
I don't like Hyper Sonic because I don't think it looks very good. But I think having different Super forms can be interesting and I actually prefer it when it isn't really explained and is left up to interpretation. That's what I liked about Darkspine Sonic. It was weird and melodramatic but it worked for what it was in a darker game. They also can fuck it up as they did with the dull Excalibur Sonic, but then it's not a big deal when they do. If anything I think Frontiers' greatest achievement was giving more of a limelight to Super Sonic. A more powered up Super Sonic is fine, especially since Super Sonic is integral to the game.
How to fuck up Hyper Sonic All fights now play nightcore version of the songs. Rainbow cycling induces seizures
Frontiers isn't even the most unfinished Sonic game in the year it came out, lol. To say nothing of the other games in 2022, including one game that came out a week after Frontiers.
Totally. Frontiers was clearly a bit rushed to completion. But unlike a lot of other games these days, and Sonic games of the past, it didn't actually a scream "unfinished" to me. I think I've used this analogy before; when I was doing my English GCSE at school, I was running out of time during the creative writing exam. Instead of leaving the story unfinished, I scrapped my plans, hastily put down an ending whereby I killed everyone in a plane crash and then spent the last 10 minutes just proofreading and making corrections. Frontiers is basically like that. They changed course and made cuts as development time was running out. They didn't release a blatantly unfinished game. It's fairly polished, stable and complete but the final act (Rhea/Ouranos/Supreme) shows clear signs of not being what was originally intended.
I think one reason why Hyper Sonic hasn't been brought back is because the rainbow cycling might look kinda weird in 3D. I could take or leave him, frankly. As Laura said, more specific, thematic forms like Darkspine Sonic would be cool, but Hyper just feels kinda lazy. It's literally just Super Sonic but Better. Not knocking it's inclusion in S3K, of course. It was just meant to be a cute bonus.
I think this is an issue of language. Every game has stuff that didn't make it into the final release, and time makes up a HUGE majority of the reasons why, but we only use the word "unfinished" when it's particularly egregious to us, and that can be pretty subjective. We like to think that cut content, even huge amounts of it, can justify this, but clearly that can be very contested depending on the product. Both Psychonauts games are "finished", but the entire Dark Souls trilogy is made up of "unfinished" products. How much or little sense does this make? Up to you.
Exactly. Every game makes cuts. Heck, there's a quote from Gabe Newell... it's something along the lines that things need to be cut during any game dscelooment process, and what you choose to cut is one of the most important decisions, because each thing you cut gives you more time to let other features flourish. It's classic opportunity cost. To be clear, that's not to say you can't cut TOO much. You can. Sonic Frontiers is an example where a little too much got cut for time.
Sure, I can agree with that. To my mind and language, Frontiers is not an unfinished game It still 'feels' (again, subjective) like after they cut content, they still had the time to go back and polish up what was already there. The game isn't riddled with bugs and mistakes. That's was sets it apart from an unfinished game like Rise of Lyric, which at times was barely functional and made you play through large sections that were clearly missing content in themselves. Frontiers, for all the shit I'll give it, at least feels like a finished product to me. And compared to a lot of games on the market these days, that actually says a lot. If Frontiers didn't recieve any patches or the major updates, it would still be an adequate package. That does not apply to lots of other games.
Yeah, I wouldn't call Frontiers overall as unfinished. Supreme was the only real black hole and it's made apparently obvious because all the other fights were so good. The penultimate fight is just nowhere near as good as everything else before it. The presentation and polish is just not there for that fight. But at least there was something actually there. Unlike someone else I know...
Except we know they were avoiding bringing back Hyper Sonic due to the powercreep/not going the same route as Dragon Ball did with transformations. Iizuka said it himself during SXSW a couple of years ago. Maybe they changed it their minds, or are going another route. But it was the reason plus cutting down the emerald numbers to 7 since the Super Emeralds were just a bonus game element for those that played S3&K.
Introduce Hypo Sonic, which makes Sonic slower, the music becomes vaporwave instead and the rainbow cycling is slow but psychedelic. That's the new transformation we need.
