Was Generations Rushed?

[Dantemustdie00]

Anyone bet that the 3DS version will have more story than the console version?

it'll be like Sonic Colors Wii vs DS all over again.

[Blue Blood]

Anyone bet that the 3DS version will have more story than the console version?

it'll be like Sonic Colors Wii vs DS all over again.

Colours DS had no more story. It just had more characters randomly there, and a crappy MotW tacked on at the end.

[midori]

About the lack of CGI cutscenes, I wonder if it was a lack of space (XBox 360 DVDs can only hold 7.95GB of data, the PC version is 8.4GB, from what I've heard the 360 version is in the 7~8GB range) and not a lack of time...

Is that true?

[Blue Blood]

Is that true?

It's merely speculation. It would explain why the pre-rendered stuff is so low quality on the 360, but doesn't explain why the same is true on the PS3.

[ezodagrom]

Is that true?

I don't know, I'm just guessing, but the lack of space would explain the lack of CGI cutscenes in all versions (in the XBox 360 the reason being the lack of space, in the PC and PS3 versions the reason being to have similar content to the XBox 360 version).

About the low resolution CGI cutscenes in both PS3 and PC versions (which don't have the same space constraints as the XBox 360 version), I have no idea why they're like this...maybe they were lazy to make higher resolution CGI cutscenes for these versions?

Edited November 16, 2011 by ezodagrom

[Neon]

I don't know if you'd call this rushing, but maybe the abundance of city stages and boss locations was made so that they could re-use assets over and over. Seriously, Speed Highway, City Escape, Station Square, Crisis City, and Rooftop Run all use the same shit.

Edited November 16, 2011 by Neon

[Emmett L. Brown]

I don't know if you'd call this rushing, but maybe the abundance of city stages and boss locations was made so that they could re-use assets over and over. Seriously, Speed Highway, City Escape, Station Square, Crisis City, and Rooftop Run all use the same shit.

Elaborate.

[Neon]

Elaborate.

[Rinzler]

I don't know if you'd call this rushing, but maybe the abundance of city stages and boss locations was made so that they could re-use assets over and over. Seriously, Speed Highway, City Escape, Station Square, Crisis City, and Rooftop Run all use the same shit.

[Emmett L. Brown]

Do I need to? Just look at all the reused skyscrapers, roads, and houses.

[Neon]

Another thing to note. The battle with Silver reuses scraps and cars from City Escape.

I'm pretty sure the skyscrapers in Crisis City are just retextured skyscrapers from Speed Higway and Station Square. Rooftop Run reuses the tables and chairs from the park section of City Escape. Station Square reuses roads from Speed Highway. Chemical Plant and Stardust Speedway use the same skybox.

Edited November 16, 2011 by Neon

[Scar]

Another thing to note. The battle with Silver reuses scraps and cars from City Escape.

I'm pretty sure the skyscrapers in Crisis City are just retextured skyscrapers from Speed Higway and Station Square. Rooftop Run reuses the tables and chairs from the park section of City Escape. Station Square reuses roads from Speed Highway. Chemical Plant and Stardust Speedway use the same skybox.

[Emmett L. Brown]

Another thing to note. The battle with Silver reuses scraps and cars from City Escape.

I'm pretty sure the skyscrapers in Crisis City are just retextured skyscrapers from Speed Higway and Station Square. Rooftop Run reuses the tables and chairs from the park section of City Escape. Station Square reuses roads from Speed Highway. Chemical Plant and Stardust Speedway use the same skybox.

[Vec]

- If Sonic revisits locations and bosses from the past, why the hell is Eggman in the Egg Dragoon? I thought he was operating the Time Eater machine. And when he says something like "What is this? Save me, Sonic!", he is obviously just playing with him to confuse him. So if it's not the same Eggman, then there must be TWO modern Eggmen! WTF?!

[Scar]

OK, this is for Scar.

Here are the odds and other shit of SG.

Two of them you've named already +

- Why wouldn't Eggman just freeze Sonic too or just make something that he would be erased from the timeline? It's the EXACT same thing you mentioned about Mephiles yet you forgot to mention this. Double standards again?

Then there would be no game. 06 would still have plenty of content if Silver didn't exist. But I'll grant you that. You make a fair point.

- If Sonic revisits locations and bosses from the past, why the hell is Eggman in the Egg Dragoon? I thought he was operating the Time Eater machine. And when he says something like "What is this? Save me, Sonic!", he is obviously just playing with him to confuse him. So if it's not the same Eggman, then there must be TWO modern Eggmen! WTF?!

Plot twist?

Black Knight was played out so Merlina looked like a good character, plot twist happens and she turns into the big bad villain. Eggman pretending to get kidnapped....both of them, would serve as a plot twist. Granted a lot of people spoiled it for themselves, or guessed correctly anyway, but it was intended to surprise people.

- I've mentioned Crisis City. This level was erased from all the timeline. It just didn't and wouldn't happen. Solaris was destroyed, nothing happened anywhere anytime. I love this level, but they never even tried to explain why it's in the game.

It would be better if they didn't try and explain it. It was a part of Sonic's 20 year timeline so they felt they needed to include something. Crisis City was popular so they picked that.

- Why the hell Classic Sonic is mute when Classic Tails can speak?! [and it is a fact that Classic Sonic actually could talk. He talked in Commercials and in Sonic OVA and stuff]

Because fans would complain. If it wasn't Jaleel White, people would complain. If it wasn't Ryan Drummond, people would complain etc. etc. Its far safer and easier, especially in a game about nostalgia, for Classic Sonic to be mute. I hated that too, but what happened happened.

- Why is Blaze there? [i love the character, but they never explained how she got there]

This was a problem Sonic 06 created itself to be honest. Though it could be assumed that she just travelled there dimensionally by pure accident as she did in the original Rush. Given that she knows Sonic, she decided to come to his birthday party.

- Why the hell do Shadow and Silver try to kill/fight with Sonic?! Judging from their lines they are not their past-selves.

Popular rivals, they needed to be in the game for fanservice, so they were put in and given vague reasoning behind why they wanted to fight Sonic.

This is just whining and nitpicking. It's like asking why Shadow uses boost in Generations or something like that. You WANTED to find some more so you could feel that you have more arguments.

The point I was trying to make, is that even some of the best Sonic stories have discrepancies. Generations' can be partially excused because it is literally a piece of fanservice with a loose plot connecting the random stages together. Other games which could have had tighter narratives. They could have put in an extra Shadow stage in dark-side after the fight, which reused Metal Harbour assets. They could have just not have Tails playable. Amy's mysterious appearance on Prison Island is a difficult one to explain away though.....

OK, I've got some too.

- Why the hell is everyone watching Sonics lying on the ground and cheering them up instead of just HELP them?!

Same reason Shadow quite uncharacteristically said "We'll hold him [Metal Madness] off, while you turn Super" in Heroes. Shadow in any other situation would have tried defeating Metal Overlord himself.

- How do they communicate to Sonics when they are fighting the final boss, when they are in kind of another dimension?

06 did this. Didn't make sense then, doesn't make sense now.

You know, there would be more and I think there are some more, but it's only natural that there are not a hell lot of them, because there is basically no story in the game!

Exactly!

06's plot is considered worse by me and many others, not because it doesn't have enough of a plot. On the contrary, it tries far to much with the plot and leaves so many problems that are quite jarring. In Generations, where plot is so barely there and has little impact on the gameplay itself, it can be overlooked. However in 06, where the plot was so massive, that it started to intrude into gameplay (that FUCKING CAPTAIN MISSION!!!!), the mistakes become much more obvious and noticable because they're staring you in the face. Its difficult to avoid Sonic 06's plot, skipping cutscenes doesn't help, because characters talk about the plot during gameplay.

In any case, a rushed plot is not an indication of a rushed game. Its clear that there was a greater focus on actually making the game, than writing the story. The game and story weren't designed together. It is clear that the hub world, the stages, the gameplay and music and collectables were done first, the writers were then tasked with stringing that together with a plot. Pretty difficult, frankly I can't see many ways on adding depth to the plot, they did a good job with what they had.

[Space☆Tomoki]

- If Sonic revisits locations and bosses from the past, why the hell is Eggman in the Egg Dragoon? I thought he was operating the Time Eater machine. And when he says something like "What is this? Save me, Sonic!", he is obviously just playing with him to confuse him. So if it's not the same Eggman, then there must be TWO modern Eggmen! WTF?!

Umm... no. Here's what went down: the Death Egg Robot was piloted by Classic Eggman (but they hid his appearance for the plot twist at the game's climax to surprise the audience) and the Time Eater at the time was piloted by Modern Eggman, who 'kidnapped' him because he needed his assistance in order to perfect the Time Eater mech. When you fight the Egg Dragoon, obviously, it's piloted by Modern Eggman, but when he was 'kidnapped', the Time Eater was piloted by Classic Eggman, who rescued him so that they could both pilot the perfected Time Eater and take on the 2 Sonics.

- I've mentioned Crisis City. This level was erased from all the timeline. It just didn't and wouldn't happen. Solaris was destroyed, nothing happened anywhere anytime. I love this level, but they never even tried to explain why it's in the game.

It's a popular level, and Sonic Team wanted to re-imagine it for Generations.

Plot-wise, I have a theory on this one: the hub world, "White Space" is a limbo of sorts that functions like the 'Recycle Bin' on a PC, but for places and times that were erased from time and space instead of files. Since 06 was erased from the timeline, what if Crisis City was always in the White Space before Time Eater started messing things up?

- Why the hell Classic Sonic is mute when Classic Tails can speak?! [and it is a fact that Classic Sonic actually could talk. He talked in Commercials and in Sonic OVA and stuff]

The Sonic OVA isn't canon and there are many fans who would rage if he had a voice.

- Why is Blaze there? [i love the character, but they never explained how she got there]

Let's just say that the Sol Emeralds magically transported her to Sonic's world and she decided to go to Sonic's birthday. Don't think about it too much. She's really just there for fanservice.

- Why the hell do Shadow and Silver try to kill/fight with Sonic?! Judging from their lines they are not their past-selves.

Judging by how they're not really relevant to the plot other than collecting some Chaos Emeralds, it's just a silly excuse for them to fight because of- like with Blaze- it's just for fanservice.

- Why the hell is everyone watching Sonics lying on the ground and cheering them up instead of just HELP them?!

- How do they communicate to Sonics when they are fighting the final boss, when they are in kind of another dimension?

Sonic just has terrible tastes in friends. Seriously though, the only reason the friends (except for Modern Tails) and rivals are there at all is for fanservice and nothing more, really. The plot could've gone without them and the 3DS version seems to be going without most of them.

You know, there would be more and I think there are some more, but it's only natural that there are not a hell lot of them, because there is basically no story in the game!

There's a story in the game, just like all the others: Shit's going down. Save the Day. The End.

But yeah, I agree that they should've done more with the story since there's so much potential gone to waste, but whatever, I love the game to bits. Better the story sucks than the gameplay.

*waits for the next Sonic games to come out*

Edited November 16, 2011 by Spider-Man Noir

[Sega DogTagz]

In regards to cross-dimension communication, its something that the series has established as possible. 06's interpretation of doing so right on the spot might have been a bit flaky, but Sonic Rush Adventure showed that when given the opportunity, Super-Geniuses can build such a device. Eggman was able to "contact" Nega in that game, so is there really much of a problem with 2 Tails's doing basically the same thing?

That Transceiver he's used in the past few games has already proven to be pretty versatile.

Edited November 16, 2011 by Sega DogTagz

[The Dead Skin]

About ArtFenix's and Hunter's endless nitpicking of the story, I think we should all agree to this:

If a story has time travel, plot holes are bound to happen.

[NiGHTS]

That was uncalled for... Well, the storybook team should have helped out with Sonic Generations, instead of working on Sonic Colours.

I actually loved Sonic Colors. SEGA can't put its entire team on one game, thats stupid. Do you ever see Nintendo put all its Mario staffers on one game? No, they always have one for a major story game like Galaxy, then a side one, ect paper mario, the sports games and all the other Mario stuff.

If anything, they should have not done the Olympics this year, im sure its the same team as generations actually,.

[redhellc]

I actually loved Sonic Colors. SEGA can't put its entire team on one game, thats stupid. Do you ever see Nintendo put all its Mario staffers on one game? No, they always have one for a major story game like Galaxy, then a side one, ect paper mario, the sports games and all the other Mario stuff.

If anything, they should have not done the Olympics this year, im sure its the same team as generations actually,.

[ArtFenix]

Plot twist?

Black Knight was played out so Merlina looked like a good character, plot twist happens and she turns into the big bad villain. Eggman pretending to get kidnapped....both of them, would serve as a plot twist. Granted a lot of people spoiled it for themselves, or guessed correctly anyway, but it was intended to surprise people.

Edited November 17, 2011 by ArtFenix

[RDNexus]

I thought this up... Is there noone from Generations' staff we could try to ask about the game?

I found Yuji Naka's Twitter but I think he's not related with the recent games, right?

Anyway, if anyone with Twitter wants to follow his account, here's the link...

BTW, is there no vids of the cutscenes some of you said to have found data of in the demos?

Edited November 17, 2011 by XRick

[Space☆Tomoki]

Post

Dude, you got Scar's post mixed up with mine. Scroll back up, re-read our posts, and reply to us as separate people, if you please.

Edited November 18, 2011 by Spider-Man Noir