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

[StaticMania]

30 minutes ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Knuckles has been flaunderized so extremely he's basically a new character now, making references to his past practically feel out of place.
And with Amy, they're so embarresed about her old personality that they're more busy making her really really really REALLY not Old Amy Rose, more so then bothering giving her a better personality, let alone bothering to have any kind of smooth character development toward whatever she's supposed to be now.
As a result, any recollection of Amy's crush or Knuckles the guardian feels more like a reference joke to a far away distant spin off series then a genuine confirmation of who they are.

I feel like your really exaggerating on that Amy Rose example...it felt like they were actually trying to show there's more to Amy than her crush on Sonic. Unleashed did very little with that and Generations only ever used surface character traits from Amy and all the petrified friends.

 

The fact that she never really shows that side of her in Lost World outside of one awkward scene is positive. It's like how she was in the Adventure games, except she doesn't make Sonic keep distance by running along the sidewalk.

[BubbleButt TV]

4 hours ago, Chris Knopps said:

It's possible Forces itself is meant to be this very thing we've been discussing, albeit in a much less drastic manner. I'd like to think it's an entirely new world as a result of the Time Eater fiasco in Generations as I've mentioned, but who knows? With any luck this is the beginning of a brand new continuity for the franchise and Forces will be the last of the rehash we'll see as a final nod to the past era.

Well, that certainly goes hand in hand with all the connections people have been making between Sonic Forces and X-Men: Days of Future Past.

To be honest, I kind of like this idea of Sonic Team using Forces to retcon the inconsistencies of older games. They're not gonna do it, but it's a nice pipe-dream. 

Can't wait for the Sonic version of Logan. That must be what cones next right?

[Scar]

Completely redoing the canon so that its good, vs ignoring the bad bits, while writing better stories and better utilising existing characters amount to the same thing. As someone already mentioned before, rebooting certain characters or even the entire canon won't reboot people's memories.

Irrespective of whether you start over and write everything perfectly or just try to write better characters/stories, people will still be going in with the last 25 years worth of baggage.

The only benefit of doing a franchise-wide reboot is to clean things up, but even that can be achieved by just ignoring aspects of the canon that were bad. We could just pretend that everything after - let's say Heroes (if we want Shadow to be alive, and not have to reintroduce him), never happened. Achieves the same result as a reboot.

If we really want to go full on in with this, then we could remake SA1 and SA2 so that they're actually good, and then start afresh from there. Then have a new game that follows on that brings Shadow back to life in a way that isn't as....shitty....as Heroes. But this is unnecessary (though, I would like to experience SA1 and 2 again but with gameplay that actually makes me want to finish the game)

[Zippo]

Sega's live steam thing should be starting in about an hour and 15 minutes. 

[Detective Kaito]

The countdown is over, stream should start any second now.

[Shiny Gems]

Apparently, nothing new was shown, sadly enough.

[Meta77]

Eh the less a company shows off the less faith i see they have in it. Even if small teases. up till e3

4 hours ago, Scar said:

Completely redoing the canon so that its good, vs ignoring the bad bits, while writing better stories and better utilising existing characters amount to the same thing. As someone already mentioned before, rebooting certain characters or even the entire canon won't reboot people's memories.

Irrespective of whether you start over and write everything perfectly or just try to write better characters/stories, people will still be going in with the last 25 years worth of baggage.

The only benefit of doing a franchise-wide reboot is to clean things up, but even that can be achieved by just ignoring aspects of the canon that were bad. We could just pretend that everything after - let's say Heroes (if we want Shadow to be alive, and not have to reintroduce him), never happened. Achieves the same result as a reboot.

If we really want to go full on in with this, then we could remake SA1 and SA2 so that they're actually good, and then start afresh from there. Then have a new game that follows on that brings Shadow back to life in a way that isn't as....shitty....as Heroes. But this is unnecessary (though, I would like to experience SA1 and 2 again but with gameplay that actually makes me want to finish the game)

Do tell what was not good about sa and 2 besides ageing horribly

[Tracker_TD]

50 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

Do tell what was not good about sa and 2 besides ageing horribly

SA1's got plenty of collision issues (and perhaps some control issues too, but I've just gotten used to those by now), animation problems up the arse, some hilariously bad voice acting (not helped by some pretty obviously bad translation), a few spotty bosses, and Big the Cat. 

SA2's got the mess that was Treasure Hunting and the plodding Mech Stages, questionable voice acting, arguably worse Sonic stages than SA1 (and even Shadow's stages aren't as fun as Sonic's most of the time), more animation and translation issues (pertaining to the lipsync), and it's incredibly daft anime nonsense and/or often tryhard plot. SA2 also requires the Chao Garden for 100% completion, and sod that. There's the kart racing levels too, but I'm one of the three people that likes those things so w/e. 

Like damn, I love SA1, but it's pretty damn naff. SA2's even worse. 

[Blue Wisp]

5 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

SA2's got the mess that was Treasure Hunting and the plodding Mech Stages, questionable voice acting, arguably worse Sonic stages than SA1 (and even Shadow's stages aren't as fun as Sonic's most of the time), more animation and translation issues (pertaining to the lipsync),

Don't forget the overlapping audio, that one's my favourite. 

At the time, the games were great I guess, it was probably the best thing Sonic had (not talking personally, just a guess, wasn't really that fan back when the Adventure games released). But as time goes on and other games show up, the bad things can be seen easier. 

Nostalgia goggles are no good for anything, objectively. I love SA1, mostly because Perfect Chaos ♥ but I won't say that it's the perfect game, it's far from it. 

[pppp]

I actually agree with Meta77 that SEGA's marketing shows lack of confindence. I actually already said this in 2015 when SEGA was literally showing us nothing.

Look at how much Sony showed of Horizon Zero Dawn from announcement till release. You can tell Sony and Guerilla Games knew they had a great game in their hands and were determined to show its qualities to people as much as possible to sell it to them.

Why can't SEGA do something similar? I want to know why I should care, I want to know what makes this game appealing to fans of 3D Sonic games. Iizuka said to Famitsu it is appealing in that way, but they should show rather then tell.

I hate this marketing tactic of showing nothing till they absolutely have to. Yes Generations showed too much, but that doesn't mean we have to go for the opposite extreme.

[StaticMania]

12 minutes ago, Kellan said:

Well, I guess technically it teaches the player to watch out for hidden springs (which, again, I really wish they weren't hidden).

"Watching out for" and "Avoiding" hidden springs is what the level designers don't want, the put them there to "help" the player. But all they do is take away control and increase automation.

 

If there were any actual negative to using them, it'd be apparent in the level design. You're not suppose to know they're there.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

https://mobile.twitter.com/Nakamura_ShunR/status/856360600737165312

Rough translation is rough but is this some sort of storyboard concept for forces? 

[Kachopper9]

WELP 

 

On the bright side, looks like he has the drop dash!

[Multikaris]

11 hours ago, Zippo said:

Though it's likely both are being cancelled, I think Indigo is referring to the Archie Comics. 

I know that he was referring to the Archie Comics, but I was trying to reassure him a bit about Boom's narrative.

[Mark1]

That's actually not as bad as the Nintendo Direct footage made it look. Some physics changes. But a bit confused with some of the random sped up sections. Reminds me of the air dash from Mania?

[Azeon]

7 minutes ago, Fusion Ellipsis said:

https://mobile.twitter.com/Nakamura_ShunR/status/856360600737165312

Rough translation is rough but is this some sort of storyboard concept for forces? 

I can't quite understand what the first tweet is saying, but the second one says "A story like this?" and also "Caution: There is no such scene in the product."

[Mark1]

Still looks a bit off at times. Level design seems ok. But I hate the zippers being forced along sections which should feel natural based on how much momentum is gained. Making it feel more scripted as a result. 

Exactly like what Sonic Mania has done right in comparison. Everything which has been done there is all based on how much momentum has been gained beforehand.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

12 minutes ago, Prisima said:

I can't quite understand what the first tweet is saying, but the second one says "A story like this?" and also "Caution: There is no such scene in the product."

Quote

What I talked about in a document in the early stage of Force, like this? It seems that Eggman who existed in was dominating 99%. rough? No, I am serious about private ... # Sonic Force

Looking at this again I think what it means is that it's prolly some storyboard concept when Forces was in it's early stage of development. 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Well that was...okay. I'm glad to see it is at least somewhat expansive in terms of concurrent alternate pathways, I guess I just wish the player in the video bothered to explore any of them.

I am intrigued at what is apparently the drop-dash at 1:27 though. Is there more communication going on between SoJ and SoA than we thought?

The aesthetic is also way more interesting than I was worried it would be. It's still really weird-looking, but a more consistent weird. It definitely seems more like the Lost World/Generations mix was intentional now, and the wind blowing foliage around is super-pretty no matter what game does it. Also, I like how the pieces of the bots scatter everywhere when they blow up.

The music is...not my favorite, I'll admit. It's weird seeing it alongside a classic Sonic stage that's in full HD. It's not an awful tune, but the instrumentation is only a little above Sonic 4's (which I'll admit to liking more than a lot of other people did, but it's still not everything it should be).

 

God these people fucking suck at revealing new levels and mechanics, don't they?

[GuyWithThePie]

Not a fan of the level design here. There's just something off about it.

[Sonikko]

CrossPost from the GHZ thread

Every single boostpad is there to avoid the player to even loosing the slightest amount of speed, like the one right here

 

Or to fake momentum, like I predicted when the 10 seconds footage was first shown.

If you pay attention through the whole video, Sonic is NEVER shown interacting with sloped terrain, without hitting a booster, or an S tunnel thing that is also automated. Besides that, in Generations, Sonic was able to mantain the momentum gained through a booster, or at least some of it, here after the scripted event you just get back to normal speed cap, and it's really jarring. Especially in this situation

Right after the first S tunnel, there's a brief section where Sonic is running, and he loses all the speed he gained through the scripted event, just to regain it in the next tunnel, 2 seconds ahead. It looks BAD.

Also, why is everything so flat? I get minimalistic design and everything, but the level design is flat, it looks like an old Mario level. Even New Super Mario levels are more sloped than this.

So, everything I said about the 10 seconds footage was just confirmed in this level playthrough, the issues were evident just by watching a short gameplay video. I really hope that the Modern sections and the 3rd character sections are very good, because while Classic Sonic doesn't look boring per-se, it's surely not the selling point of the game for me. I could do without that kind of levels in the game, to be quite honest!

[Dannymax440]

Thank goodness it isn't as bad as it was made out be. Looks fantastic too.

Was anybody else surprised about the new song and was probably expecting a GHZ remix?

[Kellan]

1 hour ago, StaticMania said:

If there were any actual negative to using them, it'd be apparent in the level design.

There is. It slows you down and makes you lose your momentum, because you didn't jump for the ledge in time. I said that in my first comment, remember?

[Guest]

Tumblr tags from the post about the Green Hill screenshots:

Quote

#sonic forces #classic sonic #desertification #(it's a real word!) #also hello tags! Aaron here for the first time in a while #normally Sergio is around to do the tags these days... #but not today! Today... I am about to embark on a journey. #A journey to find the world's greatest doughnut #As you've probably also noticed -- these screens have a lot of improvements from the first footage of GHZ we released #that's because the game is still in development - so lots of things are being touched up and enhanced #and who knows what else might change by the time the game is final! We'll be showing off a lot more over the next couple of months #and who could that third character be -- I wonder? #Oh and if you can... pay close attention for any little hints we're hiding. #If you're bored... you might just find out something interesting along the way. #See you soon! - AW

http://sonicthehedgehog.tumblr.com/post/159981962458/as-our-teams-continue-development-of-sonic-forces

Basically: Nintendo Direct footage was from an older build, hence the graphical differences. And they'll show off more Forces stuff over the next couple of months.

[Nepenthe]

Also, there's apparently hints about something or other in the gameplay and whatnot.

*remembers the lead up to the 25th anniversary party*

Oh dear.