New Sonic Forces Gameplay teased on twitch.tv (link and screenhots here)

[Dr. Detective]

Despite loving how not-cringey the dialogue we've heard so far is, I do hope they take it upon themselves to use the talking feature to it's advantage. I'd like for the characters to speak up more about the situations they're in rather than just reaffirm the situation that Sonic's in for instance. We're playing as Sonic so we know what situation he's in. Dropping a line to say what they just did or what they're about to face stands the chance of being cute. Either that or drop a line to tell me something I didn't know about the rest of them.

Also, it just hit me that Sonic has a dialogue box too, which means he actually just talked to someone other than Tails and Eggman. 

It's still amazing to me that throughout all of Generations, Sonic never spoke an actual word to the others. It's more fucked up then I gave it credit for before honestly.

[JezMM]

31 minutes ago, Faseeh said:

Nepenthe's post covers of most of what I want to say, but I'm feeling really positive about this. THE VERY END of the Modern Park Avenue level footage we saw gives me hope for level design that's at least as fun as say, Modern Crisis City. I'd still love Modern Seaside Hill levels of vast exploration, but this is ain't bad.

I'd loooove to be positive and say my hopes have been answered but right now it still looks very barebones tutorial stage stuff to me (and there's really no reason for it to be that way, the earlier portion already proved the player's competency at homing attacks).

As usual, it's a gorgeous looking place, but literally there is no meaningful platforming here.  You just hop up some steps (or take the ziplines straight onto them) or hit the booster and get sent straight into the center spring, then it's just another homing attack chain to take out the enemies up top and onwards to the loop.

Right now all the 3D gameplay we've seen is only on par with either Sonic Colours as a whole or Generations Green Hill Act 2.  I remain hopeful that the 3D gameplay will go in the direction of the latter game beyond the first stage but right now it just remains that, hope.  And even then the best I'm hoping for is that the curve of stage complexity will be the SAME as Generations, when really ideally I want it to be steeper (though I'd accept the compromise of there being secret, harder levels beyond the end credits to push it further).

[Indigo Rush]

I will say that I appreciate them giving some sort of spotlight to the extended cast of characters without shoehorning them into the main gameplay, and also attempting to address the weird imbalanced ratio between humans and mobians. I'm not sure I dig their execution of the concept, but I wasn't entirely happy with Sonic 4 either, and you can argue that got the ball rolling (lol) towards greater things.

 

[Soniman]

29 minutes ago, Nepenthe said:

The Wisps' existence.

Anything to do with implemention? because we only really saw that in context to CaC abilities, while Modern just has white wisps which just basically take the place of rings. Or just the general dislike of the concept altogether 

[Nepenthe]

I'm just realizing this would've been a perfect time to once again implement a system similar to the split level objectives that ShtH had where Sonic has to decide where to go within branching pathways of levels based upon how the situation was unfolding around him. "Get to the Egg Robo and halt a lot of conflict within this part of the level, or go to Park Avenue's coastal area to save a friend from an overwhelming fight?"

Fuck me, we're not getting this, are we?

@Soniman The way they're implemented looks the same as they've always been- temporary unlocks to abilities that either should be standard or should have much more utility in the environment. So yeah, I don't like them as a whole.

Edited June 12, 2017 by Nepenthe

[Shadowlax]

10 minutes ago, Blue Knight/Bluestreak said:

At least Shadow and Silver are in the game, now we just need Blaze, Metal Sonic, Rouge, Orbot and Cubot.

Eh? For me I guess. I'm at the point where its like, let me play as them or this doesn't really do anything for me. 

But hey maybe they will surprise me.

[Wraith]

The more I look at this game the more it's level design mostly just reminds me of Sonic Colors tbh. For me, personally, that's not a selling point. 

One positive in all this footage is that the Park Avenue Modern level is still gorgeous. Not sold on the game at all right now though.

[BubbleButt TV]

18 minutes ago, JezMM said:

Just seems to be well done animation work, not anything physics related.  Eggman starting and stopping doesn't affect it's movement in any way (which is good of course for a boss battle that's meant to have a predictable pattern).

Yeah the more I look at it the more it seems animated, which is totally fine. 

[Tara]

27 minutes ago, Celestia said:

Move the boss meter and also the radio dialogue (why isn't it just normal subtitles but maybe with the character icons nearby?) and that'd be great. I actually kinda like the HUD's whole aesthetic...

A fair compromise I think would be the Banjo Kazooie method, which puts the character icons on screen next to normal subtitles, but tints the area around the subtitles so they're easier to see.

Anyway, as for me, I'm not feeling this game.  It doesn't look outright repulsive, but it leaves me feeling extremely underwhelmed.  I love Unleashed so much that it actually saddens me to not be excited about the Egg Dragoon.  It's just pretty underwhelming overall, in my opinion.

[Badnik Mechanic]

Welcome to Sonic Forces.

 

 

Also whilst making that, I never noticed it before, but both the robots feet are clipping through the floor and into the paving of the street.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

I think the dialogue implied the Egg Dragoon's are being mass produced. Eggman mentioning that "Still THIS Egg Dragoon only lost 10% of it's combat skills".
So maybe there's a bunch. Maybe later levels have you fight a bunch of them. Altough that's unlikely, considering they need Eggman to pilot them, unless he has Eggman robo/ Captain Whiskers around to pilot them, or Eggman himself is franctically jumping from Egg Dragoon cockpit to Egg Dragoon cockpit like he's in Just Cause.

[Gabz Girl]

Visually it looks really nice, and I'm glad the characters aren't spouting cringe dialogue (at least not in gameplay footage seen so far!), but shiiiit is this uninspired or what? It's Sonic Generations 2.0, that's basically what it is! Uninspired, same old thing and so little charm too. Definitely a "wait until reviews" kind of game for me. 

[Dr. Detective]

Controversial statement, but despite my complaints, I have a feeling I'll at the very least get more out of Forces then I feel I did with Colors and Generations. 

That's not me saying it'll be a better game then them. But it certainly has more of what I like about the series in it so far. 

It also has a lot of what I don't like about the series in it too however. 

I guess what I'm saying is that there's more stuff here that I do like then I don't like at this point. 

I want to get to a point where I can like everything though. It'll save me from being confused about how to get what I'm saying across.

[Blue Blood]

15 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

Welcome to Sonic Forces.

 

 

Also whilst making that, I never noticed it before, but both the robots feet are clipping through the floor and into the paving of the street.

Although I agree that the presentation within this game is poor and that the game as a whole is absolutely fucking awful...

Really? Show me a game, absolutely any game at all, that doesn't include minor clipping issues like this. You never notice it during gameplay because it's normally mid-animation and so only lasts for a few frames, and the camera angles in screenshots like this give unusual representation. Stick to ridding on the HUD.

[SpongicX]

I think having Classic Sonic be from an alternate dimension makes more sense than being Sonic from the past to be honest. If Classic Sonic was really just a younger Sonic, than how did his appearance get so drastically different between an age gap of about 3 years? It would also explain how Amy suddenly grew older by 4 years between Sonic CD, and Sonic Adventure, while the others just grew older by 2. 

Many could argue that the Adventure games still referred to past events from the Genesis games, like Amy being saved from Metal Sonic, or Tails first coming across Sonic, but just because they happened in the Genesis dimension, doesn't mean they couldn't have happened in some form in the modern dimension. That's the thing about alternate dimensions, they can share many similar chain of events, but with small or major differences.

Maybe Sega realized they were making things too confusing with calling Classic Sonic a younger Sonic. Fans did gripe over Sonic 4's lack of connection between Sonic 3 & Knuckles, and Sonic Adventure. Sega is probably getting too tired of the fans constantly trying to piece everything together. Maybe Sega really wants to bring back Classic Sonic as a side franchise, but are too afraid to, because of the fans constantly complaining about continuity. Maybe making Classic Sonic an alternate dimension will give Sega more confidence in making classic styled games, without having the fans whine about how it doesn't make sense to the modern continuity (if there even is any...)

I really do think it's for the best to call Classic Sonic an alternate dimension Sonic, instead of a younger Sonic. It doesn't make much sense for Sonic to remember his friends from the past, like Tails, Amy, and Knuckles, only to have deja vu over seeing past locations like Green Hill Zone and Chemical Plant Zone. 

[Multikaris]

3 hours ago, Blue Knight/Bluestreak said:

At least Shadow and Silver are in the game, now we just need Blaze, Metal Sonic, Rouge, Orbot and Cubot.

Since they teased Chaos's involvement, I have an inkling Tikal's in too. And let's not forget Big, Omega, and the Rogues. At this rate Sticks too. And heck, might as well toss in Mecha Sonic when we're doubling down on nostalgia. 

[Badnik Mechanic]

5 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Really? Show me a game, absolutely any game at all, that doesn't include minor clipping issues like this. You never notice it during gameplay because it's normally mid-animation and so only lasts for a few frames, and the camera angles in screenshots like this give unusual representation. Stick to ridding on the HUD.

Yes I know...

Except this is a carefully laid out bullshot. You can tell from a number of things such as the Egg Robo that's not aiming at the player but down the street.

[Blue Blood]

3 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

Yes I know...

Except this is a carefully laid out bullshot. You can tell from a number of things such as the Egg Robo that's not aiming at the player but down the street.

What's your point?

Stop making me defend Sonic Forces.

[Badnik Mechanic]

4 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

What's your point?

They could have at least tried?

[Celestia]

We're talking about enemies in a boost game here, they react very slowly. The avatar character was probably in front of the badnik a second ago.

[Nepenthe]

Here's a carefully laid out bullshot of a character's quiver clipping through their sword hilt and wrist from one of the most critically-acclaimed games of all time:

If only Nintendo could have tried.

[ChikaBoing]

I am curios of floor impressions from the websites. Especially with Sonic Mania in direct paralell. Will it mirror impressions on here and other places?

[Blue Blood]

5 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

They could have at least tried?

I wish you would stop trying find new reasons to hate on this game where there are already plenty of other more valid reasons staring us in the face. 

You're over-analysing a bullshot (by your own definition). You're taking it a bit far.

 

[Badnik Mechanic]

1 minute ago, Blue Blood said:

I wish you would stop trying find new reasons to hate on this game where there are already plenty of other more valid reasons to hate it.

Christ just relax already, I only just noticed it and thought it was funny because for images which are blatantly lying to us and are carefully crafted it had such a small mistake in it. The more point of the post was to show just how bad the levels are going to look when you slap the UI on top of them.

[Kuzu]

I'm on mobile atm, but I guess the best thing I can say about the game is that...it doesn't look bad I suppose...