Celestia

These animated shorts are always fun. I was amused to see Metal Sonic since he's not in the original game, but according to the press stuff (and...not the trailer, weirdly) he actually IS in the remaster, so good job not false advertising SEGA !!

I'm weirdly into the darker looking Tropical Resort on paper despite how rough it looks in other aspects. The contrast with all the neon stuff could be cool. Except it's hard to tell if it's intentional or not given other levels more or less seem to look the same at a glance. Very strange.

You don't understand what he's talking about. This isn't about graphical fidelity, it's about deliberate choices being made (and/or, perhaps, issues with converting the game to new hardware/engines, etc.) with the art style and lighting and so on. Remasters fuck up visuals up this way all the time. The devs working on Colours Ultimate, Blind Squirrel Studios, even have a recent example they worked on--the Mass Effect remaster. Original vs Legendary respectively:

With Forces it felt ambiguous to me despite the moment where he slides, and then it turned out to be a boost game. This seems more likely that it'll be boost based on what we saw, so I can only hope that means it's actually something completely different. Also re: design, I wouldn't say "new design" per se but it's definitely tweaked, like they've been doing subtly the last few games. His shoes of all things look a bit different too tho maybe it's just how it was animated.

I actually am pretty happy for Roger here, he does seem to genuinely love the role. From a personal perspective though, while I was a huge fan of his Sonic early on (2010-2013), afterwards...I'm not sure how to put it. I mellowed out on it, I guess? He does a fine job so I'm not upset or anything, but I'm not really that attached to his Sonic. I was looking forward to seeing what a new VA could bring to the table too. But yeah, I guess now all we can do is hope whatever comes next is actually decent material for him and the other actors to work with. Oh boy.

The background doesn't look like Planet Wisp to me, but maybe it is and when we see more of it I'll feel silly. The animation is pretty different too and I'm not sure if they'd reanimate an intro video that's not even a story thing.

"Guilt" is a strong word for it but I enjoy booting up Sonic Lost World every once in a while. Almost everything people say about it is fair, a lot of it I even agree with, I just find it fun in spite of it's clear flaws. ...I avoid those weird levels that turn into Flappy Bird for no reason though.

Considering it's ability to neutralize the Chaos Emeralds came up in the first arc of this comic, either it's a context thing like you're saying (I hadn't thought of that but it's definitely plausible), or whoever is in charge of these things changed their minds arbitrarily since then (which is also plausible...sometimes I wonder if it's a revolving door of people Ian's in contact with and they make these calls on the fly, lol).

The only time I can recall any use of them for something other than transforming or powering something in a game is all the way back in Sonic 1. Y'know, the ending where you got all [six] Emeralds and they uh...change the flowers as they disappear. I always liked to think they did something else (maybe freeing the remaining animals Sonic missed, just to wrap things up) but yeah. It'd be interesting to see them explore this more since it was definitely repetitive just doing Super Sonic all the time, lol.

They would simply not have to do that. I don't think you've read this topic fairly. People have brought up ways to organically reintroduce these characters, it could literally be as simple as Sonic happening to go to wherever they are, having some adventure, and then leaving at the end. It's not some Herculean task. I also feel like I'm living on another planet or something whenever people argue about any of this because very few people are actually asking for these characters to be added to the games. Hell as far as I know there hasn't been much momentum with the movement that this topic is actually about, and that's adding a single character to a mobile game without strict continuity restrictions.

I sincerely love that it looks like they just ported the model and left it at that (in fact I'm curious if that's literally what they did, lmao). I had always assumed if ol Minecraft Steve made it in they'd fancy him up at least a little but no it's just...him. It's beautiful.

This has been the case since Mania/Forces. Definitely interesting but yeah.