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

[Diogenes]

6 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Trust people to show good judgement when the they make OCs, to create something that matches the style of the Sonic games while still expressing their own creative ideas on what a new Sonic character could sincerely look like.

Shit man have you actually seen what most Sonic fan characters are like?

That trust is absolutely misplaced.

[Nepenthe]

1 minute ago, Kintor said:

What, are you seriously bringing up the Roman Polanski case in a conversation about fan characters on the internet? That just lowers the whole tone of this conversation and really doesn't have anything to do with the subject at hand.

For one, it's called an analogy. It's a comparison meant to explain a greater point. 

Two, you've been going on and on about the ethics of character creation itself in order to do nothing but lend credence to your hype and ignoring every single reason people have listed- many of them based on Sega's footage and press release- as to why it doesn't gel with them, brushing us all off as "blind haters," and yet you have the audacity to talk to me about irrelevancy.

Three, you're gish-galloping. Stop pulling out single sentences in my posts to rebut while reiterating your same rants. If you're not going to at least recognize the fact that I never called all OCs fetish material and renege on everything you've argued resulting from such a misconception, you can have a strike. You've already been told about this behavior of hijacking a thread in a torrent of weak arguments and a veneer of moral superiority the first time, and I'm not going to say it again as of this post.

[Joellui]

Jesus another clues/code to figure out? I'm over it already it, like just stop it was funny and actually fun to figure what was going and what was going to be announced, but since most of things we already out in the open what's the point Aaron? I'm burnt out by this point.

Like just tell us or don't tell it's getting pretty annoying, just stick to memes for now until there's like another game or something.

[Chris Knopps]

1 minute ago, Joellui said:

Jesus another clues/code to figure out? I'm over it already it, like just stop it was funny and actually fun to figure what was going and what was going to be announced, but since most of things we already out in the open what's the point Aaron? I'm burnt out by this point.

Like just tell us or don't tell it's getting pretty annoying, just stick to memes for now until there's like another game or something.

I dunno...

I think his marketing tactic as a whole is getting a bit old to people. He was brought back due to the general dire vibes going on with the franchise and a necessity of getting it out there again in SOME positive manner, even if it meant shaming their own products through "self awareness" schticks.

Nowadays though... In general everything is steering into a "been there, done that, what else have you got?" kind of scenario.

He's a great man no doubt, but beating other horses WOULD be nice.

[Kintor]

Just now, Nepenthe said:

For one, it's called an analogy. It's a comparison meant to explain a greater point. 

Two, you've been going on and on about the ethics of character creation itself in order to do nothing but lend credence to your hype and ignoring every single reason people have listed- many of them based on Sega's footage and press release- as to why it doesn't gel with them, brushing us all off as "blind haters," and yet you have the audacity to talk to me about irrelevancy.

Three, you're gish-galloping. Stop pulling out single sentences in my posts to rebut while reiterating your same rants. If you're not going to at least recognize the fact that I never called all OCs fetish material and renege on everything you've argued resulting from such a misconception, you can have a strike. You've already been told about this behavior of hijacking a thread in a torrent of weak arguments and a veneer of moral superiority the first time, and I'm not going to say it again as of this post.

Um... gish-galloping? *does a quick Google search* Oh, so that's a reference to Creationist arguments and debate tactics. Fair enough.

Anyway, if it’s such an issue, I apologise for the remarks I made when you started using the term 'fetish material' in relation to any aspect of Sonic fan OCs.

Regardless, the point I want to make I that it's heathy for the community to assume that new OCs created by Sonic fans will be socially acceptable and a benefit to the reputation of the Sonic franchise as a whole. A few infamous examples that get shared at places like NeoGAF doesn't constitute the majority of fan output. Furthermore, it's a mistake to fear what the character creator in Sonic Forces will encourage because this official system will actually prevent anything like the infamous examples from ever being created.

With this character creator in Sonic Forces we have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

[Ellipsis-Ultima]

10 hours ago, Jango said:

I believe this was brought, but just in case you've missed during the storm, here's a reminder that the story will probably be ass again:

 

Didn't comment about this.

So I went back to Larry's comment and here its mentioned that Tails doesn't show up much in the story, he's there after Sonic's saved, but he gives up when Sonic disappears. If that's true, the concept of Tails giving up sounds kinda interesting.

Then considering who's writing the story now and I don't have high hopes for the story being executed well. Pontac and Graff aren't the right writers for Sonic to be honest. While Colors was okay, Gens, and Lost World was meh, (Shattered Crystal was awful but Fire and Ice was better than that).

And since Sonic's friends are in this story now I hope they're not reduced to the cheerleading status again like last time. I think the OC will have more focus throughout the story, but if you can't make the others playable, at least make them do something in the story, like stopping the robots or escorting the people (if there's any) out of burning buildings or something.

[Sonictrainer]

28 minutes ago, Kintor said:

Trust people to show good judgement when the they make OCs, to create something that matches the style of the Sonic games while still expressing their own creative ideas on what a new Sonic character could sincerely look like.

 

Most of the characters I'm going to make are going to be from the TV shows, Archie Comics, and outside of Sonic like 5 Nights At Freddy's, Pokemon, Digimon, and Looney Tunes.

None of these are new Sonic Characters.

[Kintor]

5 minutes ago, Sonictrainer said:

Most of the characters I'm going to make are going to be from the TV shows, Archie Comics, and outside of Sonic like 5 Nights At Freddy's, Pokemon, Digimon, and Looney Tunes.

None of these are new Sonic Characters.

This is a good way to use the character creator as well. More power to you if you can come-up with with some convincing look-a-likes. I imagine that many other people will be wanting to do somethign simliar, which is all part of the fun and certainly no cause for alarm.

[CleverSonicUsername]

I would like to add that any character creator is only as good as its ability to let you make horrifying monstrosities. If all this lets you do is swap out prefab elements then even at face value it has failed.

[StaticMania]

It might even let you scale how wide and tall the face and body is...

[Kintor]

6 minutes ago, CleverSonicUsername said:

I would like to add that any character creator is only as good as its ability to let you make horrifying monstrosities. If all this lets you do is swap out prefab elements then even at face value it has failed.

Nothing wrong with this approach either. Contrary to some of the concerns raised in this thread, a horrifying monstrosity made possible by the character creator is a vastly different thing to infamous OCs that gets mentioned. If anything, sharing these monstrosities across social media will only help to further spread the popularity of Sonic Forces amongst gamers. This kind of stupid fun is exactly what character creators are ideal for.

[Maxtiis]

7 minutes ago, CleverSonicUsername said:

I would like to add that any character creator is only as good as its ability to let you make horrifying monstrosities. If all this lets you do is swap out prefab elements then even at face value it has failed.

Not necessarily. Tf2 has some of the most ridiculous customization in gaming and you can't change their proportions, but those outfits are so good I don't really care. I mean just look at this:

Sorry best image I've got.

[CleverSonicUsername]

Just now, Maxtiis said:

Not necessarily. Tf2 has some of the most ridiculous customization in gaming and you can't change their proportions, but those outfits are so good I don't really care. I mean just look at this:

Sorry best image I've got.

Character customization =/= character creation.

[Bowbowis]

I guess I haven't chimed in with my views yet have I?

So, character creator... uh, cool... whatever... can I just play as Knuckles?  Honestly, if we were back in the early 2000's, where multiple playable characters was the norm and utilization of the extended cast was an expectation, rather than a pipe dream, I'd probably be all for it. I mean, I love customizing characters, cosmetic, gameplay related, doesn't matter. I could spend an hour or two just playing around with the character editor in Xenoblade Chronicles X and Emerl from Sonic Battle is still one of my favorite videogame gimmicks, for the sheer fact that you can can customize literally every aspect of his moveset from his running technique, to the individual strikes in his combos. Nowadays though, after years of desperately begging for the other characters to get some focus in the futile hope that Shadow may get more than two lines in the next game, this just feels like a slap in the face. The gameplay doesn't look that interesting either, maybe it'll end up surprising me, but for now it looks like their just trying to appease people who don't like the boost formula by simply taking Modern Sonic's gameplay and removing the boost. Once more showing that they have zero understanding of why people take issue with the formula, and demonstrating yet again that they have learned absolutely nothing from Lost World. Speaking of which:

12 hours ago, Jango said:

I believe this was brought, but just in case you've missed during the storm, here's a reminder that the story will probably be ass again:

 

Fuck... I mean... just... fuck...

[The Matticus]

I just had a thought. Since Lil' Sonics roll in this feels more unnecessary than mysterious. Now it's only speculation and it's waaaay out there, but...

 

What if Classic Sonic is there as alternative option for players who don't want to create a character of their own? 

I mean, yeah, it'd be real dumb, especially since any other character from the series could fill that roll... but, again, speculation. 

 

[StaticMania]

3 mandatory styles seems more likely to be honest. It's too perfect, adding another style per game. No genre roulette, just 3 different game-play styles packed into the same game.

[Alienrun]

I guess I'll chime in regarding this whole "ARG" nonsense...

I don't do ARG's often, but when I do I have a blast...even if the scope of when I do them is always because of a reason, AKA I don't go looking for them...more so to add onto that, I've only done the legendary ones done by SiIvagunner...such good and awesome stuff!

Now obviously, Sonic doesn't have ANYTHING on that. The way the first one was set up looked rather cheap when I saw it so I passed...what really sealed the deal was how it ended though...

They just release a video showing all of the "clues" that you had to follow in order to find out that "Classic Sonic has returned" Really? That's it?! Well no s**t SEGA! You think we're all idiots? You think we're all kids with no sensibilities who can't make reasonable guess and can't talk to us like humans? Take a hint from the infamous Halo 2 ARG would ya...this is NOT how you do it!

To make this even worse however is that you actually COULDN'T SOLVE THE CLUES EVEN IF YOU WANTED TO! The clues were revealed in such a way that you'd need to already know future clues in order to "solve the mystery", add that to the extreme vapidness of what the end goal was and you have a really REALLY crappy ARG to boot!

...Oh...but that video repeated the phrase "Let's look for...more clues!" over and over again! Repetition is funny, even if it makes no damn sense, so I guess its a meme now! Yay!

IDK, I'm not against the idea at all, but the way they have it set up currently is stupid. The whole "follow the clues thing" doesn't help.

I could go on about how an ARG should be handled, but I won't for obvious reasons. I will say this though...the first rule of an ARG is that YOU DON'T SAY THERE'S AN ARG! Your supposed to take a fake fictional idea and do everything in your power to make it seem real, even if it only captivates a specific audience. From there your end goal can be a real thing, but at that point you want to make it as seamless as possible so that the end goal actually feels rewarding and thus news of how your ARG was successful starts to spread.

...This, in turn is really beneficial if your advertising a product! wink wink

The fact that the most memorable part of the first one (its not an ARG by the way, an ARG has a structure while this was nonsense clues) was a forced quote that admits that ARG is fake...is very sad. Fun and Memes aside, that's just bad marketing lol...

: (

So the TL;DR for me is that they gotta make there ARGs better and give me a reason to care, if they can't do that then you won't be hearing anything from me. Best not to give it any more attention and just pretend it doesn't exist. ARGs are supposed to be fun and have a reward and well...this doesn't! 

[Roger_van_der_weide]

I think the worst thing about these clues is that the original clues never had much of a real payoff, and then when we suddenly get ACTUAL information about Sonic Forces and Mania, they came out of the blue without any clues building up to it.

It's like we're following a treasure map that's leading to an empty treasurebox with an IOU in it, and we then get a thousand bucks put on our back-account randomly by unrelated circumstances anyway.

[Kintor]

1 hour ago, Stephenb19 said:

Urgh, people are genuinely concerned and bummed out about this game. Enough with the clues and maybe give us some reassurance the game won't be shit.

There's no harm in running this ARG on the side. We just got a pretty major info dump with the Custom Hero Trailer, which actually went viral and gave Sonic Forces a lot of positive free publicity. Plus, it's only a few week out until E3, when we'll probably get another gameplay trailer at either Sony or Microsoft's conference. For now at least it looks like the marketing of Sonic Forces is starting to ramp-up. The pace will probably increase further once Sonic Mania is released as this will allow Sega to give Sonic Forces their undivided attention.

[Mark1]

Yeah. Think we will start to see more of this game soon as well, especially since I do think E3 will be when Mania gets its release date (or month) announcement. 

The hints by Sega are in favour of this happening.

Also, cannot see this game failing to general audience. On the contrary I think it'll be fairly well received - whether or not as highly as Generations remains to be seen. But I think the custom hero will be something critics will enjoy far more than say the Werehog, Silver, guns, etc. Especially since they don't play much differently to Modern Sonic from the looks of it. In essence it's not an disinteresting concept this time round.

Its literally Generations plus this extra custom character at this rate. 

[Blue Blood]

17 minutes ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

I think the worst thing about these clues is that the original clues never had much of a real payoff, and then when we suddenly get ACTUAL information about Sonic Forces and Mania, they came out of the blue without any clues building up to it.

It's like we're following a treasure map that's leading to an empty treasurebox with an IOU in it, and we then get a thousand bucks put on our back-account randomly by unrelated circumstances anyway.

I quite like this analogy. I had a lot of fun with the clues they did last year, but ultimately they didn't actually amount to much. The clues, if you could even figure them out cause they were so vague, only gave us a date in the end. They went on for months to give us a date... For a party that only a select few people in the right part of the USA could hope to attend. They announced two games there, which was great, but they didn't have anything to do with the clues. Classic Sonic returning? He never left after Generations. 

I'm not really inclined to go on a wild goose chase again, especially not for this turd of a game. 

[JezMM]

Yeah the issue with Sonic's ARGs is they need to offer something unique. Most games will reveal developer materials or lore-expanding audio, video and images, that don't appear anywhere in-game.

So for example, prior to Mania's reveal, they could've made the ultimate reward be something like, fake (but pretending they're real) photos of roadsigns advertising the existence of a city called Studiopolis, or concept art for the Drop Dash or... I dunno stuff like that.  Maybe if they wanted to go this far, clues leading to a real life hidden location that had a case of empty custom-made drinks bottles from Mirage Saloon, I dunno.

It's kind of hard to come up with stuff for Sonic since we don't really know whether there even is any proper lore or narrative anymore that would facilitate stuff like this.

[Kintor]

1 hour ago, Mark1 said:

Yeah. Think we will start to see more of this game soon as well, especially since I do think E3 will be when Mania gets its release date (or month) announcement. 

The hints by Sega are in favour of this happening.

Also, cannot see this game failing to general audience. On the contrary I think it'll be fairly well received - whether or not as highly as Generations remains to be seen. But I think the custom hero will be something critics will enjoy far more than say the Werehog, Silver, guns, etc. Especially since they don't play much differently to Modern Sonic from the looks of it. In essence it's not an disinteresting concept this time round.

Its literally Generations plus this extra custom character at this rate. 

Yeah, E3 will probably be the last major push for Sonic Mania before launch; with the likely exception of a launch trailer, of course. Then it'll be full-speed ahead for Sonic Forces. I bet more than a few media outlets would love to get their hands on the full character creator and go into a little more detail about its different features.

There is also the possibility that Sonic Forces' release date might also be revealed at E3. If not a complete release date then at least a rough target. I'm thinking something like October/November might be a reasonable release date for Sonic Forces. But I guess we'll just have to wait and see.

[Sonikko]

11 hours ago, Alienrun said:

Was worried that this video would be redundant and just talk about stuff we already know, but you managed to bring up some stuff that wasn't immidiately apparent and presented it with a lot of confidence. Great job I say!

...and by worried I meant it wasn't Sonic Spitball...

Thanks! I appreciate all the comments. I'll be releasing more videos and I'll post them in the Showcase subforum, because they won't be directly about Forces. The next time I'll focus on how automation and the boost itself influences the level design and I'll record a video per each game, starting from Unleashed to Lost World.

/offtopic

9 hours ago, Tenko said:

Oh Aaron, I do love your positivity and your status as Meme Lord, but unless it's Mania related it's not worth the brainpower to decode the clues anymore. Fun or not. 

I feel the same way and it's a pity, because the clue hunting was great... Eh, maybe next game?

[Dejimon11]

3 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

I think the worst thing about these clues is that the original clues never had much of a real payoff, and then when we suddenly get ACTUAL information about Sonic Forces and Mania, they came out of the blue without any clues building up to it.

It's like we're following a treasure map that's leading to an empty treasurebox with an IOU in it, and we then get a thousand bucks put on our back-account randomly by unrelated circumstances anyway.

Yup this is pretty much my thoughts on the matter. I understand why they do this because they want to give us something to talk about before they unveil their stuff but I just wish it wasn't as vague. The closest tease that was apparent the Madeon picture they gave us which was a hint of a classic sonic game. I just wonder that with all the hints/clues/teases pretty much everything leading up to Forces release will it all be worth it in the end?