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

[Kintor]

12 minutes ago, Bobnik said:

That would be cool if the game used the continuity established earlier, but I still feel like there isn't gonna be much of it. Heck, Silver shouldn't exist, yet, according to Nick the journalist, he is there. I'd be glad if they used something they established in classics and pre-06 era, but I'll remain skeptical on that part.

At this point Silver is pretty much a walking paradox. Time travelling is bad enough but doing so for the express purpose of changing the past is the kind of thing that would give Doc Brown a heart attack. Still, Silver is probably going to be okay. There are certain theories that each change in a timeline just creates a separate alternate timeline and doesn't erase the original timeline. In this manner a time traveller from a different timeline (like Silver) can exist paradox free in the new timeline created by altering key events.

So I guess the moral of the story is: "don't worry about breaking reality kids, the universe will right itself in the end!"

[StaticMania]

Silver the Hedgehog existing due to the Sonic Rivals games isn't a negative.

 

It's neutral.

[Bobnik]

5 minutes ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Dude, Silver exists because of Rivals. That's old news.

And yes, as whacky and absolutely dumb as it is, the Rivals games are indeed canon. Solely for the sake of reintroducing Silver...with almost the exact same backstory.

Eh, I actually forgot Rivals series exist. Okay, fair enough. 

 

[Chris Knopps]

Uhh...

I...

GUESS that Forces could be ANOTHER retelling and/or reintroduction for Silver into the franchise, and maybe this new cat-like character will play the role that Blaze kind of played in 06 where both Silver and this new cat-like creature are from the future... Meaning the game is in the future...?

So... In other words, Modern gets sent to the future, and so does Classic, and because of being sent through time, it allowed the villains to conquer things in the past because the hedgehogs went missing...?

So... The game is about...

Gotta get back...?

[StaticMania]

Classic Sonic being also thrown into the future wouldn't make sense...all Eggman needs to do is hurl Sonic.

 

He could hurl him to the point where he dies and can't get back as a result.

[Chris Knopps]

1 minute ago, StaticMania said:

Classic Sonic being also thrown into the future wouldn't make sense...all Eggman needs to do is hurl Sonic.

 

He could hurl him to the point where he dies and can't get back as a result.

It's a potential time-travel plot in a Sonic game, I'm doing the best I can.

[HyperShadic]

Any idea what this means?

I'm concerned this means that this game is going to way more cheesy and light-hearted then what the teaser (and first modern sonic level) let on.

[Chris Knopps]

9 minutes ago, HyperShadic said:

Any idea what this means?

I'm concerned this means that this game is going to way more cheesy and light-hearted then what the teaser (and first modern sonic level) let on.

So... Conflicting directions or something...?

I wish Forces had more precise marketing going on. What the heck am I supposed to be buying with this game?

A nostalgia trip? A whole new world? A quirky rebellion? A doomsday disaster?

Is it serious or not? Is it lighthearted or matured? Is it the end of the world or random spurts of destruction?

Is it just Lost World with boost and more fire? Or are we going post-apocalyptic Unleashed?

[therealfalconpawnch77]

9 minutes ago, HyperShadic said:

Any idea what this means?

I'm concerned this means that this game is going to way more cheesy and light-hearted then what the teaser (and first modern sonic level) let on.

Or it could possibly mean that the trailer scenes won't actually be in the game. You know like how the City Escape and encounter with the time eater CG scenes weren't in Generations.

[Zaysho]

25 minutes ago, HyperShadic said:

Any idea what this means?

I'm concerned this means that this game is going to way more cheesy and light-hearted then what the teaser (and first modern sonic level) let on.

It just sounds like it's not really a scene in the game but was just used to illustrate a few quick ideas to sell the overall concept of the game, with two Sonics teaming up to stop a new threat that's actually showing to having an effect on the world for a change, and with the added Nintendo direct bit, a new hero being added to the mix. I don't think there's much more to read into it than that.

 

21 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

So... Conflicting directions or something...?

I wish Forces had more precise marketing going on. What the heck am I supposed to be buying with this game?

A nostalgia trip? A whole new world? A quirky rebellion? A doomsday disaster?

Is it serious or not? Is it lighthearted or matured? Is it the end of the world or random spurts of destruction?

Is it just Lost World with boost and more fire? Or are we going post-apocalyptic Unleashed?

Forces doesn't have "precise" marketing yet because they haven't really done much beyond be cryptic for half a year, stay silent for several months, and then go right back to cryptic bullshit drip fed from the producer. To be honest, it's worn thin (hell, it was worn thin by the time the game was unveiled), but I imagine things will be more clearly outlined in the next month (E3) and once Mania is actually out and they can shift focus on the next upcoming game.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

38 minutes ago, HyperShadic said:

Any idea what this means?

I'm concerned this means that this game is going to way more cheesy and light-hearted then what the teaser (and first modern sonic level) let on.

I doubt they would be that flipflopish over the tone like that.

Mind you, I love mood whiplash plots, so that doesn't sound too bad.

[Chris Knopps]

7 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

I doubt they would be that flipflopish over the tone like that.

Mind you, I love mood whiplash plots, so that doesn't sound too bad.

Doing what they did with the script in Colors and Lost World in a game revolving a stage like Forces could make for one hell of a show I suppose.

The mind f@$ery would be out of this world. Could you imagine keeping up with something all over the place like that with everything that would already be going on simultaneously?

[The Deleter]

52 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

I doubt they would be that flipflopish over the tone like that.

Mind you, I love mood whiplash plots, so that doesn't sound too bad.

Isn't that exactly what they did with SLW, though?

I know you probably meant something like Hunter X Hunter's style of subversion or something, but I wouldn't count on a Sonic game ever capitalizing on that to any degree higher than that, especially considering SLW was Pontaff's big break to write the story as he pleased, iirc.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

So basically exactly what Sonic Lost world was, with it's random "dark" dialogue and serious scenes shoved in inbetween happy rainbow farts level 3 and flying pink candy stage? Except now with one level to match.

Thing is, I LOVE Contrast, so the idea of the game moodwhiplashing back and forth is appealing.....Indeed, using the Joker imagary is great there, that's a guy all about mood whiplashing in a cool/ funny way.


But being hyped for that concept requires an amount of  faith in Sonic team being able to pull that off. And quite frankly, I have nowhere near enough trust in them for that at this point. So far, their mood whiplashing never feels cool or exciting or funny.... Or even deliberate. (Except within the Sonic Generations levels)

Best case scenerio from current Sonic Team is Sonic Unleashed.
Starts intense, then immediatly deflates and acts hyper casual about the whole thing and just becomes a "Ohhh Chip!" wacky sitcom that barely cares about it's premise until the finale.
At least turning a hyper serious story into a wacky buddy comedy could be funny, if the writers stopped being lazy and genuinely create energery out of the contrast. And not just have the cast be detached and MST3000'ing themselves constantly.


Or we get Sonic Lost world, that's seems embarresed about itself and is awkwardly shuffling from one extreme to the next to overcompensate.
Which is just frustrating.


...Personally I would mostly prefer something like Sonic Adventure, starting as a light hearted adventure and then gradually working it's way up to a grand finale, but I doubt that's in the cards.

[Salamander]

I don't think there's any issue with Silver being in the game.  It's a common interpretation of time-travel that time-travellers are immune to the effects of any changes they cause, and the depiction of Silver in the series mostly seems to suggest that he'll be fine despite altering the future he came from.  (I discount here '06, which removed itself from the timeline in a far more drastic way than occurs in most time-travel stories.)  Silver's just a serial time-traveller at this point, and his appearance in Colours DS seems to imply that he even does so just for fun, so it makes more or less complete sense that he would show up in a story like Forces which must have some kind of time-travel shenanigans already (for multiple Sonics to exist contemporaneously).  I'd also draw a comparison to Sonic CD, in which Sonic can alter the past any number of times without erasing his own history.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

12 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

Isn't that exactly what they did with SLW, though?

I know you probably meant something like Hunter X Hunter's style of subversion or something, but I wouldn't count on a Sonic game ever capitalizing on that to any degree higher than that, especially considering SLW was Pontaff's big break to write the story as he pleased, iirc.

Not exactly? Or rather Lost Worlds did it but in a rather haphazard way given it's storytelling.

I don't know anything about Hunter X Hunter, so the closest example I can think of would be the kind of whiplash we get from Kung Fu Panda going from humorous to dark and intense like Tai Lungs first fight with Shifu being serious, then his fight with Po which is more hilarious.

And as far as I've known, Sonic games capitalized on it long before Lost Worlds if the Adventure series and Unleashed are any indicators.

[The Deleter]

15 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

Not exactly? Or rather Lost Worlds did it but in a rather haphazard way given it's storytelling.

I don't know anything about Hunter X Hunter, so the closest example I can think of would be the kind of whiplash we get from Kung Fu Panda going from humorous to dark and intense like Tai Lungs first fight with Shifu being serious, then his fight with Po which is more hilarious.

And as far as I've known, Sonic games capitalized on it long before Lost Worlds if the Adventure series and Unleashed are any indicators.

Well that's not exactly whiplash, that's just a gradual change in tone throughout, lol. A basic storytelling element.

I'm talking something like a side character smiling and talking smack about an enemy in typical cartoony fashion, then proceeding to gouge that enemy's eyes out explicitly, then going back to the cheesy dialog not one second after, with only the less crazy characters commenting on how messed up it is. All to emphasize how messed up that character is in the first place.

That's mood whiplash.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 minute ago, The Deleter said:

Well that's not exactly whiplash, that's just a gradual change in tone throughout, lol. A basic storytelling element.

I'm talking something like a side character smiling and talking smack about an enemy in typical cartoony fashion, then proceeding to gouge that enemy's eyes out explicitly, then going back to the cheesy dialog not one second after, with only the less crazy characters commenting on how messed up it is. All to emphasize how messed up that character is in the first place.

That's mood whiplash.

That example of mine was far from gradual given it was a quick change in scene from Tai Lung trying to dramatically kill his former master to him hilariously sucker-punching Po in the face in the same scene--that is mood whiplash, and a far more appropriate take of what I meant for Sonic as opposed to gouging someone's eyes out.

[The Deleter]

8 minutes ago, Conquering Storm's Servant said:

That example of mine was far from gradual given it was a quick change in scene from Tai Lung trying to dramatically kill his former master to him hilariously sucker-punching Po in the face in the same scene--that is mood whiplash, and a far more appropriate take of what I meant for Sonic as opposed to gouging someone's eyes out.

Ah, it's been a while since I saw that movie, so I didn't recall the scenes changing that quickly. You're right, it is pretty whiplash-y.

Though, I wasn't really putting forwards that explanation as an example Sonic should follow, just to give a pretty clear example, lol. Something more along the lines of Archie Eggman would be a better example, in that case.

Although I stand by the notion of Lost World being their "best" example so far by default. The whiplash in those kung-fu-panda scenes were meant to make a, or even several punchlines more effective in their executions. I'm hard pressed to think of anything in Sonic other than Lost World where the tone whiplashes anywhere that close even for that example, and doubly so to make anything work more effectively. Best I can think of is the escape pod scene in SA2, but that's still somewhat vague with the music choices and voice directions on how dark it actually was supposed to feel...

[Waveshocker Sigma]

9 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Silver the Hedgehog existing due to the Sonic Rivals games isn't a negative.

 

It's neutral.

I didn't mean that it's bad that Silver still exists.

I meant that it's bad that it's via the Rivals games' incredibly dumb and nonsense plots.

To quote Tikal, "There MUST be a better way to do this".

[JezMM]

If you really want to you could consider Silver's canon existence to be sort of piecemeal of his various non-2006 appearances.  Rivals might not be canon on virtue of being a non-worldwide handheld-only release.  Colours DS might not be canon on virtue of the Wii version overriding it.

All that needs to be canon is "Silver came from the future and stuck around for a while", and I imagine that's the full extent of what Sonic Team have in their heads when they decide whether to include him or not.  In Rivals he comes from a Bad Future like in 2006, but in Colours DS he claims the future he comes from is a peaceful utopia, so yeah.

Like if you don't want to care about Rivals, you could consider Silver's backstory to be as non-specific as say, Rouge the Bat's.  She's been a government spy since before the start of SA2, that is her version of "Sonic was born on Christmas Island", "Sonic and Eggman have long been enemies" in Sonic 1.  Likewise Silver can just... be from the future.  That's just how he is.

[StaticMania]

2 hours ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

I didn't mean that it's bad that Silver still exists.

I meant that it's bad that it's via the Rivals games' incredibly dumb and nonsense plots.

To quote Tikal, "There MUST be a better way to do this".

I wasn't saying it was neutral that Silver the Hedgehog exist.

 

I was saying it was neutral that he exist because of the rivals games.

 

The Rivals games are positive.

[Multikaris]

I know that we'll be seeing the newcomer's gameplay at e3, but is there a chance we get a look at how they look earlier than that? 

[Blue Blood]

3 minutes ago, It's a Very Merry Miru said:

I know that we'll be seeing the newcomer's gameplay at e3, but is there a chance we get a look at how they look earlier than that? 

Like, maybe? How could any of us know? 

[blazefan519]

31 minutes ago, It's a Very Merry Miru said:

I know that we'll be seeing the newcomer's gameplay at e3, but is there a chance we get a look at how they look earlier than that? 

E3 is only a month away. There's really no need to rush any information with it being this close. I don't care either way.