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


Badnik Mechanic

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22 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

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.

 

I mean, I'm not really tempted to give a lot of those games credit because the story is focused around these cutscenes that aren't particularly good at all. The Modern Games are the result of Sonic Team being called out on the fact that their stories and writing don't cut it, and instead of fixing that, they just gradually put less emphasis on it from Unleashed up to Generations. No point in wasting resources on a plot nobody cares about, right?  You can point to Sonic Adventure 2 or Sonic 06 and say "At least they tried!" over Generations and Colors but a story I want to skip is about as good as not having one to me.

It's not all bad. Unleashed giving the sensation of a long sprint from the town area in each level to the  gaia temple is fantastic and the kind of thing I want to see more of, but yeah. Not a lot of winners for me here when I look at the whole series.

 

 

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1 hour ago, Chris Knopps said:

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.

 

This is a very bad philosophy to have when developing any game, especially in a platformer like Sonic. Real ideas for mechanics and gameplay should come first before any vague ideas of a plot. if you're going to consider the plot for anything else then you may as well just write a movie

Besides, with this time around, the plot looks to be more involved with the gameplay and level setpieces this time around, the city getting destroyed is likely a part in the story,

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56 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

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.

Having a shitload of cutscenes also doesn't make it a cinematic action game, it makes it a platformer with a movie tacked on. The gameplay isn't designed as something to support the story; the two exist independently of each other, or at least with only the thinnest of threads connecting them. And Sonic gameplay isn't designed or even really capable of supporting the story much more than that, so trying to design a Sonic game from the story first is always going to be a mess.

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1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

Having a shitload of cutscenes also doesn't make it a cinematic action game, it makes it a platformer with a movie tacked on. The gameplay isn't designed as something to support the story; the two exist independently of each other, or at least with only the thinnest of threads connecting them. And Sonic gameplay isn't designed or even really capable of supporting the story much more than that, so trying to design a Sonic game from the story first is always going to be a mess.

Keep trying Dio

Even in the other games I've mentioned the plot was integrated into the game play itself.

Look at one game I didn't mention, Heroes.

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1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

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.

His list was Sonic CD, Sonic 3 & Knuckles, the two Adventure titles, Unleashed and Black Knight.

So, I don't think that's what he's saying.

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Sticking a couple of cutscenes in the middle of the gameplay also does not make it a cinematic action game, at least not by the measure I'm using. The gameplay still isn't doing anything to support the story beyond "these gameplay tasks arbitrarily move the story forward".

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2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Sticking a couple of cutscenes in the middle of the gameplay also does not make it a cinematic action game, at least not by the measure I'm using.

So, what does make something a "cinematic action game"?

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1 minute ago, Kellan said:

So, what does make something a "cinematic action game"?

I have a hard time finding Dio making any sense at all in this argument. Even on the Genesis the franchise was about using action and cinematic themes combined during game play when you controlled a character and during cutscenes when you could not.

This goes into a "spectacle" argument as well I suppose. Things like Lava Reef being destroyed by the Death Egg while, then, Robotnik chased you down, Doomsday Zone played heavily on a cinematic experience with action combined.

Then you had the whale chasing and GUN truck in the Adventure games, and SO much in Unleashed was a cinematic and action oriented experience during both game play and cut scenes.

If a Sonic title wasn't cinematic it'd be a bore by and large, and without its action... What the heck are we even playing?

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Something along the lines of a game where the gameplay exists (in significant part, not necessarily entirely) to support the story/narrative. In Sonic, the story is, 99 times out of 100, the excuse for you to play a level, and the level has no real storytelling element to it besides being something you need to do to get the next piece of story.

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I don't consider just theming the level around the circumstances or very rare setpieces to be enough.

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11 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I don't consider just theming the level around the circumstances or very rare setpieces to be enough.

I'm having a hard time understanding what your standards are. Could you maybe give an example of a game that you feel integrates its story well?

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Something like Uncharted, I guess. Something where the majority of the game is that kind of integration of story and gameplay, not just a handful of setpieces.

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1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

Something like Uncharted, I guess. Something where the majority of the game is that kind of integration of story and gameplay, not just a handful of setpieces.

Right, like how Adventure 2 did it?

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Isn't this derailing the topic a bit? 

I thought there some updates to the game as well based on the Hot Topic status. Was disappointed :P

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7 minutes ago, Kellan said:

I'm not following you.

I'm not really sure what more I can say to lead you to it, then. Some Sonic games may have occasional elements of a cinematic action game, but they do not actually commit to it.

6 minutes ago, Zoroark & Flare said:

@Diogenes do you hapoen something along the lines of what you do in the l actually changes what the next cutscene or level will play out?

No, that's a completely separate matter.

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Mario was at it's best when it was actually trying to have a story and actual lore and characters though. The Paper Mario series. Then Miyamoto got all over it and enforced that Mario shouldn't have story or character and ruined the Paper Mario series. But that's just my opinion.

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The thing is that Paper Mario is an RPG... Removing story from an RPG is just dumb.

The main Mario games had almost no story, besides Galaxy and Sunshine.

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3 minutes ago, RictalRose0 said:

Mario was at it's best when it was actually trying to have a story and actual lore and characters. The Paper Mario series. Then Miyamoto got all over it and enforced that Mario shouldn't have story or character and ruined the Paper Mario series.

Uh, Paper Mario's a RPG/Action Adventure series. Sonic is a Platformer. I'm not quite sure how they can both be compared. Besides, the main Mario games (also Platformers) have zero care in the world for plot and look how well those turn out.

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I'm just saying, I was a lot more invested in the Mario series when Paper Mario tried to do that. The Sonic series might not be an RPG but it has an interesing set of characters and settings. So the series has managed to make myself and a lot of people be invested in it for more that just gameplay.

4 minutes ago, JosepMelloZSM said:

The thing is that Paper Mario is an RPG... Remove story from RPG is just dumb.

 

And yet that's exactly what Nintendo did.

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Still, a platformer with story made for an RPG probably doesn't work.

Isn't better if we wait for a new Sonic RPG to use the characters and settings well?

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