Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out now

Just a quick reminder for anyone going for the 'Can't Touch This' achievement for Time Eater:

You *can* hit the terrain chunks and it won't count as damage. Only hits from the arms, homing shots, and the laser will count for purposes of the achievement. Dodge the hand in 2D most easily by switching back into 3D; switching is also, from what I can tell, the only way to dodge the laser attack. And of course only the lower hands will try to clap you when you get close to the weak point.

Looked up a guide that mentioned that first point, and then got the achievement my next try. Definitely hit a few terrain blocks in the process, so there's no reason reset on account of that.

 

I feel like saying one thing I hope changes for future games is the range for the Homing Attack in Shadow Generations.

It's TOO generous, you can homing attack into any target if it's even halfway on screen and it does water down some challenges.

 

I'm a bit surprised people are saying the 2D levels are put together better than other entries - I felt like the 2D sections in Shadow Generations were kinda obviously prefab objects that they slapped together, especially the further in you got. Often you have sections just kinda floating in the sky instead of being integrated into the level. The actual level design is pretty good, though.

Spoiler

The worst offender of this is, imo, Kingdom Valley Act 2, where you have multiple stretches of floating geometry that's just slapped in the sky. Sunset Heights Act 2 has multiple instances of Forces level design, where they just slap a bunch of boxes together and call it a day. Same thing with Chaos Island. You can argue that it's just them trying to replicate the style of the games - but that's not a good thing.

Granted, this isn't the first time Sonic's done this (hello Starlight Zone) and it's far better than it's been in, well, almost a decade at this point. There's sections where the stage and environment are properly melded together, but I can't see Shadow Generations being above Generations or Unleashed.

 

What does everyone think of the the visual fidelity of Shadow Generations? Does anyone else find that it looks washed out and flat? The lighting in the game isn't very sophisticated, and things look less dynamic than Forces. Whilst that game has a tendency to make characters look pale, the environments are bursting with depth and colour. All of that is gone in Shadow Generations, and across are all bathed in bright white halos. The entire game is just bright and lacking contrast. Kingdom Valley is the worst offender for looking uniformly lit. But it's best shown with the Ark as it was also in Sonic Gens. There there's nothing much going on there despite the fact that the entire place should be illuminated with all manner of bright, neon colours in depths of space. Just look at the difference between SA2, SoGens ShGens:

Bright and vivid colours in SA2:



Next up is SoGens (PS5). Maybe the lighting is a bit too intense, but look at the colours. Sonic is cast in the blue light of his surroundings, and coloured lights really stand out amongst the shadows on the right of the path. Note that there actually are Shadows cast by the environment! For an environment that technically is pretty grey, the colours are incredibly vibrant.



And finally Shadow Generations (PS5, image quality mode), where everything is sort of grey and flat. Despite the abundance of colours in the scene, there's no global illumination or light scattering. There's barely a single shadow, apart from the titular hedgehog. Just look at how the big green panels don't reflect colours back on to anything else. And Shadow himself and the springs all hand this overbearing white halos with no source. It looks horribly pared back.





I'd get some examples if Sunset Heights too if I could be bothered to put Forces on.

It really plainly obvious to see the visual concessions they made for this game. Is it because of the way they made the time of day change in Frontiers, with ShGens being built on that? The HE2 did have much better lighting when it was all pre-baked in Forces.

 

That picture of Sonic Gens you posted looks like those blue and orange movie posters

 

Yes, and for the love of God please let me target enemies that are off-screen. The homing attack these days is more influenced by the camera than the position of the player character. When you end up in a situation you have to defeat a bunch of enemies in a circle or lined up from left to right, you only won't be able to chain them all together once some of the targets are off-screen. Miss one enemy in a row from front to back and oops you'll have to awkwardly land and walk back to that enemy instead of being able to choose your target. This happens consistently at the end of Space Colony Ark 1, when you're trying to hit enemies into Doom's Eye and at several other points. It's so frustrating. I know that a target is there, but the game won't allow me to hit it and may even lock on to something much further away that isn't even in the direction that Shadow is facing.

Unleashed HD, SoGens and older games didn't work this way, and nor did older games. But the homing attack was changed to be camera based in Unleashed Wii and Colours, and has been like that ever since. Anyone who's played Egg Gate in Forces knows there's a really awkward part right at the start where Sonic just won't select the target you want, and therefore choosing which path you want to take is borderline impossible. These games have a target reticule though. Why not place the reticule on the side of the screen with ab arrow when the target isn't visible? That's how way-point markers work.

And camera control. Holy fuck I just want to turn the camera in levels again please game. Frontiers let you do it in like one of the DLC Cyberspace levels because of how convoluted the layout was. But otherwise, every stage since Colours has forbidden camera movement.

 

I don't see any reason for boost centric games to have a fully controllable camera in the levels, there really isn't a need to look around at all especially considering how fast you go. Fixed camera angle 3d platformers are generally a lot tighter anyway.

Shadow Gens never came across to me as immediately nasty looking like Forces and Frontiers, and as a matter of fact I found the lighting in levels like Rail Canyon, Sunset Heights and Chaos Island to look very nice. 3d Sonic games after 06 went for a more realistic aesthetic rather than a colorful and radical one, so I think your problem is down to the general taste in art direction rather than how it's lit.

 

@Blue Blood I apologise in advance because I’m probably going to come off like an arse with this post but…I just really can’t see where you’re coming from with the visuals and don’t accept your premise as a result of that.

I’m not going to rag on SA2 because it’s over 20 years old and the tech behind it just doesn’t compete here, but the Sonic Generations screenshot you posted makes the environment look like a plastic play set with how glossy its surfaces are. Throughout that game, I feel like Sonic rarely exhibits the right amount of bounce lighting (Green Hill is an absolutely awful offender for this, grass should not be reflecting light to such a degree) and, while I still believe it holds up very well, I don’t think shadows is a part of that.

Meanwhile Forces has the better lighting tech of HE2 but makes some really boneheaded decisions that work against this tech, broadly in simplifying the art or making it more saturated. I have despised the Sunset Heights buildings from basically day dot of the game’s marketing because they’re super saturated and have next to no noticeable texture. They look like they’re made of marzipan.

So it’s miraculous to me that Shadow Generations takes this locale and makes it pop with higher contrast shadows, more impressive lighting and desaturated colours on the buildings that make them look like real forms. All across Shadow Generations there are strong shadows and great lighting instances both throughout levels and in respect to how they affect Shadow.

Even Kingdom Valley I’m happy with because the weather there is overcast anyway, I wouldn’t expect there to be strong shadows and lots of bounce light. Basically my only issue is Sunset Heights having a blue sky that feels inconsistent with lighting direction, but given half the level is underground and then in the doom zone anyway (the former of which looks particularly lovely), I’m not losing sleep over it.

 

Shadow Gens has a fair amount of of alternate routes at different angles so the locked camera is very annoying at times. Look at the ring challenge for Rail Canyon Act 1 for example it has a lot of routes you can mix and max between but the camera will fight you constantly for doing this.

 

I don't see what Blue Blood is saying. Game looks pretty stellar with HDR. It's a pretty game with everything cranked up.

 

I wonder if the camera-based homing attack was to prevent players from accidentally homing attacking something off-screen by accident or through blind faith. In some sense, I can see why this might've been done, but it's backfired a bit.

 

It may not always or even often be necessary. But the there are plenty of times when it would be beneficial. When you want to move backwards, when you want to scope out and area for possible routes or when you're in the middle of homing on enemies, camera control would be a life saver. The camera is generally well designed enough that it guides you through levels without the need for manual control, although it veers into hand holding territory very often.

There's also technical side to removing camera control too, and I'd be remiss to ignore that. Forces for example only renders the scenery you're expected to see. The reverse side of buildings in Forces Sunset Heights simply don't exist because there's no way to see them in game. With controlled camera angles, the developers don't have to waste resources on rendering things that will never be visible to the player. But when you the player does have camera control, suddenly a hell of a lot more scenery needs to exist. From that perspective, it's efficient. I get that. But I just want the games to stop holding my hand.

@Starduster @Chimpo We'll just agree to disagree then. Yeah, SoGens can be excessive. As said, in Green Hill Sonic's skin ends up a sickly shade of green because the lighting is so intense. I picked the Ark because it's it's a location we can get a direct comparison in between games (Sunset Heights is the other option available). I'm playing ShGens on with HDR on a high end TV, and there's just something about the lighting that's very flat. The decision not to pre-bake he lighting has resulted in ShGens looking far too uniform.

@Nope No, the artstyle for ShGens isn't the problem I'm having. The artstyle is fine and it's entirely the lighting that let's it down.

 

It is a bit flat, yes, but realistically, with that many lights would there even be any shadows?
Also, I kind of see some green in front of the springs (closer to the camera, behind Shadow). Yes, it's not that great, but I'd say at least it's not 0 bounce lighting (maybe).

 

One of my favourite little things is whenever you go underground or into a bigger interior into the open world in this or in Frontiers. It's kinda novel for Sonic games. It'd be cool if the next game has really expansive interiors and underground sections that you can go in and out of quickly. Or maybe even have the linear stages baked into the open world, have a cinematic or a long valley or something to transition into the stage. They are playing with uncontrollable cinematics in the stages masking the loading into the Radical Highway sections or even the sewers in Sunset Heights.

 

FWIW I agree with @Blue Blood in that the colors are a lot more pale in ShGens compared to how vibrant they are in vanilla Gens. It could get a bit extreme and blown out in some areas, but I prefer that actually. Global illumination is awesome, and the colored shadows really do bring a realism to even the most stylized of worlds. I love what it did for Unleashed and Generations, and I still think those two games look the best in regards of stage visuals.

That said, I think ShGens still looks really good in most cases. My only major exception is the excessive use of rimlighting.. It feels like a modern version of the "glossy" look we rag Heroes/ShTH for. There's a mod for ShGens now that removes it and I personally prefer it, but I can somewhat understand people who don't, since it does make Shadow pop from backgrounds better. Here are some direct before and after comparisons:

 

Not only that, from what I've seen, Shadow Gens is smart about that segment.
With how the whole mood and music changes, you're approaching something that you shouldn't, something that even at a place time doesn't exist, it needs to be hidden.
Really cool stuff (and kinda hilarious considering what's there).

 

@Azookara Just skimming through the cutscenes, I think it is Shadow who’s affected the most by this and I think it is for the purpose of helping him pop out. The two other characters who I think this most obviously affects are Mephiles and Black Doom, both of whom are also made up predominantly of dark hues.

In my opinion, I think the lighting does help Shadow pop as it describes and accentuates his form, especially in instances with coloured lighting (I really love that shot of him in the Biolizard cutscene in particular). Briefly comparing to Forces, darker characters like Shadow and Infinite look quite flat in their appearances (though you could say this for much of the cast since Forces doesn’t really do anything interesting with its lighting and is still using the very smooth character models of yesteryear), so I think you hit the nail on the head in that they’re trying to avoid that.

I think what stops it from looking like Heroes for me is the massive advancement in texture quality and technique, particularly the use of normal maps so that this lighting isn’t applied evenly across his fur texture. The end result is it looks like Shadow’s fur in particular looks like it’s glossy, whereas few other materials do, and I think that’s fine. He’s just a healthy boi who invests in quality shampoo.

 

There we go. It's the lack of coloured lighting that really hurts ShGens, imo. That'll be contributing greatly to the overall grey and washed out look of the environments game. Whatever the setting, there's not enough contrast between light and dark, with the light areas then being washed out (water in this game doesn't look good.... If you find a dark spot somewhere, they tend to look better.

The rim lighting is a big problem too, yes. That mod would help a lot if I was playing this game on PC. The room lighting is almost like an accessibility feature that's left on at all times. It makes things stand out against the environment, but at the cost of just looking ugly. Arguably it's worst for Shadow himself because he's predominantly black and therefore the white halo stands out a lot on him. But its also present on a lot of other objects. Springs, enemies, rings and boosters all have rim lighting, but item boxes and lot of stage specific objects don't?

I dunno. The visuals aren't bad. But they're off to me. Enough to make me think that despite the great range of environments on display and well executed animations, the end result is bland.

 

Black Doom's new VA really seems to enjoy the role, lol.

 

Ben Diskin is a treasure to be honest and I’m surprised he got picked for this, given that his usual vibe is folks like Joseph Joestar and LORENZ HELLMAN GLOUCESTER. Anyway, always nice to see the VAs engage with folks like this. Maybe our next takeover can be Sonic, Shadow, Eggman, Black Doom and maybe Mephiles?