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

[Kuzu]

I didn't actually watch the stream since I was out with friends at the time, but if it really was as poorly handled as I've been reading, then it does reflect pretty badly on Sega themselves.

[Adamabba]

3 minutes ago, El Driver said:

The Madeon thing had a piece of the "puzzle" that when put together with the other hints it was going to reveal Sonic Mania.

The message of the Sonic/Madeon thing was:

Hello Hugo

The secret is inside the empire

We can get it back

The fated son of Daedalus

Add the numbers

But as Aaron said Madeon's original line is "The Secret Is Inside The Pixel Empire" so "pixel" was the clue.

Ohhhh dangit how did I miss that? Aaron did mention before that what's missing is most important in his clues, if I knew that "pixel" was missing from the lyrics I would've caught on.

[Badnik Mechanic]

So I noticed this.

Trailer ends with 2 Sonic's charging 2 of the giant Egg Robos...

But there are 3 attacking the city.

Odds that Boom Sonic will turn up?

[Darinian]

Also noticing how classic sonic appears, is the homing attack gonna be default classic can homing attack ? Or is that a kick...?

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Mayor D said:

Odds that Boom Sonic will turn up?

Zero.

Thinking 3 robots in a trailer have to correlate to 3 Sonics is a massive, baseless leap.

[Jango]

4 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

So I noticed this.

Trailer ends with 2 Sonic's charging 2 of the giant Egg Robos...

But there are 3 attacking the city.

Odds that Boom Sonic will turn up?

 

I'm seriously thinking that even Adventure Sonic might show up.

[Linkabel]

That has nothing to do with the point I'm trying to make. I'm not saying they had to show it at E3 or anything like that. But making a trailer aimed at critics, investors, and casuals, and showing it at an event focused on dedicated fans, is a complete mismatch of intentions.

To be fair, the VIP area of the event did have critics and investors.

[AngelSlayerN64]

19 minutes ago, Jango said:

I'm seriously thinking that even Adventure Sonic might show up.

Somehow, I doubt that. Though, we'll just have to wait and see for ourselves...

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

25 minutes ago, Jango said:

 

I'm seriously thinking that even Adventure Sonic might show up.

Adventure Sonic IS modern Sonic.....right?

[AngelSlayerN64]

9 minutes ago, Knuxchao said:

Adventure Sonic IS modern Sonic.....right?

He's most likely referring to Dreamcast Sonic.

[KHCast]

I'd say Boom Sonic showing up is plausible, especially if this started development around the time SEGA were trying to hype that franchise up. It would be nice to see them use a Sonic outside of just classic and modern tbh.

[Scar]

55 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

So I noticed this.

Trailer ends with 2 Sonic's charging 2 of the giant Egg Robos...

But there are 3 attacking the city.

Odds that Boom Sonic will turn up?

I agree with Dio on this. Don't think that means much. At the very least I hope it doesn't. Sonic Team (Iizuka in particular) were never really jazzed about the whole Boom thing and their redesigns of the characters, so I can't imagine them including that character from a totally parallel universe in their game - particularly considering how much Boom fucking tanked.

Sigh.

Please fucking no. 

[KHCast]

The show didn't tank so who knows.

[CottonCandy]

Boom sonic showing up may be a possibility. I wouldn't be surprised if it was true. There's a few signs that point to it. But I think it would cause a huge outrage if it happened. A pretty funny outrage. 

[Scar]

4 minutes ago, KHCast said:

The show didn't tank so who knows.

Would still be fucking dumb to force Sonic Team to shove it down people's throats (as I said, Iizuka was less than enthusiastic about it). If it happens it happens, but I won't be happy about it because it represents even more of a mismanagement of this poor fucking franchise than it already has been to this point.

(I don't even fucking know why Boom needs to exist with its own character designs and universe - why did it need this? Its fucking stupid)

[Mel]

What if Classic Sonic is just in the game for no real reason and time travelling isn't even an aspect of it.

It sounds dumb, but remember, this is modern Sonic story we are talking about.

[Scar]

Just now, Mel said:

What if Classic Sonic is just in the game for no real reason and time travelling isn't even an aspect of it.

It sounds dumb, but remember, this is modern Sonic story we are talking about.

What's the point then? That would be equally dumb. 

[Mel]

Just now, Scar said:

What's the point then? That would be equally dumb. 

It would be dumb, and it would be pointless.

Doesn't mean Sonic Team wouldn't do it.

[JingleBoy]

I doubt there'll be a Dreamcast Sonic, there's not enough to differentiate him from Modern (Visually). Like, it's not the same as Classic Sonic appearing in this where people were like "oh my god, classic sonic!!", if it was Dreamcast Sonic the general public would probably be like "wtf, why are there 2 modern sonics". It's probably just meaningless that they chose 3 robits.

[Mel]

Honestly, I really do think they have reused Classic Sonic because his gameplay was popular in Generations and he was a popular character with critics.

It's completely idiotic to use him without a time travelling plot, but what if he literally is just there for no reason amongst the other friends. I mean, is it really that unbelievable? This is Modern Sonic storytelling. 

[Indigo Rush]

1 hour ago, Mayor D said:

So I noticed this.

Trailer ends with 2 Sonic's charging 2 of the giant Egg Robos...

But there are 3 attacking the city.

Odds that Boom Sonic will turn up?

I really hope not

[Darinian]

1 hour ago, Mayor D said:

So I noticed this.

Trailer ends with 2 Sonic's charging 2 of the giant Egg Robos...

But there are 3 attacking the city.

Odds that Boom Sonic will turn up?

If he was then why would they hide him from the first showing of it

[Betz]

1 minute ago, flaresakithasol said:

If he was then why would they hide him from the first showing of it

Because of the hate towards Boom in the games. I think they're waiting for Fire and Ice to take off before saying "Oh Boom is in this too!".

[JingleBoy]

3 minutes ago, flaresakithasol said:

If he was then why would they hide him from the first showing of it

That's a good point. Boom Sonic would've been the whole attention grabber of this, so why would they leave him out? It would be like Generations not putting Classic Sonic in the original teaser.

Boom is a completely separate branch of the franchise, not at all linked to the core Sonic Team games.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

3 hours ago, Sami said:

Honestly I think the whole stream was mismanaged and while a product of good intentions, failed to deliver on expectations. 

 

That teaser is not a good payoff for an entire year of cryptic teases and buildup of expectations, to say nothing of the two (three?) hour nightmare stream we had to endure to get there. It's a bad look and although I can't speak on how fun the event was for fans that actually went, I do have the right to speak about the quality of the stream. It was embarrassing and some things are generally baffling but before I get to that I want to call out the technical difficulties again - I genuinely hope somebody got fired last Friday because the shit they put up on Twitch and YouTube was unacceptable. 

 

- 45 minutes late. 

- When the feed finally started the audio wasn't working

- Buuuuuzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

 - The audio cut out during announcements. It's been three days and I still don't think anyone other than the people who went has a clue what the Madeon thing was about. 

- Nobody in the world wants to tune in on a Friday night to see a live streamed Hyper Potions concert featuring a guy in a Sonic suit awkwardly dancing for an hour. Also the audio kept cutting out.

- Sonic Mania looks amazing, great trailer, really cool seeing Christian up on stage talking about it. Good job.

- buzz buzz buzz

The technical quality of the stream not only made it embarrassing to watch, but it reflects horridly on SEGA as a whole as well as the Sonic brand. I stand by what I said - I hope whoever was responsible got fired and this never happens again.

 

Technical issues aside the stream schedule is fucking perplexing to me. Who approved this? SEGA's marketing team knew why anyone would want to tune in to this because they kept teasing it all god damn year. "6/22 all will be revealed" or whatever. Doing cute shit with hints and teases that all led to this particular day. All of it revolving around a new game because they're not morons - they know what we want to see, and we know they know that because that was the aspect of the show they talked about to get us to want to watch. So bearing that in mind I think it's absurd that to get to the content that SEGA was aware everyone (fans and non-fans alike) tuned in for, "discussing the future of Sonic", we were expected to sit through an hour long Hyper Potions concert, an hour and ten minute long Crush 40 concert, a costume contest (holy mary mother of god are you fucking kidding me), and whatever other garbage was in the way of the Project Sonic 2017 trailer. I don't remember the rest of the schedule exactly because once I realized there was still another 25 minutes left of Crush 40 and about two hours before the "???" on the schedule, I closed the stream that I'd been hyped up for since it was announced to go to a party I'd previously turned down so that I could watch the stream with my closest friends.

 

What really kills me is at the end of it all, the game that was supposed to make all these months of waiting and that three hours of unadulterated trash on Twitch (other than Mania and LEGO which were dope) worth it was a two minute teaser trailer that told us exactly this about this game we've been dying to know about for three entire years:

- It's by the team we already knew it was by

- Dark tone

- Classic Sonic is in it

- It's got really nice graphics

 

I'm excited for this game. The style of the teaser implies to me that it's going for a story focus with a tone reminiscent of Sonic Adventure, and that's inherently very exciting to me. The visual design of the environment is very nice and right up my alley. But no, that trailer is not only a bad trailer with bland, boring music, an overly serious and dramatic tone that doesn't do much to convey what the plot of the game even is, no gameplay, and after countless teases and months of waiting... no title? Surely this is a joke?

 

I'm sorry that my tone is so frustrated here, I didn't mean to write it that way at first but after I started recapping the event in my head I got genuinely upset about it. Absolutely terrible management and I expect better from SEGA of America. I really do.

 

At the end of the day, Mania looks like a genuinely excellent game though and I'm happy to see non-fans on NeoGAF and Twitter getting jazzed about Sonic again, and Sonic '17 looks interesting. So there's positivity to be had. I just wish it didn't come in the package it did.

Being fair, the gap between Crush 40 and the announce was some pretty important stuff in terms of the brand (The Hello Kitty partnership thing, and the look into Boom Season 2, which was lacking any kind of footage until now).

I agree though. It was a fucking disgrace. Both me and @The Deleter streamed this for SSMB on Motobug (Over 100 viewers, WOOOOO), and we streamed for 10 hours straight. What was the stuff we had to deal with? Two streams that loved to keep going offline, and needed to keep being switched around in order to get a half decent stream, and even then, various issues due to SEGA's incompetence. Just generally made things harder to stream because of it.