The Sonic Adventure 2 that almost was...

Actually, Security Hall is based upon geometry from Iron Gate. The hidden Chao location in Iron Gate is the top floor in Security Hall, so the room below it would become the lower floor. Like K2J said, they just added the safes and a lot of skinny platforms and fans and different fog/lighting and it looks completely different.

Mission Street rehashes geometry from City Escape in the beginning and end, while Crazy Gadget, Lost Colony, Eternal Engine and the Tails/Eggman sections of Cannon's Core share most of the same construction system (the tall vertical room, then the short wide corridor with glass floor and ceilings, etc). I'm not sure where you're seeing the connection between Wild Canyon/Dry Lagoon and Pyramid Cave, though, except for the vague desert setting.

 

I know I knew before this about the Nails the Bat thing and point #2, but this is boggling my mind. That first trailer is clearly very dark centered, especially that logo. Hmm...

I remember bringing that up with my ex when I first played the game. But yes, four levels. Radical Highway, Sky Rail, White Jungle, and Final Chase.

 

The more I think about this, the more I rage. Fuuuck those driving levels. Seriously.

Baton... Rouge. Why have I never made that connection? :v: As a Louisianian, I am disappoint in myself.

So basically, "ITT, SA2 is half original gameplay, and half rehash/padding." Nothing we didn't already know, in a sense, but it's nice to have an explanation for it now. At the very least.

 

If you notice in the first trailer, a lot of those cut-scenes involving Shadow aren't in the final. In fact, I think only one of them is, where Shadow/Sonic meet and jump at each other and Shadow with emerald in hand, however the camera angle is different in that scene. I remember slowing down the video, taking screens and not being able to find counter-parts in the final game years ago. There's what appears to be a Chaos Control scene with Shadow disappearing that only flashes by and can only be really seen if you freeze frame it.

I don't know where the "Tenrec" part came from but, on the Dreamcast version of the game, Shadow's model and texture files reflect the Terios name. I made a big stink about that back in the day as well. I still have the Gmail address. =P

SA2's complete change in direction was one of my biggest interests back in the day. I'd still love to play through a very early version of the game. It seems that the game depended less on the lock-on air dash attack (can't remember what it's called for the life of me) originally than the previously released SA. Changed for the final. =(

Edit: I always thought the rumored Nails name was basically Tails + Nighttime.

 

...homing attack.

 

I'd like to point out that Sky Rail has nothing to do with the plot and nothing happens there. Shadow shows up and goes to the other side.

fixed

To be honest, the massively scatterbrained nature of SA 2's narrative is evidence enough that massive changes took place much later in development than they had any business to.

 

Relied LESS on the homing attack? Hurm, how would that work- oh snap, the Bounce Bracelet. Huh. Yeah, I could see it. It was probably going to be a new move right off the bat, if that's the case.

Speculating is fun. :3

 

Would make sense as a Sonic stage moving from the Capital to Eggman's Pyramid, which happens off-screen in the final. Heck, that's even what Shadow is doing in that stage, following behind the Heroes.

 

I always liked the original look of SA2 and was interested in what the hell happened that changed that logo to that hideous monstrosity of design for the final. The whole plot made very little sense outside of the basic villain set on an old vendetta by his creator, but is ultimately faced to either watch the planet explode or save it.

Hell, look how completely out of nowhere Biolizard in general was.

This would be a field worth following more and seeing what we can dig up from staffers. The absolute "closest" thing we have right now to a "prototype" is SA2: The Trial packed in with Phantasy Star Online, which at least packed in a SOAP shoe-less model for Sonic, a (superior) instrumental version of City Escape's theme, and had the original black and white logo. No doubt the thing's been sifted through a lot these past years, though.

Also, I love that the second video is one of my own. Small world.

 

Holy hell this, I STILL don't get what was up with this. I mean Knuckles says, "Is this the Ultimate Life prototype that was supposed to be encapsulated?" (paraphrase) as if we all knew about it. But we didn't. That part always bothered me. I would have liked to have known more about the biolizard, I think it gets mentioned by Gerald Robotnik in the end in his video, but I don't quite remember, it's been a while. It would have been nice if they had mentioned it earlier because it really came from left field there.

As for Terios, yeah I'm pretty sure Shadow was all set up to be the final boss. I remember reading somewhere on CulT that someone was touring Sega and saw designs for the angelic girl (Maria) and a giant hedgehog with one eye that was assumed to be the final boss.

This always interested me because it's something they sorta used again:

I always imagined the final Terios boss going something like this, only, you know, less corny.

 

To be fair, the Biolizard was briefly foreshadowed twice in the Dark Story, but yeah, Knuckles shouldn't have any reason to know about it unless he and Rouge got together and "shared intel" offscreen.

A lot of SA2's backstory and context is pretty out there and unexplained, but honestly, I think that's part of its charm. It's fun to end the game not knowing all the answers, just as in real life we don't often know everyone's motivations or why things happen. That's probably just Nintendofag justification on my part, of course, but damnit, I really like this game and its cheesy storyline.

 

BTW:
http://i34.tinypic.com/2q827vp.jpg

What's on the right side of the logo anyway? For some reason I can't make it out and my mind is making me see Shadow with fangs or something and that can't be right XD.

True we don't need to know EVERYTHING but if you're going to introduce a huge boss like it's a big deal, at least give it SOME backstory. Even a close up of what Rouge found out about the biolizard would have been nice. All we got were quick glimpses.

 

My 2AM guess is that it's Knuckles, given the general shape up at the top and the "dreadlocks" in the lower right, but honestly it could be a lot of things.

By the way, the Dreamcast version of SA2 apparently had an even more poignant reference to the Biolizard than the GCN edition, which only had the newspaper clipping. In : Battle, the screen showing Project Shadow is replaced with footage (presumably from a security camera) of the Hero cutscene happening at the same time, which probably explains better why Rouge all of a sudden says, "Oh yeah, let's go get some Master Emerald shards".

 

There've been times in games where final bosses came out of nowhere, usually to a confusing or sort of buzzkill effect when it does happen because of how jarring it is.

Examples: the final boss of Final Fantasy IX is pretty left field because of the setup to it. There's also everyone's favorite whipping horse of Mega Man X6, where the whole game is centered around fighting Dr. Gate, his Nightmare Virus and his two henchmen, Isoc and High Max. Suddenly, when you beat Gate, Sigma just blindsides the whole plot and kills him off... resulting in one of the lamest final boss fights in the X Series.

 

Yeah and it would have been nice if she read some of that aloud or allowed the players to take a better look is all I'm saying :P But it was nice to see close ups of those either way.

I figured Shadow but for some reason I just can't seem to make him out.

EDIT:
http://sost.emulationzone.org/sonic_advent...rial/info/6.jpg

Oh he's upsidedown, no wonder... I was convinced I was supposed to be seeing a face in there XD
Okay, continue on.

 

@Gene

You're talking about this. Other games doing it doesn't justify it, just explains it. Ideally, yes, I would've liked to see them put more foreshadowing, perhaps on behalf of Shadow or even one of the Heroes, to the final boss, and to the backstory, but my point was, regardless of what caused the final product to be that way (and I'm sure it's due to bad timing and other constraints), the uncertain nature of SA2's finale is really intriguing to me. I'm sure nobody here agrees with me on that, but heck, it was pretty phenomenal to me a decade ago.

 

It's just not Mega Man X without Sigma, now is it?

This was a rather interesting heap of information. It generated a few questions from myself...

1) Was Shadow originally meant to work independently to take over the world or did Eggman still have some influence in his actions in what would have been the original game?
2) How many adventure fields would have been in the game? I can guessitmate about 4, one in "Central City", one on Prison Island, one in a desert, and one in space. (that assumes whether or not the game was originally supposed to end up in Space.)
3) If Shadow shows up in Sky Rail and simply goes to the other side in the final game, what would be Sonic's purpose in Sky Rail?
4) Was there really going to be a 2 player mode? Or go karts?

I do vaguely remember something about Tails originally not being in it and me not really caring because Knuckles was a playable character.

And while I love SA2, I kinda wish Sonic Team went with this original design...

 

I'm telling you guys, Sonic Heroes basically rehashed the original plot of SA2, only instead of Terios, we got Metal Overlord.

 

Assuming you know what "the original plot" of SA2 is, sure, that'd be an interesting theory to elaborate on.