The Making of: Sonic Adventure (New Iizuka Interview)

[Wraith]

Takashi Iizuka and Kazuyuki Hoshino sat down with Retro Gamer for an interview on the making of Sonic Adventure. You can read it here: https://www.pressreader.com/uk/retro-gamer/20181228/281659666135596

There's not a whole lot of new stuff if you've researched the development of this game before but I thought it was nice to hear from them again. They still seem very fond of the game and very aware that it still has fans. They go into detail about the intentions behind the casts's redesigns and how they felt the need to freshen up and reboot the series. They talk about the intention behind the multiple playstyles. Iizuka even acknowledges the game's many rough edges and says he'd like to remake it if given a chance.

Just thought it was interesting. 

Worth noting that that last point is NOT a confirmation from Iizuka that a remake was or is in development. If the project was greenlit than he wouldn't even be able to address the idea before an official announcement. Still it's interesting that he's enthusiastic about the idea. 

 

[Kuzu]

Just the fact that they're considering the idea gives me hope; especially people were convinced "It'll never happen".

Given the success of the Crash and Spyro remasters, and Super Mario Odyssey returning to 64 style exploration and platforming, there's really no reason not to do it.  

[Wraith]

19 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Just the fact that they're considering the idea gives me hope; especially people were convinced "It'll never happen".

Given the success of the Crash and Spyro remasters, and Super Mario Odyssey returning to 64 style exploration and platforming, there's really no reason not to do it.  

Fingers crossed it happens some time after the next game.

[Diogenes]

16 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Just the fact that they're considering the idea gives me hope; especially people were convinced "It'll never happen".

Given the success of the Crash and Spyro remasters, and Super Mario Odyssey returning to 64 style exploration and platforming, there's really no reason not to do it.  

I could think of a couple.

But if they genuinely want to do it, then at this point, like...why fuckin' not, right. If they somehow make it work then cool, we get a good 3D Sonic. If not, we learn one more thing that doesn't work.

[Milo]

I see the source re-iterates the 2.5 million sales number for the original Adventure on Dreamcast (presumably taken from Gamasutra's historical platformer sales article).

[DabigRG]

Tried accessing the article, but it keeps showing a bunch of mini-articles with no way to find otherwise.

[Kuzu]

18 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I could think of a couple.

But if they genuinely want to do it, then at this point, like...why fuckin' not, right. If they somehow make it work then cool, we get a good 3D Sonic. If not, we learn one more thing that doesn't work.

I'm well aware of what you think 3D Sonic should be. And...I don't really care.

Besides Generations, Adventure is like the closest thing that got the feeling of a Sonic game in 3D down. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I'd rather they try that again with what they've learned for the past 20 years than continuously trying to experiment and getting potentially worse results. 

33 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Fingers crossed it happens some time after the next game.

It could be their next project; the only things on the horizon are the racing game and the movie. So I could them trying to do something for 2020, but we'll see. 

[Diogenes]

2 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

I'm well aware of what you think 3D Sonic should be. And...I don't really care.

Thrilling. But I've got more reasons than just me not being head over heels about the Adventure gameplay.

2 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Besides Generations, Adventure is like the closest thing that got the feeling of a Sonic game in 3D down. It wasn't perfect by any means, but I'd rather they try that again with what they've learned for the past 20 years than continuously trying to experiment and getting potentially worse results. 

They could explore that gameplay without remaking SA, you know.

[Plasme]

I really hope they don't remake Adventure. It would be probably along the lines of Spyro and Crash, and Adventure is too fundamentally broken for that. Even if you fix the camera and controls, you still have Big and Amy's awful stages, Gamma's ill-fitting gameplay, the boring Adventure fields, the dull story, tedious bosses, and uninspiring plane shooting section. If you radically changed these aspects, you'd be straying too far from the source material.

I'm also just bored of revisiting old classics with slightly improved (or different) graphics.

If they want to revisit Adventure, which I would like to see, they should make a spiritual successor to Adventure 1 and 2 and focus solely on Sonic's gameplay. That would be the best option going forward.

[Kuzu]

Just now, Diogenes said:

Thrilling. But I've got more reasons than just me not being head over heels about the Adventure gameplay.

And I know that too; you seem to forget that I've been on this site for a while now to know your mindset. But what reasons do you have?

Just now, Diogenes said:

They could explore that gameplay without remaking SA, you know.

A remake from a time when people still had faith in the series would generate far more buzz in the media than a new game, which would just get eyerolls more than anything. You can call it nostalgia pandering fine, but it's a tried and true tactic from a business standpoint. 

[Plasme]

Just now, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

A remake from a time when people still had faith in the series would generate far more buzz in the media than a new game, which would just get eyerolls more than anything. You can call it nostalgia pandering fine, but it's a tried and true tactic from a business standpoint. 

Adventure is often seen as the start of the series' demise. If anything it would be treated with derision, although some fans would probably get hyped over it.

[Kuzu]

3 minutes ago, Plasme said:

I really hope they don't remake Adventure. It would be probably along the lines of Spyro and Crash, and Adventure is too fundamentally broken for that. Even if you fix the camera and controls, you still have Big and Amy's awful stages, Gamma's ill-fitting gameplay, the boring Adventure fields, the dull story, tedious bosses, and uninspiring plane shooting section. If you radically changed these aspects, you'd be straying too far from the source material.

I'm also just bored of revisiting old classics with slightly improved (or different) graphics.

If they want to revisit Adventure, which I would like to see, they should make a spiritual successor to Adventure 1 and 2 and focus solely on Sonic's gameplay. That would be the best option going forward.

Then it's not really an Adventure game is it?

I'm not even going to pretend the game hasn't aged like ass, but if you think the game is fundamentally broken....then revisiting you wouldn't really change your mind would it?

Just now, Plasme said:

Adventure is often seen as the start of the series' demise. If anything it would be treated with derision, although some fans would probably get hyped over it.

The only ones who think that are the ones who never liked Sonic to begin with; even people who have fallen out of the series remember that game fondly, and the sheer amount of people who remembered it on it's anniversary a few weeks back are a testament to that. 

So no, its not. 

[Plasme]

5 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Then it's not really an Adventure game is it?

I'm not even going to pretend the game hasn't aged like ass, but if you think the game is fundamentally broken....then revisiting you wouldn't really change your mind would it?

I mean that the Sonic stages have aged best and are the most enjoyable part of Adventure 1 and 2. I think that particular aspect of the Adventure games are worth revisiting in some form of spiritual successor. How close it sticks to the aesthetic and design in the Adventures isn't really important to me, but how far it sticks to the controls and feeling of the Sonic stages, and building upon that, is.

Adventure's Sonic stages are pretty good and I think they hold up well for an early 2000s platformer. They could definitely be improved with the advancements of 3D platformers over the years. It's that the rest of the fat needs to be cut off. I think a remake just brings that excess back, and would actually hurt the chances of another Adventure style game, because people would even more strongly associate the Adventure Sonic stages with the duff stages and gameplay of Amy and Big etc.

 

[Kuzu]

3 minutes ago, Plasme said:

I mean that the Sonic stages have aged best and are the most enjoyable part of Adventure 1 and 2. I think that particular aspect of the Adventure games are worth revisiting in some form of spiritual successor. How close it sticks to the aesthetic and design in the Adventures isn't really important to me, but how far it sticks to the controls and feeling of the Sonic stages, and building upon that, is.

Adventure's Sonic stages are pretty good and I think they hold up well for an early 2000s platformer. They could definitely be improved with the advancements of 3D platformers over the years. It's that the rest of the fat needs to be cut off. I think a remake just brings that excess back, and would actually hurt the chances of another Adventure style game, because people would even more strongly associate the Adventure Sonic stages with the duff stages and gameplay of Amy and Big etc.

 

Then you don't actually care about an Adventure game, at least beyond the Sonic stages. Which is fine, but if that's the case, then you wouldn't really care either way. Even if they improved the rest of the game, you've already decided that everything but the Sonic stages are bad.  A remake with just Sonic stages just isn't possible, because the game was explicitly designed for six characters, not one. 

You're basically talking about removing the very foundation of the game. The only one you could probably get away with cutting entirely is Big due to the poor reception of his gameplay among everyone, but if you remove too much....you're defeating the entire purpose of it being a remake.

[Plasme]

4 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Then you don't actually care about an Adventure game, at least beyond the Sonic stages. Which is fine, but if that's the case, then you wouldn't really care either way. Even if they improved the rest of the game, you've already decided that everything but the Sonic stages are bad.  A remake with just Sonic stages just isn't possible, because the game was explicitly designed for six characters, not one. 

You're basically talking about removing the very foundation of the game. The only one you could probably get away with cutting entirely is Big due to the poor reception of his gameplay among everyone, but if you remove too much....you're defeating the entire purpose of it being a remake.

I don't quite get where you are coming from. I'm saying they shouldn't remake Adventure for exactly the reasons you have listed, but should make some kind of loose spiritual successor based upon Sonic's stages and gameplay style in Adventures 1 and 2. 

[Kuzu]

3 minutes ago, Plasme said:

I don't quite get where you are coming from. I'm saying they shouldn't remake Adventure for exactly the reasons you have listed, but should make some kind of loose spiritual successor based upon Sonic's stages and gameplay style in Adventures 1 and 2. 

Ahh, well if you don't care about a remake either way fine.

 

I wanna see it though because I wanna see what can be improved; the only style I really didn't care for was Big's. I didn't mind Amy or Gamma's and thought they played fine. 

[Plasme]

Just now, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Ahh, well if you don't care about a remake either way fine.

 

I wanna see it though because I wanna see what can be improved; the only style I really didn't care for was Big's. I didn't mind Amy or Gamma's and thought they played fine. 

I mean we are on the same side on one area, we both want to see Sonic's gameplay from Adventure to return and be expanded on!

Thumbs up buddy, as Sonic would say!

[Kuzu]

Its nice to see the team look so fondly back on the game tho even after all of these years. You can tell they were trying to really revitalize the series back then. 

[Diogenes]

2 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

And I know that too; you seem to forget that I've been on this site for a while now to know your mindset. But what reasons do you have?

Off the top of my head:

-Sonic Team sucks. Just like, in general.
-Sonic Team especially sucks at understanding how to properly leverage nostalgia. Just look at how people turned on Classic Sonic when he showed up in Forces, and how much their attempts at bringing Classic elements into Modern Sonic are wearing on people in general. I do not trust them to "get" SA.
-Remaking SA means remaking 6 different kinds of gameplay and possibly the chao gardens on top of that. The series has historically not done well managing multiple gameplay styles, often leaving some or all of them broken and/or underdeveloped.
-The inevitable "Sonic's Shitty Friends" reaction to a game that forces you to play as 6 different characters, one of whom is Big the Cat.
-Walking the line between "faithful remake" and "bold reimagining". SA isn't just a bit dated, a lot of it is outright badly designed. Going 100% accurate would result in a game that would only really appeal to diehard purists, but they wouldn't want to change so much that they'd end up with a completely different game rather than a remake. There's no balance that isn't going to end up pissing some people off.
-Voice actor arguments. I can't imagine them keeping the original acting considering it's pretty terrible and they haven't even been using those VAs for well over a decade. But rerecording everything with the current cast is bound to get purists riled up over them not bringing back Drummond.
-The script could probably use a retranslation as well, but how many people are going to want SA as filtered through Pontac and Graff?

2 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

A remake from a time when people still had faith in the series would generate far more buzz in the media than a new game, which would just get eyerolls more than anything. You can call it nostalgia pandering fine, but it's a tried and true tactic from a business standpoint. 

They're going to have to figure out how to make new games appealing regardless, though. And while nostalgia absolutely has its appeal, remaking SA is far from a slam dunk.

[Maxtiis]

Honestly if the game played fine, and could possibly prove to Sega that there's still genuine interest in a game with the structure Sonic Adventure had, I couldn't care less if they just reused the current voice actors and changed assets and levels around some. I'm more interested in getting a good game than an entirely faithful remake.

Maybe describing it as a reimagining would be a better definition, but 20 years on, everyone has their own expectations as to what they would want from a Sonic Adventure remake, and it's been discussed to death already.

[SBR2]

Honestly I'd be 100% down for a ground up remake of both Adventure games that could fix the many many many issues with them.

Also I'd be perfectly fine with the scripts being slightly rewritten if only to make the stories a little more...comprehensible. 

[Gumbit]

I would support that if they can improve the gameplay , especially for other characters . Also SA2 story needs some serious changes . 

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

Off the top of my head:

-Sonic Team sucks. Just like, in general.
-Sonic Team especially sucks at understanding how to properly leverage nostalgia. Just look at how people turned on Classic Sonic when he showed up in Forces, and how much their attempts at bringing Classic elements into Modern Sonic are wearing on people in general. I do not trust them to "get" SA.
-Remaking SA means remaking 6 different kinds of gameplay and possibly the chao gardens on top of that. The series has historically not done well managing multiple gameplay styles, often leaving some or all of them broken and/or underdeveloped.
-The inevitable "Sonic's Shitty Friends" reaction to a game that forces you to play as 6 different characters, one of whom is Big the Cat.
-Walking the line between "faithful remake" and "bold reimagining". SA isn't just a bit dated, a lot of it is outright badly designed. Going 100% accurate would result in a game that would only really appeal to diehard purists, but they wouldn't want to change so much that they'd end up with a completely different game rather than a remake. There's no balance that isn't going to end up pissing some people off.
-Voice actor arguments. I can't imagine them keeping the original acting considering it's pretty terrible and they haven't even been using those VAs for well over a decade. But rerecording everything with the current cast is bound to get purists riled up over them not bringing back Drummond.
-The script could probably use a retranslation as well, but how many people are going to want SA as filtered through Pontac and Graff?

They're going to have to figure out how to make new games appealing regardless, though. And while nostalgia absolutely has its appeal, remaking SA is far from a slam dunk.

The only point I'll give is that Sonic Team sucks, because yes, they do. But everything else is just being (understandably) paranoid. At this point, expectations for the franchise aren't even that high, with Mania being the only thing that truly got a buzz in recent years that wasn't negative.  Like you said, if they fuck it up, then that's that. Just another bad game in a franchise filled with them. At the very least, a remake of Adventure would get people that grew up on the game to check it out and generate some type of hype that's basically nonexistent for years. A new game would just get the same tepid reactions that we usually get unless they did something big...like a remake from a game of a time when people still had faith in this series. 

If you're worried about fan reactions, then so the fuck what? This series is so broad and encompassing that nobody will ever be truly pleased no matter what the series did. Even Mania, you have dissenters for whatever reason. Getting a completely unified opinion is impossible. So I'd rather they'd try something big and potentially fail and then the rudimentary games we've been getting that just come and go and leave no impression beyond "It was ok".

Sometimes I feel like fans are so jaded and cynical over the series that they feel it's better to just remain average and unassuming than to ever really try anything. That attitude is why we get games like Forces where they didn't even try whatsoever.  At least doing something like a Sonic Adventure remake has the potential to please people that have been waiting for something like that for the past two decades. 

[SBR2]

1 hour ago, Gumbit said:

I would support that if they can improve the gameplay , especially for other characters . Also SA2 story needs some serious changes . 

Agreed. SA2's plot is all over the place and really needs a bit of reworking. 

[Diogenes]

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

The only point I'll give is that Sonic Team sucks, because yes, they do. But everything else is just being (understandably) paranoid. At this point, expectations for the franchise aren't even that high, with Mania being the only thing that truly got a buzz in recent years that wasn't negative.  Like you said, if they fuck it up, then that's that. Just another bad game in a franchise filled with them.

I mean yeah but maybe let's...try not to do that? Even if you think there's enough in SA worth remaking, there are a lot of opportunities for things to go wrong with it. I don't think the odds of it working out are good.

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

At the very least, a remake of Adventure would get people that grew up on the game to check it out and generate some type of hype that's basically nonexistent for years. A new game would just get the same tepid reactions that we usually get unless they did something big...like a remake from a game of a time when people still had faith in this series. 

But hype's not worth much if you can't follow up on it. If you hype something up and it fails, you get a bigger backlash than if it had been just business as usual.

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

If you're worried about fan reactions, then so the fuck what? This series is so broad and encompassing that nobody will ever be truly pleased no matter what the series did. Even Mania, you have dissenters for whatever reason. Getting a completely unified opinion is impossible.

And I don't expect to ever get everyone on board with the same ideas. But I also don't think it's a good idea to actively chase after things that we know are divisive and risky. At least not unless there's a payoff worth the risk, and I really don't see it here.

1 hour ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

So I'd rather they'd try something big and potentially fail and then the rudimentary games we've been getting that just come and go and leave no impression beyond "It was ok".

Sometimes I feel like fans are so jaded and cynical over the series that they feel it's better to just remain average and unassuming than to ever really try anything. That attitude is why we get games like Forces where they didn't even try whatsoever.  At least doing something like a Sonic Adventure remake has the potential to please people that have been waiting for something like that for the past two decades. 

Man you're talking about a remake, and you were just talking about how you want them to go back and iterate on the Adventure gameplay because it's the best they've done so far rather than trying something new and experimental. You're not actually advocating for anything gutsy.

And I'm not saying the games should be limp and cowardly. Far from it, I want Sonic to go big and bold. But I don't see how remaking SA is the way to do that.