JezMM

This idea is only in reference to cut-scenes that are shared across multiple stories and the player has already seen in another character's story. It would never happen with anything the player hasn't already heard on another character's story and... is purely only suggested in the context of Sonic Adventure where some scenes play out 3-4 times over a playthrough of all stories. It's a minor solution to a minor problem anyhow, I only came up with it as an extension of people's frustrations about the repeat Chaos 4/Sky Chase gameplay. As said, this doesn't account for a huge amount of cut-scenes anyway - just stuff like the pre-Knuckles fight, pre-Chaos 4 fight, pre-Gamma fight. The stuff that these cut-scenes cover could easily be covered in the first few seconds of the fight. Heck it might even make more sense that way, than characters yelling "Let's fight!" while standing around in their idle poses for 10 seconds straight. Likewise for Sonic and Tails discussing their next move during adventure field gameplay rather than standing around talking about it too (example: the post-Emerald Coast cut-scene could pretty much end after Tails shows off the chaos emerald, from that point on they're just talking and you might as well give control back to the player, only the most adamant of speedrunners would make it to the train before they finish talking).

Chamomile #145

My hypothetical "smart abridging" would account for differences, like, it'd show Knuckles spotting Sonic and Tails holding the emerald before approaching them even if you've seen the Sonic & Tails versions of the cut-scenes already. But after that, (just as an example of what I'm imagining), the cut-scene shows Knuckles attacking them so everyone is in position, but then the remainder of the cut-scenes dialogue "hand over those emeralds" "no way" etc would play during the boss battle. But yeah, while it doesn't hurt anything, I don't really feel it added anything either. It's sort of a cute idea that, with Tails' cut-scenes, it kind of plays him up to be the hero instead of Sonic, but to be honestl I don't feel it adds enough to be worth all the extra money/time spent recording extra lines - there's particularly no need to record lines from NPCs like Eggman differently for every story. There should definitely be little extra bits and pieces unique to shared cut-scenes across different stories, but only where it makes sense, in my opinion. The cut-scenes shouldn't literally clash with one another across stories.

For the repeated boss battles, I'd say you just need to do something to make them different each time. Rework the Chaos 4 fight so Sonic, Tails and Knuckles each have some discreet task to do to aid each other (Eggman fighting alongside Chaos is an easy way to give at least one of them a seperate thing to do), and have it so you perform that role when you play it yourself. For Sky Chase, have it so Sonic occasionally jumps off like in Sonic 4 to take down some smaller aircraft defending the Egg Carrier, and he fights off enemies in a seperate way - essentially make it a 3D "Classic" Sky Chase stage, while only Tails does the shmup stuff (also: make the shmup gameplay better, natch lol). Now that I think of it, those are the only two big offenders aren't they? The only other crossover content would be the Character vs Character bosses, which could definitely be beefed up a bit but would play differently enough due to different skillsets. The only other thing I'd say is cut-scene-wise, perhaps make it so all cut-scenes are the same for each story, no more of this weird arbitrary dialogue differences that were just a waste of voiceover budget and time. You can still insert little moments that only occur for individual characters, but other than that, having the cut-scenes be exactly the same across multiple stories would mean you could safely make it so the game smartly abridges cut-scenes you've already seen. There could be a setting in the options menu to disable this for those who want to, but by default it should play the shorter versions on repeat viewings.

I actually really like the idea of Big cameoing in everyone else's stories as kind of a "wtf" moment where something comical happens and then they move on, and once you've seen say, 3 out of 5 of them (or met some other condition) Big's Story unlocks as a bonus campaign. But what really got my head spinning from there was the concept of... what if they threw in some extra optional bonus campaigns of similar mini-length for other characters too? Something for Tikal that expands her backstory a bit, something for Eggman with a couple of mini stages where you get to play in one of his boss machines. Obviously this is getting a bit into "they should really be spending that budget on the proper stuff" but as long as we're throwing out neat ideas for a ground-up remake, why not lol. Would add some exclusive special new content to the experience and would mean Big's Story isn't an outlier.

Best case scenario is they include the original game as a free download with purchase of the remake, maybe study the various fan mods of SADX to understand what fans care about in regard to purism on the original version to try and make it as faithful as possible rather than just throwing out another SADX port. That's for the bonus pack-in original version. For the real remake? They need to approach it as a new game if they expect it to sell like a new game, for people beyond those who already love SA1. They should go back to their original design concepts and try and recall what their vision was, but when it comes to what actually shipped with SA1, nothing is precious. They should chop and screw as much as they like with anything that hasn't aged well, or is clashing with improvements elsewhere. Example: People don't like Big's fishing for the most part. Can we make it fun enough to still be a mandatory portion of the game? No? Would resources spent building it as a side mini-game be better spent on making Sonic's gameplay even better? Yes? Fishing's gone. Bye. The original game hasn't gone anywhere. Like, I dunno, I really enjoy Sonic Adventure but it's so much of a fixer-upper and we're so short in supply on good, new Sonic experiences, I'd kinda want them to make it feel like a new experience at this point. I don't want them delicately going at this game with a sanding tool to smooth out the rough edges, I want them to take a sledgehammer to the thing. The only condition I would set is that they should still have some kind of vision for the project overall that appeals to the same qualities that they can agree were appealing about the original game from both general and fan feedback (but general should probably take priority a bit if they want the game to sell well - again, fans will still play the original and will probably inevitably find a remake polarising). So as an example, even I, as an Unleashed fan, would consider it silly to essentially just dress up a boost-gameplay level pack with Sonic Adventure aesthetics. The fact that SA1 is a speedy but varied and (slightly) momentum based platformer is part of it's core appeal, and that's one of several "key Sonic Adventure things" they should regularly circle back on when they're rebuilding the game. Unfortunately, I too, don't really trust the current Sonic Team to be able to deliver on such a project. But part of that distrust does come from the ever-rotating cast of developers, maybe the next shuffle-around will have a bunch of really great designers, and either the budget or coding team (whichever is flawed) required to program more than the most basic of platforming movement mechanics.

Chamomile #144

I'm not too concerned tbh, more content is more content to me, Joker and Banjo are literally the only characters that I care about the source games of and I don't enjoy playing as them enough to make them mains even. But I still like having new stages/music/opponents to fight. The aesthetic of the new stage is nice and heck, I never cared about Corrin but I enjoy their gameplay enough that they ended up becoming one of my mains (same was true of Ike back in Brawl too actually). Maybe Byleth will be the same. It was definitely misguided of them to make this the finale for the 5 initial DLC characters though, especially when they didn't even have a teaser of DLC character 6 to share. The whole thing absolutely feels like it's just promo for Three Houses, history repeats itself when it comes to Fire Emblem and Smash, huh?

I feel like Adventure fans, even if they abstain from newer games, have never really distanced themselves from the series like people who played Sonic as kids and then "grew out of it" did. For whatever reason, the type of fan who loves the Adventure games tend to stay very much in the fanbase, buying all the games in spite of their grumblings or at least keeping close tabs on what the new ones are doing. My post was more talking about people who loved Sonic at one point, but are almost surprised to hear that Sonic games are still made regularly or that they're any good - like they have no idea what the series is really doing these days at all, other than Sonic is still like... around (well, mostly, I have met adults who genuinely talk as if Sonic stopped existing when the Mega Drive went out of fashion). I think OP was starting discussion about those types of people, who might be seeing the movie as if it's a revival of a long-dead franchise or even have no familiarity with Sonic at all but are going to see it with children related to them.

I mean I'd say we've had this happen several times already to different degrees. In fact probably more modern Sonic games try to re-attact old fans than those that don't. Sonic Heroes - Went for a lighthearted Classic-esque tone with the teams presented as different difficulty modes. Sonic 2006 - Tried to take popular game design sensibilities at the time and apply them wily-nilly to Sonic (terribly). Sonic Unleashed - The inclusion of 2D sections was a novel concept that many folks outside of the fanbase saw as a welcome return to Sonic's roots, and the Werehog was specifically designed to capitalise on the popular cinematic brawler genre that God of War popularised. Sonic 4 - A game that absolutely looked like the classics and was designed for mobile first, where most adults "out of gaming" were playing their games. It, bizarrely kind of worked, Sonic 4 wasn't a complete flop in terms of reviews and sales from casual players outside of the fanbase. Sonic Colours - Including this just so it doesn't seem like I forgot it, but this one DIDN'T really seem to be made to reintroduce people to Sonic, even though it accidentally did and was recieved better than 4. It was made at the same time as 4, and came off as if 4 was for the nostalgics and Colours for those who were already on board with Sonic, particularly kids. In the end it turns out if a game is good enough quality as a general experience, everyone can enjoy it, who'd have thought!! Sonic Generations - Duh Sonic Mania - Duh x2, but of particular note is again they seem to reel people in with nostalgic zones upfront rather than the new content. They could have easily made Studiopolis the first or second stage if they really wanted to, but they deemed it more important to really get people's nostalgia going with the big two everyone knows from Sonic 1/2. Sonic Forces - Basically Generations + Mania what with the use of Classic Sonic and Green Hill/Chemical Plant, but just with a helping of second-hand embarassment due to how transparent, repetitive and desperate it all feels at this point. One could argue that it was partially for budgetary reasons, being able to re-use assets from Generations, but... there were 7 other stages that weren't "the big two" if that's all there was to it. All of this said, it's hard to know how I would re-introduce people to Sonic if I was making the next game and that was one of my goals. But I'd definitely want to lean on the accidental success of Sonic Colours... just... make a really good game that fans and newcomers alike can enjoy and let word of mouth do the rest.

Chamomile #143

Chamomile #142

Cool concept for a project! You have my interest. I feel I'm so hopelessly in love with the original game (my first Sonic game, my rose-tinted glasses are practically opaque) that I'm gonna be way too nitpicky about how I see it get recreated but I'm looking forward to checking out your vision on it regardless. I certainly too was thinking "when's the person who wants to remake Sonic 2 gonna come along" after the incredible efforts on Chaos and Triple Trouble lol. Best of luck with the project, I'll be sure to give feedback when something playable is ready!

I think this is something that really, REALLY varies depending on the type of game. In most cases, I don't think games really should have anything TOO massive. It's not like games tend to tell you the reward upfront, since a game should be enjoyable enough to 100% without any material reward for doing so. I know Sonic Adventure 2's Green Hill is often considered the holy grail of 100% rewards, but I'll tell you what - I wasn't grinding chao and tearing my hair out at Cosmic Wall A ranks because of any innate fun in them - I simply was that desperate to get just one more little slice of Sonic platforming gameplay to enjoy (and at the time, the Green Hill remake angle was a novel concept of course). In fact, gonna throw this out there - if I was in charge of an all-out remake of SA2, I'd probably replace the 100% reward with something smaller, and instead reward something like Green Hill for finishing all missions with any rank, something reasonable. I'm really not into the idea that 100%ing games should be some elite club that rewards exclusive content that could be enjoyed by players of any skill level if they had access to it. Green Hill is an example of such - it's not like it's a final super duper challenging stage for experts, like the Mario games tend to do these days (but I think Mario Odyssey absolutely made the right choice by unlocking that earlier than 100%, considering the ridiculous amount of content in that game).