Sonic X Shadow Generations thread, movie level out on the 12th

It never stops being cool. Live and learn dude

 

This is the worst. They could put the effort in and actually make a good story and cutscenes, or cut the pretenses and have minimal story.
Instead, we get the worst of both worlds: tiresome cutscenes that show nothing of worth.

 

I know what you mean. The Pontac era games are full of pointless, unengaging cutscenes devoid of any character or plot development. You could cut most of Colors' cutscenes and have just as much plot. Especially considering that the plot resolves itself without Sonic's involvement in the end in the laziest deus ex machina possible.

Even worse when they tease to have some actual development only to backpedal right away, like the infamous mind-controlled Tails cutscene. Why even have that scene?

 

It's especially annoying with generations, they could pick and choose from ANY of the cool locations/set pieces from the series for cutscenes yet they made the decision to have most of them take place in a white void.

 

There's also that one cutscene with Robo-Tails in Sonic Lost World; at first I thought there was going to be an actual boss battle with him only for the game to go "Nah, screw this" and just... act like nothing even happened in the next cutscene. It's rather jarring.

 

I mean not for nothing, but Frontiers has the same problem of characters just standing around and talking. The conversations are good, but I think that's more a Modern Sonic Team thing than a specific writer thing.

 

Best Frontiers cutscenes are the ones where no one says anything.

 

I’m like 99% sure the standing around cutscenes are due to the budgets of Sonic games being slashed after Unleashed.

 

I always thought they were just trying to rip off the Sony dialogue template.

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A large majority of the dialogue cutscenes are just wo characters talking where nothing happens. Can't really make those excit-

Spoiler

 

They should have the guy who made The Twin Snakes direct a Sonic cutscene

 

Frontiers' cutscenes are such a mixed bag. The early game cutscenes are decent but a majority of the in-game character dialogue is literally just two characters standing around with vacant looks on their faces. I honestly wouldn't have minded if they did character dialogue portraits like the DS games. At least that would be more interesting to look at lol

Spoiler

I think it's so weird that they don't get Marza to do cutscenes for the games, only for promotional material. They're a great studio and have always handled Sonic well.

 

I was going to make a point that Marza only works with pre rendered CG, which wouldn't work with how cutscenes can be effected by the time of day, weather, and Sonic's costume. But Frontiers forces those elements to what it wants in major story beats anyways, lol.

 

Hey, Crash 4 had some very expressive cutscenes. And that was a $30 game! Thinking about it, the overall production value of that game was high for a $30 game.

 

Was it really only $30? It was almost definitely in the normal range of prices in Denmark. Haven't seen it on shelves in the US however so I'm not sure the MSRP there.

 

Did some research. Apparently, the MSRP depends on the platform. The PC and Switch versions launched at $39.99, while the PS5 and Xbox versions launched at $59.99. I got my copy of the game when it was on sale. Looks like I misremembered the cut price as the normal MSRP.

 

it's crazy to me that Crash 4 had about 70+ animators, spread out across multiple studios, whereas Frontiers had around 12 to 16 in-game character animators (according to the credits). Not saying that more is automatically better, but it gives a good insight into where priorities lie.

fun fact, some of the animators for the Crash Team Racing remake previously worked on Sonic Boom for Wii U

 

I am praying to god it doesn't have a stupid launcher. I just know it's going to break in a decade dammit!!

 

Ironically, Sonic Unleashed used motion capture. Not sure if any games after it did (maybe the Mario and Sonic games?)

I'd be fine with the visual novel style if that didn't also have major drawbacks. For Colors DS I always assumed Orbot lost his arm when they were trying to depict Orbot and Cubot cleaning up Globotron and missing his actual arm, or in Rush Adventure Captain Whiskers' sidekicks Mini and Mum sharing his portraits. There's a lot of stuff that, if you actually want to make sure you're communicating, you just have to show fully.

There's also the fact that they've never done it correctly while still having voice lines recorded, which is the Rush Adventure / Colors approach where every character who is in the scene is on screen at once or at least swapped in accordingly. Team Sonic Racing wasted so much time taking everything off the one screen just to replace it with every character, so jokes had some of the worst timing ever.

 

I like Sonic and like Sonic Adv and the global travel aspect of the game. I didn't care much for the story mind.It was more the gameplay that won me over and the super cool moments like the killer whale or hanging off a Helicopter and running down a skyscraper