It seems they were considering a new look for Sonic either way. The fuzzy model is dated Feb 2006 according to the render. Unless the implication is that Kawamura already thought the 06 model was ugly before release, which is totally possible lol.
Retro's development articles on anything past the dreamcast are bad. Sonic wiki zone has a way better one for unleashed, the retro wiki article is just putting words in kawamura's mouth, she doesn't mention 06 in the original blog both pages are sourced from.
I dunno. The concept art is for Blur's CG scenes, right? I don't know who did what with those. Good to know! I usually don't touch anything on Fandom because Fucking Look At It™ but I'm surprised to see Retro outdone in that regard. That said, this still isn't explicit on when it actually happened, and if it is indeed 2005, then it's still weird to say it's "for Unleashed", when it was "for" the entire damn brand years before that game. Hell, it seems like this might only be talking about the ingame model, where fans are conflating it with the CG renders, which have always given Sonic sidemouth and such, as far as I recall. I was only using the Shadow render because it's the first one that looked like it could debatably be the same model or source as some of the more modern stuff, and people always look at the renders when talking about modern Sonic's design problems, unless it's debates over quill length or whatever.
I have to imagine they were working on those new models for a while before they started to see actual serious use around 2007 and with Secret Rings. It would seem like Blur Studios was given early iterations on them and that's what they used for Shadow and 06's scenes.
Slightly unrelated but I simply don't think game franchises should re-use models across multiple games, unless it's a direct spin off situation like OoT/MM and even then only sparingly. It's not even about if the model is good or not. Like just thinking artistically I hate the idea of them just resting on their lorels. It's like in manga, it's fun to see an authors style change over time. Imagine if a manga author just made a bunch of stock poses and traced them for every panel, even if it looked good it would feel artistically dead. I would much prefer sonic to change a bit every game and people could pick their favorites.
the resources wasted starting from scratch portraying the same character, modeling them, texturing them, rigging them, animating them are all resources not going to environment creation, the modeling of other characters/creatures/bosses, among other things 3D artists working on a game are meant to be doing. if you allow a concession to let them re-use animations, that won't necessarily work with a new model, resulting in even more wasted time going through everything making sure you haven't broken it. real-world examples: lmao can you imagine trying to get a yearly yakuza in an alternate timeline where the devs were forced to repeatedly remodel kiryu And Friends. can you imagine how even more limited existing Pokemon games would be if Game Freak had to waste time every generation modeling and animating hundreds of unique characters while also trying to make a new region from scratch and all the characters in it? how much longer do you think Tears of the Kingdom would've taken to release if they also had to remodel and rework all the characters that come back? edit: but also an aside, I think I would lose my mind spending my career redoing my work over and over - trying to net the same result I already had - til the end of time. I would argue that it's not even just artists - the idea of, say, having to constantly rewrite all of my existing tests from scratch ad nauseum for the end of time, to "not be lazy" makes me want to drive my car off an overpass.
Its funny you say this because this is kinda common with long running weekly battle shounen. A lot of them start off with more distinct character designs and more detail in general, but as time goes on character designs are largely defined by their hairstyle and clothes because the author is just cycling through the same 3-4 body+face templates and blank backgrounds or panels that are just big attack effects become more common. Nothing is wrong with that because at the end of the day, making shit for a strict deadline is hard and demanding and requires shortcuts to be taken where needed, and fans won't really mind much as long as the quality isn't noticeably affected.
I mean. With how much they re-use levels from generations it's not like they are doing that anyway. The difference is that Yakuza has an extremely realistic and intricately detailed artstyle and Pokemon has about 1000 dudes to model and animate, Sonic is comparatively simple and would not take nearly as much effort. No series with comparative detail to sonic reuses models and assets as much as sonic does, this would be like if Mario's model in odyssey was just the same model he was using in galaxy. Even the kirby games remodel him every time, and he's just a circle so you could probably get away with reusing it. But even so, I would prefer smaller/less frequent sonic games with less detailed graphics if it meant the ones we got had more creative/stylistic assets. Reusing assets means that the art style can't evolve and each game can't fully lean into a unique artistic identity. Not that I think this is a necessary trade off, because every other major series does this.
When sonic games start getting the dev times and resources first party nintendo games get then maybe we'll see that happen, but we still constantly see these games rushed and stretched thin too this day.
I have immense respect towards Arin Hanson for sticking to his opinions despite facing constant harassment from Sonic fans
Sonic was treated so pathetically in the mid 2010s that you could become a brand ambassador if you said his games were always bad in a Youtube lets play. I feel like Ego must've lost some Mario vs. Sonic argument on the playground and his ego never got over it and it's not right that he made it the internet's problem to begin with.
It's incredible he was ever put in the position of being a brand ambassador in the first place considering how much he shat on the franchise, speaking as someone who was actively watching Grumps at that point in time.
I have a feeling that Sticks inclusion in both the Rio Olympics and the Sonic Channel was the source of confusion for her availability as a character in modern games; same with the Freedom Fighters in Sonic Spinball. SEGA only allow for her inclusion due to them seeing her as a representative of the Boom series, and since the last ties to it got canceled, she was permanently vaulted. I got this hunch when it revealed to me that Tangle, Whisper, and Surge were included in Speed Battle solely to promote their comics. That and mention of her was removed in the Japanese version of Frontiers, along with her being replaced by Blaze in the official Holiday wallpaper of 2023.
So her being mentioned in Frontiers was totally just a case of Ian Flynn going rogue? Not surprising, Sega's been actively sweeping the Boom brand under the rug ever since the show ended in 2017. I'm pretty sure that the only exception to this has been Vector being added to Sonic Dash 2, which happened like five years after the game was otherwise left to rot.
Shadow Generations seems to be bucking the trend of unpolished, rushed Sonic games with a low budget... so far. Bugs are actively being fixed and visual polish is being added between trailers, and the game itself looks visually stunning. I REALLY hope this is a sign of better things to come and not just a fluke.
Sega's expectations for Frontiers getting blown out of the water has me at least hopeful Sega will afford more time and money for the next game, whatever it might be.
I think Sonic fans need to stop using the GameCube ports' issues as a defense for why some people don't like the Adventure games. Relatively minor technical issues aren't going to drastically affect someone's perception of a game when the core gameplay is unchanged. I do think the games get hit too hard with the "aged poorly" criticism compared to its contemporaries, but that's a whole different discussion not related to the ports themselves.
