What finally broke me

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, G-Force said:

In contrast to all of that, the franchise splits don't have any redeeming qualities, they only do one thing: murder possibilities.  There is no advantage to locking Classic characters like Mighty and Ray out of Modern games.  They could have easily spiced up Team Sonic Racing's roster, and that game sorely needed it.  Likewise, there's no benefit to locking Modern characters out of old-school style Sonic games.  I have what I think are some pretty good ideas for how characters like Shadow and Big could be implemented in a game like Mania, but those ideas will never see the light of day as long as the Modern/Classic split is still a thing. 

I mean, there's a dozen other Modern dimension characters they could've put in TSR, and there's nothing stopping them from making a classic-ish game with the Modern dimension characters if they want to. And it's not like Mighty and Ray or genuine classic gameplay were likely to come back if Mania and the whole dimensional split thing never happened.

[Kazhnuz]

8 hours ago, Dr. Mechano said:

Well, Sonic Pocket Adventure actually had Eggman wear both his classic and modern outfits in the same game. 

He wore the classic cape for the bulk of the game, then changed into the modern jacket at the end. One could make the argument that this game is the perfect "bridge" in the timeline for when things shifted to the modern designs, since we actually see one character "cross over" to their modern look in-game.  

SA1 kinda waffles around about the modern designs "always being" what the characters looked like, considering icons of the classic designs appear in the Sonic pinball game in Casinopolis, and Eggman's classic design is also used in the Hedgehog Hammer minigame. 

Sonic Pocket Adventure is a pretty small game made reusing past level and concept. I really doubt that the game have any importance in the lore, nor that they really wanted to show the transition, especially as they won't care at all about this game in the future. Samewise for Adventure, I think that all the reuse of "Classic" assets was simply because it was what they got,  not to indicate that the character mysteriously all changed of appearance at the same time.

 

For me, Sonic Adventure show way more that they didn't care about how Sonic looked like "in-universe" and that for them it was just a design change to adapt Sonic to the new time.

[Tarnish]

On 9/25/2019 at 5:14 PM, batson said:

But not too long ago, an idea was put forth that abruptly made me stopped caring about SEGA's official Sonic canon. After years of investment, this idea sucked the fun out of caring about the Sonic universe. And this idea is, that the classic games exists in a different dimension from the modern games. The classic games, in other words the games that made me start caring about Sonic in the first place, are no longer canon to the post-1998 series. Classic Sonic and Post-1998 Sonic exist in different worlds. Oh sure, supposedly "something similar" to the classic games happened even in the modern universe, but there is no way to tell exactly how much of them happened. Nowadays when I boot up Sonic 2 on my Mega Drive, SEGA wants me to accept that the Sonic I see on screen is a different character from the Sonic I see when I play Sonic Adventure. And I'm sorry, but that's just not something I can accept and still be invested in Sonic as a fictional universe. I can still enjoy the games as games, I mean they are still fun to play and all, but as a work of fiction, that's it for me. I'm done. The official SEGASonic canon is nowadays so messed up that it's no longer worth being invested in.

Yeah, it's hard to be invested in a character or entire world when they can just retcon anything at any time and seemingly have no clear vision for the franchise, so they're just jumping all over the place as they go along. In other words, why should I be invested when seemingly the creators themselves are not?

[Your Vest Friend]

I keep saying this but it bears repeating; the classic character embargo has existed since like forever, it's only more visible now because they've actually had a modern classic game to be used in. 

[Tarnish]

12 hours ago, Dr. Mechano said:

SA1 kinda waffles around about the modern designs "always being" what the characters looked like, considering icons of the classic designs appear in the Sonic pinball game in Casinopolis, and Eggman's classic design is also used in the Hedgehog Hammer minigame.

I wouldn't be surprised if the old-school icons were just leftover early assets they didn't have time or didn't bother to update as development went along. Sonic's 1-up icon in the item boxes still has his short quill and black eye designs as well, at least in the Dreamcast release. And there was that early Japanese trailer or whatever video showing the Tornado 2 transformation scene where they were still using the Sonic R character model for Sonic (and maybe even for Tails).

[MainJP]

1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

I wouldn't be surprised if the old-school icons were just leftover early assets they didn't have time or didn't bother to update as development went along. Sonic's 1-up icon in the item boxes still has his short quill and black eye designs as well, at least in the Dreamcast release. 

Pretty sure this is 100% the case.

An interesting detail about the 1-up icons is that Sonic's icon faces to the left in the AutoDemo prototype while everyone else's faces to the right.

and it has a more default naming scheme than the other files:

Sonic:

Everyone else:

All of that coupled with the Classic design obviously pointing to it being added much earlier in development

Here's where things get interesting. The mission title card for Tails's stages uses a classic design for Sonic's model:

The model here even uses the same frame of an animation that can be found in later builds. That's his 'slot 11' animation, where he does a faster jog:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

This is actually the same model seen in a early developmental Dreamcast screen revealed at Sonic Adventure Music Experience 2016.

The shoe model present in the Speedup icon is was taken from that model and used for this texture:

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

Spoiler

And the tutorial images from the Dreamcast version's website use his classic design:

 

As well as the storyboard for the first cutscene:

Spoiler

 

 

1 hour ago, Tarnish said:

And there was that early Japanese trailer or whatever video showing the Tornado 2 transformation scene where they were still using the Sonic R character model for Sonic (and maybe even for Tails).

Those were actually their Sonic Jam models:

The Sonic R model lacks a model for the fabric around the wrists on his gloves, hands are lower poly and lack thumbs and the ears are angled differently. Sonic Adventure used the Jam models for both Sonic and Tails.

[Tarnish]

35 minutes ago, MainJP said:

Those were actually their Sonic Jam models:

I stand corrected, but my main point was that it was a model from a previous game where he still had his old/classic design.

[MainJP]

Just now, Tarnish said:

I stand corrected, but my main point was that it was a model from a previous game where he still had his old/classic design.

I know. Sonic World was also just an early build of Sonic Adventure according to the trivia section of the Sonic Advance 2 strategy guide and the Retro Gamer Magazine article.

Just making a TIL post for those he didn't know I suppose.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

I actually don't mind the split between Classic & Modern Sonic universes, in theory it should allow Sonic Team to focus on the differences between the 2 game styles & ideas instead of poorly trying to marge everything together all the time, pleasing very few in the process. I also always personally hated the concept certain fans came up after Generations because of that 1 anniversary game where they thought the classic designs were retcon as younger versions of the modern characters instead of being simply different art styles which I prefer them to stay as. Next is the modern human & animal world split is strange to me I agree, but it doesn't bother me much either outside of them not ever talking about it as a fact inside the actual game stories themselves. Afterall we already had multiple worlds, Little Planet, The Lost Hex, Blaze's World, Whatever those alternate worlds are inside certain games special stages... So what difference does one more make added to the pile? I guess I also just never saw Sonic as having 1 true cohesive canon world, even back in the 90s I didn't... so it doesn't bother me to much by this point.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

What I find the most fascinating/ infuriating part of this all is what some mentioned before, how Sonic team can over-think and under-think this whole situation at the same time,

I think it all boils down to the old Watsonian versus Doylist logic. We 're aproaching it from an in-universe perspective because we like to care about these characters and their world, while Sonic Team only approaches everything from a meta perspective where they blindly throw things around because "fans liked that thing from that other game". Especially Sonic Forces just feels like a grocery list of things fans like with zero thought put behind any character, gameplay element, setting or plot element used.

So yeah, I'm with the "Classic and modern are split to appease the classic fans for keeping the classic games Pure from filthy Modern Sonic." logic.
And I'm fine with that split but it irritates me to no end that Modern Sonic is STILL humping the Classic Sonic train. Especially in Forces. Hey, if you DELIBERATLY make it take place in NOT classic Sonic world, then don't use Green hill Zone, Chemical plant zone AND Death Egg Zone with zero levels based on Modern Sonic's own universe.
So it's not even that we have Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic.
We have Classic Sonic and distorted broken Classic Sonic with some modern Sonic junk shoved into a dusty corner.
Reminds me of Generations splitting the gameplay between "2d gameplay" and "3d gamep- Ah, too much work, more 2d gameplay." 

I hate the stupid logic and even from a meta perspective it makes no sense. Fang the sniper/ Nack the weasel can't appear in modern Sonic why?
Is his classicness of a higher intensity then, say, the chaotix, Amy, all the other characters? 99% of Classic Sonic has already made the jump to Modern Sonic but for the last 1% we're suddenly drawing a line in the sand? Cute.
 

[Wraith]

On 9/26/2019 at 8:04 PM, Diogenes said:

I mean, there's a dozen other Modern dimension characters they could've put in TSR, and there's nothing stopping them from making a classic-ish game with the Modern dimension characters if they want to. And it's not like Mighty and Ray or genuine classic gameplay were likely to come back if Mania and the whole dimensional split thing never happened.

I doubt Mania was made with the dimensional split in mind. It never came up in any interviews about the game's conception or in it's marketing. The only thing they wanted to do was bring back classic Sonic gameplay, not rewrite the Sonic canon. Nobody in the fanbase caught onto anything being amiss and assumed it would slot in right after Sonic 3 or 4 pretty easily. 

It doesn't really have much in the way of benefits but to be honest it's such a non-entity in the games that it doesn't really hurt a whole lot of things either. Like, even if there were no restrictions at all on characters like Mighty and Ray...what were the odds of them showing up in a Modern game anyway?

I'm only bummed that the Chaotix can't show up in Mania 2 on paper but I feel like if they felt like doing that they would bend the rules to make it happen anyway. I don't expect them to seriously commit to this.

 

[Diogenes]

Yeah I didn't mean to imply Mania or its developers were responsible for the split, just that the game aligns with it. I'd imagine it was something like Sega recognizing Classic Sonic's appeal in Generations and jumping on Taxman's pitch as a way to make Classic a bigger part of the brand than just bringing him back in Forces.