Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

Would be neat if the pre rendered scenes were done in engine so the Saturn and SA1 costumes can carry over.

 

You know, I keep looking back and forwards between Sonic Frontiers' 'Halo Reach player's first Forge world' approach to level design, and SxSG's current approach to past zones, and it makes me wonder... If they just had approached Frontiers as SxSG but fusing all the intended zones into one cohesively interconnected "giga-zone", would that be received better? Because that's sort of my dream.
If SxSG can supposedly run on a Switch, why didn't they just take that sort of approach with Frontiers' "Open Zone", just with loading areas so it can actually run on the poor thing? Is SxSG seriously that much more intensive? I dunno if I'm getting across what I mean well.

Actually, have we gotten any Shadow Generations gameplay running on the Switch?? I desperately need to see how it plays before I make any sorta purchase.

 

According to the Nintendo Switch's ver of Story Trailer, appanretly the footage was recorded on Switch's specifications:


Anyway, more Kingdom Valley gameplay, from TGS:


We should probably get Fadel's footage soon too.

 

The trouble with the level design is that there are really no surprises due to how everything is on pretty much one broad path. I feel like I’ve seen everything of substance Kingdom Valley has to offer now. At least there’s only a month left, so hopefully there are no demos with Rail Canyon, Sunset Heights or Chaos Island in that time.

 

It's said very quickly but the player here said "It doesn't control like Forces" which is pretty reassuring.

 

Love that stomping on the ropes slings you higher, don't love the mach speed segment being kinda short and anticlimactic. The stage looks like it flows really nicely but seems to accomplish that by flattening everything a bit too much. It doesn't seem to make you engage with the castle ruins like 06 did but it could just be how the guy's playing. Regardless I never noticed how Beta Windy Valley-esque Kingdom Valley is but the wider platforms really bring it out.

 

Some people also say that Cyberspace controls absolutely fine and they don't have any issues with Sonic's aerial movement controls in Frontiers, Forces etc. We'vealready seen that Shadow Generations shares a lot of it's DNA with Frontiers, including the homing attack delay and how jumping works, so forgive me for saying I won't be convinced until I play the game for myself or hear impressions from someone with whom I'm familiar.

 

This is my main point of contention with the level design as of now. It reminds me a lot of SA2, where there's typically one core path with a multitude of secrets, and any alternate routes are just shortcuts to the end that quickly spit you back on the main path. Nothing wrong with that, but I just want more. I love the sensation of there being more to discover after completing a level for the first time. The controls in this game look so good, I want to take advantage of them to find things you otherwise couldn't access.

It also still retains the problem of too many freaking Homing Attacks. You interact with so many things using the Homing Attack, which is the same input and action every time. This issue stems all the way from SA2, where much of the game design was made more binary. Maybe could use a little less of that, given the control is better.

Outside of those things, I'm pretty happy with it. Seems they've learned a lot of lessons from Cyber Space - less restrictive control, more complex challenges, bespoke gimmicks, and more opportunities to use movement to your advantage. For me, the biggest difference between this and something like Forces is that Forces is *heavily* restricted in what you can actually do. There are invisible walls everywhere, and the rigid control and level structure leaves little room for experimentation beyond the same "slope jump to skip 5 seconds of level". This game (and Cyber Space, for that matter) has more open levels, with less invisible walls and looser controls, allowing you to experiment a lot more.

 

This is kind of what’s got me so curious. Sonic Team is very good at implementing new things to slap on games that they seemingly never be able to properly learn from by expanding on afterwards - it doesn’t help that a lot of fresh content is heavily tied to story as well that makes reapproaching certain mechanics not quite feasible.

With something as general as Shadow Generations, not only am I wondering about how they’re going to be improving on the standard set by Cyberspace, I’m looking to the future as well - With something of a gameplay successor to Frontiers coming within the next five years or so, how are they going to improve on what they learned from the title that tried to change its course for the better? What of Dream Team and its supposed success that I’d say a majority of people have never gotten to enjoy, will we be seeing whatever made that game so great? After both SxSG and F2 as mainline titles eventually release, how are they going to improve on both at the same time? That’s what got me hooked, seeing if they’ll properly tie the portions received well, whatevers functional and fun, everything they learned into a nice fitting package… Or if we instead get a mainline title inspired by Sonic Jump / Rumble.

 

I would say it's still pretty in line with how the main campaign of Generations was designed, which is what I've wanted from a high quality "modern" title since then. Not to mention getting to play Frontiers and actually experiment with Sonic in an open world made it obvious to me that desining large stages around his speed that aren't linear is always going to be a struggle since Sonic can cross the open world maps in a lot of game like this...

 

Well, pretty much others impressions have said the controls felt pretty good. Then there's no reason to put any worry there.

 

At this point yeah, I think it's fair to say this is a Shadow game that comes with Sonic Generations
In hindsight it's kind of funny that it was said Shadow Gens would be smaller than Sonic Gens, because it seems to have about an equal amount of content to me so far.

 

I kind of like the ‘SEGA lowering our expectations’ method instead of fans having to be consistently disappointed for a change. It’s a nice surprise - but we’ll have to see if the game holds up for ourselves. One month left to find out!!

Edit: Also, I keep a list of all the Sonic things I notice are coming out, so here's some October releases to keep peeps preoccupied:

• October 3, 2024 - SxSG: Dark Beginnings Ep. 2
• October 9, 2024 - Sonic IDW Annual 2024
• October 10, 2024 - SxSG: Dark Beginnings Ep. 3
• October 25, 2024 - Sonic x Shadow Generations Game
  
• October 30, 2024 - Sonic IDW Issue 74

 

Sonic Generations has eighteen acts, seven bosses and 90 challenge acts. As far as we know, Shadow Generations has an open-zone, twelve acts, and six bosses, with maybe some challenge acts, though we don't know how many or how they play. Now, I'm assuming that there will be Radical Highway acts separate from portals like the ARK, that there is a final boss outside of the six stages we've seen and maybe there's even an eighth boss with Infinite, but I don't know that for certain. Either way, it does come out to less stages (albeit more bosses), it just depends on how you weigh the content. Shadow's open zone is obviously more elaborate than Sonic's hub, but less than any Frontiers island. I'm sure Shadow doesn't have the combat or upgrades from that game. The stages, while they certainly look fun, can be critiqued as less complex than Sonic's (and seeing the ones that are in 2D definitely won't help that perception). I think it's fair to say that the game is still smaller, just not "rushed 3-level DLC" small.

 

I guess I should've worded it better, I meant play time, rather than actual content, Generations is like a 3 hour game casually. I think you'll at least get that amount of time or more out of Shadow Gens. But yeah I can see how it does have less content in regards to levels.

 

@Deep Dive Devin Are you counting Radical Highway as one of the six Zones? I’m counting them purely as challenge acts since that’s what they seem to be analogous to, given their quantity, so I’ve got five Zones, being the ARK, Rail Canyon, Kingdom Valley, Sunset Heights and Chaos Island, unless I’m missing something.

 

No, you're right, I miscounted. We just don't have enough information on what's going on with Radical Highway right now to say anything for certain. There's no way of knowing whether all the additional Highway stuff we've seen in trailers and such are similarly appended to the ends of stages, or full acts unto themselves. A lot of them look more complicated than the first one.

Still, I would love for the progression to be something like:

ARK -> Biolizard -> Rail Canyon -> Metal Overlord -> Kingdom Valley -> Mephiles -> Sunset Heights -> Infinite -> Chaos Island -> Sonic(?) -> Black Comet/something like it -> Doom/ending

with distorted highway as an interruption or bonus between all these.

 

I must say, I’m really impressed with Kirk performance as Shadow in the last trailer. And I really did not enjoy his Shadow back in other games.

It’s like the voice direction changed completely, he even sounds a little bit like Humphrey.

 

Forgot where I read that, but Kirk during a recent panel admitted that he didn't really understand Shadow until Generations showed him Shadow's motivations.