The World Is Dead In Sonic Forces

[Chris Knopps]

Have you noticed how you can't pick up the rings you lose in the upcoming Forces title? Throughout the history of the franchise, being able to take back the rings you've lost has always been the one staple to remain, next to lives of course.

However, in Forces you can no longer collect rings, and this is likely because the world either is dead or close to it and is no longer capable of producing rings any longer. This could be tied to the state of the planet itself, as being in such a terrible state after all the damage caused by Eggman, the planet has likely ceased producing rings in order to preserve what little life it has left, no longer capable of giving off excess energy.

The rings you collect in Forces could be considered the last round of rings the planet provided before Eggman's global attack began, thus making them far more valuable in the game as-is proven when trying to fight against the bosses of the game.

Once you lose the rings, it could be that the planet absorbs them back into itself, trying to suck up whatever energy it can in a sort of zombified manner. Although this is just speculation, it's an idea that does tie in well with the state of the planet.

It's Ded Son

[Tracker_TD]

I'm not fond of summarising my responses in a gif form (hell, it's primarily against the rules), but for once I think I've got one deep within my folders to sum up what I just read, in a way other than "mother of god, are we that starved for Forces content?" or "no, it's because Sonic Team's design choices make no sense"

And that is:

[Chris Knopps]

4 minutes ago, Tracker_TD said:

I'm not fond of summarising my responses in a gif form (hell, it's primarily against the rules), but for once I think I've got one deep within my folders to sum up what I just read, in a way other than "mother of god, are we that starved for Forces content?" or "no, it's because Sonic Team's design choices make no sense"

Well, when you consider how rings are essentially a form of energy themselves, granting extra lives and Super forms, if the world is dying or dead it makes sense that rings can no longer be collected as they were before. Rings are nonexistent now since to have them, the world would need a surplus of energy to produce them and allow you to keep them.

Hence them being so limited in Forces.

The ones you pick up are yours, but lose them and they're gone. No collecting a second time.

[Tracker_TD]

6 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

Well, when you consider how rings are essentially a form of energy themselves, granting extra lives and Super forms, if the world is dying or dead it makes sense that rings can no longer be collected as they were before. Rings are nonexistent now since to have them, the world would need a surplus of energy to produce them and allow you to keep them.

Hence them being so limited in Forces.

The ones you pick up are yours, but lose them and they're gone. No collecting a second time.

Wrap it up everyone. Sonic's world has been dead since Sonic 1. And Tails Adventure. And Sonic Labyrinth. Dang. RIP. 

[Chris Knopps]

1 minute ago, Tracker_TD said:

Wrap it up everyone. Sonic's world has been dead since Sonic 1. And Tails Adventure. And Sonic Labyrinth. Dang. RIP. 

We're going by the main-series titles, not the "alternate versions" or "spin-off" series.

[Dejimon11]

8 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

Well, when you consider how rings are essentially a form of energy themselves, granting extra lives and Super forms, if the world is dying or dead it makes sense that rings can no longer be collected as they were before. Rings are nonexistent now since to have them, the world would need a surplus of energy to produce them and allow you to keep them.

Hence them being so limited in Forces.

The ones you pick up are yours, but lose them and they're gone. No collecting a second time.

Seriously where do you even come up with these conclusions? 

[Chris Knopps]

1 minute ago, Dejimon11 said:

Seriously where do you even come up with these conclusions? 

It's just speculation. Thinking of the rings as the excess "life" of the planet felt like something fairly... Neat... I suppose.

[Thigolf]

Sonic Team Headquarters

"Hey, let's make a Custom Character Creator and slam it into our game as a third gameplay style!"

"Great idea! We should make a couple species and give them different abilties to differentiate them more from eachother in subtle, creative, fun ways! Any ideas?"

"Uh... One species keeps a ring when he gets hit... another one attracts rings... another one starts with 5 rings when they die... and uh... I guess one gets to pick them up again..?"

"...good enough."

_____

There's your answer.

[Blue Wisp]

I have to admit something to you Chris, I always loved/admired the passion you put into posts and topics like this ever since I've seen your posts. But I'm honestly uh... Dumbfounded I guess sometimes.

[Dejimon11]

4 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

It's just speculation. Thinking of the rings as the excess "life" of the planet felt like something fairly... Neat... I suppose.

Baseless speculation. 

[Osmium]

Except this isn't SatAM and rings have never been said to have been generated by the planet anywhere 

[Indigo Rush]

You can't pick up dropped rings in Sonic Unleashed [PS3/360]

 

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Here we go again.....

[Chris Knopps]

3 minutes ago, Venom Wisp said:

I have to admit something to you Chris, I always loved/admired the passion you put into posts and topics like this ever since I've seen your posts. But I'm honestly uh... Dumbfounded I guess sometimes.

Thanks much. After doing this sort of thing for some six years or so, give or take, you learn a thing or two on how to keep people interested in what you've got to say, be them reasonable, ludicrous, or just plain out there.

5 minutes ago, Thigolf said:

Sonic Team Headquarters

"Hey, let's make a Custom Character Creator and slam it into our game as a third gameplay style!"

"Great idea! We should make a couple species and give them different abilties to differentiate them more from eachother in subtle, creative, fun ways! Any ideas?"

"Uh... One species keeps a ring when he gets hit... another one attracts rings... another one starts with 5 rings when they die... and uh... I guess one gets to pick them up again..?"

"...good enough."

_____

There's your answer.

That's a very depressing way of putting how/why it was done... I like my reasoning better as it's creative in its own way but your post here is naturally the most realistic scenario of all... I appreciate that honesty but at the same time it makes one feel like eating ice cream and pondering life...

1 minute ago, Dejimon11 said:

Baseless speculation. 

Baseless perhaps but fun nonetheless depending on your outlook on the topic.

Just now, ShroomZed said:

Except this isn't SatAM and rings have never been said to have been generated by the planet anywhere 

That's why it's called speculation my friend.

Just now, Jovahexeon Ace Joranvexeon said:

Here we go again.....

Yes indeed. What do you think of the idea?

[Clewis]

Has the presence of rings ever been referred to by characters in-game before (outside of tutorial messages, of course)?

[Chris Knopps]

1 minute ago, Clewis said:

Has the presence of rings ever been referred to by characters in-game before (outside of tutorial messages, of course)?

Hmm...

Well, there was Generations where Tails pondered where Sonic keeps them all.

[Osmium]

Alright, you know what then? If you really want to go into this sort of hole, than here we go. 

Quote

However, in Forces you can no longer collect rings, and this is likely because the world either is dead or close to it and is no longer capable of producing rings any longer. This could be tied to the state of the planet itself, as being in such a terrible state after all the damage caused by Eggman, the planet has likely ceased producing rings in order to preserve what little life it has left, no longer capable of giving off excess energy.

All we've seen from Eggman is him blowing up a city and some desertification of Green Hill Zone. And even in Green Hill we see flowers and grass and fertile soil and all the things associated with it. I really doubt the planet is close to having all life extinguished from such little damage. The Earth has gone and is going through periods of constant destruction and catastrophic change (these adjectives are of course subjective based on what universal stance you are on), and it has never come close to dying in these times. Planetary systems don't work like this, and life can still flourish easily through some destruction or change. That's how we are here today and in the past millions of years have seen such levels of diversity. The sort of damage Eggman is doing is extremely superficial at best. 

But that's just our Earth, and now we have to talk about Sonic's planet too. Coming from the Sonic 1 JP manual: 

Quote

The Chaos Emeralds are a super-material that give energy to all living beings.

So the chaos emeralds also give life to beings, and this is supported by the ending to Sonic 1 where the emeralds vanish, and a bunch of flora appears from the reaction. So this has been proven in series. But the chaos emeralds are almost positively still around in Forces. So they are giving life to organisms, along with how I said that the damage Eggman has done is superficial at best. So on two accounts there's no way the planet is dead in this manner. 

There is no deficiency in energy at all, and life will still form on Sonic's planet. There's no reason for rings to absorbed back into the planet to reserve energy when the Chaos Emeralds are still emitting energy to all life and the core of the planet is still warm, generating magnetic fields along with an evolutionary process that has been occurring for billions of years and can't be stopped as easily as some think. The planet is not dead and so this is null. 

This was a completely pointless post, but if you want to be ridiculously speculative, then so can I. 

[Cyrus]

Y'know it's really nice to come back to this community for the first time in a while and see people go out of their way to shoot down a silly innocent little theory with mean spirited responses including offhand diet forms of "OP is a you-know-what" for likes. These are the good vibes I signed up for back in 2012.

What happened

[Chris Knopps]

4 minutes ago, Cyrus said:

Y'know it's really nice to come back to this community for the first time in a while and see people go out of their way to shoot down a silly innocent little theory with mean spirited responses including offhand diet forms of "OP is a you-know-what" for likes. These are the good vibes I signed up for back in 2012.

What happened

You get used to it, no worries. I'm a bit of a blotch on the day of many here. I've accepted it and just roll with it. Welcome back to SSMB.

8 minutes ago, ShroomZed said:

Alright, you know what then? If you really want to go into this sort of hole, than here we go. 

All we've seen from Eggman is him blowing up a city and some desertification of Green Hill Zone. And even in Green Hill we see flowers and grass and fertile soil and all the things associated with it. I really doubt the planet is close to having all life extinguished from such little damage. The Earth has gone and is going through periods of constant destruction and catastrophic change (these adjectives are of course subjective based on what universal stance you are on), and it has never come close to dying in these times. Planetary systems don't work like this, and life can still flourish easily through some destruction or change. That's how we are here today and in the past millions of years have seen such levels of diversity. The sort of damage Eggman is doing is extremely superficial at best. 

But that's just our Earth, and now we have to talk about Sonic's planet too. Coming from the Sonic 1 JP manual: 

So the chaos emeralds also give life to beings, and this is supported by the ending to Sonic 1 where the emeralds vanish, and a bunch of flora appears from the reaction. So this has been proven in series. But the chaos emeralds are almost positively still around in Forces. So they are giving life to organisms, along with how I said that the damage Eggman has done is superficial at best. So on two accounts there's no way the planet is dead in this manner. 

There is no deficiency in energy at all, and life will still form on Sonic's planet. There's no reason for rings to absorbed back into the planet to reserve energy when the Chaos Emeralds are still emitting energy to all life and the core of the planet is still warm, generating magnetic fields along with an evolutionary process that has been occurring for billions of years and can't be stopped as easily as some think. The planet is not dead and so this is null. 

This was a completely pointless post, but if you want to be ridiculously speculative, then so can I. 

It's possible Infinite can cancel out the Chaos Emeralds power in regards to keeping the planet alive. After all, the villains name IS Infinite so there's no telling what's going on revolving the Emeralds in this game, so the speculation still stands. You could say something's going on with the Emeralds as well, thus the lack of being able to take back your rings.

[Darinian]

But Chris, why would only one species be able to pick up rings and not others? Why would (I think it was wolves) they be the only species to pick up rings? It seems so random to just have a random species do something that our blue blur has been doing since sonic 1. I think that it is just a random power up that they slapped onto one and just made sure others couldn't grab them.

1 hour ago, Indigo Rush said:

You can't pick up dropped rings in Sonic Unleashed [PS3/360]

 

 

Also this

[Chris Knopps]

26 minutes ago, Zorua & Flare said:

But Chris, why would only one species be able to pick up rings and not others? Why would (I think it was wolves) they be the only species to pick up rings? It seems so random to just have a random species do something that our blue blur has been doing since sonic 1. I think that it is just a random power up that they slapped onto one and just made sure others couldn't grab them.

I really haven't paid much attention to the details of the whole Avatar aspect of the game, mainly the Sonic aspects.

It's like I said, it's more fun to think about something deeper like this being the reason than how the company just does things without having any real thought behind it.

I know it's not in Sonic Team's ideals to put thought into things nowadays, but it's still fun to insert your own thoughts.

[Diogenes]

Sonic Team makes plenty of stupid decisions, but they don't just do things without any thought. Not being able to recollect rings is just a game balance tweak, not something that needs a story justification.

[Chris Knopps]

2 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Sonic Team makes plenty of stupid decisions, but they don't just do things without any thought. Not being able to recollect rings is just a game balance tweak, not something that needs a story justification.

Of course it doesn't NEED anything in particular, but it's nice to think about nonetheless.

And need I remind you the entirety of Lost World happened because one guy at Sonic Team rolled up a piece of paper one day and found it an interesting idea for a game thus an entire project happened?

Not much thought there at all. It was in the interviews for the game.

[Diogenes]

6 minutes ago, Chris Knopps said:

And need I remind you the entirety of Lost World happened because one guy at Sonic Team rolled up a piece of paper one day and found it an interesting idea for a game thus an entire project happened?

Not much thought there at all. It was in the interviews for the game.

Inspiration from an unlikely source has nothing to do with a supposed lack of thought.

[Chris Knopps]

Just now, Diogenes said:

Inspiration from an unlikely source has nothing to do with a supposed lack of thought.

I just don't see much in the game myself.

Though it could just be my own spite shining due to seeing all the "remixed" enemies and locations/bosses in the game...

Not so sure...

Forces is hard for me like most people.