G-Force

The first Hyrule Warriors was bottom to top fanservice. It was basically The Legend of Zelda's own personal version of Smash Bros; a big ass crossover between all the different Zelda games. They weren't even trying to make it link up with existing canon, and because of that, they didn't have to think twice about who they included in the game. With this game, they're actually trying to create a legitimate prequel to an established main series game, so it's pretty safe to assume that they're going to be more conservative with their character choices. Having said that, I wanna throw down my relatively conservative predictions for what we might see from this game. Link will probably have a variety of movesets based on different weapon types since, y'know, that's part of his whole deal as a character. Basic Sword & Shield is confirmed, and the Master Sword will inevitably be a variant of that, but I'm sure there'll be Greatsword/Hammer and Spear movesets as well. I'm also hoping there will be at least one completely new weapon type that might go on to appear in BotW2. Zelda will likely have two movesets: Sheikah Slate and Divine Power. Maybe she'll get more, but definitely those two. Mipha, Urbosa, Daruk, and Revali are virtually confirmed playable already. I can't really see any of them fighting with anything other than their signature weapons though. ...I guess Urbosa could have a Thunder Helm moveset, maybe? Impa, Purah, and Robbie were all around 100 years before BotW, so they will inevitably play a significant role. Impa will probably be playable as a conventional Sheikah ninja. That little egg shaped Guardian is on the box art, so it has to be important, so it's either playable or a major supporting element. If it IS playable, my money's on it being a drone controlled by Purah and/or Robbie. All of the enemies we've seen so far are the same ones from BotW, which ... doesn't bode well. Then again, this was just an initial reveal, so ... fingers crossed? There's a scene in the trailer of Link clashing the Master Sword against ... some kind of electrical weapon? It doesn't look like any BotW weapon I know, so either it's a new thing or it's just too zoomed in to recognize.

Honestly, I think Diogenes hit the nail on the head. Sonic and Knuckles should be friends and allies with a bit of a competitive rivalry. Exactly which side of their relationship comes put would depend on what's going on. If the fate of the world's at stake then they would team up, no questions asked, but if it's just something like Team Sonic Racing? Knuckles should be putting his own team together to kick Sonic's butt.

Sakurai likes featuring new IP's. I'm pretty sure he said so back when... I think it was Wii Fit Trainer? When Wii Fit Trainer was first revealed for Smash? I know he has specifically said something about Nintendo making new IP's, either that he was happy they made something new for him to feature, or that they had gone a long time without making new ones.

See, the problem with your point here is that even if I wanted to agree that Shadow, Blaze, and Silver were all "force of nature" strong, the same would apply to Sonic these days. I mean, the only thing that really made Shadow seem more powerful in the first place was Chaos Control, something Sonic eventually figured out he could also do. These days I tend to view Sonic and Shadow as having a kind of Ryu & Ken or Mario & Luigi situation. Same overall "fighting style," so to speak, different specialties. They both favor a combination of speed, spin attacks, and Chaos powers, but Sonic leans very heavily toward the speed and spin attacks and Shadow leans toward the Chaos powers. I don't think it makes any sense to stress over Shadow being stronger, because the whole point of characters like Shadow is to be overcome. Sonic overcame Shadow, so Shadow's not stronger. Period.

So either Penders has never heard of orphans, or he doesn't think orphans can develop as people. Sorry, I'm kidding. I know it's because he can't fathom anything other than a generic nuclear family.

That's not complicated, that's just tongue in cheek. Sonic & company's past selves are literally just their old character designs. That is technically exactly what they used to look like. That's the joke. It's like if Mickey Mouse pulled out an expired driver's license, and the picture turned out to be him from Steamboat Willie. It's not supposed to be taken super seriously. And then Sonic Forces came along, said "Sonic from another dimension," and now we're divvying up the whole franchise like a huge ass divorce settlement. It's so stupid.

The robots are generic because it's a live action movie, and thus "needs" to be more "realistic." It's Sonic '06 all over again.

I know this is kind of a dick thing to say, and I'm sorry for that, but this is pretty much the perfect example of how bizarrely dumb the Sonic fanbase can be. We're literally talking about a franchise built around brightly colored rubber hose cartoon animal people with superpowers, and yet there are still people who insist on calling out weirdly specific parts of this inherently absurd fictional world. Knuckles can be red, sentient, 3 feet tall, bipedal, super strong, glide through the air, and have no visible genitalia, but the fist spikes are too ridiculous? That's where the line is? Why is that where the line is?

Nintendo seems to operate on the assumption that Luigi can't be the star of anything unless Mario's missing for whatever reason.

Ok, so, here's the thing. I have a variety of opinions on different aspects of the Sonic franchise, and I have seen some posts in this topic that make me want to throw down and argue about some of them. For the moment, though, I'm not gonna do that. Instead, I'm gonna try to focus on batson's original post and express my own feelings about how the series has been going lately. In recent years, the revelation of the "Classic/Modern" and the "Animal World/Human World" splits have been one of the single most agonizingly frustrating things I've ever seen come from the Sonic franchise. I genuinely HATE those splits, and that should mean a lot coming from me. Sonic Team has done A LOT of dumb crap over the years, and it's been very, very, verrrry hard for me to genuinely hate any of it. Mostly because there always seemed to be something decent buried under the problems. The Adventure shouldn't have tried to juggle so many gameplay styles, but they were definitely made with a lot more care and attention than most of what came after. Heroes' team mechanic was a pretty cool idea, but four teams that were almost exactly the same was a huge waste of it. Shadow's branching story concept was cool, too bad every branch was poorly written. And so on and so forth. 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 have tons of ideas I'd love to throw around and discuss, actually, but I can't help but feel like it's pointless to actually talk about them because I know, for a fact, that they can't possibly happen right now. That's the most frustrating thing of all to me, actually. The Sonic franchise means a lot to me, so I really can't stop myself from keeping an eye on it and seeing what it's doing, which means I can't help but make myself frustrated. The way I manage that frustration is by focusing on one particular fact. The Modern/Classic split and the Animal/Human split are just dumb ideas that Sonic Team came up with to pacify fans. If Sonic Team can just choose to break their franchise into pieces, then there's no reason to think they can't choose to put it back together again later. So I recognize that the splits are real, and are relevant right now, but doesn't mean they're permanent, and i have no problem telling anyone that these splits should be erased as soon as possible.

That doesn't make it a good thing.

Ok, sure, credit where it's due, but this just makes it seem like the resistance had everything they needed to get these jobs done, and yet completely failed to do so until they had a random shmuck and/or Sonic to do the heavy lifting for them. That doesn't really seem better to me.

I mean, it's not even a question. Sonic's friends shouldn't be defenseless without him. Exactly how capable they are should vary depending on who you focus on, but none of them should be outright helpless.

Since most of the Mii Gunner costumes already use arm cannons, it may have been done for variety's sake. Or, perhaps, they wanted it to be visually clear that it's regular Tails with a blaster, and not some kind of Bionic-Commando-robot-arm Tails.

Yes. I know. And I'm saying that it's fucking stupid. The fact that Sonic Team is actually doing this doesn't stop it from being stupid, it just makes them stupid for thinking it's a good idea.