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

[FantasticMrRobb]

Guessing there isn't any new info on the game is there? SEGA sure is keeping their lips buttoned, but they again they have every right to.

[PC the Hedgehog]

Yeah, there's around a year until the game comes out, so I imagine Sega will be taking their sweet time in revealing info about the game, especially considering how much they'll want to keep the hype fueled for Mania.

[Fr0zenanus]

28 minutes ago, Meta77 said:

My hype for maina is not that high. I'm getting it but not staying wide eyed awake for it

same here (except for the buying it part), if had to tell anyone how "excited" iam for Mania. i would refer to them towards, Dragon Quest Builders. which happens to be an good e-rated game for kids to play, that doesn't rely on mascots, side scrolling. or figureshit. in order to be appealing. as such it sets up a better example on how to make an more appealing (and better) game for curious kids who want to get into an series. than Sonic Mania.

[JosepHenry]

Eh, at least we are going to get more imformation on it before the NX reveal.

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, Lucid Dream said:

Exactly my point, Sonic Rush set up the boost system which many 3D games are based off. There hasn't been much of a new system. Also, I wouldn't say Sonic Rush isn't a good 2D game just because it's different, IMO it shines as much than the classics. 

But that's aside from my point. The point is, is that most Sonic 3D games are based off the 2D games, whether it be the boost or classic/advance. I think Sega should try to make a 3D game that is not based off any 2D games, and isn't a strange deviation. Perhaps then they could make a good, stable 3D system. 

Eh, I disagree. I liked Rush but not for the same reasons as I did the original games, and not because its different; they simply play pretty drastically from each other aside from being in 2D is all.

Heroes wasn't based on any 2D game, nor was Lost World. What I'm saying is that instead of trying to spit ball and finding a 3D style "that works", how about they actually attempt to bring the things that made the 2D games good into a 3D plane; out of everything they've attempted, they have not ever tried doing that and its kinda jarring considering its very foundation of the series itself.

[Lucid Dream]

5 minutes ago, Kuzu the Boloedge said:

Eh, I disagree. I liked Rush but not for the same reasons as I did the original games, and not because its different; they simply play pretty drastically from each other aside from being in 2D is all.

Heroes wasn't based on any 2D game, nor was Lost World. What I'm saying is that instead of trying to spit ball and finding a 3D style "that works", how about they actually attempt to bring the things that made the 2D games good into a 3D plane; out of everything they've attempted, they have not ever tried doing that and its kinda jarring considering its very foundation of the series itself.

Well, yea, Rush is a different game and system to the classic series. Sonic Rush isn't actually too different, since enemies are still a threat, and there are a fair amount of multiple paths, but Sonic Generations 3DS really shows a clear difference. But that's not really a bad thing. 

They have tried to bring the things that made the 2D games good to the 3D plane. It was the Adventure series, and the boost games. They weren't trying to make a bad system you know. But it's just far too restrictive, and 2D is far too different to 3D. Sonic Heroes and Sonic Lost World are two small examples of Sonic Team trying to break out of the 2D restrictions. IMO the Lost World system has a lot of potential, and with some fixes and better level design, they could make a fantastic 3D Sonic game with it.  

I just don't see a reason why we should throw away a fine system like the Boost, or a promising system like the Lost World, for a new system based off 20 year old classic games that may or may not be decent. Especcially at the risk of making another Adventure styled game. 

[Pixel]

The Classic games are glorious and are by far the best games in the series. The franchise should exactly try to emulate the Classic titles since these games made Sonic popular and a cultural icon. Besides, the times when 3D Sonic hasn't emulated the Classic titles, such as Heroes, Shadow, Unleashed, Gens and Lost World, have all been sub-par games plagued with terrible controls.

Sonic Adventure is a bad game but the Sonic stages are still the closest the games have come to translating the 2D Classic experience to 3D.

Sonic Team should absolutely try to translate the glorious Classic titles to 3D.

[Fr0zenanus]

2 hours ago, Pixel said:

The Classic games are glorious and are by far the best games in the series. The franchise should exactly try to emulate the Classic titles since these games made Sonic popular and a cultural icon. Besides, the times when 3D Sonic hasn't emulated the Classic titles, such as Heroes, Shadow, Unleashed, Gens and Lost World, have all been sub-par games plagued with terrible controls.

Sonic Adventure is a bad game but the Sonic stages are still the closest the games have come to translating the 2D Classic experience to 3D.

Sonic Team should absolutely try to translate the glorious Classic titles to 3D.

i don't want to say "no one likes you" since that was stupid on my part and it got my ass in trouble, but the classic games are far from glorious. let alone anything a sonic fan says, what makes them out to be. and when you say something like "emulate the classics" that's just misguided baiting on you're own when you talk about how much you think Sonic Adventure was an terrible game, when in everything but character design, and extra characters. it is essentially an classic sonic game in 3d. you just don't want to admit it because i pointed out earlier at one point, you set up you're own standards to deny the 3d games for what they actually are, or makeup some cockadooty about how attached you to ball-physics or pretentiously complex level design (which isn't that complex at all) in it's entirely 

and the popular and cultural icon thing, you realize Tom Kalinske. the same man whom actually propelled Sonic into an icon, (and i don't happen to like the guy, to be honest. because credited to 1up dot com, he was behind the controversial saturn launch) said the modern design exists for an reason. to appeal to an older demographic. that may not be the case for the general conscious of sonic fandom. but in an practical thinking manner. it made sense for the time. because.. remember the dreamcast ads from back in the day? the ones where sonic is an disc-jockey. the ones at goodcowfilms.

[Pixel]

I've always stated that Adventure has been the closest to translating Classic Sonic to 3D and I've praised Adventure for that. However, Adventure is still a terrible game for reasons I've put forth many, many times.

The Classic games are glorious and are wonderful masterpieces which Sonic unfortunately never equalled in his move to 3D. They have perfect level design, crisp and stunning sprite art that leaves you reeling awe, wonderful soundtracks that boom into your ears and fill your life with joy, unique and masterful art designs that pushed the boundaries of gaming as an art form, challenging but fair difficulty that always kept the action exciting and tense and incredible physics that really allowed the player to exploit the game and speedrun the levels in a stylish and rewarding way. That's just to name a few points. Classic Sonic is sublime and far eclipses any of Sonic's 3D attempts.

[Diogenes]

19 minutes ago, Fr0zenanus said:

and when you say something like "emulate the classics" that's just misguided baiting on you're own when you talk about how much you think Sonic Adventure was an terrible game, when in everything but character design, and extra characters. it is essentially an classic sonic game in 3d.

It is an incredibly, incredibly stripped down interpretation of the Genesis Sonic formula, weighed down by the limitations of that era's hardware, a few questionable design choices, and 4-5 gameplay styles that no one asked for taking time and energy away from it. It's not at all an accurate representation of what the classic formula could do in 3D.

[StaticMania]

In terms of control, it's almost exactly how a Classic game would play in 3D...tweaking necessary for further accuracy. Additional abilities for 3D shift, welcomed but not intrusive or really required. Not good enough, but a start.

 

Level design is what took the drastic change.

[Fr0zenanus]

10 minutes ago, Pixel said:

Sensationalism,

you lost me at the " boundaries of gaming as an art form" part alone,

like any other Sonic-fan. in the same mindset. you use superficial words to describe how much the genesis games mean to you. without going into proper short analytic detail why!  you use,  "colorful that leaves in awe"  without pointing at least one example. which is the entirely of your reasons. 

2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

It is an incredibly, incredibly stripped down interpretation of the Genesis Sonic formula, weighed down by the limitations of that era's hardware, a few questionable design choices, and 4-5 gameplay styles that no one asked for taking time and energy away from it. It's not at all an accurate representation of what the classic formula could do in 3D.

letme guess? "ball-physics and level designs" right? 

4-5 styles, isn't practical reasoning either, because outside  what disillusioned sonic fan eyes would weap, that was one of the selling points of the game, back in the day. gamers back then didn't really care when they just wanted sonic in 3D, like. did you even read an interview in an late-90s era edition of gamepro. where the devs said the level-design would be an building-towered maze of sorts? jesus christ son.

i'll take the "being an ass" route here, if average gamers were in the same mindset of thinking alot of people here. then regular gaming wouldn't advance where it is today. even with series that tend to remove or unrefine things from nes-gen to now, none of the popular classic sonic fan's arguments (or personalty) would be reasonable in another series explanation, because they refuse to al knowledge what the games they play actually are, if GTA removed the awful auto-lock, from an time when sonic-fans were possibly into that, would they jump ship or spend an large majority of decades, complaining about an simple if it caused it to complain that the series to that point saying they left it but say it sucks. then that wouldn't be a reasonable or fair explanation why, other than said fan has bias but refuses to admit it.  it's like i'm in an whole another world/planet when seeing reasons from classic sonic fan extremists (because my gaming hobby, doesn't revolve around everything classic sonic, or vice versa.)

and i seriously went WTF at the era's hardware thing, are you primarily saying this for Sonic? Shenmue was done on the Dreamcast, Soul Reaver was done on it and PSX. GTA could of been done possibly before the PS2. Soul Calibur was done on Dreamcast. all these amazing games were done on an less-advanced console before lousy HDDS could fuck the data up whenever the hell it wanted. 

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, Fr0zenanus said:

4-5 styles, isn't practical reasoning either, because outside  what disillusioned sonic fan eyes would weap, that was one of the selling points of the game, back in the day. gamers back then didn't really care

Well I'm glad we've evolved past that unenlightened age and realized that good game design counts for more than a large list of features.

I can't really respond to the rest of your post because it's so rambling and poorly written that I can't actually tell what you're trying to say.

[Badnik Mechanic]

31 minutes ago, Fr0zenanus said:

Shenmue was done on the Dreamcast, Soul Reaver was done on it and PSX. GTA could of been done possibly before the PS2. Soul Calibur was done on Dreamcast. all these amazing games were done on an less-advanced console before lousy HDDS could fuck the data up whenever the hell it wanted. 

Every game developer on this board is probably going to roll their eyes at this and I'll explain why.

If you are going to compare a game to another game, on any machine from any era, you really need to pick games of the same genre which are also doing what, well... whatever the target game you have picked is doing. This is especially true if you are talking about the technical ability/performance of a game.

E.g. if you are talking about Tekken, compare it to 3D fighter from that time. Command and Conquer? Starcraft. Gran Tourismo? Ridge Racer. Resident Evil? Silent Hill. 

And you probably also want to pick titles around the same development period too. 

Because whilst I was about to say you might have one small point with Shenmue, and it's a small point because if you upped Ryo's speed to that of Sonic, suddenly those big levels/areas are not that big anymore. I then remembered that Sonic Adventure was in development before the hardware went on public sale. Shenmue was in development a lot later and developers had discovered a lot more 'tricks' or ways to program games in order to get the most out of the system without having to compromise in... well... everywhere. 

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before lousy HDDS could fuck the data up whenever the hell it wanted. 

Oh aye, because nobody during the PS1-PS2 era ever had a memory card randomly delete all their data.

[BlueFlare]

I'm fine with the gameplay Unleashed/Generations uses but wouldn't complain if it didn't feel so much like running on railways. If only they were able to use UL/Gens gameplay elements combined with Adventure gameplay to make 3D Sonic feel more exploration-friendly. When I look at the core of the 2D classics, they have a good balance between speed and exploration, yet leaning more on the side of exploration gameplay.

This is only my feeling, of course, but I don't feel like they should change the 3D gameplay (the boost style) very much since it seems to work quite well. I think Generations had a few good alternate route choices in some levels. The only thing that annoys me in Unleashed/Generations is the camera angle which is sometimes way too close or badly directed. Also, I would like Sonic's controls feel loosier, more responsive when going really fast.

[Pixel]

Once again, Diogenes is right and knows what he's talking about.

We want a 3D game that recaptures the spirit of the glorious Classic titles. Even though Adventure translated the amazing Classic titles the best, Sonic's stages was still of the mark. It's the Classics that made Sonic an icon and we need to look back at those stunning pieces of art.

That's why I hope Sonic '17 isn't another Boost game, because the Boost is hopeless and doesn't capture the glory of Sonic's classic adventures. I would disagree with most people on Generations. The Classic Sonic stages were useless because the physics weren't up to snuff and the Modern Sonic stages were just shallow and didn't resemble the Classic Sonic experience.

Hopefully the next trailer will alleviate some of my fears. If the game is a Boost title I can conclude that Sonic Team has no idea what it's doing and is just fuelled by terrible impulses. Still, I have hope for a Classic Sonic in 3D experience, despite having no faith in Sonic Team.

[Lucid Dream]

20 hours ago, Pixel said:

If the game is a Boost title I can conclude that Sonic Team has no idea what it's doing and is just fuelled by terrible impulses. Still, I have hope for a Classic Sonic in 3D experience, despite having no faith in Sonic Team.

Honestly, how many times are you going to repeat this?  Are you here to just bash Sonic Team for making anything outside of what you want? 

I'd be ok with this if this was, you know, the first time you posted this opinion. But for gods sake, how many times has it been now? For the umpteenth time, you have just called Sonic Team and the 3D games utter crap, while calling upon "Le Glorious Classic Days" as the true way to go, while completely ignoring all criticism against the Classic era.

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because the Boost is hopeless and doesn't capture the glory of Sonic's classic adventures.

Saying "boost sucks because it's not classic" is not a viable argument. Nor is it a fact.

We get it, you hate the modern 3D games. You hate the boost games. We understand. Now are you actually going to debate on the topic, or are you just going to continue to try to shove that opinion down our throats and act as though your opinion is fact? 

[JosepHenry]

Ok, I'm sorry, but can we stop this discussion like... Now? Please? No? Okay.

But all I see, is a classic fan arguing with a modern fan... There is very different opinions here.

But acording to majority of people who played Sonic games, not just me:

 

Sonic 1 is good not great

Sonic 2 is amazing.

Sonic 3 (and Knuckles) is amazing

and Sonic CD is amazing (I don't think that, but a lot of people do)

 

But none of those are "glorious" by any means, and please. Enough of this word. Glorious sound like you are worshipping a videogame. No hard feelings.

 

Sonic Adventure is good, aged BUT still good.

Sonic Adventure 2 is still great 

Sonic Unleashed Day stages are Amazing

Sonic Colors is great.

Sonic Generations is great.

 

If you think I'm wrong feel free to tell me. But both Classic and Modern have their ups and downs. No era is perfect.

[Darinian]

Something that would really be nice would be to have sonic randomly say a line of text while playing. Say you're running through the first level boosting, sonic would say "woo, feels so good to be running again!" or if you land in quicksand (might not even happen) he would say "stay calm sonic, you've got this." It'd be really cool and I'm sure they've got enough space on a disc to use like, what 1mb of space per line.

[Diogenes]

I'd rather they didn't. Character chatter has a tendency to get obnoxious fast, and it's already happened plenty in this series. I think it's better to keep it to very brief and minimal shouts and phrases, if at all.

[FantasticMrRobb]

On 10/11/2016 at 11:32 AM, PC the Hedgehog said:

Yeah, there's around a year until the game comes out, so I imagine Sega will be taking their sweet time in revealing info about the game, especially considering how much they'll want to keep the hype fueled for Mania.

I would think that SEGA would be trying to equal out the hype. Surely they know that they have fans that are for the Classic style, Modern style, and those who love both. Focusing the hype on one side could be seen as unfair, know what I mean?

[Blacklightning]

1 hour ago, FlareSakithaSol said:

Something that would really be nice would be to have sonic randomly say a line of text while playing. Say you're running through the first level boosting, sonic would say "woo, feels so good to be running again!" or if you land in quicksand (might not even happen) he would say "stay calm sonic, you've got this." It'd be really cool and I'm sure they've got enough space on a disc to use like, what 1mb of space per line.

I'm in the process of reviewing footage I've taken from 06, which does this all the time. To put it bluntly, it's obnoxious. Characters inanely stating quips and the obvious ingame doesn't immerse me in the experience or anything, it just makes me wish they'd shut the fuck up and let me play. I hear Rise of Lyric is marginally better about this, but only in that their lines have some small relation to whatever the player is doing - it still gets repetitive rather than entertaining or witty, and it really bothers people to hear those exact same lines over and over and over again when they weren't even appealing the first time.

Sometimes I wonder how it would work if voicework were integrated directly into a level's setpieces, rather than "Sonic is doing generic thing X, so play generic voice line Y". Nothing wrong with the status quo, though - just save the dialogue largely for cutscenes and some mid-boss banter and not a whole lot can go wrong.

 

[Nepenthe]

We have dynamic soundtracks in games now, so I don't see why we couldn't pull off dynamic voice tracks where every now and again you get a line that's context-specific to a certain situation, either banal things like getting caught in a trap or more weird or rare instances of the players doing something unique or finding a hidden object. Just let Roger in on what the game is looking like and have him ad-lib some bits.

[StaticMania]

If only those context specific voice clips only played during the main campaign instead of every time you played through a level. That's a pretty annoying thing and I don't really see this type of thing happening in the Boost style since you're blasting past everything.

[Blacklightning]

1 hour ago, Nepenthe said:

We have dynamic soundtracks in games now, so I don't see why we couldn't pull off dynamic voice tracks where every now and again you get a line that's context-specific to a certain situation, either banal things like getting caught in a trap or more weird or rare instances of the players doing something unique or finding a hidden object. Just let Roger in on what the game is looking like and have him ad-lib some bits.

To some extent this is what I was trying to get at in the latter half of my post - the problem if anything it's because most of the context sensitive lines aren't particularly unique. Just off the top of my head, teams in Heroes have lines for lots of enemies showing up and particularly elaborate loops and stuff, but they reuse the same lines for them verbatim almost as much as they rehash those same setpieces over and over again. Hell, Sonic isn't alone in this problem either - I can only hear Deadpool say "Snikt!" so many times before the novelty wears off, and unlike the likes of Heroes and '06 Deadpool actually had some legitimately funny writing behind it, even if it was incredibly crude.

Spoiler

So I guess what I'm saying is that the level should be taken into consideration too, not just the situation. Hell, having lines spread around levels like easter eggs actually sounds pretty interesting as long as they're unique to them.