Sonic X Shadow Generations announced, releases Autumn 2024

Yet the cutscene preceding The Doom shows the Ark sans southern hemisphere. Ostensibly this takes place 50 years ago, though one could argue Shadow’s memories or Black Doom’s illusions aren’t entirely accurate.

 

Physical pre-orders now come with a reversable cover that has the Japanese box art.
Not ideal that it's exclusive to pre-orders but still a very nice thing.

 

I'm pretty sure the retail versions will also have the reversible cover.

 

If so, then they worded it poorly... Which I guess tracks for Sonic marketing purchase bonuses as of late.

 

Does the scale of the environments compared to Shadow himself bother anyone else? It's not purely a visual thing either, because it also ties in to how the levels are designed to be played. This stuff has been getting on my wick with regard to Sonic games for a long time. Whilst everything was fine in Unleashed HD and preceding games (Heroes was a bit off), Unleashed SD made Sonic feel like he was the size of a mouse. Subsequent games have often gone with same approach, although Sonic Generations and Frontiers' open zones forgo it. The latest SXSG trailer offering level comparisons highlights the issue:


The path is needlessly wiiiiiide in SXSG. It's all dead space with nothing going on. Shadow is an ant in the middle of it, but you get a convincing sense of speed by traversing the vaccuous, empty ground so quickly.

It's even worse in Kingdom Valley, due to how the design is more grounded in realism (though it would still be a problem even in a totally surreal setting).


It just draws attention to the fact that the world is ridiculously scaled up. In 06, the path on top of the castle/building is approximately 3 dash panels wide. In SXSG, the path is several times wider than that. The result is that Shadow and the dash panel look like they're starring Honey, I Shrunk the Hedgehog. It emphasises how empty the locations look.

The standard animals of the Sonic cast all stand around 1m tall, so Shadow would be just a bit shorter than that here considering that he's kneeling.


There's no way that he's even close to being 1 meter tall here. The dude's practically microscopic next to the wall on his left and tree on his right. Again, not the case in 06 whatsoever. Even Eggman or a realistic human would look silly here if scales correctly next to Shadow. You could argue that it's necessary for both the visuals and the gameplay that the playable characters are scaled down compared to the world that they occupy (that's the argument for a Mario Kart). In other words, you could say that in order for the player to maintain control at high speed and be able to read the environment whilst doing so, the environment needs to be at a larger scale. But I don't think that true at all. Unleashed HD managed totally fine, as did a lot of Sonic Generations back in 2011 (with some exceptions).

This whole approach to level design is irksome.

 

Re; ARK: the long grind rail at the start actually extends very far into the background ARK prop. They surely put some consideration for how it looks... so I don't know if the floating ARK stuff could be considered an oversight or an intentional design choice.

 

I hadn't thought about this until you guys brought it up, but yeah that is a bit strange to see. This level presumably takes place in the past though, so more likely these are pieces that got jettisoned from the Ark when Eggman fired the Eclipse Cannon.

 

The weird scaling is surely to give Shadow more room for boost, and to match with the weird scaling in OG Generations. I don't love it either but it makes sense for those reasons

 

Never noticed the scaling until now, wild

I knew they’d do the reverse cover, had a feeling. Tbh SEGA have been good for alt covers this whole gen

 

The problem with this argument is the weird scaling isn't an issue (or isn't as much of an issue) in base Gens. Sonic never looks tiny.

 

The scaling rarely looks quite this ridiculous in OG Generations. It has its moments (Green Hill, Chemical Plant and portions of City Escape always come to mind), but it looks like they're not even trying to make it work in Shadow Gens.

SEGA have fallen into the same trap that 3D Sonic fan games often do. Boost gameplay was a mistake...

 

Now, if only they'd release a complete game on cart/disc instead of withholding a stage as DLC that you have to buy the digital deluxe edition for.

 

They’ve been awful. It’s always printed without the proper console information. It looks like someone just stuck in a photo of whatever they wanted.

Every single one is unusable for a collector. FotNS, Judgment, Sonic Superstars, this…

 

At this bit in the trailer:

Shadow's run animation stutters really weirdly as he nears the bottom of the ramp. Did anyone else notice that?

 

I don't get it myself. The game looks so good and I'm so looking forward to it.

 

Run it in slowmo its just the ground at the endd of the ramp is pretty jagged, not smooth, so shadow is snapping into another angle

 

Pretty sure a common argument back then was how Classic Sonic looked so tiny in comparison to every stage
But it’s classic not modern

 

The did have to retcon Classic Sonic's height for Generations to make him only about 2/3s the height of Modern Sonic. Before Generations or both designs in a single game, they were officially the same height and Cleric Sonic looks like a mascot suit from hell if he's the same height as his modern counterpart. So he is genuinely smaller.

But yeah, even aside from that very intentional caveat he's still got the scaling issue and it certainly can look funky.


It's not a constant thing though, and being limited to only 2D movement helps maintain the illusion somewhat.

 

Eh, it doesn’t look great though. They probably could make the animation snap less abruptly.

By the way, I guess these are all the levels? The trailer suggests this if they’re doing comparisons.