Official Sonic 2006 topic

[Blacklightning]

12 hours ago, Meta77 said:

Looking and reading interviews show that a lot was cut and a lot was unfinished. The rainbow gem. Online mp. Dlc...actual good dlc was planned but in the end it was all dropped

In order:

- The game is already janky as shit to control at standard speeds, I can't fathom it getting any better at Super Sonic speeds. If you've ever used the blue gem you already know how.

- Have you played the multiplayer modes? They're complete and utter garbage. Silver only even exists in the VS modes to be broken or useless depending on who you ask, and the Coop levels are just regular levels with lame "one player holds a switch to let the other through a laser gate" puzzles. And the hardest level in the rotation (well, I say "rotation" because all the levels loop endlessly) is the second one for some reason.

- Define "good" DLC. Though even if you can, I struggle to see how just adding more content is suddenly supposed to make the game such a huge jump from mediocre at best to an actual good game, especially if you're expected to pay an entry fee of fifteen fucking dollars on top of the price of the base game for all of it.

Quote

And while the romance was not well written at all if was not that bad.

You keep saying "not that bad" for everything, but have an interesting tendency to be intentionally vague about that, as if you have nothing of substance to back that up.

And no, "other games do this specific bad thing" is not something of substance. At best that's only saying other games sometimes make similar mistakes.

4 hours ago, BlueSky said:

I just remembered actually reading somewhere about how there would maybe have been more stages etc. if not having such a shortage of time/workers. I'm not that good of a programmer (I know some stuff but not that much), but maybe there's a problem because of that fact; like, there's empty "places" for the content that was never made/used in the final version that the game still browses trough as it tries to find right file/something.

I dunno, man. People have gotten as far as hacking the game and actually tweaking certain sets of data in it (such as increasing Tails's speed - interestingly enough he controls even worse at Sonic speeds). Hell, some are proficient enough to hack in little gems like this:

If there was any sign of this content still in the game, even just as placeholder files, don't you think they would have found it by now? That's kind of a big deal.

[Meta77]

Regardless some are going to hate the game like a wasp has wasp spray and some will enjoy it for what it was. Yes it was broken and yes it had bugs. But playing this my senior year in high school i enjoyed it. And noting will ever be the hype I had and my friends had for this game back when it was first shown off and still get chills wishing it was not as buggy as it came out.

 

[BlueSky]

15 hours ago, Blacklightning said:

I dunno, man. People have gotten as far as hacking the game and actually tweaking certain sets of data in it (such as increasing Tails's speed - interestingly enough he controls even worse at Sonic speeds). Hell, some are proficient enough to hack in little gems like this:

If there was any sign of this content still in the game, even just as placeholder files, don't you think they would have found it by now? That's kind of a big deal.

Well, again I'm not that good with programming, I've just had to take some studies so I'm not that certain either if this was the case to begin with, I just made a theory for passing time. Though I was thinking more about there just being empty places where files should exist without said files actually, just a location that has nothing in it or something, sorry, it's been so long when I last time had to use any terminology so I made it all gibberish again. I dunno, I've made Java cry for making conditions that do so broken endless loops it takes at least 15 minutes for a helper to actually get what I meant to do even if I write sidenotes... Then again, they were professionals who made this game...  If I would've had any part of programming it it would've ended up being even worse I can promise that one to you.

By the way that's a nice picture. I've always thought about Big having a bit too "soulless" eyes anyway...

[Blacklightning]

7 hours ago, BlueSky said:

Though I was thinking more about there just being empty places where files should exist without said files actually, just a location that has nothing in it or something, sorry, it's been so long when I last time had to use any terminology so I made it all gibberish again.

Even empty spaces can make sense to data miners depending on where they find it. The most famous examples I can think of are the last two Smash games - using placeholder data they could determine several characters that were planned for Brawl but scrapped for various reasons (Dr Mario, Mewtwo, Roy, Toon Zelda and Sheik, Dixie Kong and what seemed to be Plusle and Minun), and even in Smash 4 they were accurately able to predict Ryu's inclusion as DLC based on filenames in one of the prior patches. In the case of stages, the gap alone would tell a story - if the still existing stages were marked #4 and #6, for example, it would beg the question of where #5 went, but to my knowledge no such gap has been found yet, and knowing how dedicated the hacking community is for Sonic I have a hard time believing it would take them over ten years to find one if it existed. Especially when it's been the subject of so many "what the fuck even happened?" case studies on top of that.

[BlueSky]

On ‎31‎.‎3‎.‎2017 at 3:48 AM, Blacklightning said:

Even empty spaces can make sense to data miners depending on where they find it. The most famous examples I can think of are the last two Smash games - using placeholder data they could determine several characters that were planned for Brawl but scrapped for various reasons (Dr Mario, Mewtwo, Roy, Toon Zelda and Sheik, Dixie Kong and what seemed to be Plusle and Minun), and even in Smash 4 they were accurately able to predict Ryu's inclusion as DLC based on filenames in one of the prior patches. In the case of stages, the gap alone would tell a story - if the still existing stages were marked #4 and #6, for example, it would beg the question of where #5 went, but to my knowledge no such gap has been found yet, and knowing how dedicated the hacking community is for Sonic I have a hard time believing it would take them over ten years to find one if it existed. Especially when it's been the subject of so many "what the fuck even happened?" case studies on top of that.

Well yeah, I suppose that would be noticed especially considering the fandom in question, my bad. Maybe I just continue keeping myself out of programming as much as possible...  Sorry.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

So... Shun Nakamura is posting some what looks like cutscene concepts of the game on Twitter.

https://mobile.twitter.com/Nakamura_ShunR/status/851282901824020480

https://mobile.twitter.com/Nakamura_ShunR/status/850212301592449029

[Meta77]

Oh If only this game was not rushed T.T

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

22 hours ago, Meta77 said:

Oh If only this game was not rushed T.T

Let's be honest. Those cries are best saved for games like Crash Twinsanity which are keen but could've been so much more.

06, if still headed in the direction it went with, would've just been a better polished and non-broken turd.

[Meta77]

19 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Joranvexeon said:

Let's be honest. Those cries are best saved for games like Crash Twinsanity which are keen but could've been so much more.

06, if still headed in the direction it went with, would've just been a better polished and non-broken turd.

Honestly even if 06 failed I'm sad they did not still stuck with the games look. The cgi movies at least. I like the models. But Sega like sonic never sticks to one thing long these days

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

On 2/13/2014 at 11:09 PM, Indigo Rush said:

To this day I still don't know why the writers thought there would be no problems with Princess Elise having a hold of that one Chaos Emerald for 10 years, thus nullifying any and every game that ever used all 7 prior to '06.

On 2/13/2014 at 11:21 PM, Jovahexeon Joranvexeon said:

Apparently, before negative reception came crashing down on the game, 06 was set to reboot the Sonic universe.

 

Of course the stupidity of the plothole is only strengthened since Generations acknowledges 06 as canon.

On 2/13/2014 at 11:33 PM, Indigo Rush said:

 

Well, they did a fine job getting that across. All this time I thought this was just continuing on from Shadow's game. 

 

Forgive me Indigo, but I just remembered a thought I had back then, that I'd forgotten to bring up.

I don't blame you for thinking that because well, yes, thanks to it no longer being a reboot, it was continuing off of Shadow's story from his game (one of the few decent character developments that 06 could manage while struggling.

And yeah, they really did end up making Sonic 06, Shadow 2 & Silver.

So yes, as to what the hell smoked up the writers' minds up enough to put the blue chaos emerald in that time loop is beyond me, I'm afraid, old friend.

 

On 4/12/2017 at 3:32 PM, Meta77 said:

Honestly even if 06 failed I'm sad they did not still stuck with the games look. The cgi movies at least. I like the models. But Sega like sonic never sticks to one thing long these days

Sonic in CGI movies? Looking good? That's what we've got Unleashed for.

Albeit the one thing I'll give you is the duo of 06's very first and very final cutscenes and how they made the whole Sonic-among-humans thing work. Course we have the rest of the game to thank for screwing us out of that for any future games.

[FantasticMrRobb]

I enjoyed '06, but of course it took a little time to get good enough at knowing the controls well enough to S Rank everything with Sonic.

[StaticMania]

AVGN did a Sonic the Hedgehog.

 

Sonic Nex Gen and AVGN = James Rolfe

 

There's an awful lot of green screening.

[Maxtiis]

Y'know not that '06 doesn't warrant it but I have to ask why did James even bother with dedicating a full AVGN episode to it? He's done like 3 videos on the game now if you count his James and Mike Monday episode and the Christmas Wishlist bit where his fans requested him to review it alongside other bad Sonic games, so he's obviously had his say on it already. Then there's the decade after its release full of videos where everyone has ripped the game a new one so what's left to make a bit out of that hasn't been done plenty of times before? The green screen making fun of Sonic's Mach Speed Dance of Death^TM is cute and all and certainly has James's unique touch of quality on it but like I said everyone has made fun of it. What remains to mock that hasn't already been done by people like Blaze Hedgehog, SomecallmeJohnny, and the Game Grumps?

Oh well, it isn't uncommon for James to revisit games he's reviewed previously for the sake of clarification, but I'm just tired of seeing this old piece of shit given some sort of relevancy when at this point it doesn't deserve any. It's important to learn from past mistakes but give it a rest already, we know this franchise had its period of rancid, horrible excuses for video games; I mean how can we possibly forget when we're constantly reminded of it? It's time we focus on what's to come instead of having everyone gather around to see the freakshow that is Sonic '06 we've all seen a hundred times before. Let's get back to bitching about Green Hill in Sonic Forces and gushing over Sonic Mania because that's actually relevant.

[Blacklightning]

To an extent, I honestly disagree. For one thing, learning from past mistakes is absolutely a big part why many people keep 06 relatively fresh in memory, myself included, but here's the thing - Sega themselves are keeping those same mistakes relevant, not just because they continued to make them after 06 but in many cases still are to this day. Like trying to sell games on brand power alone (that they no longer have, even) rather than any concious attempt to fix any of the nagging problems people have been pestering them about for years. Or constantly dividing entire games into a myriad of playstyles that almost never have resemble any kind of focused core gameplay design (which is kind of ironic considering 06 was the straw that broke the camel's back on this, but Sega decided to scapegoat every other playable character for it and still made the same mistake with Unleashed anyway). Or... you know what, if you're this sick of hearing about it you can probably imagine how this list goes, so I'll spare you the rest. Point is, they haven't learnt from it, at least not as much as they should have, so that gives people an excuse to point back to it, and that's why it keeps coming up in discussion, besides the fact that the hype buildup to its critical failure is literally legendary in this business.

Another thing, though, is that as far as James Rolfe is concerned, this is a very different kind of insight than we're used to hearing. Much of the discussion on 06's part, for better or worse, is made by people who have a lot of experience with the franchise as a whole (because let's face it, almost nobody else is stupid enough to play 06 nowadays =V) and make observations with that level of experience in mind. James in his own words didn't even know bad Sonic games existed for a great deal of his time as the AVGN, and personally I actually find it pretty refreshing to see somebody play the game ten whole years after release as though it were a brand new experience. Especially because it brought to light a handful of things I completely took for granted, both on my first playthrough and afterwards.

Take that rant about the dog fetching side mission, for instance. In the video he claimed it was something you needed to complete in order to progress through the game. Most of us know that's false - at that point in time, there's only one side mission you need in order to get further in the game, and that's the one where you need to find the captain. Yet I can kinda see how he came to that conclusion - the game doesn't actually show you the open gate once you're done, so if you don't talk to the Mayor or don't happen to just walk right by it, you might not even know the option to progress is open to you. Even SA1, a game made eighteen years prior, had the courtesy to specifically show you when and where a new route in the hubworld opened up, but I never thought about that because I've always known the proper route ahead of time and assumed it went without saying. James bumped into a lot of issues like this because like a lot of buggy, rushed games, 06 snaps like a twig if you don't play it exactly the way the developers and QA testers intended you to, and who better to play a game the unintended way than someone who has played almost no 3D Sonic games before =V

That all being said though, if there's any recurring theme in bringing this game back up in discussion that I can't stand, it's this bizarre insistence that anything in there was salvagable on the path they were taking. There... really isn't? At best, maybe the level design might've improved a little (as much as I hate to admit it, the opening sections for Wave Ocean and Kingdom Valley were onto something as far as branching routes go) and a few of the more obnoxious glitches could've been ironed out, but either way the combat would still be absolute Homing-Attack spam garbage and the plot would still be obnoxious and full of holes and... yeah you've probably heard all this before too. I think we both agree that 06 as a design lesson is more valuable for it's mistakes, not for whatever few strengths it could possibly possess.

...jesus I rambled on about this a lot longer than I expected to

[pppp]

I wanted to answer this, so I'll do it here to not derail the Forces topic:

9 hours ago, Meta77 said:

People need to stop acting as if sonic 06 drove people away if 2 games did that than they were already leaving  hell cod does this what every other hear and I stay. 06 was rushed it was not bad for the sake of being bad but simply were done working on it and want it as a Xbox launch title and Christmas title ship it. Had they taken the time like they are with this and mania maybe it would have been better hell even a solid 7 of 8. But no

OK, I'll humor you, let's imagine if SEGA did delay the game. A delay wouldn't fix the nonsensical story, since it already was done, only some CG cinemas were unfinished hence why they had to use the ingame models on those. The town missions are all terrible, and it would take way more than a couple months to throw them all out and create 30 new ones that are actually fun. The hub worlds would still be unecessarily large, unless of course we threw them out and started over. The level design was full of dumb decisions like the infamous ball puzzle that required complete level overhauls. The fact that by early 2006 the development team was reduced to a fourth of the original number of employees also meant that whatever they had to do would take much longer than if it was a full development team, making any executive cancel the game cause it's a lost cause.

Most of the game had to be thrown away to make it great, which would require the game to start from scratch, meaning by the time they were done the game would be something completely different than the game we actually got.

Sonic 06 was flawed mostly by design(vision in the story's case), not by just lack of polish. Most of its ideas were terrible from the early concept stage, and no amount of polishing was gonna magically fix ideas that are ineherently bad.

[Meta77]

I'll humor you as well. Tell me how was 06 story any worse than any other sonic game. Granted it's main flaw was the Time travel bull that they couldn't ever explain. Why did omega wait 200 something years. What did shadow do to cause people to turn on him. What did mephiles do. Etc. Outside that most the story was ok. Not great but ok.

More time on a game can truly help and also skipping secret rings may have helped

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

You never really answered his questions,  @Meta77.

3 hours ago, Meta77 said:

More time on a game can truly help and also skipping secret rings may have helped

How pathetic is it,  that skipping another game is needed to make 06 appear better? Pfft.

[pppp]

2 hours ago, Meta77 said:

I'll humor you as well. Tell me how was 06 story any worse than any other sonic game. Granted it's main flaw was the Time travel bull that they couldn't ever explain. Why did omega wait 200 something years. What did shadow do to cause people to turn on him. What did mephiles do. Etc. Outside that most the story was ok. Not great but ok.

More time on a game can truly help and also skipping secret rings may have helped

The plotholes are not the only problem of the story, the main problem is how the characters are either shallow, always making stupid decisions for the sake of moving the plot forward or just plain badly written. Sonic looks like he got lobotimized(Except for the opening GC scene), Knuckles is just there, Amy is horrendously out of character(Amy loves Sonic cause he's a hero she would never stand with him if he turned bad.), Tails is always pointing out the painfully obvious, Silver is retarded cause, well, I think Johnny put it well here:

And of course Elise is nothing but a dumb helpless bitch that does nothing aside from getting rescued and yet she still acts all "I do my best to protect my country".

A plot that can only work when the characters either have to act incompetently or act out of character is a terrible plot, it's one of the most scandalous flaws in writing, which is why people hate movies like Batman v Superman or Last Airbender.

Sonic Adventure 1 has plotholes yes, but at least the characters act appropriately to situations.

[Meta77]

21 minutes ago, pppp said:

The plotholes are not the only problem of the story, the main problem is how the characters are either shallow, always making stupid decisions for the sake of moving the plot forward or just plain badly written. Sonic looks like he got lobotimized(Except for the opening GC scene), Knuckles is just there, Amy is horrendously out of character(Amy loves Sonic cause he's a hero she would never stand with him if he turned bad.), Tails is always pointing out the painfully obvious, Silver is retarded cause, well, I think Johnny put it well here:

And of course Elise is nothing but a dumb helpless bitch that does nothing aside from getting rescued and yet she still acts all "I do my best to protect my country".

A plot that can only work when the characters either have to act incompetently or act out of character is a terrible plot, it's one of the most scandalous flaws in writing, which is why people hate movies like Batman v Superman or Last Airbender.

Sonic Adventure 1 has plotholes yes, but at least the characters act appropriately to situations.

Since I like your post in the forces thread I'll I'd bygones be and agree with this haha

[pastelspectre]

the only thing i can say about this game, since i never played it, is that the glitches are awful from what ive heard and seen, and from what i saw game grumps do, i actually like mephiles bc i have a thing for bad boy characters (oops) and i thought this was a good game back in 2008 when i was like..11?

[Blacklightning]

9 hours ago, Meta77 said:

Tell me how was 06 story any worse than any other sonic game

No other Sonic game with plotholes so bad it directly makes other games impossible (namely the blue emerald paradox) comes to mind. Even ShTH, which invented a backstory with aliens out of buttfuck nowhere, still did it with consideration of previous games in Shadow's character arc and didn't actually contradict anything in the process.

No other Sonic game that forces the same level of cringeworthy romance subplot comes to mind. The only one that comes close is CD, and even that ultimately adds up to a skippable encounter, a scripted sequence and a level ending trigger over the entire course of the game, and none of them play out longer than they're welcome to - you'd honestly be forgiven for completely forgetting it's a thing at most points.

No other Sonic game that gives the main character reduced importance in the overall narrative comes to mind. Even SA2, at worst, gave both lead characters equal billing and still made them a part of the same actual plot, whereas Sonic and Eggman both are treated as irrelevant to the real danger in 06 until the eleventh hour.

No other Sonic game that conveniently forgets certain things exist for the sake of making their plot work come to mind. As far as I am aware, Heroes is the only other game in the series that doesn't immediately resort to the Tornado whenever Eggman has a flying fortress out of reach to be boarded, and even then I'm convinced they only glossed over it for the sake of parity between teams. 06 doesn't have that excuse. That's saying nothing of the fact that Knux's ability to sense the chaos emeralds never shows up in a plot that largely revolves around them.

No other Sonic game that straight up makes characters do incredibly dumb shit to make villains seem cunning and manipulative comes to mind. pppp already covered this to some extent, but I feel it needs to be reiterated - Mephiles isn't a threat because he's played off as smart, he's a threat because the actions of everyone around and the plot threads built up to support him are blatant bullshit desperately contrived to make him seem more competent than he really is. For the life of me I can't think of any analogue throughout the entire franchise for this. Even Metal Overlord in Heroes at least came as a big surprise, even if it wasted their well-earned buildup on something stupid.

No other Sonic game that uses quite as much blatant padding comes to mind. Even though Heroes made every team visit every stage just like 06 did, they never had to contrive an excuse for any of them to be there, if only because every character had the same end goal, aware or not. Meanwhile Silver is for the most part only ever relevant to the story whenever Sonic or Shadow is around, most of his time is spent chasing the former around like a homicidal Amy and usually building up to anticlimactic "oh he isn't here" results. And Elise is kidnapped on no less than three seperate occasions (maybe even four? Do correct me if I got that wrong) in order to justify running Sonic's story longer rather than putting anything interesting or relevant in between.

And of course, no other Sonic game that seems so aware of how bad it is that it retcons the entire events of it at the end comes to mind. Seriously, most publishers usually wait a year or two for the fallout to get to them - these guys seemed to be aware of how badly it'd be received while they were making it, which frankly should have been a big warning flag for the executives up high.

Do I need to go on?

9 hours ago, Meta77 said:

More time on a game can truly help and also skipping secret rings may have helped

You do know that 06 and Secret Rings were made by separate teams, right? It's not like cancelling one would have diverted resources back towards the other - they'd just start a new game to develop in tandem like they already were.

[Meta77]

31 minutes ago, Blacklightning said:

No other Sonic game with plotholes so bad it directly makes other games impossible (namely the blue emerald paradox) comes to mind. Even ShTH, which invented a backstory with aliens out of buttfuck nowhere, still did it with consideration of previous games in Shadow's character arc and didn't actually contradict anything in the process.

No other Sonic game that forces the same level of cringeworthy romance subplot comes to mind. The only one that comes close is CD, and even that ultimately adds up to a skippable encounter, a scripted sequence and a level ending trigger over the entire course of the game, and none of them play out longer than they're welcome to - you'd honestly be forgiven for completely forgetting it's a thing at most points.

No other Sonic game that gives the main character reduced importance in the overall narrative comes to mind. Even SA2, at worst, gave both lead characters equal billing and still made them a part of the same actual plot, whereas Sonic and Eggman both are treated as irrelevant to the real danger in 06 until the eleventh hour.

No other Sonic game that conveniently forgets certain things exist for the sake of making their plot work come to mind. As far as I am aware, Heroes is the only other game in the series that doesn't immediately resort to the Tornado whenever Eggman has a flying fortress out of reach to be boarded, and even then I'm convinced they only glossed over it for the sake of parity between teams. 06 doesn't have that excuse. That's saying nothing of the fact that Knux's ability to sense the chaos emeralds never shows up in a plot that largely revolves around them.

No other Sonic game that straight up makes characters do incredibly dumb shit to make villains seem cunning and manipulative comes to mind. pppp already covered this to some extent, but I feel it needs to be reiterated - Mephiles isn't a threat because he's played off as smart, he's a threat because the actions of everyone around and the plot threads built up to support him are blatant bullshit desperately contrived to make him seem more competent than he really is. For the life of me I can't think of any analogue throughout the entire franchise for this. Even Metal Overlord in Heroes at least came as a big surprise, even if it wasted their well-earned buildup on something stupid.

No other Sonic game that uses quite as much blatant padding comes to mind. Even though Heroes made every team visit every stage just like 06 did, they never had to contrive an excuse for any of them to be there, if only because every character had the same end goal, aware or not. Meanwhile Silver is for the most part only ever relevant to the story whenever Sonic or Shadow is around, most of his time is spent chasing the former around like a homicidal Amy and usually building up to anticlimactic "oh he isn't here" results. And Elise is kidnapped on no less than three seperate occasions (maybe even four? Do correct me if I got that wrong) in order to justify running Sonic's story longer rather than putting anything interesting or relevant in between.

And of course, no other Sonic game that seems so aware of how bad it is that it retcons the entire events of it at the end comes to mind. Seriously, most publishers usually wait a year or two for the fallout to get to them - these guys seemed to be aware of how badly it'd be received while they were making it, which frankly should have been a big warning flag for the executives up high.

Do I need to go on?

You do know that 06 and Secret Rings were made by separate teams, right? It's not like cancelling one would have diverted resources back towards the other - they'd just start a new game to develop in tandem like they already were.

I'm skipping most that all of text . Walls of text annoy. I will say that the romance was not really  creep no idea why people keep saying that or cringe I forget which you said

 

And you do know 06 team was cut down because of rings right had they stayed even with yuki leaving maybe it would have been a bit better

[Blacklightning]

Hey man, you literally asked for it. I'm honestly not sure what you were expecting - there's just that much bullshit to sift through.

8 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

And you do know 06 team was cut down because of rings right had they stayed even with yuki leaving maybe it would have been a bit better

When this is one of the most infamous failures of videogame history we're talking about, "a bit better" isn't good enough.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

That's a desperate strawman if ever I've seen one. Just outright ignoring the answer to your own challenge. 

44 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

I will say that the romance was not really  creep no idea why people keep saying that or cringe I forget which you said

 

Actually formulate an argument. That helps. 

[Meta77]

22 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Joranvexeon said:

That's a desperate strawman if ever I've seen one. Just outright ignoring the answer to your own challenge. 

Actually formulate an argument. That helps. 

No its not. Just cause I do not want to sit through a wall of text. Honestly most everything can be from ones own opinion. Think the romance was awkward, some do not,  saying that if given more time the game would still be a mess, no one knows that. The thing with many gripes from 06 is not so much what the game was but what others wanted from it. Maybe the game would not have been any better had the team not split, we will never know, eggman trying to unleash the flames of disaster is pretty important. if anything sega paced the story and also told it both horribly.  At least mephiles killed sonic, instead of some last minute the power of friendship will help up defeat you. IE Metal overlord or time eater.