Sonic-related pet peeves?

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Yo, if you're gonna make comparisons, can you not be fallicious about it? Stardust Speedway and Speed Highway are so obviously different from each other that it's not even a genuine comparison when other examples like Speed Highway and Star Light Zone, Final Rush and Death Egg, or S3&K's Ice Cap to the SA1's version would make more sense.

Plus, it's not like the classics didn't delve into rather non-wacky territory if the tropical Angel Island, realistic egyptian-styled Sandopolis, or the steel gray-as-fuck Chemical Plant are any indicators. Nor were all the Adventures' levels based on realistic locations: Twinkle Park isn't a realistic place, the Sky Deck isn't a realistic place, the Final Egg isn't an actual place, nor are the ARK stages or Pumpkin Hill.

Come on now people, stop disregarding parts that don't fit your argument.

[Diogenes]

Yo, if you're gonna make comparisons, can you not be fallicious about it? Stardust Speedway and Speed Highway are so obviously different from each other that it's not even a genuine comparison when other examples like Speed Highway and Star Light Zone, Final Rush and Death Egg, or S3&K's Ice Cap to the SA1's version would make more sense.

Well isn't them not being similar the point? CD is a bit of an outlier compared to the rest of the classics, sure, but I don't think it's invalid to compare how it and SA interpret the highway/city trope.

[Wraith]

I mean sure, Classic Sonic dove into grounded/realistic fare sometimes, but there's a greater variety on display here then either of the Adventure games. There's a clear difference between the two. 

I mean, just look at how the two of them portray a Casino level.

 

Sonic 2's Casino Night takes place in some weird City/Pinball Machine hybrid while Sonic Adventure's takes place within an actual casino with the Pinball machines being their own seperate thing.

Sonic Adventure 2 only took this further by taking place almost entirely in realistic locations and leaving the goofy stuff to a minimum.

I wouldn't say it's fair to say the difference is inherently worse, but it's there, whether you actually like it or not. The classics lean more toward craziness while the Adventure games are more grounded.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Wraith

[Regen]

Look guys, I'm not even saying the realism approach is bad, but this attitude of pretending Sonic Adventure didn't massively change the art style and go for realism is disingenious at best and an outright lie at worst. One of the big research points of Adventure was that it was based on real life locales that Sonic Team went to. I've already refered to Tikal, but there's City Escape and Radical Highway as other examples

I mean yeah, it's pretty obvious how much Sonic Team took from the real world, it was an artistic deicsion. If you like the idea, good for you, it's your choice. However, I'm not going to watch people claim that Adventure and the Classics had an art style that's more similar than different. There are similarities, but they are outweighed by the differences.

Come on now people, stop disregarding parts that don't fit your argument.

It's more like Adventure fans want to point to the levels that resemble the Classics most because they don't seem to be confident in the realism approach that Sonic Team went for. I'd say that's a lack of confidence in their product to be honest. Sonic Team wanted Sonic Adventure to be realistic. There's no reason why someone shouldn't like that.

Picture above shows Sonic Team in front of Tikal on their research tour.

Edited November 7, 2015 by Nepenthe

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

There's definitely a difference between the art styles of the levels in the classics and the Adventures-era moderns, but it's also possible to exaggerate the difference. There isn't a strict dichotomy, just an undeniable tendency. It's wrong to suggest that everything from the Adventure era is "bleak realism", of course, but the fact is that the Adventures simply look more realistic in general, even the levels with a brighter color palette. The most colorful and "out there" levels of the Adventures are a far cry from the most "out there" Classic levels. I mean, look at Twinkle Park:

Carnival Night Zone, despite being from one of the most realistic-looking and detailed classic games, seems significantly zanier and less grounded:

Both are supposed to based on theme parks, but it's pretty clear which one seems more like a place that could exist in the real world.

[Nepenthe]

Bowbowis never said that the Adventure games did not employ realism at all. He said he's tired of people disparaging the Adventure games as drab in general and ignoring the specifics of their art design, as well as acting like the classics didn't employ more muted colors and ignoring their specifics. Which is indeed annoying.

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Im not a classic fan. But I want to jump into it. Sonic Adventure series were more real stages but they also have there cool and wacky moments to. Its not like say Sonic 06 were you take a hyper realistic place and just add bonce pads.

[Speeps]

This isn't a peeve about official Sonic games, but I've noticed a lot of fan-made 3D Sonic works model their levels too big. It really bugs me when Sonic is the size of a mouse compared to everything else around him and it's one of the main things that puts me off often-praised fan creations like Sonic Adventure Generations.

There are plenty of examples of how to make open spaces work in games like Sonic Unleashed that doesn't cause Sonic to look downsized. Just look at Arid Sands and Cool Edge.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Well isn't them not being similar the point? CD is a bit of an outlier compared to the rest of the classics, sure, but I don't think it's invalid to compare how it and SA interpret the highway/city trope.

As a matter of fact, the initial point was the exact opposite of that, being over how similar certain stages in the Adventures and Classics were to each other despite their different artstyles. So using two radically different appearing tropes as a counterexample to judge the entirety of two different game eras isn't even a geniune comparison if you're going to ignore everything else along with them - and I find it very invalid to compare CD's Stardust Speedway to SA1's Speed Highway over the city/highway trope over how realistic one is over the other when Sonic 1's Starlight Zone would be more appropriate. That's sidestepping the point with a blatant apples to orange comparison if there ever was one if we're just going by aesthetics alone. Nevermind how CD and SA hardly have that many similar tropes to them in the first place, as that's a huge ass disconnect of a comparison to make and dishonest to boot.

 

It's more like Adventure fans want to point to the levels that resemble the Classics most because they don't seem to be confident in the realism approach that Sonic Team went for.

No it isn't, because not one person in this topic has had any lack of confidence in the approach, and you know it.

Everyone, Adventure fans included, know that the Adventure titles went for a more realistic approach - that's the thing Adventure fans liked. But the point made was that there were still similarities between the Classics and Adventures, and that making out the Adventures to be that far removed from the Classics is dishonest when there are several obvious examples in those very games themselves that show otherwise, much less the inverse of where the Classics themselves had a few realistic locales in them.

That was acknowledged from the get go. Seriously, Bowbowis said, and you quoted it:

It always irks me when people act like the levels in the classic games were all a bunch of bright and wacky Green Hill Zones or that the Adventures were somehow defiling Sonic's art conventions by (apparently) being super drab and realistic, as though they didn't have their fair share of strange and/or colorful levels too.

Which had nothing at all to do with how confident Adventure fans were in the realism as he went and listed several examples from each game to make his point, and then conceded that, yeah, the Adventures went for realism compared to the classics, but there were still bizarre parts. Meanwhile, you attempted to argue against his point with just single comparisons of one level from just one classic and one Adventure title as if that was somehow credible enough of a refutation.

So your statement doesn't hold that much water.

Edited November 8, 2015 by ChaosSupremeSonic

[Regen]

Yeah, but most of us aren't against Adventure's art style because it's 'drab' or whatever. We are against it because it traded out the cartoony vibe for a more realistic approach. That's the reason I and many others take issues with Adventure's art style, not the issue of the game being too 'drab' and not colourful enough or whatever. 

I'll concede that Adventure isn't super-drab the whole way through and is quite colourful, although it can be quite drab. I'm more concerned over the fact Adventure took a major art design shift towards realism that completely changed Sonic's aesthetic. But I mean, if you all agree with me on that then I guess we are all cool there.

It's how certain fans want to pretend that Adventure had a very similar art-style to the Classics that annoy me, because the two art styles are so very different. I'm not really bothered by people's opinions in this thread.

Edited November 8, 2015 by Regen

[Nepenthe]

Just as well, certain classic fans also like pretending everything after the classics that doesn't make a note to emulate them is indeed just super drab and boring. More often than not this argument is based primarily on color and literally not any other facet of art, which is ultimately an elementary way of determining where on the spectrum of "abstract" and "photorealism" a work sits, much less its overall quality both on its own merits and in relation to a larger experience that a game is trying to present. So yes, SA1 is more realistic than the Classics. But this statement doesn't mean much of anything.

[Regen]

Just as well, certain classic fans also like pretending everything after the classics that doesn't make a note to emulate them is indeed just super drab and boring. More often than not this argument is based primarily on color and literally not any other facet of art, which is ultimately an elementary way of determining where on the spectrum of "abstract" and "photorealism" a work sits, much less its overall quality both on its own merits and in relation to a larger experience that a game is trying to present. So yes, SA1 is more realistic than the Classics. But this statement doesn't mean much of anything.

Oh yeah, you are right there. There certainly are Classic Fans who want to find as many reasons to attack the Adventure change as possible. Like I said, there's nothing necessarily wrong with the realism approach. I just happen to prefer the more cartoony and surreal elements. I mean, I'll try to use some fair examples.

The approach is obviously very different, and I personally prefer the more unique art style the Classics went for. I think Sonic lost part of his identity in the move to 3D. Maybe it was too hard to capture those old environments on the Dreamcast. Maybe they wanted to go to realism because that was more popular. Whatever reason, I just think it was a mistake.

Edited November 8, 2015 by Regen

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

Sonic Colors enviroments were beautiful

[Nepenthe]

The amount of realistic detail in the classics increased as time went on, culminating in a near-abandonment of the abstract geometric patterns that littered earlier titles' natural environments and making for stages that were more believable and tactile. Nothing in those S3 screenshots or indeed most of the locations in the classics were particularly out of bounds for real life with the exception of just how damn saturated the color was (probably because the Japanese designers were operating under the assumption that the planet was indeed our Earth). Just as well, it probably wouldn't have been anymore difficult to do basic color texturing on the Dreamcast than it would have been grass texturing, considering most of them are pictures the team had to go out and take themselves. It's just that- to me- SA1's fidelity is merely the logical culmination of the direction they were always heading in to some extent. For reference, look at the OVA that Sega happily signed off on during a time when Sonic's look was supposedly more tied down and consistent and note how realistically the environments were painted. Subsequently note just how little people complain about it as a Sonic cartoon. Crayola colors and simplistic geometric shapes aren't the only facets of Sonic's art style and general character.

[Regen]

The amount of realistic detail in the classics increased as time went on, culminating in a near-abandonment of the abstract geometric patterns that littered earlier titles' natural environments and making for stages that were more believable and tactile.

It's just that- to me- SA1's fidelity is merely the logical culmination of the direction they were always heading in to some extent.

I'm not quite sure if I agree with that. I get what you are saying, there are some levels in Sonic 3 that are more realistic, but it's in the geometry (like you said) rather than the art-style. There are still quite a lot of levels in Sonic 3 which are pretty out there compared to Sonic 1 and 2.

You get the point.

I agree that the enivornments became more organic and lifelife, but the actual art style itself is a far cry away from the direction they jumped into with Sonic Adventure. I certainly don't think Sonic 3 has a more realistic art style than Sonic 1, for example. Most the levels in Sonic 1 look less zany and out there than Sonic 3.

I mean, Sonic 1's artstyle is way more surreal than Adventure, but I think it's less or equal to Sonic 3.

[Yoko/葉子]

I can't stand the elitist squads who can't handle that some people do find something likable in the less commonly liked games. It's entertainment. An argument over which Sonic game is best is like fighting over the best thing on a food menu or if Simon's Quest is really a terrible Castlevania game or not, ridiculous and absolutely pointless.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

[Nepenthe]

Geometry, like color, is part of the art style. You can't really separate the two. 

Anyways, the thing is almost everything in S3's environments is identifiable as some sort of specific, realistic object or texture (crystal, ferns, boulders, corrugated metal) and the things that aren't contain significantly more amounts of detail to prevent them from being flat and purely mathematical. But in Spring Yard alone, I cannot tell you what the hell the level is even made up of. I guess the green stuff is chain-link fencing? And the shading on Starlight Zone's...white metal(?) stuff is so pillow-shaded as to not even really qualify as metal, which raises the question of what it even is. This problem of suggestion and bad shading is addressed in the later games, resulting in nothing more than higher detail within each object which can only really translate into less abstraction and thus higher realism. This is taken to its most logical conclusion in the Adventures where you can actually render out "realistic-looking" things wherein Sonic Team would be kinda dumb for not taking advantage of the opportunity to do so. 

The only other thing that gives the classic games a sense of cartoony-ness is in the scale and occurrence of certain objects, such as really big mushrooms, but this isn't unique to them either. Scale is used to a much greater extent in the Adventure games both in overall level size and in set-pieces, such as Speed Highway's vast cityscapes, Twinkle Park's space-like features, Lost World's rock snake, the dimension-bending pinball tables and sewer system of Casino Highway, etc.. Again, color isn't the only thing that's important. Other different facets and ideals of art are ultimately being applied to different aspects of the world in each series of games. So while SA1 is more realistic I don't agree with the argument that that means it automatically killed any meaningful part of Sonic's identity as a cartoony property anymore than the OVA did, unless you want to argue that realism is just automatically a negative thing and thus Sonic CD is more exemplary of Sonic's character and identity than S3&K is (lolno)? In general, this whole general discussion as it's played out over the years is like trying to figure out which is more cartoony:

 this or this  

The Lion King has brighter colors and less realistic lighting and rendering than Madagascar 2's characters or environments in this screenshot, but Mufusa and even Scar are more endemic of what a lion is actually supposed to look like than Alex and his family ever will be, and the same goes for most of the main cast in comparison to the animals seen in The Lion King. Subsequently, TLK's characters are animated in a more realistic style, while Madagascar's cast has been admitted by Dreamworks to be basically channeling Tex Avery's impossible style of movement. So what takes more precedence? Which is significantly more stylized? What is more important to be stylized? Is it wrong to have a mix of cartoony and realistic elements and must everything simply be homogenized? Is Madagascar "confused" about its identity by having cartoony characters in realistic environments, or for even giving them individual fur strands?

Ultimately why can't we just say they're both cartoony in their own ways and be done with it?

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I can't stand the elitist squads who can't handle that some people do find something likable in the less commonly liked games. It's entertainment. An argument over which Sonic game is best is like fighting over the best thing on a food menu or if Simon's Quest is really a terrible Castlevania game or not, ridiculous and absolutely pointless.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder."

I dont like elitist thoughts with the Sonic stuffs at all. Especially when they say that if you think Sonic is about speed then your not a real fan. (only saying that genisis fans are REAL fans ugh)

[Regen]

unless you want to argue that realism is just automatically a negative thing and thus Sonic CD is more exemplary of Sonic's character and identity than S3&K is (lolno)? In general, this whole general discussion as it's played out over the years is like trying to figure out which is more cartoony:

Uuh, well this is awkward  

I do think Sonic CD had the best art style out of all the Sonic games, by quite a mile. I could write a massive thread about how genius Sonic CD actually is  .

Yeah, I respect your opinion on this, but I just prefer Sonic to have a really stylised aesthetic and don't like the approach to realism they took. I can see your point, they did go more towards realism as the Classics went further on, but they really shouldn't have  . Although honestly I think a lot of the differences were because of details, Sonic 1 doesn't have nearly as much details as its sequels.

[Nepenthe]

The difference is due to detail, but that doesn't necessarily inhibit something from being evocative of cartoony or fasntastic design. Again, Alex the Lion has more detail than Simba does through his fur, his ability to bounce light and cast proper shadows, the physiology of his eyes, etc.. But his exaggerated bipedal design means he is still less of a realistic lion design than Simba is. This is not a contradiction or paradox. It's that art is a mess of different characteristics and design decisions mashing together to form an idea, and focusing on a couple of things like color, and putting those things on a simplistic, linear scale of "more color: cartoony:: less color: realistic" is simply a bad way to examine art.

[Regen]

I mean, I'm not saying the realism is a bad approach, I don't mind if people like it, I just personally prefer the older art design. If people like it I have no problem

Edited November 8, 2015 by Regen

[Monkey Destruction Switch]

I know this is probably unnecessary, since I know my post probably doesn't matter that much, but I just wanted to say that, in my post, I certainly wasn't meaning to attack or even really argue against Bowbowis' or anything. In fact, at one point I was going to say as much in my post, since I knew I wasn't really arguing directly against him, but I didn't for some reason. I was just trying to clarify, I guess. I'm sorry if I wasn't very clear.

[Regen]

I think I'm the one who tends to annoy people more Monkey Destruction Switch so I wouldn't worry

[Rey Skywalker-Ren]

I think I'm the one who tends to annoy people more Monkey Destruction Switch so I wouldn't worry

Nah your cool~!

[Nepenthe]

I know this is probably unnecessary, since I know my post probably doesn't matter that much, but I just wanted to say that, in my post, I certainly wasn't meaning to attack or even really argue against Bowbowis' or anything. In fact, at one point I was going to say as much in my post, since I knew I wasn't really arguing directly against him, but I didn't for some reason. I was just trying to clarify, I guess. I'm sorry if I wasn't very clear.

I didn't mean to accuse you of attacking Bowbowis personally. Rather, I felt people were misunderstanding what he was saying and were thus arguing with a point he never made.