Whatever the WhoCares

Sonic’s world, not necessarily the events, needs a retcon/reboot. You can’t have a universe as inconsistent as Mario’s (which is also annoying) when your characters speak in complete sentences.

I definitely would’ve preferred Orbot and Cubot over Zavok. But yes, at least they didn’t go with Infinite.

No. The mentality is a symptom of the problem. Let’s do this timeline style: 1990s: Sonic’s friends are well-accepted as slight but inspired variations on his gameplay. 1998-2006: Sonic’s friends play vastly differently and are often obtuse and not fun to use. This is where the “shitty friends” think stems from. 2008-2013: Taking the completely wrong message from this, Sega only has Sonic as the playable character, while often retaining the obtuse gameplay styles. 2017: Sonic Mania makes it so Sonic’s friends are well-accepted as slight but inspired variations on his gameplay. 2017: Sonic Forces makes it so Sonic’s friends are slight AND uninspired variations on his gameplay.

I think the main difference between humans and anthros is going to come down to how the eyes are shaped (Big the Cat notwithstanding).

I actually would prefer using Eggman as a point of reference over Sonic and co. He’s kind of hard to use as a reference because of his body shape, but overall we can still glean, based on Eggman, that Sonic humans should have exaggerated hair. Something like the Unleashed characters with more realistic head shapes but exaggerated hair.

That’s a good point, but to some extent there’s overlap with both issues. I want Knuckles to be the guardian of the Master Emerald again, but the truth is nothing has told us that he isn’t. If we could get a consistent setting, putting Angel Island and the shrine in a defined physical space, I’d expect even the Forces writers to just know to put Knuckles there anyway. To that end, that’s why I have a soft spot for Green Hill being in Forces. Maybe it’s a spot where Sonic likes to relax, the closest thing he has to a home.

I think Sonic’s default personality should be some combination of the shonen anime Sonic we got in the early 2000’s, and the sardonic and laid-back version we have now. His Forces characterization was pretty great, but it could’ve definitely used some of that sense of passion he used to have. He never really seems genuinely upset with Eggman, something I really thought we’d see given the 2016 teaser. We even saw hints of it with lines like “Time to tag out, Silver. I’ll take it from here.” And “Okay, Shadow, what’s the deal?!” Unlike so many other aspects of the series, Sonic himself wouldn’t really need a huge paradigm shift to get right.

Any characters in particular that just nag at you? That just beg for a rewrite? What would you change about them?

I remember being disappointed by Lost World, but not terribly so. That game was clearly going to be smaller-scale and more of a throwaway thing from day one. But then they waited 3 years, hyped the shit out of their next game with an emotionally evocative teaser trailer, and then waited another year to finally release the puddle of utter mediocrity that is Sonic Forces. Never before have I seen something built up so much only to be so brazenly disposable upon release. Yes, ‘06 was a much worse game that got more hype, but at least in that game you could tell someone was trying. Sonic Forces feels like a game made by skilled developers who aren’t trying. Sega has gotten to a point where we as players won’t careen over edges and fall through the floor, where we won’t get stuck on random polygons or crash into unforeseeable spike traps. They’ve figured that stuff out. But now we have new problems, ones not so awful to play but far more frustrating to think about even briefly. They seemingly know how to make these stages more than 2 minutes long. How to give us multiple pathways. How to present us with actual challenges. We can see scattered evidence throughout the game. But for whatever reason, they just choose not to. Is it budget? Time (lol)? Or just pure apathy? I don’t know, but to me Sonic Forces comes off as the most cynical mainline game in the series. That brings me to the present, or rather the future. Both, I guess. Team Sonic Racing looks like fun. Sonic Mania kicked ass. The IDW comics manage to fit in with game canon and present an entertaining take on the characters. Yes the movie looks like shit, but the live-action/CG hybrid genre is viewed so poorly to begin with that it will do nothing more to Sonic’s reputation than it did Woody Woodpecker or Yogi Bear. This all leaves “Sonic Team” (whatever that may actually be) with the ball squarely back in their court, at least once the Team Sonic Racing dust has settled. And as much of a sucker as it makes me feel like to admit, Iizuka’s recent interview about Sonic Adventure seems genuinely appreciative. His thoughts about that game’s scope and scale, along with its now-apparent flaws, do not sound like the words of a man genuinely pleased with a product like Sonic Forces. This newfound evidence - that he still gives a damn - certainly gives me some hope.

This is admittedly a backhanded compliment, but I like the potential created by a lot of the plot points in the game, even if none of it was utilized. For example, Shadow inadvertently creating Infinite- imagine if this story was written better, and Shadow found out that his cruelty contributed to the creation of basically another Ultimate Life Form. That’s some existential guilt right there.

I really appreciated the return to multiple music tracks per stage, allowing motifs to change with the music. It reminded me of Sonic Adventure in that way.

Assign the characters to shoulder buttons or the D-pad. If possible, maybe even do the Forces thing and have characters do their thing at the press of a button.

I know there’s a “positive things about Sonic Forces” thread, but I want to narrow it down to things within the game itself so we don’t have to retread the “it shows Sonic Team what not to do” routine (understandable as it may be). I’ll start with one, and that’s changing music within levels. This is something we haven’t seen for a long time. It’s so refreshing to have multiple tracks per stage, and that alone reminds me of SA1. It’d be nice if they kept that idea going forward.

Ever since I considered the notion of SA and SA2 ports for the Switch, I honestly can’t stop thinking of them. I would play the shit out of those and SEGA already did the hardest parts in 2012 (though of course I’d hope for better quality than those versions). Every night before bed I’d probably go for another emblem.

It’s a significant misfortune that we haven’t had more power pop and punk rock in these games. I don’t know how the two Adventure games didn’t feature more of that, given what was popular at the time. I suppose Megadeth could do an appropriate-sounding character theme for Shadow. There’s a tongue-in-cheek thrashiness to a lot of their music that would be just right for an edgy cartoon hedgehog. Not to self-indulgent, not too self-aware.