Whatever the WhoCares

This game definitely has a budget feeling to it, from its menus to its options to its graphics in general, which is kind of the opposite of Transformed. It feels like they went back to square one a bit, it’s better than ASR but definitely inferior to Transformed. Hopefully we can get Team Sonic Racing Transfomed lol. Edit: I really wish they would just port the old All-Stars games to newer consoles. Transformed in particular runs so poorly that it’s hard going back to outside of PC.

So, is there a reason this game still isn’t on the PS Store in North America or...?

Sonic Forces is both too dark and too lighthearted at the same time. Comic relief is relentless and out of place, juxtaposed carelessly against apocalyptic imagery that makes the whole thing feel hollow and fake.

Is that really all it was? No, and you know that. Cmon.

Sonic’s world and storytelling should reflect the passions and sensibilities of its developers. That’s how you get the best interpretations. Time and again we’ve seen the results of Japanese developers trying to be “western,” those results being the blandest stories in the franchise. But then we can point to Sonic Adventure 1&2, which felt like someone in that writing room was creating the narrative and world how they truly wanted it to be. Those games’ stories didn’t come off like action anime because they were trying to; they were just naturally like that. Meanwhile Sonic Boom or the comics don’t feel like they’re trying to be like western action-comedy; they just are. Compare this to Sonic Lost World, a Japanese narrative written to emulate a western cartoon. How about Sonic Forces, where our side of the pond got so much writing power that it actually ended up feeling like a western cartoon trying to be an anime. It’s no coincidence that both of these stories feel entirely soulless. I’m not saying things should be only Western or only Japanese, we’ve seen plenty of franchises that incorporate storytelling tropes from all kinds of mediums. But the people making Sonic need to take a step back and realize that what will ultimately turn out better is probably whatever story they can truly care about.

Even the best superhero-type ensemble stories have trouble keeping character strengths/weaknesses consistent. Sonic the Hedgehog is among the worst. There’s your answer, OP.

This is the kind of rhetoric that drives people to be dicks to SEGA staff on social media. Who knows what kind of restrictions Aaron is under?

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?