Sonic Heroes Remake in UE5 Rumored, So Who Knows If It'll Happen

Metal Overlord is only for Team Sonic already. I'm not suggesting changing which characters participate, I'm only saying that the final story should be immediately unlocked as long as one of the teams is complete.

With the chaos emeralds, like I said before, you should probably just give them to players from boss battles unless you make REAL FUCKIN CERTAIN that you've fixed the special stages beyond a shadow of a doubt to not be jank dogshit. Which is an order tall enough that I don't trust most people with it, let alone Sonic Team.

 

worth noting that there is in fact an unjankified version of those special stages in existence already, and it was done by Dimps in their Generations for 3DS. so I wouldn't put it out of the question that Sonic Team could do it

 

True, I'd actually be fine with Sonic Team just recycling the code of that version. They actually made them fun and enjoyable, and I say this as someone who was already sick of all the pipe and half-pipe special stages when Gens 3DS came out.

 

Fair enough, for a moment there I forgot Final Story was a separate option. Though I do stand by my latter thought - especially in a game with mid-level dialogue, getting to use any team could be mildly interesting. Or making it a team-up fight like Adventure 2 and 06, though that'd probably mean keeping it behind 100%.

More than fair enough, though I have been curious to see a non-Classic, non-handheld game's take on Special Stages for quite some time now. I remember thinking about it a fair bit back when the Generations modding scene was active.

 

To be fair Team Rose was almost necessary for getting the emeralds since you have to essentially play a perfect game to avoid losing the special stage key which was really friggin hard in later levels like Final Fortress or Mystic Mansion.

 

I remember struggling really hard to get the final Emerald with Team Rose. Several attempts and I kept failing the Special Stage. But then I was told to use Team Sonic, as Sonic (and Shadow) were both faster than Amy (and Espio, IIRC). I've never had this verified, but I do know that I was successful on my first attempt at getting the Emerald with Team Sonic. It was tedious to get through Final Fortress with the key, but it worked.

Can anyone confirm for me if there's any difference in the running speed of the different speed characters?

 

In my opinion, the best way to handle the last story in a remake would be...

Require collecting all emeralds, just like the classics. You wouldn't have to complete every story, but doing that will either unlock a special stage mode, or give the player all emeralds by default.

That way, kids who aren't as good at special stages will have the option to "complete" all the stories in the way the story was originally intended, and in the way they might expect to 100% complete a game. And on top of that, fans who want an experience closer to the classics will get exactly that, engaging with the gameplay systems to their fullest extent, while also embracing each individual story's difficulty mode as a conscious choice to "complete" the game with. Sonic if you're feeling traditional, Team Rose if you want a brief run-through, Team Dark for a veteran replay that is actually challenging to complete for the last story, and chaotix for the "mix it up" option.

The special stages would have to be... good, though, and I still feel like the levels could use some edits with how long they are. In an ideal world I'd say this is the format that would be the most robust for the gameplay that is provided for the game, though.

The only problem past that, is the frustration and cheapness of losing a key after one hit. Maybe it could be like rings from the classic games, where every time you get hit, it bounces away from you at an increasingly high distance? That could make the act of losing it a lot less stressful while also frantic, and even more similar to the formula the classics followed to begin with; collecting lost rings after getting hit was always a relatively enjoyable combination of penalties and recovery steps, at least imo.

 

I would be moderately okay with that solution, but I think it misses the issue. Yes, Heroes Special Stages suck. And yes, I don't like Special Stages in general. But my issue with the "play the game four times" approach is that it's padding, and I don't think "do this other thing that's also not fun" quite solves that. I wouldn't feel good about a Shadow the hedgehog rerelease giving me the option to play through Secret Rings to skip the mission bloat of that game either.

This is my personal bias, but I've never felt good about special stages in the first place. They're certainly better when you can retry them easily (don't lock the emeralds to specific stages, in particular) but there's no version of "push a totally different ruleset on the player that's never more fun than the stage it's interrupting or else they get a much lamer ending" that I really like all that much.

 

The thing about Heroes' special stages is that they do use the same ruleset, though - or at least ideally they do. Making use of the team formations that the game featured, making use of the "same" platforming controls (unfortunately) to intuitively maneuver around or over the bombs, and the only real addition being that damn boost button.

If the Power formation was more reliable in where the other two players are located at all times, the steering and speed didn't completely fall apart at the slightest bend of the tunnel, the steering was locked to ultra-responsive strafing but the jump was completely free to turn, and the boost button actually functioned reliably like in the cracked youtuber videos, I'd say they'd be relatively bearable, idk. I can understand not liking special stages outright, but considering that Heroes is one of the few 3D Sonic games that does have special stages, I'd say it'd be a bit of a missed opportunity to not build an angle of completion around them ala the classic formula... especially when there's not much point to them at all once you remove the life and chaos emerald requirement to begin with...

+ - Yes I realized super forms after I typed that up, but... hmm...  

 

Eh, I suppose more band-aids wouldn't hurt. Give it the token retry system from Origins and I can at least brute-force them without having to play all of Mystic Fucking Mansion again for another shot.

 

That'd be cool, I was wondering what would happen to the life monitors rewards in the level design, assuming the remake kept the same level design of course

Alternatively though, here's a system I banged out while thinking about what to do with the bonus stages:

• Collecting another key while holding key = +1 key count
• Getting hit sends all keys flying to be picked up ala rings
• Any attempt at entering a special stage for the first time for the zone is for the emerald stage
• Bonus score attack stage level design that was previously for the act 1's is only available in act 2 after the emerald for the zone has been collected
• Grants more keys for the player to hold instead of lives
• Carry all keys throughout the playthrough, with the option to skip special stages to improve the flow of a playthrough and pass on the bonus stages

Edit: Actually ykw I just remembered that there's only 7 zones in the game... limiting the emeralds to one per zone might be too egregious, especially for the pacing. Maybe they can be only selectable from the stage select for actual rankings, considering they're score based to begin with?

 

I'm not sure how much real this rumor is, but in case a remake of Heroes will ever exist, I wonder if they will take inspiration from the control scheme of the Sonic + Avatar stages of Sonic Forces. In those stages, you control two characters at once, though you don't have to switch between them, because each character is tied to a move or a set of moves, and by performing that/those move/s the characters will automatically switch without the need of an additional button, nor prior planning before performing said move.

In this case the button layout might become a bit more complex (moves that were executed with the same input but different character now would require a separated input), or the movesets might be simplified (by removing redundant moves), but at least it would be a lot easier and more intuitive to control.

The problem comes when you have to optimize the second jump action, there's fly, glide and homing attack, and each move should have a separated input. In my opinion it's totally doable, but not an easy task and there's the risk of messing everything out.

 

This is an interesting idea, but you'd have to make sure it's airtight, since at this point, your three characters are essentially just one character with a different model in focus depending on the last action you used. This might get a little weird with stuff like the pinball tables where each character is one "ball" or the jellyfish/weights that can totally disable a party member.

I said this a while back but a good way to make the other characters feel better (and Sonic in general) is for them to be just slightly overpowered for the stages they're in. Not to the point of intentional breakage, but I like using the Physics Preset & Stage Fix mod, which makes Knuckles's triangle dive and Tails's air momentum way more versatile, and I end up using them way more often than previously (it also makes the speed characters' acceleration way more tolerable). The ideal would be something like this, with all characters normalized to have the same speed and physics values. With this, we might as well go with that homogenization idea and boil it all down to one moveset.


This is just a rough outline obviously, but the homing attack, if it has any action outside of basic melee, can do what the tornado does (which it already does at lvl 3 in Heroes). Thunder shoot, likewise, can almost entirely replace Fire Dunk other than raw damage on the big hammer pawns. Combining Flight and Gliding into one air action might be jank (depends on how much you like Advance 3 I guess), but it would fit most situations that the Flight or Triangle Dive already used in the base game and outpace them, along with basically having the same function as an air dash to begin with. I don't think an air dash should go on the homing attack button, since it will never avoid the "meant to homing attack but airdashed instead" jank otherwise. I'm not sure exactly what to do with X and Y, since we're already massively simplifying the combat in a game with very basic combat to begin with, but maybe there's some movement tech they can be used for instead. Ideally I wouldn't want fights lasting nearly as long as they do in the base game. But the idea is that it shouldn't feel like you're playing a Sonic game only to occasionally switch to one of the boring slow guys to use as a key in the world's least-interesting lock.

 

if they want to reward more "perfect" play without it being absolutely awful like the original game, they could gate the special stages behind a ring threshold like Sonic 1/CD or a score threshold.

 

I reinstalled Sonic Heroes after decades just to experiment with this.

The game has two main buttons, "Jump" and "Action". The other 2 buttons (let's say X and Y taking inspiration by the Gamecube pad) are used to scroll the characters: scroll left and scroll right.

They are using 4 buttons, one for jumping, and the others for character-specific moves and offcourse changing the leader character. In other words, they use one button for jumping and 3 buttons for the characters... but there are 3 characters total and they are using 3 buttons for them, what's stopping them to dedicate one button to each character and remove the switching thing completely?

Let's move to the XBox pad now, for convenience.

- A is the jump button, it does the same action for every party member except the secondary action that's activated once you are already in air. This will obviously be changed in the new layout.

- X, Y and B are the Speed, Flight and Power buttons, each one of them will activate the moves of the associated character, by switching to it automatically (quality of life changes: allowing to switch to power type even when you are floating over a fan, and a little QTE to select the character type before being shoot by a cannon, with the default one being the last used, or speed type).

Team Blast can be on a trigger or on an analog click button. No other input are required.

Notice how the XBox buttons use convenient colors by pure accident (X is blue, speed type; Y is yellow, flight type; B is red, power type).

Now the real problem are the secondary jump actions, HA, fly and glide, as I said in my other post.

- Power Type's jump action is a glide. Let the Power Type's attack function on release of the button, while on press and hold it would change into a glide.

- Speed Type's jump action is the Air Dash and Homing Attack. It can be mapped to the Speed button instead of the tornado move, and just like the Power Type's glide, the tornado comes out if you hold for long enough, but only if an HA target is nearby (air dash is on press, homing attack is on release, the tornado move is on press and hold; those poles will now become targets for HA but an HA is not enough to fly over them, it will make you spin a little and then detach). Light Dash will also replace HA in a context sensitive way, still on press like the Air Dash.

- Flight Type's air action is flight, and in the original game it completely replaces the jump. In this new configuration, flight types can walk and jump normally instead, and they only fly if you press the Flight button. Pressing the flight button multiple times will make you dash upward, while the Thunder Shoot attack is performed by pressing the Speed and Power buttons while you are in the flight formation (depending on the button pressed, you decide what character is launched). By jumping, you break the flight formation and free fall (in ball form?).

The final moveset would be very similar to the one of the original game, but way more accessible and intuitive. There's no secondary actions on the jump button anymore, so you can potentially code a double jump, drop dash or whatever there if you want. Or nothing at all, no need for unnecessary complexity.

EDIT: double pressing the jump button might activate the walljump, but I would suggest only after air-dashing into a (compatible) wall as a Speed Type character.

 

If we're gonna talk redesigning how Heroes controls (Xbox layout):

A - Jump
B - Interact (Light Dash, pull lever, grab/drop thing, etc)
X - Action
Y - Team Blast
L/R - Switch Character

Keep it simple. No need to reinvent the wheel*, just put things in more appropriate places to prevent overlap and improve game feel. Switching characters would feel more natural on L & R anyways, if you asked me.

* - They gotta replace the Rocket Accel with a normal Spin Dash, though. Please.

 

That would work, but the point was trying to redesign the controls in a way that removes the need of switching between characters.
That layout is fine but it doesn't remove the switching...

The problem of Heroes' gameplay is that it's not simple, it's a mess.

I completely agree about replacing that weird move with a spindash/roll anyway.

 

I get what you're going for, but personally I think the character switching is fine. There's a satisfying (albeit wonky) kind of feeling to get from rolling between types, it's like spinning a wheel or loading a revolver cylinder.

And tbh I'm just not a fan of trying to shove every character's actions onto one button. Context sensitive actions cramp Heroes' moveset as-is, and plagues the game with potential accidental inputs. If I'm already having trouble doing a Tornado Spin or Rocket Accel when I meant to Light Dash, my frustrations would only triple if I did a Tornado Spin when I meant to do an Air Dash, or Air Dashed when I meant to Light Dash, or Homing Attacked when I meant to Tornado Spin.

Now I am fully for other minor gameplay changes, like taking Flight characters out of being in totem-pole-stance at all times, or replacing the Rocket Accel with the Spin Dash/roll. But IMO the reason Heroes was bad to play wasn't really as much these issues. It was moreso the really slippery physics, poor collision, grindy combat, the four mandatory campaigns to beat, and characters that couldn't stop yapping.

All that combined is still it's own Goliath of a task to address, but if they did, then the only thing left I could REALLY ask for is to make sure I don't Rocket Accel into a pit when I wanted to Light Dash or grab a door pulley. And personally I think the only 100% safe way to do that is to just let those actions be on a seperate button from your attacks.

 

Yeah Azoo has the right idea at least for a faithful version of the game. I was going off of reinvent the wheel mentality insofar as removing redundant actions entirely, because the tornado is basically just a more unwieldy homing attack, the fire dunk and thunder shoot are basically the same move, the rocket accel is useless and the ground combat is really hit-or-miss, all in service of enemies that feel spongy and shouldn't have much health to begin with (I'd also scrap leveling). It's about making things efficient, trying to turn the game into a one-button wonder just opens you up to doing all that stuff accidentally.

 

Switching characters and formation changes was fun. Removing them just robs the identity for me.

Actually playing the game with those unique formations and their quirks is another question. But that's something a remake should refine with better execution of those ideas.