A question about alternate playable characters in Sonic games

[Shiny Gems]

Now, as we know, the final update for Sonic Frontiers will release in two days on the 28th of September, this month. When reading the synopsis of that final update earlier, I noticed that the three playable characters other than Sonic, which are Tails, Amy and Knuckles will be trying to find the Chaos Emeralds, while Sonic is apparently preoccupied with doing something else (of which I forgot at the moment). While Tails, Amy and Knuckles have the same role in this final update, apparently, they apparently appear to be doing something different from what the main character, Sonic, is doing, and are helping him in rather than fighting alongside him, or without him joining them in finding the Emeralds.

Which brings me to the question: How do you want playable characters to be handled in Sonic games, especially, but not limited to, future Sonic games?

Do you want them to have a different role than Sonic like in Sonic Frontiers and helping Sonic in a way?

Or do you want them playable like in the classics, where they had the same adventure as Sonic but with their own moves and (sometimes) different routes?

Or like the Adventure games where they had their own story? Not necessarily their own gameplay, but yeah.

Or, in the case of playable villain/rival/antagonist characters, (if that ever happens) have them try to hinder Sonic in levels and make it more difficult for him? (Like what Dr. Cortex was trying to do in that one ice stage he was playable in, within the video game, Crash Bandicoot 4: It's About Time!)

Or; in terms of gameplay; do you want them to have slight variations in game play from Sonic, compared to the classics and the Adventure games, something to mix them up like a gimmick? (kind of like Silver the Hedgehog from Sonic 06, except with more speed like Sonic)

Or a mix of the above, or something else?

Feel free to answer and discuss your thoughts. I will be waiting for you all to say things.

[Lytan]

I'm a sucker for the Adventure games so my preference is for the side characters to have their own stories and things to do. I suspect Frontiers is going for a similar thing as 06's "End of the World" segment - albeit hopefully with a little more for each character to do than a short stage, since it's just the three of them. I like this kind of thing because it gives the characters more narrative reason for being there. It's more engaging than just adding Tails, Knuckles, and Amy as alternate choices for a "new game plus" file. Not that I would be opposed to that, but I think it's more fun when playing as the other characters serves an in-game purpose. It also backs up the whole "teamwork" thing to have Sonic's friends help him out in their own ways.

In terms of gameplay, variation between characters all the way. I want a reason to select them that's more than a re-skin, especially since all these characters have their own fun abilities. To use S3&K as an example, I enjoy how a stage I've played a bunch of times as Sonic feels totally different as Knuckles.

All in all, I love the sound of the new Frontiers update. It's so nice to see the other characters playable in any capacity after so long, especially in a way that respects their own skills.

[MetalSkulkBane]

GAMEPLAY
I am a big adventure fan... but I don't think this is the way.

Not everyone who buys Sonic game wants mech shooting. And there never will be enough budget to polish every game style.

So I say Classic Route, where every character is different, but they all can beat the level. Or 06 routes where levels do have to be changed, but not too drastically, it's still platformer, not God of Warhog

Ooor, if some styles just don't translate well (Knuckles too OP in 3D standard platforming), then I guess Sonic 06 had a decent idea, allowing to play them for short segments.

STORY
...honestly, I'm flexible. Whatever budget allows. Ideally, I wanna say SA1, but that created an obvious problem when some scenes were repeated several times. So maybe do like SA2 or 06, with 2 or3 sub-stories tops and group characters into teams?

I would be perfectly fine with spin-off stories, that happen before or after, just in the same area. It makes the big story less focused, but it works too.

The "what if" route, where Shadow or Blaze defeats Deadly Six instead of Sonic is good enough, but I prefer everything to be canon.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

We’ve had this question asked dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and the universal consensus is this—NO GENRE ROULETTE!

Allow me to explain using Big the Cat as a stellar example:

-In SA1, if you wanted to unlock the final story, you needed to play all six characters. Typical Sonic gameplay here is as a platformer to get from point A to Point B. Big the Cat is one of the two exceptions—his game is a goddamn fishing simulator that has little similar to the other characters, and is required.

-In Sonic Frontiers, the gameplay here is an Open World..er, Open Zone sandbox that gives you freedom to tackle objectives in anyway you want, but still has that “Get from Point A to Point B” to reach the end of the level. However, to get from Point A to B, you need to collect items around the level to progress. Big the Cat, again, is an exception—again, as a goddamn fishing simulator. However, those items you need to collect, you can skip the entire level by going fishing, and this is optional.

Put another way, if I’m playing Mario 64 the game shouldn’t suddenly jump into me playing Ikaruga in order to actually beat the game.

You can have multiple arch types of playable characters, all of them quick and mobile with differences such as one being able to shoot lasers, another able to hit harder and kill enemies faster, another able to fly, another able to teleport, throw bombs, etc. But they should still do so as a platformer and not a completely different genre of gameplay outside of mini-games—if I’m playing an action game and want to switch from playing Sonic to playing Big the Cat, the game should stay an action game and let me control Big the same way I control Sonic but with his own flavor to the gameplay.

After 20 years of hindsight, this question is something that’s been answered quite a lot.

[Shiny Gems]

7 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

We’ve had this question asked dozens and dozens and dozens of times, and the universal consensus is this—NO GENRE ROULETTE!

Allow me to explain using Big the Cat as a stellar example:

-In SA1, if you wanted to unlock the final story, you needed to play all six characters. Typical Sonic gameplay here is as a platformer to get from point A to Point B. Big the Cat is one of the two exceptions—his game is a goddamn fishing simulator that has little similar to the other characters, and is required.

-In Sonic Frontiers, the gameplay here is an Open World..er, Open Zone sandbox that gives you freedom to tackle objectives in anyway you want, but still has that “Get from Point A to Point B” to reach the end of the level. However, to get from Point A to B, you need to collect items around the level to progress. Big the Cat, again, is an exception—again, as a goddamn fishing simulator. However, those items you need to collect, you can skip the entire level by going fishing, and this is optional.

Put another way, if I’m playing Mario 64 the game shouldn’t suddenly jump into me playing Ikaruga in order to actually beat the game.

You can have multiple arch types of playable characters, all of them quick and mobile with differences such as one being able to shoot lasers, another able to hit harder and kill enemies faster, another able to fly, another able to teleport, throw bombs, etc. But they should still do so as a platformer and not a completely different genre of gameplay outside of mini-games—if I’m playing an action game and want to switch from playing Sonic to playing Big the Cat, the game should stay an action game and let me control Big the same way I control Sonic but with his own flavor to the gameplay.

After 20 years of hindsight, this question is something that’s been answered quite a lot.

Well, maybe the gameplay thing with the genre roulette has been asked so many times, but I thought most other things aside from that were, well, kind of new. Kind of.

I also just couldn't help but ask after noticing how Sonic friends would work as playable characters in the final update of Sonic Frontiers. I could have focused on certain things, but I wanted to broaden it up some, if you know what I mean.

EDIT: But then again, sorry if I made something that just was...unnecessary.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

1 hour ago, ShinyGems said:

Well, maybe the gameplay thing with the genre roulette has been asked so many times, but I thought most other things aside from that were, well, kind of new. Kind of.

I also just couldn't help but ask after noticing how Sonic friends would work as playable characters in the final update of Sonic Frontiers. I could have focused on certain things, but I wanted to broaden it up some, if you know what I mean.

EDIT: But then again, sorry if I made something that just was...unnecessary.

It not unnecessary, it's just something that's been talk about way more than you think.

Every question you asked was answered multiple times, all the way back to when the idea of having multiple characters was soured by Sonic 06's bad reception:

• Characters can have their own stories and their own gameplay...rather they should have their own gameplay kits. Think League of Legends or Apex Legends, where you have characters, all of whom share a basic control scheme of movements, all of whom can have an attack or weapon and kill other players. That said, while characters like Loba and Wraith can run and move around shooting people on the map in Apex, Loba and Wraith have different abilities that give them different ways of running and moving around to shoot people. (SIDE NOTE: I have not played a single game of Apex Legends, but I've seen videos, so this is just me over simplifying things for clarity)
• Characters can have their own moves--Sonic can boost, Tails can Fly, Knuckles can punch and glide, Shadow can throw Chaos Spears, Amy can use her hammer, Big can yoink things with his fishing pole, etc. But these moves shouldn't require the main game go from 3D Action Platformer to a 2D Shoot 'em Up Bullet Hell or Fishing Simulator. Like, imagine you were playing a 3D mech game like Armored Core only for the gameplay to go from Mechs to a 2D Fighting game mid or even late in your play through? Not what you came in to play, is it? Characters should have a different style of play, not the game turning into a different genre whenever you play a different character.

Another example of what not to do? Sonic Unleashed spliting it's Day and Night Stages dividing the faster platforming stages from the slower beat 'em up stages. That's two different genres that aren't meshing well with each other.

[Iko]

I would enjoy having new stories for the characters, but honestly, the thing I'm interested the most when it comes to characters, is their gameplay style. It would be cool if every character has a different story like in Adventure 1, but I'm totally fine if the characters are just a bonus and completely not canon.

This said, if Shadow is hybernated into a capsule, Silver is stuck in the future, Blaze is stuck in another world, Cream is too young for dangerous things, and so, I don't care at all, as long as they allow me to play as those characters for fun, even if said characters have no role in the story (not canon). Kinda like knuckles in Sonic 2, just a bonus for the sake of gameplay (Knuckles canonically didn't met Sonic/Eggman yet in Sonic 2, and especially didn't visit Westside Island - yet he's playable).

---

Gameplay-wise, the classic way is the best: every character should have the same gameplay but a few unique moves that allow them to approach the levels in a slightly different way. To me it's not important if the characters have unique routes, as long as playing as them does feel like a new experience.

The Sonic games are usually short due to their nature of having huge levels that you can rush through in less than a minute each: this is why I think that having multiple playable characters is necessary in order to increase the replay value of the Sonic games. The characters should all share the same core gameplay, but be different enough to justify multiple playthrough of the same game in order to experiment with them and how their unique moves can interact with the levels. Characters who are just reskins are useless because they don't add anything gameplay-wise.

[Shiny Gems]

46 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

It not unnecessary, it's just something that's been talk about way more than you think.

Every question you asked was answered multiple times, all the way back to when the idea of having multiple characters was soured by Sonic 06's bad reception:

• Characters can have their own stories and their own gameplay...rather they should have their own gameplay kits. Think League of Legends or Apex Legends, where you have characters, all of whom share a basic control scheme of movements, all of whom can have an attack or weapon and kill other players. That said, while characters like Loba and Wraith can run and move around shooting people on the map in Apex, Loba and Wraith have different abilities that give them different ways of running and moving around to shoot people. (SIDE NOTE: I have not played a single game of Apex Legends, but I've seen videos, so this is just me over simplifying things for clarity)
• Characters can have their own moves--Sonic can boost, Tails can Fly, Knuckles can punch and glide, Shadow can throw Chaos Spears, Amy can use her hammer, Big can yoink things with his fishing pole, etc. But these moves shouldn't require the main game go from 3D Action Platformer to a 2D Shoot 'em Up Bullet Hell or Fishing Simulator. Like, imagine you were playing a 3D mech game like Armored Core only for the gameplay to go from Mechs to a 2D Fighting game mid or even late in your play through? Not what you came in to play, is it? Characters should have a different style of play, not the game turning into a different genre whenever you play a different character.

Another example of what not to do? Sonic Unleashed spliting it's Day and Night Stages dividing the faster platforming stages from the slower beat 'em up stages. That's two different genres that aren't meshing well with each other.

Maybe I should have just restricted the topic to "What narrative role do you think playable characters other than Sonic should have in relation to Sonic himself?"? Not that it changes anything, but initially, that was what I was going for before I added everything else.

[Phoenix]

Narratively, the way SA1 didn't is best for me. Every character had their own story and arc (Tails and Gamma's narrative arcs being standouts), they intersected and split, and it all built up to the finale. The more of them you played, the more you understood, and they could all mostly stand on their own.

[LegoNess]

I feel like the roles of other playable characters really depends on the game. For something like Sonic Adventure 2, having it divided into 2 stories happening simultaneously works for the game, but with the classics, having everyone play similarly is ideal.