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


Badnik Mechanic

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4 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

I wasn't specifically addressing you, but rather Lucid Dream. In general though, what Sonic Team does is irrelevant to what some people want and are asking for, so elaborating on all the ways an idea can go wrong from their end and constantly saying we need to take baby steps comes across as unnecessarily policing certain fans or arguing past the point being made or against strawman. Like, when people ask for classic gameplay to come back I don't go, "Whoa there, before that happens they need to get the physics right first, and then they can move on to the level design. Remember Sonic 4?" Proper execution the first go around is an assumed ideal of any proposition being put forth, so it doesn't need to be reiterated all that much.

Okay, that makes sense. Thank you for clarifying.

Yeah, it must be really annoying to have to deal with people dismissing your ideas because they might be executed poorly. Its one thing to discuss how Sega and Sonic Team might apply your ideas, but another thing entirely to heavily imply that you're wrong in having them.

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1 minute ago, Nepenthe said:

I wasn't specifically addressing you, but rather Lucid Dream. In general though, what Sonic Team does is irrelevant to what some people want and are asking for, so elaborating on all the ways an idea can go wrong from their end and constantly saying we need to take baby steps comes across as unnecessarily policing certain fans or arguing past the point being made or against strawman. Like, when people ask for classic gameplay to comeback I don't go, "Whoa there, before that happens they need to get the physics right first, and then they can move on to the level design. Remember Sonic 4?" Proper execution the first go around is an assumed ideal of any proposition being put forth, so it doesn't need to be reiterated all that much.

I've already said I wasn't arguing with anyone. My opinion is based off what Sega is doing, which is going for an all or nothing approach. I was criticising their approach and how they've damaged many characters in the past, and giving my own idea of how they could fix their approach.  

I am not dismissing any ideas or elaborating on all the ways an idea can go wrong. I am simply stating that I would appreciate Sega fixing their characters before using them, because they still havn't. They had a clean, easy opportunity to fix up Blaze in Sonic Generations, but screwed her over even more. I am upset over that. 

To follow your example, I am asking for classic gameplay to come back, but to be well developed so that it doesn't end up like Sonic 4 (and explaining what went wrong in Sonic 4).

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7 hours ago, Apple Kid said:

Who are you to say what characters Sega can and can't use? I just hate the idea that only Sonic and Tails can be used because they're the only characters that haven't been 'ruined'. As if shit like this hasn't happened. 

Characters being playable is one thing, but the fact people think they can't even show up in the story to have something to contribute is ridiculous. Honestly, even if Cream isn't the most popular character, who would actually be upset if she showed up in a few cutscenes of a new game? Anybody? It's shit like this that makes me so mad that Big wasn't at Sonic's birthday party in Generations. Because he's such a horrible character, he couldn't be bothered to actually show up in the game outside of a hidden trophy room most people don't even know how to access, because if he had showed up, the games score would have taken a hit right...? Right??

It's ridiculous.

I really hope Sonic 2017 manages to avoid all this nonsense. I know I'm crying out for something practically hopeless at this point but I can't help it.

The cutscene I always use whenever I bring up the ramifications of forcing the dialogue to be more intuitive without the right balance of character interaction and plot relevance to help naturally carry a conversation through is the cutscene at the Aquarium Park.

I think that might have been the first time I was ever embarrassed watching a cutscene for a Sonic game. You can just feel someone over there, trying their hardest to squeeze every last drop of entertainment out of Sonic to unabashedly milk this scene for whatever they could. There are few things more soul crushing and devastating then when something that's supposed to be portrayed as sharp wit comes off lame and pathetic. 

They tried to make it work on the merit of Sonic being Sonic, which is hard enough on it's own, but when you try to do that with the kind of narrative Colors had? How?There's nothing there. What is he supposed to react to? How is the scene supposed to build on anything if it starts with nothing and leads to nothing? Relying on Sonic's wit alone won't save anything, especially if it's written bad. The robots don't talk back and Sonic isn't contemplating anything important or spinning something that mattered into a joke for more relevant humor. It's just him repeating the word "clobbering" over and over and him smirking about it as though he said something clever.

I wish I could say Tails distracted from the fact that he ultimately did nothing by being a buffer for Sonic's rapid fire "say whatever and hope it lands" comedy act but all Tails really did was reaffirm everything Sonic said. Whenever he was against something Sonic said it was usually for something that made him look stupid.

Tails saying he didn't think Eggman had an evil plot.

Or saying that he found it hard to believe that the aliens could go inside Sonic.

Or saying that he didn't think they could beat the weird half-finished, jellyfish robot at the end of the game.

Or saying that his translator told them exactly what they needed to do when Tails only ended up telling Sonic to continue doing what he was already doing. 

"You need to destroy five generators."

"Well, I've already taken care of two."

Truthfully, I ended up enjoying the interaction in Lost World a lot better because a lot of that kind of nonsense was toned down. There was a narrative they were actually trying to string along with the cutscenes and a few character dilemmas that allowed for them to talk about an actual subject pertaining to the plot rather then something they squirted out for the sake of having a cutscene. That said, Lost World had it's own problems when it came to how it handled those concepts but that's an entirely different matter all together. There are a lot of problems with Lost World's narrative as well. Out of context of the story, though, I can at least watch the cutscenes within the game just fine. The Aquarium Park cutscene doesn't work no matter what context is there, unless the point is that Sonic is going insane and is desperately trying to cling onto his old personality but failing.

Even the fact that he calls Eggman's puns lame pissed me off. Eggman was the funniest motherfucker in that game. Everything Sonic said was terrible yet they had the gall to have Sonic call Eggman's jokes lame. And I bet the writers wanted us to side with him too.

Character usage and interaction alone won't save anything but I'd be hard-pressed to say it wouldn't help. At the very least it would require them to think a little bit about what they need to say and how they need to say it. Not only that but a few of them have certain occupations and positions within the series that often force a bit of critical thinking towards their inclusion out of the writers in order for their presence to matter or make sense. That's part of the reason why I became such a huge Chaotix fan. The way they were utilized in Heroes and especially Shadow's game (surprisingly) was a method of handling the secondary cast that I had never seen up to that point. Something always endeared me about characters who, despite minor or vacant connection to the main character, still somehow end up having a heavy contribution to make to the plot. 

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34 minutes ago, Dr. Chaotix said:

They tried to make it work on the merit of Sonic being Sonic, which is hard enough on it's own, but when you try to do that with the kind of narrative Colors had? How?There's nothing there. What is he supposed to react to? How is the scene supposed to build on anything if it starts with nothing and leads to nothing? Relying on Sonic's wit alone won't save anything, especially if it's written bad. The robots don't talk back and Sonic isn't contemplating anything important or spinning something that mattered into a joke for more relevant humor. It's just him repeating the word "clobbering" over and over and him smirking about it as though he said something clever.

I don't understand this apparent need for it to tie into the narrative or be about something "important". It's jokes. Not great jokes but still coherent jokes. That's a worthwhile end unto itself, it doesn't have to be some dramatic turn as well.

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1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

I don't understand this apparent need for it to tie into the narrative or be about something "important". It's jokes. Not great jokes but still coherent jokes. That's a worthwhile end unto itself, it doesn't have to be some dramatic turn as well.

Yes I know. Obviously.

 The humor in Colors is branching off of nothing though. There's nothing there for him to mold a joke from. There aren't any other characters around, the robots don't talk, and there's nothing to bounce off of from the plot. As a result, they need to attempt to pull a joke from thin air and make it work but they can't do that. They needed a better set-up that was conducive for telling good jokes and they didn't have one.

When I say "important" I don't use that as a stand in for "serious" or "drama". That's ridiculous. I'm using it in relation to something of relevance for him to talk about. What was being told to us wasn't a coherent "joke" to me. I barely managed to catch what the joke was. He molded something from thin air and repeated it over and over. The lead in about wanting something to eat followed by Eggman's convenient PA announcement was there to provide context for it, but it didn't work because it was extremely flimsy and the "joke" Sonic went with ultimately ended up still being hamfisted. 

I know jokes and humor on their own is a worthwhile endeavor all it's own. Chill out. This isn't a stupid "serious vs. comedy" debate. I don't get into those anymore because I always strive for balance. I don't have much desire to take part in the need to turn discussions about their handling of the comedy into one either.

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8 hours ago, Lucidream said:

 

What characters can Sega use? Sonic and Tails are the only ones to not be butchered (too much). I can't think of many people who would be happy with Cream and Rouge being reintroduced into the plot. Not reintroducing the wide cast of Sonic characters would be the right thing to do. Most of the cast has been damaged by Segas own hands and cleaning up that damage would take some time. Reintroducing Knuckles and fixing his character would be a good move right now. Rushing it by reintroducing everyone could lead to another Sonic 06 in terms of story. Sega needs to improve their reputation and fix their characters first. 

Yeah, before introducing Classic Sonic as a character. I'm a big believer in the idea that Sega needs to fix their existing characters and I'm concerned that Sega is going to introduce Classic Sonic as a recurring character in the main series while leaving 90% of their other characters in the dump. Sega should have moved forward with Sonic 2017 by putting fan favourite characters such as Knuckles and Shadow as important characters instead of copying and pasting the Generations formula by taking a step backwards and putting Classic Sonic as a major character.

As for comedy, that's what Boom is for, cheesy sub-par dad jokes have no place in the main games. I never liked Colours, Generations or Lost World's writing for that reason. 

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1 hour ago, Sir Laptop said:

As for comedy, that's what Boom is for, cheesy sub-par dad jokes have no place in the main games. I never liked Colours, Generations or Lost World's writing for that reason. 

I want there to be jokes in the series. The levity they provide just needs to balance itself out more comfortably with the drama and whatever elements within the narrative that they desire to take seriously. 

And the jokes also need to be good. 

A lot of the anime and action cartoons I watched as a kid had jokes in them. I had no problem taking them seriously when they got serious.

It shouldn't be that hard to do.

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7 hours ago, Diogenes said:

It's a water level. The fish in it made Sonic hungry for sushi and wonder if there was a sushi place around. Joke #1 is that Eggman did, in fact, have a sushi place, but it's a shitty one, like everything in the park. Joke #2 is that Sonic acts like a restaurant delivery boy (because he was thinking of restaurants) except delivering a beating rather than food. That's the scene and it is completely coherent even if it is not exceptionally funny.

Yeah. I know. Thank you.

"The lead in about wanting something to eat followed by Eggman's convenient PA announcement was there to provide context for it" is what I said in the post above.

I said that. So I know. 

There's no need to try and argue semantics with me over the word "coherent". I'm not even the one who used it first between the two of us.  However, if you want an extreme in-depth explanation behind the passage cropped from the long post I made about the  explanation behind why I don't consider the structure for the cutscenes in Colors to work......... then continue reading below.

First off, I was being hyperbolic when I said I didn't consider it a joke in general and the use of the word "coherent" in my post was bouncing off of yours without consideration for it's use. I had also edited the reply to say that I "barely was able to catch what the joke was" shortly after posting because that quote you're responding to was a typo. 

So when I said this: "The humor in Colors is branching off of nothing though. There's nothing there for him to mold a joke from. There aren't any other characters around, the robots don't talk, and there's nothing to bounce off of from the plot. As a result, they need to attempt to pull a joke from thin air and make it work but they can't do that. They needed a better set-up that was conducive for telling good jokes and they didn't have one."

What I'm talking about is that the initial setting and the atmosphere for the use of telling jokes wasn't enough. They need to squeeze them in there somehow and the only way would be to pull them from thin air but they can't. Because the set-up they had was so baron, what they had before them wasn't a conducive enough platform to tell jokes. The task they had at hand was made worse because of it and the execution of trying to make it work with just Sonic, the announcement, and the environment alone was piss poor on top of that.

But none of this matters anyway because I'm not exactly sure why making sure the jokes were being sold as something coherent matters when it comes to what I ultimately was trying to express. Even if I did agree with you that the set-ups were fine and the environment was good for what it was used for, I'm not exactly certain why it would have been that big a deal to discuss it to this point in the first place.

In other words, I don't think the initial set up was to their advantage and I don't think the choices they made worked to compensate for that. So I don't agree. 

I wonder why this always happens to me. I make a comment and the talk I end up having is about a single passage within it or a single word. For once I'd like a discussion or a. talk about what I wanted to talk about. 

7 hours ago, Diogenes said:

e: it's just, I mean...this harmless jokey cutscene is the first Sonic cutscene to embarrass you, in a series that did this:

6TunSXs.gif

I just don't get that.

 I was a really young kid when Shadow the Hedgehog came out. Although, I'd be lying if I said I was embarrassed about this. I'm not. Shadow and Sonic 06 are more funny to me nowadays then embarrassing. I actually willingly showed my friends scenes from Sonic 06 because they were so horrible.

And you don't have to get it. I don't consider it "harmless" and I don't see why it would matter if it was "jokey" or not. 

What I think is what I think and there's nothing wrong with that. 

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9 hours ago, Lucidream said:

Wow, aren't you being a bit hostile over my opinion? I don't mean to start an argument. 

What I'm trying to say is that Sega should try to fix the problems they've made for the characters. Like they need to clear up Blaze's backstory and make it clear that the Sonic Rush Blaze is the real Blaze. They need to reastablish that Shadow is not an edgy friend-hater. Which character did Sonic Generations improve? Sonic Generations actually harmed Blaze. Right now, Tails and Sonic have the least problems compared to them. 

Considering that most of the Sonic games with large casts have created huge problems for their characters, it would be natural to want Sega to take it character by character and individually build them back up and improve them. Taking it step by step, rather than rushing it, seems like the best thing to do. Sega only seems to want to put all of them or none of them in though. 

Okay. Rise of Lyric ruined EVERY single character including Baldy McNosehair. Effectively, we can start from scratch now.

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I wonder if they're going to go for releasing a singular cutscene for this game like they did with Lost World way back when. If they do, I hope they pick a good one. 

I'll admit to having been originally very excited when I saw the scene where Zazz jumped onto the Egg Mobile and Zomom slammed into it to knock Eggman onto the ground. 

At that point it had felt as though it'd been a while since I'd seen some decent action in the cutscenes. 

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They released that cutscene early because it was the best in the game and they knew it.  By using it as a teaser, they created the impression that the rest of the story was of a similar level of quality.  However, that was simply an illusion.  If they tried the same thing again, I would become suspicious before I became excited.

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What if they end up choosing the worst C-scene out of a series of decent to good scenes from the game? That'd be quite the situation...of choice. No expectations are possible.

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3 hours ago, StaticMania said:

What if they end up choosing the worst C-scene out of a series of decent to good scenes from the game? That'd be quite the situation...of choice. No expectations are possible.

Why on earth would you pick the worst moment of anything to sell your product?

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On the topic of the characterization of everyone, while the tone of games like Shadow and 06 were hilariously bad, I think the tone of Colors and Lost World were just as bad, but on a different spectrum. Sonic's not supposed to be edgy, but he's not supposed to be a dork either. Ideally I want them to go back to the tone that Adventure 1 had, with it being relatively lighthearted but still able to take seriously, with none of that ShTH/06 edginess and none of that Colors/Lost World dorkiness.

 

But more importantly I just want to see Sonic interact with characters other than Tails again...

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So just out of curiosity, if this game ends up being supported by the PS4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio, is anyone gonna upgrade just for Sonic 2017 in 4K?

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It's merely a what if scenario, calm down. From a visual and artstyle standpoint, I don't expect a massive difference compared to most HD Sonic titles like Unleashed.  So let's just go off the assumption it's visually looking more like a cleaner more detailed Unleashed that ran normally at 30Fps on a regular ps4/Xbox One. Would the upgrade for it be worth it?

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I don't outright buy consoles just for the graphical fidelity in the first place, so I'm not about to upgrade the same console if that only means more vertical lines on the screen (A screen I don't even have to take advantage of this feature because whoops, I don't have a 4K TV.) If I did value technological prowess, and I wanted a 4K TV on top of this, I would not base this amount of a financial undertaking on Sonic of all franchises.

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I'm on PC but personally 4K isn't that big of a deal to me. Yea it's nice but its not like it makes 1080p look butt ugly or something so I probably won't end up moving to 4K for a long time if at all.

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8 hours ago, Sonic The Badass said:

I'm on PC but personally 4K isn't that big of a deal to me. Yea it's nice but its not like it makes 1080p look butt ugly or something so I probably won't end up moving to 4K for a long time if at all.

Thing is. It's like with any higher res display. The longer you look at the better res. The more you notice the drop.

So you will eventually notice a huge difference between the two.

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It seems many of you guys are very pessimistic on how the game's story will turn out. What did you think about Runners' Sonic Team interactions? I think they were great for a game of that style, and Knuckles' portrayal was the right one!

One thing I'd LOVE to see here is Knuckles back to the spotlight.

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On 9/9/2016 at 3:32 PM, SonicFreak94 said:

It's really quite an unfortunate coincidence that the only 3D game that attempted to have multiple playable characters without genra roulette was 06.  People need to stop seeing everything from 06 as objectively bad as that mentality is holding the series back. Avoiding past mistakes like the plague is not going to help. What SEGA needs to do is UNDERSTAND their past mistakes and LEARN from them.

In a sense, Black Knight kinda did it as well. It even made them optional like Sonic 3 & Knuckles.

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