What do you want to see in Episode 3?

[Jack / Joker]

I wouldn't mind seeing a Sonic the Hedgehog 4 & Knuckles. It'd probably suck just as hard as the first two, but considering we all know who would be in a theoretical Episode III, of course I'm not against it...

[Dr. Homem]

I want Sonic 4, not Sonic 1.4.

 

What made the classics so enjoyable? The fact that each game took the old one's concepts and improved/added. Instead of taking 3&K and improving on its formula... Ep1 instead copies Sonic 1. And Ep2 follows suit by taking Sonic 2 and CD, and adding them in with nothing new.

 

What I want here, is a game that can stand out on its on. One that doesn't rely on its predecessors, or is heavily based upon them.

[SilJeff]

I definitely agree with the originality. The fact that Sonic 4 is nothing but Sonic 1, 2, and CD rehashed along with the poor physics is the main things wrong with it.

 

I know SEGA is too incompetent to make the physics like the classics, but I don't understand how they can't do new things...

 

Maybe Episode three could at least have originality while at the same time building upon the previous games.

[Rlps]

I honestly would rather see a sth5 because episode 2 is already having a different feel than episode 1 changing it any further would just be plot continuation not the sonic 3 and knuckles type continuation they where going for but if we do see an episode three some reasonable things I could say are

More memorable soundtrack

More zones (seriously even sonic 3 alone has more than episode 1&2 separate

A little less rehashes (even though ep 2 did a lot better than ep 1)

A more memorable plot not complex just memorable)

Actual lock on rewards (sorry to those who like episode metal uncontrollably)

And finally an actual feeling of continuation

[Milo]

Maybe Episode three could at least have originality while at the same time building upon the previous games.

 

I wouldn't count on it, because that's essentially how Episode II was marketed by the PR, and it didn't even come close to doing so-both in terms as a sequel to the classics and as a sequel to Episode I.

[Blazy]

Mh...Episode 3..

i'm not a big Fan of Episode 1'nd 2,theyre 2 hard 4 me u.u i just remember this Stupid Carnival Level in Episode 1

But well... Why not?? Maybe Sega have a nice surprise there ~

And i hope theyre remake this annoying Music Style

[Multikaris]

I dont want one. Was never really interested in the Sonic 4 saga to begin with. Also,,after seeing its effects on retro fans, I started to feel sorry for them about this game.

However, if I did want one, I would want Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Espio, Charge, and Vector playable.

Edited January 17, 2013 by New Year's Miru

[LATER BUDDY]

aspammingsayswhat?

 

Give some reason Miru, you've been here long enough to not need a hand holding.

[Chaos Incarnate]

I want it to be the last episode.

I want playable knuckles.

Music definitely needs a fix. Give us back catchy, high quality tracks instead 5 second loops,

Have the end of the game tie into Sonic Adventure somehow.

[Kidd Ryze]

1. Elemental shields - Honestly, this was one of the coolest features of Sonic 3. These shields not only protected you from a hit, but they gave you special abilitues as well. The electric shield gave you a small double jump, bubble shield can make you bounce, and flame shield gives you an air dash. But don't stop there, add more elemental shields!

 

2. Super Emeralds - The super emeralds we're just awesome. They we're harder to get then the regular emeralds, and they grant Sonic and Knuckles to go hyper, and Tails to go super. They gave each character replayability and created immense fun!

 

3. More zones - Really? 4 zones each episode? Definantely not worth 10 dollars.

 

4. Better stage design - Limit the bumpers and speed boosters and make the acts feel unique. Also, no more zone rehashes! This is a sequel.

 

5. Better boss design - What do I need to say? Just, make the bosses more challenging and not tedious.

 

6. More characters - I only want Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman storywise. But It'll be really cool is you can get extra characters by doing certain things. Like if you own Sonic 4 Ep. 2 you can play as Metal Sonic. If you have Sonic Generations, you can play as classic Sonic, etc.

 

Well those are my ideas. I hope Sonic Team takes these ideas somehow. I doubt it though.

[Gaming Misfit]

It's like SEGA tries to rely on the classics with so little different from the classics, but when it is different from the classics it's in the worst ways possible.  Like the boosters.  God, the boosters...

[The Pit of Mystic Cave]

First off, I'm not a fan of this whole 'episodic' thing. But anyways, all I want from this third episode is better physics! If they fix the rolling, that eliminates the uses for the overpopulation of speed boosters and springs. Then they can focus on actual good level design which is why I love Sonic in the first place

[Mechatronic]

- Knuckles.
- 2P mode with changeable characters (something like pairs in Sonic Advance 3)
- more levels
- something done with Tail's fly. It should be more like in Sonic 3.
- Angel Island Zone 

[Spooky Mulder]

Meh I really hope we don't ever seen an Episode 3. Episode 1 was pretty bad and Episode 2 is pretty mediocre. I don't see any reason to continue with Sonic 4 especially since the experience between episodes is already so inconsistent.

That said, I would like a new Classic Sonic game, albeit a proper one. If we ever get one, I hope DIMPS isn't involved and that it feels like a true successor to the Sonic 3. Lets see some original zones and a story as interesting as the Death Egg Saga. You don't need dialogue or fancy cutscenes to tell a good story.

Take a look at Journey on PSN. It's not a 2D platformer like Sonic, but there's not a single line of dialogue in the entire game yet it has one of the most compelling stories in any video game I've played.

Taking a cue from Journey and even Sonic 3 itself, they should use the environments to tell the story. While S3 had its filler stages like Ice Cap and Carnival Night, stages like Angel Island, Launch Base, Lava Reef, Sky Sanctuary, and the Death Egg were all central to the game's story. Those stages are part of why S3 works so well. S4E1 didn't do that at all and E2 does it poorly. The only stage that really has anything to do with the story is Sky Fortress and even that was just shoehorned in as a Winged Fortress rehash.

Edited February 8, 2013 by Spooky Mulder

[Straw Hat]

I'd rather there not be a Episode 3.

I'd rather a new 2D Sonic game by Sonic Team themselves instead of Dimps.

[Blacklightning]

1. Elemental shields - Honestly, this was one of the coolest features of Sonic 3. These shields not only protected you from a hit, but they gave you special abilitues as well. The electric shield gave you a small double jump, bubble shield can make you bounce, and flame shield gives you an air dash. But don't stop there, add more elemental shields!

What more can you do for elemental shields as a mobility tool? Unless you count one that goes backwards (and why the fuck would you want that?), we already have one for every cardinal direction in the 2D plane, and there's really not a whole lot else you can do with them that aren't already accomplished by existing moves and level gimmicks, or can't be done without compromising the abilities of other characters in the process. I'd rather not have more shields for the simple sake of quantity.

 

2. Super Emeralds - The super emeralds we're just awesome. They we're harder to get then the regular emeralds, and they grant Sonic and Knuckles to go hyper, and Tails to go super. They gave each character replayability and created immense fun!

Hyper forms and super emeralds are a redundancy in this series that really has no right to exist anymore. Everything that could possibly be appealing about Hypers can be integrated into Supers instead, and the only reason either of them existed in the first place was to prevent the player from going through over half of S3&K with perma-invincibility in a single playthrough - something that won't happen in Sonic 4 as long as the episodes don't lock on with each other. And even if they did you can justify extra special stages without absolutely asinine DBZ power level bullshit. Hell, the start of Sonic 3 is proof of that much, and doubles as a crowning moment of awesome for Knux to boot.

 

6. More characters - I only want Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, and Eggman storywise. But It'll be really cool is you can get extra characters by doing certain things. Like if you own Sonic 4 Ep. 2 you can play as Metal Sonic. If you have Sonic Generations, you can play as classic Sonic, etc.

So what you're advocating is on-disc DLC which requires the purchase of a completely different game in order to unlock... umm... why would you want that. I'm all for extra characters but I think it's incredibly dumb not to have them encapsulated in its own game and not to have them available right at the start like they should be.

[Indigo Rush]

What more can you do for elemental shields as a mobility tool? Unless you count one that goes backwards (and why the fuck would you want that?), we already have one for every cardinal direction in the 2D plane, and there's really not a whole lot else you can do with them that aren't already accomplished by existing moves and level gimmicks, or can't be done without compromising the abilities of other characters in the process. I'd rather not have more shields for the simple sake of quantity.

There could be a shield that lets you hover down or stomp down without a bounce, but I can't think of many other elements that would work as a shield besides rock or ice.

As you said, regular, fire, bubble and lightning are probably enough anyway.

 

 

 

 

....yay color tags :3

Edited February 15, 2013 by Indigo Rush

[Diogenes]

There could be a shield that lets you hover down or stomp down without a bounce,

Would stomping really be worth it, tho'? I always thought the bubble shield was the weakest in terms of its movement ability; gravity ensures that you fall pretty well regardless, and the bounce itself was just a lesser version of the lightning shield. Having another downwards based shield would basically make it redundant, movementwise, and I'm not sure how much use the stomp-shield would have by itself anyway.

 

Honestly, S4E3 or otherwise, if they ever bring back shields I'd like them to be more powerup-y rather than an extra hit, a movement action, and an elemental immunity. There's any number of gimmicks that could be done with a character who's suddenly surrounded by fire (or lighting or bubbles or whatever); give me something interesting to do with the shields.

 

...I'd also like for them to stop being shields, since I've gotten sick of having the character covered up by some glowy effect half the time...

[Blacklightning]

There could be a shield that lets you hover down or stomp down without a bounce, but I can't think of many other elements that would work as a shield besides rock or ice.

 

I don't think there's really a need to have two seperate shields that both specialize in downward movement - if there's ever a need to have a fast fall without a bounce you'd be better off just implenting it as a secondary function in the bubble shield (eg: holding the jump button down while you touch the ground cancels your bounce). A hover shield is muscling dangerously close to Knux's and Silver's territory, and assuming the whole point of Ice is to walk on water it's basically made redundant by the fact that Sonic can already run along the water's surface as long as speed and level design permits.

 

Dio does have a point though, and it makes me wonder how shields could work if they worked in tandem with the level design. I mean, the functionality of the bubble shield is obvious - it's the only non-shit shield in a water section. But would it work if you could let characters magnetise themselves to certain surfaces with the lightning shield, for example?

 

Oh who am I kidding. That kind of talk assumes Dimps are competent level designers.

[Semi-colon e]

I think this is partly why Sonic 3 had so much water, because the bubble shield was the weakest once S&K rolled around and there was none. The fact it's the only shield where you were able to keep it as you dove under the surface was HUGE, especially when you don't drown too.

 

Similarly, Advance 3 and Episode 2 had a fair bit of water because of Advance 3's pairing system where some characters had differences underwater (Tails could swim but it differed with Knuckles, Cream could float at the surface of the water with Sonic as a partner, Sonic with Cream as a partner made Sonic unable to drown) while Episode 2 had the swimming thing which I actually thought was fun for some reason making White Park Act 3 one of my favourite parts of the game (as well as the feel that you're infiltrating the deserted park from below).

 

In an Episode 3... eh, I dunno, if it does happen just make it a better game. Episode 2 got creative with some of the badniks for the first time in years, but they were often just dickery and the level design was often not great. I will say while I hated Episode 1, Episode 2 I did enjoy to some extent.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Semi-colon e

[TheOcelot]

If the fire, lightning and bubble shield had been in Episode 2, they would have been mostly useless due to the level design. You need far more complex stage design and different physics (like Sonic 3) to make it worth adding those extra shields. Just look at Sonic 3d Blast which had three shields; the gold one with the homing attack, the fire one and the lightning one. It was nice having them, but the game would have played just fine with the normal Sonic 1 type shield.

 

Sonic Team will not change the boxes for another episode of Sonic 4. Lets face it, we are stuck with that - rather horrible looking - green shield. I would have preferred the shield colour being transparent like Sonic 1, as it would look so much better.

 

Something that annoys me, is that in Ep2 when you turn Super Sonic, the green shield still shows up. That's just lazy design. In the previous games when you went Super, the shield did not show. This is how it should be. The shield would of course show up again when Sonic was no longer in his super form.

 

At the very least they could do something like; if you already have a shield, if you then touch another shield box it will upgrade your shield (to a different colour) which then acts like an electric shield - attracts rings - and gives Sonic the double jump ability (like in Sonic 3). To reward you for collecting more than one shield box.

 

What about some new style boxes. The different boxes in Chaotix are fresh in my mind. A box that could temporarily switch your control to Tails, with Sonic as the AI. Since they were too lazy to allow Player 1 (in single player mode) in Ep2 to control Tails, it's the least they could do. Anyway, Sonic Team/Dimps won't do shit, especially if they are going to stick to copying Sonic 2. Arghhh. 

Edited February 15, 2013 by -Bender-

[Indigo Rush]

I agree about the green shield on Super Sonic. At the very least, it should turn yellow or something. That would at least have worked from an aesthetic standpoint.

[Jango]

I rather have this instead of a " still not-good-enough" Sonic 4 episode:

 

-A classic Sonic game, based upon Generations. A little tweaked physics for a better and more natural rolling and jump (it's already pretty enjoyable in Gens, but I feel like it could be a little better, not a must, tho.)

-Original levels and music

-Gens graphic style, Hedgehog Engine

-Simple, but well told story (told through level-cutscenes, just like S3)

-Elemental shields in-levels

-6 zones with 2 acts each, mini-boss on the first and Eggman on the second

-Multiple paths in-levels (just bring Gens level-designers and bam)

-Just Sonic, for a start

-Digital (PSN, XBLA, Steam and whatever is the name of the Wii U Network)

 

I would call that something like, Sonic Reborn or even Sonic Classic, I don't know. It could be the first one of a new digital series with classic characters and gameplay in HD/3D graphics, while the modern Sonic can keep on boxed games.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Jango

[Sega DogTagz]

I'm in the same boat as I was in going into episode II. Give me Knuckles (I guess I should quantify that as playable Knuckles) and they've got my money.

 

At the very least, it continues the trend of reintroducing the other characters back into the series. I want my echidna back.

[Milo]

I'm in the same boat as I was in going into episode II. Give me Knuckles (I guess I should quantify that as playable Knuckles) and they've got my money.

 

At the very least, it continues the trend of reintroducing the other characters back into the series. I want my echidna back.

 

But at what cost?

 

Would you really want Knuckles in Sonic 4? Episode II brought back Tails as a playable character, and yet Dimps brought him back in one of the most damningly retarded ways possible.

 

And why would you buy Epi. III for that sole purpose alone? Would you really pay for more of the same retained from past episodes of this saga-automated level design with dash panels and springs out the wazoo, bosses that shove in a lot of pointless filler just to artificially lengthen it's time, "not" rehashed/reskinned content from much better games-just because one character is playable, let alone makes an appearance in the game?

 

People who gladly accept anything from Sega/Dimps/Sonic Team on one sole condition (be it playable characters, Shadow as a star of his own game, a "Adventure-styled" game, among others) hold a no better mindset than people who would gladly pay for the same game more than once if only to win prizes by a couple of community managers, whether it be a poster, their internet alias/name being mentioned in a video, or dubbed "true Sonic fans"-or sheep, to put the term in a blunt manner.

Edited February 15, 2013 by Gabe the Grinch