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What approach should 3D Sonic take next?

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by The Joebro64, Mar 23, 2020.

  1. qwertysonic

    qwertysonic

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    This.
    Sega has made other non-sonic games in the recent past, but They have so many unused IPs like Nights, or Altered Beast, or Ecco etc. At one of the recent SXSW panel Q&As a kid asked if they'd make a new Billy Hatcher game, and Iisuka looked so genuinely surprised and happy to hear that. It was sweet to see him look so happy. I think it would do a lot to help Sonic Team out of they could work on something different that they enjoyed.
     
  2. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    Hell, they should bring back Alex Kidd and make it some sort of wacky Conker's Bad Fur Day-esque reboot.
     
  3. BadBehavior

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    Yeah and when they do make sonic games again, rotate development among another developer or two. It works for Call of Duty (well for the most part)
     
  4. Billy

    Billy

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    Would definitely be interested to see a western developer's take on a mainline 3D Sonic game, i.e. not a spinoff. Assuming they're given a good budget and reasonable time constraints. Don't want a repeat of Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric.
     
  5. TheKazeblade

    TheKazeblade

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    What I would give for a 3D HD Ristar title. It would lend itself nicely to a vertically-oriented collectathon, where using angled stretchy-armed slingshot trajectory could reveal new paths or even just be a really fun take on platforming.

    As for Sonic, I still feel in my gut it's going to be an Adventure or Adventure 1 & 2 Remake bundle. But if it's not, at this point I'm not picky as long as it:

    •Has a control scheme that feels as fluid and natural to move Sonic around at low speeds as the Adventure titles, with refined higher speed controls (the boost titles should have taught them plenty on how to give him precise movements at high speeds).

    and

    •Feels like a full-fledged, unified experience. No more splitting the difference with a gimmick in lieu of creating a fully fleshed out gameplay style.

    I could care less if it has multiple characters or not, but as long as they all feel like they are built from the same base and all feel cohesive, with a high baseline of basic quality, I will consider my expectations met. Anything else I like on top of that is just icing on the cake for me. I just want a mechanically sound game at the bare minimum.
     
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  6. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Most comments here seem to be consistent with preferences for the next 3D Sonic to either be more directly inspired by the MD games, to pick up where the Adventure series was left off, or to continue building on the Boost playstyle. This current thread tangent on whether a sandbox/collect-a-thon Sonic can work, and the disagreement surrounding it; doesn’t really strike me as an example of every member wanting something completely different out of 3D Sonic game design. I personally have called for more than one approach to be taken for 3D Sonic games.

    Is it not too late to make a poll for the thread with a list of different 3D playstyles to vote for? Real and hypothetical, and allowing for multiple choice. I’m sure you’re going to find some consensus with at least two, if not three options.

    But with that said...

    You don’t go from a game like the first Sonic 1 in 1991 to a game like Sonic and the Secret Rings in 2007 and then to a game like Sonic Forces in 2017 just because of a series’ age and its age alone. The Super Mario series (speaking strictly about the platforming games, not the spinoffs) has its own share of divisions; but the games are inarguably far more consistent across the board (art direction, stories, tone, game controls, music, etc.) than Sonic ever has been, despite being at least six years older.

    Someone decided that in 2010 Sonic should automatically unroll off of a quarterpipe after virtually never doing so for the previous nineteen years. That’s not something you simply explain away as the series existing long enough to buy a pack of cigars.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2020
  7. Beltway

    Beltway

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    A big “citation needed” is needed here as of late. Most games have underperformed if not outright flopped this past decade and the Sonic Boom brand did not light the world on fire as a rebrand of the series for the modern age. Even Sega knows this as they’ve pulled back drastically on the series in regards to production values and advertising after the 2015 restructure. The live-action movie has been the only big success the series has had in a long time and even that had little to do with Sega themselves.

    (Sorry for double posting.)
     
  8. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    No? Both Mania and Forces did good business (Mania sold over one million units, while Sega said Forces performed well in a sales report; the latter also attracted well over 6 million players through PS Plus). The iOS games (the remasters and Dash) are also perennial favorites on the App Store's most-downloaded list. The only outright flops in the last few years have been Lost World and the Boom games, mostly because they were released on a failed platform (Wii U).
     
  9. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    Yeah, Mania was stated to do VERY well and Forces did better than we expected. If Sonic was consistently a flop they wouldn't be making them - Sega does have other series that they can pour money into instead, like Yakuza, Sakura Wars, even throw more money at Atlus to get MegaTen games out faster, since they own them.
     
  10. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Forces is a dubious example that while Sega's own reports said it performed well, none of the public sales charts that we have shows that game doing even moderate business to really corroborate that perspective (the only way it does is if Sega's internal sales expectations were of a remarkably low bar). There's plenty of examples to choose from--US NPD reports, weekly European/Oceania charts for regions like the UK, Spain, France Germany, and Australia/NZ, and weekly Famitsu sales charts for Japan. And those are just for physical copies sold, there's still digital/monthly charts of best-sellers on charts provided by Nintendo eShop and PlayStation Network, with their own regional charts.

    That is unlike Mania where it was actually debuting at #1, in the top five, or in the top ten of weekly and monthly charts on the Nintendo eShop (and PlayStation Network to a lesser extent); and continuing to chart for months, if not more than a year. Nintendo even released their own reports listing as Mania was one of their best-selling games on the Switch console for the 2017 year. With Sega's own IR report of crediting Mania for doubling the amount of games they sold that quarter compared to last year, there is at least external data to support that statement. Actually giving Forces a tangible number of copies it sold like Iizuka did with Mania also supports the idea that Forces did at least moderate business, but Forces never got that. Although I will give Forces credit, in that part of this is more to blame for Sega having stopped providing the number of copies sold for their games after 2015 in most cases.

    But even putting Forces aside--when I talk about games that underperformed if not outright flopped, I'm also factoring in games of the era like Sonic Free Riders, Sonic 4: Episode II, Team Sonic Racing, the three Mario & Sonic games (Sochi 2014, Rio 2016, Tokyo 2020) and the second Boom game Fire & Ice--games that never receiving any comments from Sega themselves about how they performed in sales in their IR reports, even before they stopped giving numbers. (Although Mario & Sonic 2020 does/did seem to be doing alright in European and Japan's sales charts, last I recall.)

    There's some sorely lacking context about the sales of Lost World and first two Boom games, it's typically forgotten that the sales numbers for those games are with respect to the combined sales of both the 3DS games (ST/Dimps' version of Lost World and Shattered Crystal) as well as the Wii U games (Sonic Team's version of Lost World and Rise of Lyric). While we all know the Wii U was a renowned sales failure, the 3DS still had a much larger and healthier installbase of over seventy million units. So you have Sonic games failing to sell on a fairly successful platform in addition to failing to sell on a unpopular console.

    And while I won't dispute the performance of mobile games like Jump and Dash, I would also remind that we also had Runners, which was actually listed as a sales failure in Sega's reports and was taken offline in just a little over a year after the "official" launch.

    Compare all of that with the full list of Sonic titles that we do have sales numbers for with at least more than one million or are mobile successes--Sonic 4: Episode I, Colors, Generations, Mania, Jump, Dash; and the two ASR games if you want to count those--and I'd say the list of marked failures or "unknown" performers of Sonic games this decade is overall greater than the number of confirmed hits.
     
    Last edited: May 10, 2020
  11. Beltway

    Beltway

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    Sega has definitely pulled back on the amount of Sonic games they have released though. They are no longer releasing multiple Sonic games a year like they did in the in the 2000s and early 2010s; and a majority of the spinoffs and spinoff franchises that were borne from it have been culled.
    Adding to that, CS2 (which has the Sonic Team group) was responsible for the new Sakura Wars game, and was also reported to be creating a new IP. So there's probably a good chance the money that would had went into making more Sonic games in the past has nowadays being funneled towards other ventures.

    (Again, sorry for DP.)
     
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  12. Trickster's Joke

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    Yeah you do, you can just do it. Sonic isn't just video games, its a multi media franchise, and it makes different things as time goes on to appeal to different people. Which is very common. Whether you think all those things are good is purely up to you. But that's fairly normal.

    If you look at purely from a " mario is his only contemporary " stand point it may look weird, but when you realize sonic is from the school as TMNT , transformers, and the like , it changing every so often makes sense it just so happens to be video game. Thing made to be cool at a specific time that was changed to be cool to different people at a different time. It just happens sonic's thing comes with gameplay
     
  13. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

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    While it's true that Sonic operates at two levels, having the games on one side and the character and his world on the other, that's not what they are talking about. They're just saying playing new Sonic games is like Christmas presents, you don't know what will be inside when you open them, and, in this case, they come from a relative that doesn't know what to give you, so it's truly hit and miss, especially miss. The example with Mario is that you don't have to like all of them, and Mario stuff can change over time, but at least you can expect some level of quality or familiarity Sonic games often don't give us. of course stuff things change over time, I accepted that with SA2, but not it what followed was Sonic Heroes or worse.

    3D Sonic itself has done a lot of things right, but then someone involved usually ruins it. To me, the most important thing have always been, in this order: good controls, good gameplay mechanics, good level design. Any game that does these three things right, even if it's not perfect, will be welcome. I don't even need them to be perfect or be of my liking, as long as it's a quality product everybody could respect. Dreamcast games may have not been the best games, but I enjoyed them a lot and a progression in quality should have continued from there instead of doing just the opposite. Ok, there are more recent games that were better than others, but I'm not a fan of the boost gameplay, so generations is the only other 3D title I really liked (not too much proper boost there, you know).

    As a side note, when I 100%ed mania and was totally satisfied with it, my first thought was "That was great! Now Sonic Dreamcast 3" (yeah, that's it, Sonic DC3, not SA3).
     
  14. The Joebro64

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    The reason they're not releasing as many Sonic games is most definitely more related to quality control than sales. Iizuka admitted in a 2015 interview (I think with Polygon) that during the 2000s Sonic Team/Sega prioritized the sheer quantity of games over quality. It's important to note that Sonic X was super popular at that time, so they were most definitely trying to cash in on that. It's extremely draining on a developer to have to churn out as many games as possible in such a short time frame. Nintendo had Mario on a yearly basis in the early 2010s, and when the creativity began to drain, so did game releases - and then, after a four year wait, we got Odyssey, one of the greatest platformers ever made.
     
  15. BadBehavior

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    I mean, the gap between the last two Sonic games was 4 years, and the game we got was Sonic Forces. If that's what "quality control" looks like then it doesn't give me much hope for the future.
     
  16. The Joebro64

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    But we also got Sonic Mania.
     
  17. BadBehavior

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    And if the mania team were coming back for another game, then great. But they might not. We don't know. As far as Sonic Team and the mainline Sonic series is concerned, all the time in the world couldn't fix that trashfire.

    (Maybe Sega & Evening Star parted ways cos Iizuka wanted Mania 2 to be entirely Green Hill Zone lol).
     
  18. qwertysonic

    qwertysonic

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    That's the thing though. Iizuka said they were focusing on quality over quantity. That's 100% PR speech. Whether or not it's true is irrelevant. Either Sega isn't pouring the money in to allow two teams to work on Sonic games like before, or They're working on other things like Yakuza, but the fact of the matter is that we're seeing fewer Sonic games per unit time and they haven't been "better" games.

    The outlier is Mania, but Sonic Team didn't make that so Iizuka's PR statement isn't relevant.
     
  19. Frostav

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    This situation is why I honestly am only mildly interested in an Adventure 1 remake.

    Improving on Adventure? Nah, much like Gens > Forces, I have doubts Sonic Team could merely recreate Adventure's gameplay warts and all properly, much less improve it. Or they'd do some other stupid shit like ruin the chao garden or cut it entirely, or do the exact opposite and so slavishly follow the Dreamcast game such as to use its far far worse chao garden than the improved SA2B/SADX version.
     
  20. The Joebro64

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    I'm actually fully expecting Sonic Team to outsource development to another studio if they do decide to go ahead with an Adventure 1 remake. I mean, that's what Sega's been doing with all their retro revivals recently, and they already technically did it for Sonic with the remasters and Mania. I think even Sonic Team knows Adventure is way too beloved to half-ass.

    (I personally consider an Adventure remake unlikely, FWIW. I know Iizuka said he wants to remake it but I don't think they're going to make it just yet.)