Sonic Forces | PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC "The Next Generations"

[Sephy]

6 hours ago, Solly said:

does that mean eggman had sex

with a girl eggman

Also, that's kind of bullshit, since everything about his design screams "I'm the bizarro world version of the main villain" which fit what Rush was going for. 

Well, they don't have to be direct relatives...If we count Maria as cousin (though we don't really know their relationship), that means Eggman has uncles around there somewhere...

[Salamander]

If Eggman Nega being Eggman's descendant is true (I mean, we have no grounds to disbelieve it, but I'd retcon it in a heartbeat), it's probably via cloning or something; Eggman wanted his grand Eggman legacy to live on forever after his death, so he cloned himself.  That seems plausible.

Nega is kind of a weird character, though.  I agree that he looks absolutely as if he was designed to be a bizarro alt-Eggman, but that sits uneasily against the fact that Blaze has very little in common with Sonic in terms of design or history, so why would Nega be a near-identical parallel universe doppelganger when she's not?  Add that to the fact that, from the last time I replayed Rush, I don't remember there actually being any indication that Blaze and Nega had ever met before...  Even his name suggests an acknowledged relationship to Eggman rather than a parallel who grew up in a vacuum.  So it kind of reads to me like Nega was designed to be a parallel Eggman - and then Sonic Team held that idea back for some reason, while keeping the design and characterisation.  Maybe because Rivals was in the works and they wanted to use him in that?  In fairness, if he's from the future and can travel through time, I don't think it's implausible that he could also travel between dimensions.  Although it does seem more likely that Sonic Team have always regarded him as a minor character and never thought about his backstory that hard, which seems credible when they flat-out didn't care about having Blaze's appearance in '06 make any sense.

My own headcanon on the character is that, rather than a parallel universe counterpart or a descendant, he's a bitter and jaded future Eggman; it fits pretty well with his white hair, willingness to destroy the world, and overall resentment of Eggman.  As I recall it, the only word we have on the character's backstory is his own, so we can just say that he lied and it doesn't look like a contradiction at all.  If he turns out to be in Forces, I hope that's the line they take; we might be able to make an educated guess at such a thing once we know what the third gameplay style is.  Until then, I can't really assume that Sonic Team even cares about him at all.

[Shadowlax]

9 hours ago, Solly said:

does that mean eggman had sex

with a girl eggman

Also, that's kind of bullshit, since everything about his design screams "I'm the bizarro world version of the main villain" which fit what Rush was going for. 

Here's your problem

You are assume sega cares about blaze and her world, and haven't actively thrown her, her world, the characters that exist in that world, under a bus multiple times for whatever story they want to tell. 

If they ever decide to give another individual fire powers, fear for her existence. 

[StaticMania]

It doesn't really matter, Blaze exists...her world is irrelevant now. She pretty much lives in Sonic's world now, just like Silver now lives in the past. It's convenient.

[JezMM]

How about this for a character hope - I hope the supposed new character has just simply always existed in Sonic's world so we aren't given these headaches should they decide to use them again.

Not every character needs an elaborate backstory to explain why they've only become relevant now.

[StaticMania]

So, you mean something simple...

 

A Big the Cat-like introduction, no fanfare at all...just "here's a new character"

[Osmium]

21 minutes ago, JezMM said:

How about this for a character hope - I hope the supposed new character has just simply always existed in Sonic's world so we aren't given these headaches should they decide to use them again.

Not every character needs an elaborate backstory to explain why they've only become relevant now.

Exactly. 

It's like, how do we want to introduce a new character? Sonic happens to meet them, that's all. I mean, he moves around a lot, he's gotta find someone at some point. It's not complicated. 

[Jango]

What if the third gameplay style is mech shooting with Tails? Or some kind of GUNDAM FIGHT SHIT, that would be lit. The few hands on we had didn't mention Tails at all, isn't it a bit weird? Sonic Team didn't revealed the third gameplay style yet, and Tails wasn't mentioned. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not?

I for one would love to play as Tails in all kinds of machines and weapons, similar to Ratchet & Clank. Now that would be awesome sauce.

[JezMM]

27 minutes ago, Jango said:

What if the third gameplay style is mech shooting with Tails? Or some kind of GUNDAM FIGHT SHIT, that would be lit. The few hands on we had didn't mention Tails at all, isn't it a bit weird? Sonic Team didn't revealed the third gameplay style yet, and Tails wasn't mentioned. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not?

I for one would love to play as Tails in all kinds of machines and weapons, similar to Ratchet & Clank. Now that would be awesome sauce.

Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't hate this because I enjoyed the mech shooting just fine in SA2 and I probably would again if it was more of the same but polished, those stages were still plenty platformy.

But the world at large would HATE this and it'd be a godawful decision.  Hell, I'm sure even a lot of Sonic fans would hate this, people to this day are still bitter that they put Tails in a mech in SA2 after SA1 had him in his traditional "Sonic, but he can fly!" form.

 

I personally would take a third "normal" platforming style over adding shooter mechanics any day.  I'd also hate to see R&C shit in Sonic personally too, the weapons are the main reason I could never get into the first game.  In a platformer I want my platforming skills to inform how I take out enemies, not a secondary form of gameplay (nothing wrong it it, just not my taste, I found ShTH acceptable due to the autoaim and the fact that weapons were just dispensible pickups rather than a  system with shops and upgrading and stuff).

[Shadowlax]

2 hours ago, StaticMania said:

It doesn't really matter, Blaze exists...her world is irrelevant now. She pretty much lives in Sonic's world now, just like Silver now lives in the past. It's convenient.

I think it does?

I think its kind of shitty you divorced one of the few actually cool powerful female entities in the series from a lot of the things that make them them.  I say this is a shadow fan, I think it is shitty shadow gets to keep all his dumb lore, but she at every opportunity is thrown out of window.  Like what even is blaze now, she's just girl with fire I guess. 

[NegaMix]

7 hours ago, FFWF said:

If Eggman Nega being Eggman's descendant is true (I mean, we have no grounds to disbelieve it, but I'd retcon it in a heartbeat), it's probably via cloning or something; Eggman wanted his grand Eggman legacy to live on forever after his death, so he cloned himself.  That seems plausible.

That's what I've always thought made the most sense, in terms of Nega's "Future" backstory. An addition to that could be that the 'clones' become more mentally unstable the further it goes on, hence why Nega goes from "eerily polite" to "fuck it, I'm-a blow up the world!" in a minute.

Quote

Nega is kind of a weird character, though.  I agree that he looks absolutely as if he was designed to be a bizarro alt-Eggman, but that sits uneasily against the fact that Blaze has very little in common with Sonic in terms of design or history, so why would Nega be a near-identical parallel universe doppelganger when she's not?  Add that to the fact that, from the last time I replayed Rush, I don't remember there actually being any indication that Blaze and Nega had ever met before...  Even his name suggests an acknowledged relationship to Eggman rather than a parallel who grew up in a vacuum.  So it kind of reads to me like Nega was designed to be a parallel Eggman - and then Sonic Team held that idea back for some reason, while keeping the design and characterisation.  Maybe because Rivals was in the works and they wanted to use him in that?  In fairness, if he's from the future and can travel through time, I don't think it's implausible that he could also travel between dimensions.  Although it does seem more likely that Sonic Team have always regarded him as a minor character and never thought about his backstory that hard, which seems credible when they flat-out didn't care about having Blaze's appearance in '06 make any sense.

Actually, just before you fight Blaze as Sonic, she recognises Nega immediately, saying to him something along the lines of, "It's been a long time, Eggman Nega." So they do have some history in the Rush games, which really doesn't help. I've had a couple of ideas on how to mesh the two current backstories into one, but that's for a different topic...

Quote

My own headcanon on the character is that, rather than a parallel universe counterpart or a descendant, he's a bitter and jaded future Eggman; it fits pretty well with his white hair, willingness to destroy the world, and overall resentment of Eggman.  As I recall it, the only word we have on the character's backstory is his own, so we can just say that he lied and it doesn't look like a contradiction at all.  If he turns out to be in Forces, I hope that's the line they take; we might be able to make an educated guess at such a thing once we know what the third gameplay style is.  Until then, I can't really assume that Sonic Team even cares about him at all.

That could be an interesting spin on the character. Though I think, if Eggman Nega does end up in this game, that he'll probably just be labelled as Eggman's descendant without specifically mentioning the events of Rush or Rivals.

[Your Vest Friend]

Eggman Nega being Eggman's descendent is irrefutable canon now it's stated on his Sonic Channel profile, so eh. 

[Blue Blood]

52 minutes ago, Jango said:

What if the third gameplay style is mech shooting with Tails? Or some kind of GUNDAM FIGHT SHIT, that would be lit. The few hands on we had didn't mention Tails at all, isn't it a bit weird? Sonic Team didn't revealed the third gameplay style yet, and Tails wasn't mentioned. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe not?

I for one would love to play as Tails in all kinds of machines and weapons, similar to Ratchet & Clank. Now that would be awesome sauce.

http://uk.ign.com/articles/2017/03/17/sonic-forces-gameplay-eyes-on-impressions

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

14 hours ago, blazefan519 said:

It's been officially confirmed that Nega is Eggman's descendant. So, if he's brought back, he'll just be tied to time like Silver, and no longer has correlation with Blaze. So Rivals is his canonical game.

14 hours ago, Solly said:

does that mean eggman had sex

with a girl eggman

Also, that's kind of bullshit, since everything about his design screams "I'm the bizarro world version of the main villain" which fit what Rush was going for. 

@Solly You're correct about Blaze's encounters with him being the ones actually remembered.

However, it turns out that he is still Eggman's time traveling descendant who at some point decided to move to Blaze's dimension to set up shop and take over as established.

[Wraith]

I really hate mech shooting. I can rationalize treasure hunting because it can still be pretty fast at times and if you wanted to make levels focused around Knuckles's moveset that's the way you would go.

But Mech shooting? Boring and slow combat levels based on THE most shallow shooting mechanics ever. No thanks. SA2 gets dragged down a lot by those for me. If the gameplay style is focused around Tails, I want it to be focused on flying. That's where the original joy of playing as him came from

[MegasonicZX]

5 minutes ago, Josh said:

I really hate mech shooting. I can rationalize treasure hunting because it can still be pretty fast at times and if you wanted to make levels focused around Knuckles's moveset that's the way you would go.

But Mech shooting? Boring and slow combat levels based on THE most shallow shooting mechanics ever. No thanks. SA2 gets dragged down a lot by those for me. If the gameplay style is focused around Tails, I want it to be focused on flying. That's where the original joy of playing as him came from

Eh, the gamma levels were pretty fast paced in ADV1 and while they weren't the deepest shooting mechanics in the world I don't think they really needed to be for what they were going for. All that said, I'd probably be a little peeved myself if the third gameplay style was just a throwaway gimmick that, while fun, isn't something that they can keep for the series going forward to help improve or even change the gameplay for the better.

[Blue Blood]

27 minutes ago, Josh said:

I really hate mech shooting. I can rationalize treasure hunting because it can still be pretty fast at times and if you wanted to make levels focused around Knuckles's moveset that's the way you would go.

But Mech shooting? Boring and slow combat levels based on THE most shallow shooting mechanics ever. No thanks. SA2 gets dragged down a lot by those for me. If the gameplay style is focused around Tails, I want it to be focused on flying. That's where the original joy of playing as him came from

 

 

I also have some thoughts about the do's and don'ts of mech shooting, with upsides and downsides to the SA1 and SA2 variants of it. But ultimately this isn't the topic for that, though it would be interesting to discuss if someone wants to make one. At any rate, we can say that Tails and mech shooting won't be this third component. (Which is good cause I'm one of those bitter people that Jez was talking about lol)

It's still impossible to really come up with any proper ideas about the "third component", which may or may not be a wholly new style of gameplay. It's hard to say, and the reasonings behind the ideas that keep getting posted are tenuous at the absolute best.

We've got Classic and Modern so far. If it's a whole other type of gameplay, Boom is the most obvious choice if you don't think about it, but it's also the stupidest choice is hardly likely to happen. Sticking in any other character though is going to feel terribly imbalanced. Two Sonics... & Knuckles? Silver? Cream? It just doesn't work. I can't get past the idea of the forces of good and evil playing a role here. I think there's going to be some component of taking control back from Eggman, or even 'playing' as Eggman. Eggman (or the Eggmen, if Classic and Modern variants are involved) is the only other character that could possibly fit, in my mind at least. And even then I'm not exactly convinced that we'll necessarily be playing through entirely separate levels or in an entirely separate style. We just don't know quite enough yet.

Also the new character... We can say virtually nothing about that. They could maybe possibly be playable and behind this third component. There'd have to be a proper reason for them to be around though, both for gameplay purposes and the plot, otherwise it's again going to look stupid.

[Indigo Rush]

If I had to take a stab at it, the third gameplay component might be something that threads the two major playstyles together somehow, like a hub world or something to that effect. I can't imagine what, though. They keep saying that the word "Forces" has some sort of meaning, so maybe there's a strategy mode where you mobilize 'forces' on a map screen against enemy robots to salvage resources or affect the levels themselves?

Maybe you can have friends following you around?

 

 

Chao Garden?

A'hyuck.

[Jango]

Play as Eggman? Now suddenly mech shooting becomes fun? What else would you do as Eggman, I ask? And most important, what would they NOT do. Shooting? People complained. Mechs? People complained. What's left is Puyo-Puyo. Or Eggman plays like Modern Sonic, he's faster anyways [emoji14]

I rather have Jak & Daxter / Ratchet & Clank-esque gameplay with Tails, platforming, vehicles and shooting.

[Chris Knopps]

9 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

If I had to take a stab at it, the third gameplay component might be something that threads the two major playstyles together somehow, like a hub world or something to that effect. I can't imagine what, though. They keep saying that the word "Forces" has some sort of meaning, so maybe there's a strategy mode where you mobilize 'forces' on a map screen against enemy robots to salvage resources or affect the levels themselves?

Maybe you can have friends following you around?

 

 

Chao Garden?

A'hyuck.

Did you say Chao Garden?

CHAO GARDEN?!!

Also folks, I wasn't... Really serious about it being Eggman Nega returning but glad it seems to be a topic people enjoy speculating on.

[TheOcelot]

inb4 the third playable character is Eggman who is forced to team up with classic & modern Sonic to save the world after something evil Eggman was trying to control/use to take over the world betrays him XP

[Chris Knopps]

2 minutes ago, TailsBot said:

inb4 the third playable character is Eggman who is forced to team up with classic & modern Sonic to save the world after something evil Eggman was trying to conrol/use to take over the world betrays him XP

I've been speculating that Classic Robotnik has pulled a coup against Modern Eggman and is taking conquering the world into his own hands, hence all the robots resembling the Death Egg bot.

We do know that Classic Robotnik has an inner hatred toward his older self and thinks pretty lowly of the person he becomes, so it wouldn't be a surprise to see the former give the later a big middle finger and attempt to show him how things are done.

[Tenko]

Couldn't see this posted anywhere on here around the time Twinfinite posted it on their website so here is a bit of an interesting interview.

http://twinfinite.net/2017/04/sega-admits-sonics-evolution-hasnt-worked-forces-about-reinvigorating-sonic/

Basically its Jim Dyer (SEGA Product Manager) speaking on Sonic Forces and SEGA trying to reinvigorate the franchise. There are mentions of Sonic's evolution to 3D being less than sucessful and wanting to use sucesses like Generations and Colours as stepping stones for the future after Lost World's less than stellar reception as well as wanting to take Modern Sonic and make it "something more".

The talk of exploration in Lost World being unsucessful and therefor having emphasis on pacey-platforming, speed being obtained via wisp boosters and homing attacks making a return all have me worried that it's going to be far to linear even for Sonic...

[FriendBot]

Sounds like typical PR talk

Nothing new I heard

[Blue Blood]

Aye. I mean, the statement about "Mania being for the fans and Forces being for everyone" is virtually the exact same thing that they said in 2010 with regards to S4 and Colours. Back then of course they got it totally wrong, but that really only goes to show that it's the same old spiel that doesn't mean anything.