Sonic and... stuff...

[Yoder]

I've got a bit of a new topic, but it's more of a question: Which character do you think has the best story (in any game) or has been the best part of any game's story.

In my mind, E-102 Gamma's story, though not directly connected to SA1's plot, was probably the most well-implemented plot. It was deep but lacked a 'cheesey' factor.

[Sho_"Rocker"_Daisuke]

I've got a bit of a new topic, but it's more of a question: Which character do you think has the best story (in any game) or has been the best part of any game's story.

In my mind, E-102 Gamma's story, though not directly connected to SA1's plot, was probably the most well-implemented plot. It was deep but lacked a 'cheesey' factor.

I have to agree, E-102 Gamma's story was very deep, and actually had a great plot, though it was kind of used like that before, but anyways

I also liked the fact that they never brought him back in a sequel (ignoring Sonic Battle), not that I hated the robot, it just shows me that that little bird never got caught and tured into a robot again, and got live a free and secure life... either that or Sega just decided to replace him E-123 Omega, which is probably more the case

[Flare]

Thats what ruined Shadow, he came back. I liked Shadows story as it had the deep emotional side and the scary, who is he side. But yeah like I said it they ruined it after they tried to make more money off him.

[kyrtuck]

I don't mind there being a story with a few cutscenes, but let's not overdo it. They should cut down on what characters they put in the games, but I'd also like to see a few old ones come back that we haven't seen in a long while. Also, I kinda wish they could make Knuckles' role more...individual. He's supposed to be more of a loner, so who says that he ALWAYS has to hang out with Sonic and Tails.

[Yoder]

Omega in Sonic Battle was a copy Robotnik made, because he was called Chaos Gamma. I'm guessing that means the clone is powered by a chaos emerald?

Yeah, Shadow should've just died in SA2. His amnesia only made things more cliche. Aliens took the cake for the strangest development, because I preferred Gerald being evil and vengeful.

Amy's story in SA1 was okay. The play style was different and I wouldn't mind seeing her come back as a playable.

[Sho_"Rocker"_Daisuke]

I think Shadow should've died, but maybe they could make a game where we ACTUALLY find out Shadow's past? but only if they did that

Spoiler:
and in Shadow the Hedgehog, we don't find out ANYTHING about him, if you beat it on good, it doesn't matter because you're there to help people, if you beat it on evil, it still doesn't matter because you just want to destroy, and if you beat it anywhere in between, you're a freakin' android built by Eggman, supossedly, but it still doesn't matter!!!

[Flare]

You find out hes an alien, you find out he is Shadow from SA2, you find out what his real purpose was, you find out what the eclipse cannon is for... you find out quite a bit, however its all info they needed so they could Shadow come back without plotholes.

[kyrtuck]

Maybe they could give minor characters bigger roles, like King Boom Boo, Eggrobo, Wendy Witchcraft, Grand Battle Kukku the 15th, and Tails Doll.

I mean Boomboo could bring new levels of intellegence to the series with deep, thoguht provoking dialogue such as:

BLAAAAAAARG!

and

BLAAAAAAARG!

and let us not forget the most memorable one:

BLAAAAAAAAAARG!



This is a total joke by the way

[Afr0Blu3]

The answers to how to revive Sonic are rather simple and I'm amazed that they've alluded everyone for so long.

The old games were focused around Sonic, but not his speed - his speed was only available to slightly more skilled players. Whenever you get some real speed going you'll be slowed down by spikes, enemies, springs and various other obstacles. If this weren't true, then the posts allowing access to the past and future in Sonic CD wouldn't require you to maintain speed for a set amount of time before letting you warp through time. Sonic's top speeds had to be worked for, and it took skill to maintain it. A lot of the engine focused around the physics of Sonic himself too, with him bouncing off enemies at different heights, speeds and angles, depending on where he hit them from and at what speed. The current games just showboat Sonic's speed and more or less control themselves half the time, relying heavily on giving you blisteringly high speeds with little to no effort. Sonic also seems to only bounce a set height from enemies in the newer games and the homing attack meant you always hit everything at the same speed.

The levels always had many different, interlocking routes which allowed you to replay each level in a variety of different ways and meant that there were always new areas to find and hazards to overcome. New games are far more linear, containing one main route which the player is forced down, with few shortcuts or side roads. The exploration element's just gone as of late.

Plus, Sonic was about Sonic. The ramps, jumps and loops were designed specifically for Sonic and it felt as though Sonic alone could conquer it all. True, in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles allowed you to play as Tails and Knuckles, both had their own specific abilities which allowed them access to routes that were impossible to get to as Sonic - it meant the gameplay changed drastically depending on who your character was, and due to different characters having access to different routes, it almost felt like playing a new game each time. For example, say there are a set of platforms ascending from a breakable wall - a common sightin those games. Sonic couldn't break the wall, but could jump up the platforms and continue along. Knuckles however had a lower jump height and couldn't get up the platforms, but he could break the wall. The levels were designed in a way that made them unique for each character, but as Heroes shows, the obstacles that are character specific are now present only to verify a character's participation in a game. It's far from the same effect. To solve this, you'd either have to let Sonic go solo again, or try to recapture the level layouts of Sonic & Knuckles.

Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2 bring up an alarming point as well. There are too many characters with little to no variation between them. In Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow and Rouge were there purely to rival Sonic and Knuckles - that was their entire purpose and these new characters were mere clones of their rivals, with the same abilities and statistics. Meanwhile, Tails had his entire gameplay changed, simply to use him as an equivalent to Robotnik, ignoring all the previous flight, swim and tail abilities which made him unique and lovable. In Heroes, all the teams are carbon copies of each other, and play exactly the same as one another. 12 playable characters that are all clones of one another is a worrying thing, it'd be like a Street Fighter game filled with Ryus, Kens, Akumas and Dans (oh wait), where the characters are there simply to bump up the roster and have no real purpose or use. I say most of these characters need to be dropped, or have their involvement severely cut.

To use Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure as an example, I bring up another point. Sonic Adventure 2 felt broken, because as soon as you got into the game and started enjoying blasting through stages, you were forced to switch to a whole new gameplay style as either Tails or Knuckles. This killed the flow of the game for me, as the second I got comfortable playing as a character, I had to jump to another one who played as though it was a different game. S3&K and SA1 had multiple characters, and they were all unique, but, you only played as one at a time. You played as Sonic, got into a Sonic groove, and finished it as Sonic. You could play as Tails, Knuckles, Amy, E-102 etc when you felt like it and wanted a change of pace. It was never forced, and so felt like an option and an occasional breath of fresh air giving you replay value, rather than the forced and stiff switches in later games. The S3&K and SA1 character select systems need to return if multiple playable characters are to be a feature and lure of future Sonic games.

Super Sonic was once a prestigous award for those who bothered to collect all the Chaos Emeralds, and you could play him in any level, and take him wherever you liked. This unparalled freedom Super Sonic offered needs to return. I'm sick of him simply appearing for one heavily scripted and linear battle. Sick of the Chaos Emeralds being a part of the plot, rather than having to attain them through Special Stages. Special Stages like those in Sonic 1, 2, 3 and even 3D need to return. Though I despise the Special Stages of Sonic CD and Chaotix.

Robotnik needs to be Robotnik once more. I'm not talking about the name swap, I'm talking about Robotnik being the anatgonist, the main villain, rather than a soft, comedic relief, villain that is usually shown as being incompetent by a higher being or one of his own creations. It's getting very old, very fast and he's no longer the nemesis he once was.

Another point is the story. Sonic was never originally designed for a worldwide continuity and plot. Sonic 1, Sonic 2, CD, 3 and Knuckles had plots that were heavily hinted but never thrown in your face and never the focus. It was always pick up and play gameplay. I'm sick of there being giant, contradicting and confusing plots by people trying to get into Square Enix.

Also, the games need to be finished and polished on release. Too often do they feel rushed and contain a truckload of bugs and glitches. The engine needs to be ready before we get to play it. We don't mind if we don't get it for Christmas, just as long as it's good. So long as the extra time was spent making sure the game was as tight as it possibly could be.

Moving from 3D back to 2D's not the answer either, as the Sonic Advance series proved. Though Rush was indeed good, it didn't meet the standards of the old games for several of the reasons listed above. 3D can work, if done right.

But then again, Sonic 1's GBA port proves that Sega can't even get the most basic of games right these days. All they had to do was move Sonic 1 on Mega Drive to the Game Boy Advance, and somewhere along the line they managed to mess up the collision detection and add several bugs and glitches.

Sonic Unleashed is the last bastion of hope for me. If it doesn't do what I want it to do, then I'll probably give up on the series entirely.

[A.J. Nitro]

Holy crap! Giant wall of text!

[Sho_"Rocker"_Daisuke]

Holy crap! Giant wall of text!

and I had the time to read all of that

[DioShiba]

The answers to how to revive Sonic are rather simple and I'm amazed that they've alluded everyone for so long.

The old games were focused around Sonic, but not his speed - his speed was only available to slightly more skilled players. Whenever you get some real speed going you'll be slowed down by spikes, enemies, springs and various other obstacles. If this weren't true, then the posts allowing access to the past and future in Sonic CD wouldn't require you to maintain speed for a set amount of time before letting you warp through time. Sonic's top speeds had to be worked for, and it took skill to maintain it. A lot of the engine focused around the physics of Sonic himself too, with him bouncing off enemies at different heights, speeds and angles, depending on where he hit them from and at what speed. The current games just showboat Sonic's speed and more or less control themselves half the time, relying heavily on giving you blisteringly high speeds with little to no effort. Sonic also seems to only bounce a set height from enemies in the newer games and the homing attack meant you always hit everything at the same speed.

The levels always had many different, interlocking routes which allowed you to replay each level in a variety of different ways and meant that there were always new areas to find and hazards to overcome. New games are far more linear, containing one main route which the player is forced down, with few shortcuts or side roads. The exploration element's just gone as of late.

Plus, Sonic was about Sonic. The ramps, jumps and loops were designed specifically for Sonic and it felt as though Sonic alone could conquer it all. True, in Sonic 3 and Sonic and Knuckles allowed you to play as Tails and Knuckles, both had their own specific abilities which allowed them access to routes that were impossible to get to as Sonic - it meant the gameplay changed drastically depending on who your character was, and due to different characters having access to different routes, it almost felt like playing a new game each time. For example, say there are a set of platforms ascending from a breakable wall - a common sightin those games. Sonic couldn't break the wall, but could jump up the platforms and continue along. Knuckles however had a lower jump height and couldn't get up the platforms, but he could break the wall. The levels were designed in a way that made them unique for each character, but as Heroes shows, the obstacles that are character specific are now present only to verify a character's participation in a game. It's far from the same effect. To solve this, you'd either have to let Sonic go solo again, or try to recapture the level layouts of Sonic & Knuckles.

Heroes and Sonic Adventure 2 bring up an alarming point as well. There are too many characters with little to no variation between them. In Sonic Adventure 2, Shadow and Rouge were there purely to rival Sonic and Knuckles - that was their entire purpose and these new characters were mere clones of their rivals, with the same abilities and statistics. Meanwhile, Tails had his entire gameplay changed, simply to use him as an equivalent to Robotnik, ignoring all the previous flight, swim and tail abilities which made him unique and lovable. In Heroes, all the teams are carbon copies of each other, and play exactly the same as one another. 12 playable characters that are all clones of one another is a worrying thing, it'd be like a Street Fighter game filled with Ryus, Kens, Akumas and Dans (oh wait), where the characters are there simply to bump up the roster and have no real purpose or use. I say most of these characters need to be dropped, or have their involvement severely cut.

To use Sonic 3 & Knuckles and Sonic Adventure as an example, I bring up another point. Sonic Adventure 2 felt broken, because as soon as you got into the game and started enjoying blasting through stages, you were forced to switch to a whole new gameplay style as either Tails or Knuckles. This killed the flow of the game for me, as the second I got comfortable playing as a character, I had to jump to another one who played as though it was a different game. S3&K and SA1 had multiple characters, and they were all unique, but, you only played as one at a time. You played as Sonic, got into a Sonic groove, and finished it as Sonic. You could play as Tails, Knuckles, Amy, E-102 etc when you felt like it and wanted a change of pace. It was never forced, and so felt like an option and an occasional breath of fresh air giving you replay value, rather than the forced and stiff switches in later games. The S3&K and SA1 character select systems need to return if multiple playable characters are to be a feature and lure of future Sonic games.

Super Sonic was once a prestigous award for those who bothered to collect all the Chaos Emeralds, and you could play him in any level, and take him wherever you liked. This unparalled freedom Super Sonic offered needs to return. I'm sick of him simply appearing for one heavily scripted and linear battle. Sick of the Chaos Emeralds being a part of the plot, rather than having to attain them through Special Stages. Special Stages like those in Sonic 1, 2, 3 and even 3D need to return. Though I despise the Special Stages of Sonic CD and Chaotix.

Robotnik needs to be Robotnik once more. I'm not talking about the name swap, I'm talking about Robotnik being the anatgonist, the main villain, rather than a soft, comedic relief, villain that is usually shown as being incompetent by a higher being or one of his own creations. It's getting very old, very fast and he's no longer the nemesis he once was.

Another point is the story. Sonic was never originally designed for a worldwide continuity and plot. Sonic 1, Sonic 2, CD, 3 and Knuckles had plots that were heavily hinted but never thrown in your face and never the focus. It was always pick up and play gameplay. I'm sick of there being giant, contradicting and confusing plots by people trying to get into Square Enix.

Also, the games need to be finished and polished on release. Too often do they feel rushed and contain a truckload of bugs and glitches. The engine needs to be ready before we get to play it. We don't mind if we don't get it for Christmas, just as long as it's good. So long as the extra time was spent making sure the game was as tight as it possibly could be.

Moving from 3D back to 2D's not the answer either, as the Sonic Advance series proved. Though Rush was indeed good, it didn't meet the standards of the old games for several of the reasons listed above. 3D can work, if done right.

But then again, Sonic 1's GBA port proves that Sega can't even get the most basic of games right these days. All they had to do was move Sonic 1 on Mega Drive to the Game Boy Advance, and somewhere along the line they managed to mess up the collision detection and add several bugs and glitches.

Sonic Unleashed is the last bastion of hope for me. If it doesn't do what I want it to do, then I'll probably give up on the series entirely.

I can't believe I read all that, but a lot of this is true though. For the bugs and glitches part I think Sega and Sonic Team need to find better Debuggers then the debooggers they have now.

[Yoder]

All very true, Sam.

Their best move in regards to your points would be to bring back the character select of SA1 and let every character play every stage a different way as in SA1 (noting Sonic's last stage being Gamma's first stage). Also, they need much better boss/enemy design. Enemies and bosses from SA2 and on were crap.

It seems that Unleashed will primarily be Sonic-only, so that avoids the first 2 problems. Unleashed's enemies don't look much better than previous iterations. Plus, it seems we'll have another epic chaos emerald and doomsday creature conflict on our hands.

[kyrtuck]

So....do you think they should just get rid of the voice acting altogether, except for a few little noises? It works for Mario.

[Flare]

Hmm, I think it would be interesting to see if it works, but no, one reason I like SA-SA2 is the story cutscenes.