Sonic Forces | PS4, Xbox One, Switch, PC "The Next Generations"

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Pretty sure Baker was pretty far up there by the time Generations came about anyway, and Mercer is a really good match for him as it is.

Either way, it really doesn't matter who voices Omega, since between Heroes, Shadow and Free Riders (not counting his weird-ass 06 voice) there's literally no difference between each performance because of the direction and filters they put over the voice.

[The Deleter]

4 hours ago, Chris Knopps said:

You know what...?

Here's what I'm thinking...

What if the game is all about playing as Sonic only, and while we play the game, they pull a Cars 2 where we actually focus on what the other characters are doing in cut scenes while Sonic makes his way toward Eggman, making them main characters as much as Sonic, possibly more-so, just not as playable?

That's a hard "No" on my end.

 

Outside of the boost games, Sonic media has always placed waaaaaay more significance and interest on anything anyone is ever doing, except for, well, Sonic himself.

What's going on in Adventure, for example? Well, Knuckles is searching for his sacred master Emerald in an ongoing epic, Amy is on a mission to help a bird find its family, Tails is on a journey of self worth, and Gamma is struggling with the complexities of life and free will itself.

What's Sonic doing? Eh, just going about his days, fighting Eggman when he sees him and stuff.

 

What about Sonic Heroes? Well, the Chaotix are following up a mystery client and taking on missions for a job, Amy's team is looking for their kidnapped friends, team dark is seeking out answers and vengeance for multiple, layered reasons yet again, and... Sonic's going after Eggman too, I guess...

 

06. Silver's inevitable future of apocalypse and the search for the catalyst, Shadow's hunt for a plotting demon's head, and, Sonic saving a princess a million times over, sure

Riders, a team with stakes and a backstory to uncover, and Sonic's likes to race, why not

Sonic Rush, an interesting new character's plot, or Sonic's tired old one; Rivals 1 and 2, with equally superfluous plots yet still different enough from Sonic's to be more interesting

Even the spinoff media like Sonic X, SatAM, the Archie comics suffer the same fate!

 

And all this does is emphasize how utterly boring Sonic's stories are in comparison. Having good stories for the games is all well and good, as well as having a good supporting cast, but when their prominence does nothing but promote a harsh apathy towards anything the main character is doing during gameplay and downtime? That's the point where you need to spin around, take a step back, and try again. Because in a video game series with a main character, you should be making an effort to make their story as engaging and enthralling as possible, otherwise what even is the point in playing as them anymore?

 

At the very least, the Boost and Pontaff games manage to make you give a crap about Sonic's story for once, not someone else's. (although Generation's may as well be by default, but eh)

[Wraith]

4 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

 

At the very least, the Boost and Pontaff games manage to make you give a crap about Sonic's story for once, not someone else's.

You're gonna regret saying this, lol.

I agree with you in general, but I'm not sure if Sonic's the type of character to want a whole lot personally. A lot of the stories in the series even in the classic days focus on him entering someone else's situation and helping out, and I'm not sure if that's such a bad thing.

[Diogenes]

58 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

The problem is the direction they went that was flawed. It had a poor script, it was made primarily to attract Mario and Nintendo fans to the franchise, which has been stated by staff, and the instant you warp your franchise into that of another your "brand identity" which some go on about as-is suffers as a result because it means the team have so little confidence in Sonic now the next best step for them was to literally copy and paste Mario from their Galaxy concept, to stage progression tropes, to the whole Bowser/Koopaling thing, etc.

I really wish people were able to differentiate between "we're making a game exclusively for a Nintendo system so let's focus on elements of the series most likely to appeal to them" and "hurf durf let's copy Mario! *farts*"

[Chris Knopps]

3 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

That's a hard No on my end.

 

Outside of the boost games, Sonic media has always placed waaaaaay more significance on anything anyone is doing, except for Sonic.

What's going on in Adventure, for example? Well, Knuckles is searching for his sacred master Emerald in an ongoing epic, Amy is on a mission to help a bird find its family, Tails is on a journey of self worth, and Gamma is struggling with the complexities of life and free will itself.

What's Sonic doing? Eh, just going about his days, fighting Eggman when he sees him and stuff.

 

What about Sonic Heroes? Well, the Chaotix are following up a mystery client and taking on missions for a job, Amy's team is looking for their kidnapped friends, team dark is seeking out answers and vengeance for multiple, layered reasons yet again, and... Sonic's going after Eggman too, I guess...

 

06. Silver's inevitable future of apocalypse and the search for the catalyst, Shadow's hunt for a plotting demon's head, and, Sonic saving a princess a million times over, sure

Riders, a team with stakes and a backstory to uncover, and Sonic's likes to race, why not

Sonic Rush, an interesting new character's plot, or Sonic's tired old one; Rivals 1 and 2, with equally superfluous plots yet still different enough from Sonic's to be more interesting

Even the spinoff media like Sonic X, SatAM, the Archie comics suffer the same fate!

 

And all this does is emphasize how utterly boring Sonic stories are in comparison. Having good stories is all well and good, as well as having a good supporting cast, but when their prominence does nothing but promote a harsh apathy towards anything the main character is doing during gameplay and downtime? That's the point where you need to spin around, take a step back, and try again. Because in a video game series with a main character, you should be making an effort to make their story as engaging and enthralling as possible, otherwise what even is the point in playing as them anymore?

 

At the very least, the Boost and Pontaff games manage to make you give a crap about Sonic's story for once, not someone else's.

Ehh...

Going by receptions, after Unleashed the plots kind of made a majority of folks... DISLIKE the blue blur even more.

Keep in mind in most/all those titles you mentioned Sonic had his own story/campaign going on with equal length/detail going on pretty much.

And as far as the TV/comic series you mentioned...

I... I don't know. I saw Sonic being just as important and getting equal screen time by and large...

Something about your comment just sounds like one big F bomb to anyone but Sonic being a focus which... I think majority are sick of nowadays...

[MegasonicZX]

1 hour ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Because when they tried to step away from the boost formula, the entire fanbase kinda balked at it.

Lost World was, more than anything else, an attempt at creating a new playstyle for  Sonic that was above all, asset friendly. But the lukewarm-at-best reception and lackluster sales it got does no favors to a franchise that was just getting back on track after Generations. Its not surprising that Sonic Team fell backwards into their safety net. For as divisive and controversial as the boost gameplay is (especially round these parts), it is what is working for them at the moment.

At some point, they are going to either have to find a way to make the boost formula less asset intensive (procedurally generated content maybe? idk) or find another playstyle that people can enjoy and get behind. Otherwise, all future boost games will have to feature some kind of hodgepodge of play styles to pad out the game.

I really feel like lost worlds gameplay should be given another shot at some point. The general gameplay mechanics were sound (with some fine tuning needing to be done on some things) and the idea was interesting but the way they executed it was poor, like I'm almost 100% sure that if sonic team had just scrapped the planetoids, 2D, wisps, random level ideas that never go anywhere, and a list of other things that I can't comprehend right now and focus strictly on the parkour and focus the level design to accommodate it I think that style could've gone a long way and its a shame that they botched it up so badly.

Sky road act 3 in the 3DS version of the game between both versions of the game since it felt like the only one (besides maybe one or two other 3DS stages and one of the Wii U ones) that put the parkour up with some good use instead of side lining it for a bunch of other things that the game didn't even need.

[Diogenes]

5 minutes ago, Josh said:

I agree with you in general, but I'm not sure if Sonic's the type of character to want a whole lot personally. A lot of the stories in the series even in the classic days focus on him entering someone else's situation and helping out, and I'm not sure if that's such a bad thing.

Well I don't think it's a matter of making Sonic exceptionally deep or complex (and it's not like we could have new revelations or major developments for him as a character in every single game given how prolific the series is). But he should actually be a major player in the plot, with more involvement than "smashes some bad guys" while The Real Plot happens to other people.

Like, '06 shouldn't have been this big mess of Double-Dark-Sonic tricking Silver into trying to kill Sonic while harassing Shadow because of a time paradox and Silver angsting about if it's okay to kill people to stop fire demons and then losing his mentor figure because he's useless and Shadow declaring that he's not going to let Dark Shadow make him mopey, meanwhile Sonic dates a princess, fights some robots, and sees these guys maybe once or twice. What we could've had is a game that focuses on Sonic being hunted down by a mysterious new enemy, being confronted with the idea that his continued existence may doom humanity, and eventually finding out the truth and confronting the guy responsible. That's a solid base for a story, I think, and it's not really driven by Sonic's needs or desires (beyond survival, naturally), but it makes him a central part of it rather than just hanging around the edges until it's time to beat up the final boss.

[The Deleter]

46 minutes ago, Josh said:

You're gonna regret saying this, lol.

I agree with you in general, but I'm not sure if Sonic's the type of character to want a whole lot personally. A lot of the stories in the series even in the classic days focus on him entering someone else's situation and helping out, and I'm not sure if that's such a bad thing.

Then make his story the same as everyone else's story, when character depth and motivation is lacking. No need to seperate them.

SA2, SatBK, Zero Gravity, and Rush Adventure all have stories like this, and it's exactly why I didn't bring them up. In those games, all characters benefit equally from the stories, regardless of whether some personalities are more immediately interesting than others. The events of the game effect every single one, and in turn, they're all just as invested in the situation as one another.

It's not the same as making Sonic as genuinely interesting of a character as the rest of them, (which SatBK did attempt to do, tbh) but it's much better than the alternative, which is exactly what Knopps was suggesting we go through again.

 

Reminds me of One Piece, in a way. Every character generally stands in the background figuratively when they aren't paying attention to anything, or are separated, and characters given special prominence for stories initially feel detracting from the main character's appeal, but when they all unite, hear each other out, and combine all their resolves into one, that's when it gets interesting. Personalities clash, drives are challenged, the plot feels more unified with a singular resolve and turmoils, and as a result, the payoff feels much more satisfying, for a series focused around those characters first and foremost.

I still feel like Luffy should be more involved despite his personality, but hey, it's better than nothing. *shrug*

[Shadowlax]

3 hours ago, The Deleter said:

That's the point where you need to spin around, take a step back, and try again. Because in a video game series with a main character, you should be making an effort to make their story as engaging and enthralling as possible, otherwise what even is the point in playing as them anymore?

 

No?

The most popular video game character in history of video games , mario's story is basically nothing. Hell when they tried to tell his story as a baby , its more yoshi doing cool shit than anything else. This is something that happens in media quite often, the " main character" is a familiar venue for you to tell stories about other character. Ryu, boring ass fight man who fights so he can learn how he fights, persona protagonists 3-6 some asshole who just shows up. Every pokemon protagonist ,literally who. Not to mention RPG's in general where you start off as just... guy and your story is going around helping other people. Dark souls doesn't tell you jack fuck about nothing, you have to find it out and turns out every character in dark souls is cooler and more interesting than your guy. 

Them having an interesting story is not a a requirement. Some games have main characters that work with their narratives about them being simple, some are more complicated and work like snake and raiden. But to use that as a barometer for everything shows a fundamental non understanding that people play video games for different reasons and people enjoy video games for different reasons. 

So no, my issue with sonic stories being boring is no that their boring its that they have stopped surrounding him with more interesting characters and we now have to deal with the fact that sonic is boring. On top of him often having no flaws, it isn't exactly a great time. That's my issue, and pontac and the other guy and the newer stories have yet to engage me in a sonic narrative, boom kinda because it tried something. But i t hasn't tried that thing again since the failed game ROL, so now the TV show is just boring ass nothing most of the time. 

[The Deleter]

3 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

No?

The most popular video game character in history of video games , mario's story is basically nothing. Hell when they tried to tell his story as a baby , its more yoshi doing cool shit than anything else. This is something that happens in media quite often, the " main character" is a familiar venue for you to tell stories about other character. Ryu, boring ass fight man who fights so he can learn how he fights, persona protagonists 3-6 some asshole who just shows up. Every pokemon protagonist ,literally who. Not to mention RPG's in general where you start off as just... guy and your story is going around helping other people. Dark souls doesn't tell you jack fuck about nothing, you have to find it out and turns out every character in dark souls is cooler and more interesting than your guy. 

Them having an interesting story is not a a requirement. Some games have main characters that work with their narratives about them being simple, some are more complicated and work like snake and raiden. But to use that as a barometer for everything shows a fundamental non understanding that people play video games for different reasons and people enjoy video games for different reasons. 

So no, my issue with sonic stories being boring is no that their boring its that they have stopped surrounding him with more interesting characters and we now have to deal with the fact that sonic is boring. On top of him often having no flaws, it isn't exactly a great time. That's my issue, and pontac and the other guy and the newer stories have yet to engage me in a sonic narrative, boom kinda because it tried something. But i t hasn't tried that thing again since the failed game ROL, so now the TV show is just boring ass nothing most of the time. 

Except Mario is deliberately as minimal as you can get, Street Fighter is rather a collection of fighters under that name, and RPGs have their protagonists deliberately bland to be a "blank slate" for the player to project himself with. Sonic, is none of those things.

There's no "fundamental misunderstanding" here; some people may play games for different reasons, sure, and SEGA's handling of the stories and characters has generally molded parts of the fanbase to be apathetic towards everything dealing with Sonic alone, in advance, but that doesn't change that the Sonic the Hedgehog series, is still about Sonic. Having an interesting story isn't important, no, and that can very well be the case, like with the classics and Mania overall. But when you actually make an effort to include a good story, in a video game, that's supposed to motivate you to play through the game in some way, and your main character campaign is a completely uneventful snoozefest compared to everyone else's... Yes, you have failed on multiple levels. Especially when he's supposed to be the fastest, coolest character of them all.

 

It's like if you took Mario, and gave Peach a story about fighting through an enemy kingdom's Forces to protect her newfound friends, Luigi's being trapped in a strange underground world and has to find a way to escape, and Yoshi's a Wall-e esque romp through the jungle in a slice-of-life fashion, all while giving them special abilities and gameplay twists... And Mario gets the base gameplay and the same "rescue the princess" plot, all over again.

(Edit: or, use a more conservative plot example like the one I posted below, if this is too radical to set an example with)

.... You tell me, who in their right mind would actively want to play as Mario over the others past that point? And in what way would Mario be actively worthy of his namesake being the title itself, of all things?

 

Make no mistake, I'm not trying to rail against supporting characters being included again, or even that they should always be limited to be just as or less interesting than Sonic's story, no exceptions. But going back to the old way of doing it, separating every element of interest and eventfulness into alternate character stories, to the detriment of Sonic himself? Nope. There are far better ways to pull off good stories and characters than that.

[StaticMania]

32 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

... You tell me, who in their right mind would actively want to play as Mario over the others past that point? And in what way would Mario be actively worthy of his namesake being the title itself, of all things?

People who don't necessarily care for the game-play differences or people who just prefer Mario's simplicity. It's not like anything outside of the story of those ideas you suggested are inherently bound to be better than what Mario already has, just different.

 

But it's not like that stuff would be prioritized in a regular ol' "Super Mario" game, so it doesn't even have to become an Artifact Title.

[The Deleter]

37 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

People who don't necessarily care for the game-play differences or people who just prefer Mario's simplicity. It's not like anything outside of the story of those ideas you suggested are inherently bound to be better than what Mario already has, just different.

 

But it's not like that stuff would be prioritized in a regular ol' "Super Mario" game, so it doesn't even have to become an Artifact Title.

Maybe, but in this hypothetical game, it's gotta be as close to the Sonic series as possible, so the moves have to stack. Even though they may be slightly different, Mario's base gameplay would be severely limited in comparison, and even underpowered. At that point it's not just difference for the sake of difference, but difference for the sake of superiority and validation, which all Sonic characters tend to fall into theoretically. Unless of course we really went in hard, and followed the full-blown alternate gameplay styles the series has, beat for beat. :V

 

Also, my first example for story is a bit "Sonic Adventure", which might be a little too different, so a better example would probably be, "Mario saves Peach as usual, Luigi saves Daisy with more character development and humorous moments throughout, and Wario saves a gold statue of a Princess, with more action, adventure, and twists along the way." Gets the point across better, imo, but if the other one floats your boat more, eh...

[StaticMania]

12 minutes ago, The Deleter said:

Maybe, but in this hypothetical game, it's gotta be as close to the Sonic series as possible, so the moves have to stack. Even though they may be slightly different, Mario's base gameplay would be severely limited in comparison, and even underpowered. At that point it's not just difference for the sake of difference, but difference for the sake of superiority and validation, which all Sonic characters tend to fall into theoretically. Unless of course we really went in hard, and followed the full-blown alternate gameplay styles the series has, beat for beat. :V

Mario doesn't have a "base game-play" though. His foundation is platforming and the developers can build from there. He doesn't have gimmick so he's able to do basically anything within the realm of platforming whimsy. He wouldn't be limited by his simplicity.

 

Though I guess keeping Mario to 64 style basics, while everyone else gets Sunshine and Galaxy style gimmicks is what you mean. Where it's basically slightly more complicated platforming based around those gimmicks. And that's what Sonic's friends should have (realization ensues).

[DonWaffleleven]

9 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Lost World was, more than anything else, an attempt at creating a new playstyle for  Sonic that was above all, asset friendly. But the lukewarm-at-best reception and lackluster sales it got does no favors to a franchise that was just getting back on track after Generations. Its not surprising that Sonic Team fell backwards into their safety net. For as divisive and controversial as the boost gameplay is (especially round these parts), it is what is working for them at the moment.

At some point, they are going to either have to find a way to make the boost formula less asset intensive (procedurally generated content maybe? idk) or find another playstyle that people can enjoy and get behind. Otherwise, all future boost games will have to feature some kind of hodgepodge of play styles to pad out the game.

Yeah, not exactly thrilled at the parkour style myself to be honest. They should have just rethought their entire design process when some bright spark brought up the run button. I think the sales were just because it was an exclusive to a non-starter of a console and by the time the PC port arrived, it was too little too late and the only people who bought were either the die-hards or the modding community.

A large part of me is a little miffed because, in my opinion at least, they got it right the very first time with Adventure. Then one game fell flat on it's face and we get a new playstyle that somehow better for some bunch of nebulous reasons. In fact they actually REMOVE features like basic camera control and the ability the lightspeed dash with any trail of rings. Can you think of any game or game series that gets better when it REMOVES features or content?

[Dannymax440]

55 minutes ago, DonWaffleleven said:

At some point, they are going to either have to find a way to make the boost formula less asset intensive (procedurally generated content maybe? idk) or find another playstyle that people can enjoy and get behind. Otherwise, all future boost games will have to feature some kind of hodgepodge of play styles to pad out the game.

Hasn't the padding feature being present way before the boost feature was introduced?

[Salamander]

Stepping back a page (or two pages, as it's turned out) to the question of "Which characters might be in the game?", I could see Silver and Blaze making it.  Time shenanigans are confirmed by Classic Sonic's presence, so Silver showing up is hardly incredible - and furthermore, because Silver himself seems to be just generally a time-traveller now, he never actually needs a reason to show up, he can just be there and say "oh the future became ruined because of what happened here, so I time-travelled."  Whatever.  Blaze is more complicated, but if Nega or Boom Sonic are involved - less probable, but still possible - then the way is cleared for Blaze to show up.  Also, nobody actually bothered to explain how Silver and Blaze could be there in Generations at all, yet they were still there.  So I'd never say never.

So far as making Sonic's story interesting goes, even if they can't think of any particularly unique or memorable reason for Sonic to be involved, all you really need to do is have events happen to or around him.  This seems to be hard for the writers to grasp sometimes, but it becomes trivial if you just take some of the things that happen to secondary characters and ask yourself "Well, what if this happened to Sonic instead?"  To take Lost World as an example, purely because it's the most recent game, let's say Sonic really did get kidnapped by the Deadly Six instead of Tails.  When it happened to Tails, Tails got partially converted into a robot but ended up saving himself through his mechanical prowess.  That's obviously not an option for Sonic, but you could have other ways things could go.  He could fight his way out of the factory; that would be an interesting diversion in an otherwise formulaic plot and level order.  He could be partially mechanised and fight a mental battle with Metal Sonic or something.  Tails and Eggman could break into the factory with a distraction that lets him get away in time.  Actually, swap "Tails" for "Sonic" in the previous example and you could've put that in Lost World as it stands.  There are things Sonic can do that are different if only the writers will let him.  Except... it's not always on the writers, is it?

The Tails example above actually showcases a problem with the current approach to writing the games, and in fact it goes for Tails in both Lost World and Colours.  In Lost World, he's kidnapped and turned into a robot to fight Sonic, but ends up not having to for some reason.  In Colours, he's brainwashed to fight Sonic, but ends up not having to for some reason.  Why don't the fights actually happen?  It's because of the way the writing team's work is very obviously proceeding entirely separately from the rest of the development team.  The development team are building their games according to a rigid and predictable structure, and because the writers don't have access to them or the level of trust to be involved in deciding the initial structure, they have no way of providing any input into the process to the tune of "what if we fight Tails," or "what if we escape from a factory."  And because they don't have that input, all the writers can do is write inconsequential cutscenes to be "dropped in" between levels, cutscenes which absolutely cannot affect the actual level order or game structure.  So Tails can be brainwashed, but we can't fight him as the development staff are already building a completely independent set of bosses.  Tails can be kidnapped, but we can't go and rescue him as that's not part of the level structure the designers have been given.  We can put a random hall of mirrors in a cutscene in Generations, but you'll never actually go there as a playable character as they don't know about it on the development side.

The writers are just playing fill-in-the-blanks on the overall structure the developers have given them; they can write a plot, sure, but the plot can't stop Sonic from going to Level 1 then Level 2 then fighting Monster of the Week 1 and so on, so the plot will never actually be relevant to the game itself.  This is a situation which won't change unless Sonic Team becomes willing to slow down its development plan in order to interact directly with their western writers - or start working with Japanese writers again who can actually be in the office and talk to them.

[DonWaffleleven]

53 minutes ago, FFWF said:

let's say Sonic really did get kidnapped by the Deadly Six instead of Tails.  When it happened to Tails, Tails got partially converted into a robot but ended up saving himself through his mechanical prowess.  That's obviously not an option for Sonic, but you could have other ways things could go.  He could fight his way out of the factory; that would be an interesting diversion in an otherwise formulaic plot and level order.  He could be partially mechanised and fight a mental battle with Metal Sonic or something.  Tails and Eggman could break into the factory with a distraction that lets him get away in time.  Actually, swap "Tails" for "Sonic" in the previous example and you could've put that in Lost World as it stands.

Aw man all these great ideas, I'm trying not to be disappointed that none of them will ever happen in the series.

[Red Hot Jack]

Since the characters are not playable and this game is somewhat like Generations, I can see most of the supporting cast appearing in the hubworld, Vic Mignogna mentioned he's working on a Sonic project and Nika Futterman is not allowed to answer me about Forces, so if we could see them we could see a lot of characters, I just want Big.

[Chris Knopps]

I'm kind of in the mindset that the plot should come first and foremost.

When the plot of the game took center stage we got Sonic CD, we got Sonic 3 and Knuckles, the two Adventure titles, we got Unleashed and Black Knight.

When considering this, I'd rather story come before anything in a project. Sure there are hit and misses with the game play, but the sales were still great no matter what parts of the game play itself of the titles I mentioned were off perhaps.

You had some real meat in the game besides play this stage, play this stage, beat this boss, okay you're done, with random poor attempts at being a laid back version of Adventures of Sonic in a very off-brand vibe kind of way.

[Diogenes]

4 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

I'm kind of in the mindset that the plot should come first and foremost.

When the plot of the game took center stage we got Sonic CD, we got Sonic 3 and Knuckles

What?

No one's going to say those games don't have more of a story focus than Sonics 1 and 2, but there's no way I'd describe them as "plot first". The story in both is told only by a few short dialogue-free cutscenes and a couple of paragraphs in the manual.

Not even the best Sonic stories have been good enough to make them the primary focus. This is an old school platforming series, not a visual novel or a cinematic action series.

[Chris Knopps]

Just now, Diogenes said:

What?

No one's going to say those games don't have more of a story focus than Sonics 1 and 2, but there's no way I'd describe them as "plot first". The story in both is told only by a few short dialogue-free cutscenes and a couple of paragraphs in the manual.

Not even the best Sonic stories have been good enough to make them the primary focus. This is an old school platforming series, not a visual novel or a cinematic action series.

Yes, and no.

Where have you been...?

[Wraith]

I'm not sure if I want plot to come first, but it would be nice if they looked at Sonic CD and Sonic 3 and tried to integrate their story into the gameplay and mechanics. Story and gameplay don't really have to be seperate things, and they often become better when you think of them as one whole experience instead of separating them as much as possible.

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Plot in a platformer game especially should not come first to the detriment of the gameplay itself.

Now the plot itself being interwoven with the gameplay cleverly is what I'm all for!

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Chris Knopps said:

Yes, and no.

Where have you been...?

If you're trying to say that Sonic is a cinematic action series, boost games playing themselves doesn't count. Especially not for this argument, when the extent of their "cinematic action" is "watch Sonic get flung around" and not anything having to do with storytelling.

[Chris Knopps]

11 minutes ago, Josh said:

I'm not sure if I want plot to come first, but it would be nice if they looked at Sonic CD and Sonic 3 and tried to integrate their story into the gameplay and mechanics. Story and gameplay don't really have to be seperate things, and they often become better when you think of them as one whole experience instead of separating them as much as possible.

 

I feel like the titles I mention integrated this mindset pretty well as a whole.

Not perfectly, but pretty well.

Segregating the plot from the gameplay/locations has led to the recent titles, resulting in nonsensical products at the end of it all where both the locations and script feel out of place, they feel distant from one another.

Quote

If you're trying to say that Sonic is a cinematic action series, boost games playing themselves doesn't count. Especially not for this argument, when the extent of their "cinematic action" is "watch Sonic get flung around" and not anything having to do with storytelling.

Are you really going to play the "I'm going to ignore everything" game and put the plots of the titles I mentioned aside and the length of time their scenes have when woven together that often result in the time frame of an entire theatrical film save recent titles with bare minimum half-hour plots?

Don't even try to play that schtick on this one.

Quote

Plot in a platformer game especially should not come first to the detriment of the gameplay itself.

Now the plot itself being interwoven with the gameplay cleverly is what I'm all for!

 

Essentially what I'm going for.