This is a pretty interesting take on the current status of Sonic the Hedgehog

Looking at the video again, I feel that the author's desires for the mainline games to have BOTH surreal classic-style environments and realistic Dreamcast-style urban environments is extremely contradictory. Having one stage be this lush, realistic city and the next look like something out of CD would just be a big heap of style clash.

 

Much as I enjoy the general focus on continuity that Sonic has compared to most other platformer series, I don't think it is so beholden to it's story telling that it needs to explain every contradiction that happens. Forces had a dumb retcon as a minor part of it's plot, the best solution is to quite frankly undo and ignore it.

Speaking of contradictions, why isn't the moon exploded?

 

I mean, even if they had kept the two-dimensions concept, that still wouldn’t have salvaged or brought any sense to the contradictions in Forces and Mania, other than the characters not remembering they had encountered it before. But again, that still leaves everything else.

The whole Phantom Ruby thing was just a mess in general, which is unfortunate because the idea of "the same threat affecting the heroes across different dimensions or eras," with stories interconnecting across two games, had a lot of potential.

 

Yeah, the two worlds concept was dumb from the get-go. Never made any sense.

 

It's not like Sonic Team's ever been concerned over this, though.

SA2 begins in Modern Day San Francisco, 2001, and almost immediately after that sends you into a place like this.

 

I don't mind having different art styles such as classic and modern, what I don't like is them being tied to a timeline. Is it really that much problematic to make a classic game set in a post-frontiers point in the timeline? Classic Shadow or whatever classic-fied modern character doesn't have to be a younger version of the modern counterpart, it can just be drawn differently because the tone of the game is different.

Sonic Lost World is a modern game and uses simplified visuals that, if Sonic had his classic model, it wouldn't have looked out of place.

In my opinion sega should just drop the classic=past thing and start using the classic art-style for any game they feel it's fitting, without having to explain it with continuity exploits. This way you can make new classic-styled adventure without having to contraddict anything, they're not set in the past anymore.

Sonic Rumble uses "chibi" versions of the characters' models, and some classic locations such as Sky Sanctuary and Pinball Carnival, you can hardly tell that's a modern game outside of the homing attack and the automation-based gameplay.

Is the Sonic continuity destroyed because Modern Eggman is piloting a boss mech from Sonic 2 in the new racing spin-off?

 

I think SEGA should stick to what they're doing right now because it's the first time in like 15 years where Sonic as a franchise feels like it's in a decent, stable place.

 

That's true, but Pumpkin Hill is a lot more realistically designed than the early-CGI-inspired zones of 1, 2, and CD.

 

Yes, it looks almost exactly like a real pumpkin hill

 

What I'm saying is SA2's zones are less stylized than the Genesis games that I described. 1, 2, and CD's zones are much more geometric and stylized.

 

I would just like to point out that Sonic's art style has 'always' been evolving and the 2 branding thing is just a representation of eras, a problem which would be harder to solve than people think, or rather, that a redesign unifying the 2 would 'not' solve. The Dreamcast and Saturn models being Generations DLC further acknowledges this issue by showing 2 further bridges between Classic and Modern within the same game.

A redesign is nice, but misses the point because the fans will STILL categorize it as a new era. The same arguments and brand division won't actually go away at all.

Instead, each Sonic title will have its own subtly unique art identity based off of a set starting template and that's basically how it should be treated, similar to how comic IPs treat evolving artstyles over time and don't ever really acknowledge it in a meta sense. Generations Classic and Modern sonic are like the starting points, and each new head game artist deviates their designs from one of those chosen templates, and whether or not they do this from one or 2 templates doesn't really... solve any of the branding problems. There's 0 reason you can't have a 2D game with modern designs, or a 3D game with classic aesthetics.

Do we even need to remind people how many different ways "Classic" Sonic was drawn in just a 7 year time period? It's a kind of absurd number.