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What approach should 3D Sonic take next?

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

  1. Pengi

    Pengi

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    "Still" here isn't even the right question. In Colours they were never on Sonic's planet at all.
     
  2. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    Here's how I see the Wisps, by game:
    • Colors: they make perfect sense and I don't have many problems with their implementation. Each Wisp serves a purpose and controls fine for the most part. They're not required to beat the game, but it's certainly not as fun if you don't reap their benefits.
    • Generations: in this context? They make sense. They're only in one level, it's a Colors level, it's a celebration of the series' past.
    • Lost World: ehhh... they're... unnecessary. They don't really add to the gameplay at all, and at launch a lot of the Wii U ones had all sorts of awkward GamePad controls. They're mostly just "oooh look at this fun GamePad feature!" fluff. Fortunately they're not required so you can just ignore them. I just got the 3DS version and they haven't shown up just yet, so I don't have an opinion just yet.
    • Forces: totally unnecessary. They do nothing to the gameplay. They're all just "press X to win" in this.
    So Colors is the only real main Sonic game where the Wisps are (A) common and (B) work. Again, I like the Wisps and still think the concept could be explored further and integrated better into the gameplay. Just get rid of the pace-breaking transformation cutscene, modify how they work so they keep the momentum going, have varied effects based on the character, and bam. They work fine.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2020
  3. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    I think Wisps are fine as a concept. It's one of the few original concepts modern Sonic had that wasn't awful from the get-go. And let's be honest, ever since SA1 the shields have been intensely generic, barely useful (if not an outright hindrance, like the magnetic shield and light speed dash paths), bog-standard platforming power ups - the wisps are an attempt to at least inject some personality where there was none.

    How the wisps are used isn't a problem with them specifically, it's just a symptom of Sonic Team's inability these days to actually implement anything in a fun or cool fashion.
     
  4. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    Couldn't agree more. The shields work fine in the 2D games but I see little purpose in them in the 3D ones. The double jump, bounce, and jump dash are all proper parts of Sonic's moveset in the 3D games. The Wisps feel more like a modern (no pun intended) take on the old TV monitors.
     
  5. Frostav

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    The problem with wisps is that they're Mario-style power-ups when that is fundamentally against Sonic's core design. I don't want to suddenly have to do Not Sonic to get back to Sonic. It really isn't a coincidence they first interloped in Colors, a game trying its damndest to be an okay-at-best Mario ripoff.
     
  6. The Joebro64

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    ... 'scuse me? :V
     
  7. Josh

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    Bit of a non-sequitur, I know, but I wrote this over the past few days regarding the storytelling approach in Sonic games. What I noticed, looking back over old threads on this forum, is that back when Unleashed, Secret Rings, Black Knight and the like were new, very, very few of us ever commented anything one way or the other on the story, whereas lately, those games seem to be celebrated for their stories. Simply put, with the possible exception of 06 and its overwrought anime plot, I don't think the stories of Sonic games have ever been TRYING to be anything other than stories "for kids," and since most people participating on THIS forum were not kids, most of us didn't really care.

    Ever since I aged out of the target demo somewhere between SA1 and SA2, I haven't really enjoyed ANY Sonic game's story on its own level. I enjoy the stories because of nostalgia and because I love the character, but I never, like, get immersed in them or forget that this is children's media, the way I do for stuff like Avatar or Steven Universe.

    Whether it's SA2 or Forces, it hits me the same way: The cornball jokes are not usually laugh out loud funny, the ridiculous lines about teamwork don't seem genuine or inspiring, and the stakes are never believable enough for me to ignore how targeted this all is at just being children's media, but it's still heartwarming, it makes me smile, because really, the Sonic of my youth was not so different, even if the way I saw him was.

    This is probably why I feel a bit of a disconnect when people compare the 2000s to the 2010s. I see the differences in their plot and tonal focus, but they all pretty much hit the same notes for me: "I bet kids enjoy this, but it's definitely not why I'm playing it!" It's not that I dislike the story elements, it just didn't have enough to hook me or make me care.

    Sonic was always, to some degree, a corny franchise, reflecting whatever the current "cool" trend happened to be in a way that was palatable to children. You can see this even in Sonic's earliest days: Many of those who didn't grow up with the character saw him as a Poochie, and that's where the idea that Sonic was built JUST to pander to the 90s came from.

    But when you're a kid, that's going to go right over your head. When you get older, become more self-aware, and Sonic changes a bit to reflect the current zeitgeist, that's when it'll be more obvious. It's not that the Sonic you grew up with was any less cool than the one we've got now, it's that Sonic always tries to be cool to kids, and you're not one anymore.

    It happened to me with Heroes, and as a teenager I was actively resentful of it, I thought the series should be growing up with me for some reason, and hated that they were targeting all these dumb, baby Shadow the Hedgehog fans who never even owned a Sega console! But that came down to a lack of perspective. In retrospect, I find the cheesy, pandering to kids coolness of that era kind of endearing, and that's STILL how I feel about the more recent stories.

    Now, maybe Sonic could be better than this. Maybe he shouldn't need the excuse of, "Well, this is for kids, so..." Plenty of things targeted at kids are well-written enough that anyone can enjoy them.

    I think it'd be preferable to have a Sonic who's compelling, relatable, and cool for adults AND kids, and if we're gonna have a story focus in the next game, that's the approach I'd like to see it take. The movie, while it was by no means ideal in terms of setting, still did a great job of showing that it's possible. But as someone who played most of the story-focused games when I was a little older, I don't think it's something the games have ever pulled off to this point, and I don't think they were really trying to. Perhaps they SHOULD, and it's valid criticism to wonder why they DON'T, but there's so much more nuance to this issue than just "Sonic stories stopped being good in 1994, or 2009, or whenever".
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2020
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  8. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    I was actually pondering bringing this up but chose not to, but now you make me want to: no one plays Sonic games for the story, NO ONE. Not even the most dedicated Sonic fan in the entire universe picks up a Sonic game on the basis of its story. If Sonic '06 still had the creepy bestiality between Sonic and Elise and all the nonsense plot holes and ridiculously serious tone, if it was a 10/10 gameplay-wise? No one would have given two shits. I firmly believe this. People don't play games like Sonic, Mario, and Donkey Kong for the story. A decent story is nice, but should not be prioritized over good gameplay.
     
  9. Dek Rollins

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    I'm getting a bit tired of seeing this argument. First off, I've seen people literally say that they play Sonic games for the story, so that's just false. More importantly, I don't think I have ever heard someone say that they want good story to be prioritized over good gameplay. Maybe this needs saying again, but a fun story that doesn't make me want to rip my ears off and kickass gameplay with well-designed levels are not mutually exclusive under any circumstances.

    Your point about Sonic '06 may have some truth to it, but that doesn't mean people shouldn't desire something better. Josh brought up Heroes, and, as someone who played Heroes as a kid and has a bit of nostalgia for it, I think the ridiculous "super-power of TEAM WORK" dialogue is just that, ridiculous. When I replay Sonic 2, I don't see the end cinematic where Tails looks up to the explosion in the sky and say "eh, it's pretty lame now that I'm not a kid anymore." It's still dramatically effective storytelling. Same goes for the more complex scenes in Sonic 3, though I was a little older when I first played that. Knuckles using whatever energy he has left to help Sonic catch Eggman is still dramatically effective storytelling.

    I've said it before and I'm gonna say it again. Sonic Adventure's story, for the most part, feels like the classic games. That's all I want, but with a bit less '90s radical dialogue from the English version of course.

    Since Josh also mentioned that other things made for kids have been well written, it's something I really want to highlight. Think of movies like The Brave Little Toaster or The Iron Giant (or the first 13 years of Pixar's output barring Cars). These are beloved for obvious reasons. Animated kids films that manage to be more than that description can offer. I don't think Sonic's stories need to be held to such a standard, but it's a basic benchmark for what children's media can be. Sonic doesn't need deep themes, but it should have solid character writing, and a presentation akin to SA2. I'm not talking about the actual story in SA2, I'm talking about the quality and effort put into the cinematics in SA2; the way the story is told.

    I think I've also said this before, but if they really don't know what to do with the story of the next game, I'd be perfectly happy with a total arcade style game, or if a simpler story is told by the zones themselves.
     
  10. RDNexus

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    You kidding me, right? Whether my brother or I played a Sonic game, story ALWAYS counted.
    Hence why we tend to complain about the lack of decent-to-good story in latest Sonic games.
    If we're in a minority, well, it sucks. Any game can be appreciated for its gameplay AND story.
     
  11. BadBehavior

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    I'd agree in most cases; If they can't do it right then they shouldn't do it at all. But I'd still appreciate the effort. That's why Forces frustrates me so much, everything I want from a story is there but they just don't follow through. It's like that meme that goes "If you don't love me at my X then you don't deserve me at my Y", X and Y being Colours and Forces respectively. Like... this is the best they could do? I shudder to imagine what they've got for the upcoming game, the one where they're actually trying, or at least they claim to be.
     
  12. Part of why I play Sonic games is for the story, so your statement is wrong right off the bat. I don't play Mario or Donkey Kong or any other Nintendo IPs at all, and I don't think I'll ever really have an interest in them. You know why? Because they're not as interesting as Sonic to me. Sonic was different. He had a personality, he had a world, he had friends that also had personalities, and some of them had some tragic pasts. It's not super deep, sure, but it doesn't have to be. I enjoyed some of 06's story, and in all honesty, I don't even give a damn that Sonic kissed a human princess. It was a small peck and it only lasted a second or two anyway. You know why it doesn't bother me? Because it's a video game. It's not real. And I think all the people who cry about it are blowing it out of proportion.

    Every aspect
    of the Sonic series is important to me. Gameplay, art style, graphics, music, and yes, even the story. I don't want Sonic to be just a meme or have the games' stories amount to nothing more than a poor man's AoStH, which in itself, was a poor man's Looney Tunes. Sonic Team had a vision for a greater world for Sonic in the 90s and 00s, and sadly, due to the way things were handled, it was never fully established, and it always makes me sad to see people write the series off because 'lol gotta go fast' and 'muh Sonic 06' every time. I can't blame people for not liking the games of the 2000s, and I won't deny their lack of quality, but I wanted SEGA to improve upon things, not outright scrap them for something else entirely. I wanted SEGA to prove that Sonic's friends weren't 'shitty' or 'useless'; that stories can still be entertaining in Sonic, and that the issue was the execution, rather than the concept, but that's not what happened.

    That's a big part of why I'm so bummed about Sonic these days. These newer games aren't not as bad as 06 (except for Rise of Lyric, that was pretty awful), but they're still lacking in almost everything else; at least to me, anyway. Even with bad games like 06, there's some interesting ideas buried in there that could've been salvaged for future games, but SEGA just threw everything out because of the bad reception it got (and it only turned out THAT bad because of how horribly managed everything was back then). It just feels like their heart's just not in it, anymore. At least we got Mania, I guess.
     
  13. RDNexus

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    THIS!!! So much THIS! That's what bums me out every time a new game appears. SEGA doesn't learn from their mistakes.
    They shove fails aside and look for another formula that may work out, so they can milk it to death, as cheap as possible.
    Oh! And when they seem to listen...they only pick up the trendy social stuff and misinterpret what the fanbase truly wants.

    THAT's why the franchise is in this sorry current state!
    THAT's why the fanbase got so divided over the years!
    THAT's why fans keep new games at low expectations!

    Even I, nowadays, feel more like looking at SA1 and back rather than any new games. And it just makes me sad, for real :(

    Rails, Wisps, Werehog, Boost, Mario-style gameplay... All those, in my humble opinion, hurt the franchise more than help it.
    And these are just a few examples.
    Whoever's developing the upcoming game should go back to the franchise's roots and foundations and build anew from there.
    Not only for the sake of old fans, but new fans alike.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2020
  14. qwertysonic

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    Anyone who says "stories for kids can be dumb because they are for kids" or "You don't have to like them they for kids" obviously has never seen a Disney movie. Sorry Josh, but you are entirely wrong. There's a reason Frozen is best seller and the Emoji movie is crap.
     
  15. The weird thing is, SEGA does learn from their mistakes, but they don't learn the right lessons because the masses aren't making the right complaints. Thus, their thinking goes like this:
    Average Gamer/Journalist: "We don't like playing as Sonic's friends because they're not fun. We'd rather just play as Sonic." = SEGA: "Okay, so we'll make Sonic the only playable character from now on."

    When in reality, what that complaint meant was, "We don't want dumb genre roulette play styles in Sonic games. We prefer to play as Sonic because he's the only one that plays like a proper Sonic game, and is the most fun for it.", and the lesson that should've been learned would've been, "Make Sonic's friends play similarly to Sonic, with a few different moves that let the player access alternate routes, and make them completely optional to play as like in Sonic 3.", but that's not what happened, sadly.

    Then when the boost style took over, the lessons they have learned were "No Werehog", "More 2D", "Unleashed was too hard, let's make it simpler.", "People want Sonic to be more like Mario, so let's just make a Mario game and slap Sonic on it.", then it was "Okay people don't want Sonic to be a Mario game, so let's go back to the boost.", then while developing Forces they decided, "Having actual level design is too hard for the casual gamer, so let's just make every level a straight line that requires minimal input from the player."

    And the lesson they learned from 4 and Generations is "2D + Green Hill + Classic Sonic = Easy Money", and I fear that the lesson they learned from Mania will be "2D + Green Hill + Classic Sonic + Lower budget = MORE Easy Money".
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2020
  16. E-122-Psi

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    I think the issue with story is as much execution as concept.

    One problem I think often comes from the stories SA1 onwards is that a lot of the time it feels like they're just appealing to trends instead of trying to flesh out the Sonic universe. SA1 is about the only 3D game that tackles the classic lore, outside of that they tend to keep skewing the universe into whatever big brand is out at the time, anime, dark sci-fi, meta heavy cartoon. I think that's why some of the characters were becoming divisive as well, because often they were created according to these trends and the story and universe tended to revolve more around them than Sonic himself, especially by the Shadow and Next Gen era.

    I actually kinda like the modern games have a slightly more cohesive universe (Forces at the very least shown it wasn't just a dozen anthros within a population of realistic humans) but I guess the issue is how lethargic the writing often is, like these guys don't really care much for the cast. I appreciate it's not as insufferably pretentious as some previous takes but it'd be nice to still have some earnest characterisation. The nearest recent game to try to accomplish that was Lost Worlds and emphasis on TRYING (Lost Worlds kinda feels like a primordial Boom episode where they haven't quite figured out the characterisations).

    The 'Poochie' comparison seems plausible in this situation since people say that episode is all about trying to shove in a gimmick that isn't needed, when I see it more as trying to shove in a gimmick they thought would be an instant seller with minimal creativity, and when it didn't work like that, rather than trying to put in the effort and fix it to work properly, they just dumped it and the cycle repeated. Why did they retire the other playable cast instead of just moderate and fix them? Because rage quitting, blaming the actual concept and retiring it is easier and at that point it might seem like a lazily done game like Sonic 4 might sell solely on the premise of being a Sonic only fare. It really felt like what made Sonic broader earlier was that you could tell the creators had a genuine passion for him, while in recent games I'm not too sure.
     
    Last edited: May 27, 2020
  17. How are the modern games more cohesive? Unleashed is set on a more realistic Earth with cartoony Pixar-like humans, Colors is set in a space amusement park, Generations is just time travel shenanigans that take you back to older levels, Lost World has a completely different art style from previous games and have you fight rip-offs of Bowser and the Koopa Kids from Mario games, and Forces has a weird mix of the two previous art styles, has no humans (other than Eggman) in sight, and now Classic's been retconned to being from a 'different dimension'. They couldn't even get consistency with how the Phantom Ruby worked between Mania and Forces.

    The Adventure games up til Shadow had a much more consistent world for the most part, imo.
     
  18. RDNexus

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    I think I'm starting to understand why some people say "SA1 was the last good Sonic game, SA2 was when the derailing began".
    To note, I still deem SA2 as a good Sonic game. But grinding and a edgier plot kinda set the departure from the Classic formula.
     
  19. The grinding in SA2 was fine, as the balancing system still kept things physics-based. It's just that the later games (especially Heroes and the Boost games) got really dumb with it. As I've stated before, SA2 isn't really that 'edgy'. It's campy and over-the-top, yeah, but the only part that was 'edgy' was in the last story, where Gerald was giving his last words about going insane and wanting revenge against all of humanity before being heavily implied to have been gunned down by a firing squad.
     
  20. RDNexus

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    By grinding, I meant how many Sonic games after SA2 started depending a lot from rails. Cheap level design.
    And, yeah, true. SA2 ended up being more campy than edgy. Shadow was actually the worst offender there.