Sonic Forces Japanese official site opened!

[Ratcicle King]

Judging from the screenshots from his fight we got a couple of weeks earlier, pretty sure this is where you fight Metal.

[DiamondX]

5 minutes ago, Ratcicle King said:

Judging from the screenshots from his fight we got a couple of weeks earlier, pretty sure this is where you fight Metal.

It definetly is. Too bad it's kinda lame.

But the boss hopefully will make it better.

[Diogenes]

13 minutes ago, Kellan said:

I think that there's more to a series's identity than just the level tropes it uses. What about platforming? Or speed? Or its themes of environmentalism, teamwork, or independence? Good music? Dr. Eggman being comical and serious? The games being able to be light-hearted at first, but then get darker as it needs to? Do none of these things count towards the series's identity? I think the identity can survive Sonic being in a dark city.

I'm not saying level tropes alone define a series' identity. But when you start saying Sonic can just go anywhere and "has no real anchor", you are giving up on the series' setting as part of the series' identity, and that is not a good thing.

Plus most of what you've said is controversial or argued over to some extent so it's not as if his identity is solid in those respects.

...also I have to wonder about the overlap between people who will use this kind of "Sonic can go anywhere!" argument to defend Forces but pitched a fit over Dessert Ruins.

[Blue Blood]

5 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I'm not saying level tropes alone define a series' identity. But when you start saying Sonic can just go anywhere and "has no real anchor", you are giving up on the series' setting as part of the series' identity, and that is not a good thing.

Plus most of what you've said is controversial or argued over to some extent so it's not as if his identity is solid in those respects.

...also I have to wonder about the overlap between people who will use this kind of "Sonic can go anywhere!" argument to defend Forces but pitched a fit over Dessert Ruins.

Good God I hate that level so much.

But it's really bloody difficult to see Dessert Ruins alongside Park Avenue (/Crisis City/Westopolis) is the same series. No wonder Sonic fans are so divided over everything when SEGA can't keep anything consistent. What looks 'like Sonic' to one fan is completely alien and wrong to another.

[NoKaine]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

I'm not saying level tropes alone define a series' identity. But when you start saying Sonic can just go anywhere and "has no real anchor", you are giving up on the series' setting as part of the series' identity, and that is not a good thing.

That's the philosophy of Mario and Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat in general, which is why we have games like Mario Kart, Epic Mickey and Kingdom Hearts, so it's not really a bad thing.

It's a bit weird to start talking about identity now as if Forces is so, so alien to the series, when we've had Sonic in Aladdin, Sonic as King Arthur, crossover games, Sonic in space, Sonic in realistic worlds, Sonic in trippy lands, etc. What is Forces doing with its tropes? It's a darker, ruined world. We've had those before, and this certainly isn't anywhere close to the worst example.

The problem with Sonic though is that most of the time it asserts whatever current thing it's doing as its identity. When Sonic went to Station Square and tangled with GUN the games treated it like it was always the case, until suddenly it wasn't in Heroes, until it suddenly was in Shadow and Unleashed, etc. 

What's different here though is that Forces isn't asserting itself as any status quo, it's well aware that it's the dark story in the franchise. It's a Green Hill stage, but look what Eggman did to it! It's a city, but Eggman fucked it up! This isn't how it was before! But you're acting like somehow this is the new status quo and it's going to be like this? It's not.

Sonic definitely has an identity issue but it isn't an issue here.

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...also I have to wonder about the overlap between people who will use this kind of "Sonic can go anywhere!" argument to defend Forces but pitched a fit over Dessert Ruins.

The only problem that I have with Dessert Ruins-- and this fits with the rest of the game's level tropes-- is that it doesn't fit the world it's in. The lack of coherence within a world is definitely a Mario thing, and not a Sonic thing, and I wouldn't mind if it was just with similar levels, or even that it looked like it could be in Desert Ruins, like if we could see a desert in the background. Like if it was always a desert and also flying desserts there would be no problem.

But in all honesty we knew they did it to make a pun, so whatever.

I also don't know what that has to do with Forces, or what the comparison is.

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

I'm not saying level tropes alone define a series' identity. But when you start saying Sonic can just go anywhere and "has no real anchor", you are giving up on the series' setting as part of the series' identity, and that is not a good thing.

Plus most of what you've said is controversial or argued over to some extent so it's not as if his identity is solid in those respects.

...also I have to wonder about the overlap between people who will use this kind of "Sonic can go anywhere!" argument to defend Forces but pitched a fit over Dessert Ruins.

The thing is, stuff like Dessert Ruins has no real precedent in the series. Sure, there were the special Zone stuff, but those were bonus stages meant to obtain things that would unlock the end of the storyline, and did not control akin to the rest of the game. Music Plant and Sweet Mountain at least had structure. This is the first time normal gameplay takes you into a mandatory, completely nonsensical environment, and that's by the standards of a man who believes starfish and roly-poly bugs are acceptable end-game mooks with enough tweaks.

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, NoKaine said:

That's the philosophy of Mario and Mickey Mouse and Felix the Cat in general,

It's really not, though. A series can have a very diverse setting, but it cannot do everything. Mario absolutely would not fit into Forces' ruined city, for example.

1 minute ago, NoKaine said:

It's a bit weird to start talking about identity now as if Forces is so, so alien to the series,

We have been talking about the series' identity for years, man. This is not a new conversation, just the next step in a very long discussion.

1 minute ago, NoKaine said:

What's different here though is that Forces isn't asserting itself as any status quo, it's well aware that it's the dark story in the franchise. It's a Green Hill stage, but look what Eggman did to it! It's a city, but Eggman fucked it up! This isn't how it was before! But you're acting like somehow this is the new status quo and it's going to be like this? It's not.

That's not at all what my complaint is about. Some things just don't fit the series regardless of whether they're meant to be the status quo or they're just one off things.

[NoKaine]

3 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

It's really not, though. A series can have a very diverse setting, but it cannot do everything. Mario absolutely would not fit into Forces' ruined city, for example.

Yeah, he could. We had a similar idea in Galaxy's intro level, with the Mushroom Kingdom on fire and being attacked. We're having Mario in a city too, and similar to the problem with Sonic, Odyssey works because it makes it clear that it isn't normal.

Why is "ruined city" such a no-go zone for Sonic or Mario?

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We have been talking about the series' identity for years, man. This is not a new conversation, just the next step in a very long discussion.

What I mean is that what is Forces doing so special to warrant complaining about the identity? Forces isn't changing anything about Sonic's identity, it's in fact framing, developing, and subverting what we already know. 

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That's not at all what my complaint is about. Some things just don't fit the series regardless of whether they're meant to be the status quo or they're just one off things.

Again, why is "ruined city" so alien and weird? Why is this something that "doesn't fit" in apparently any circumstance whatsoever?

Like, okay, so in a game where Eggman wins, where there are many other examples where we see what could happen if he does, like Unleashed, or Sonic CD's bad futures which also comprised of ruined cities, they can't show, you know, the result of Eggman's rule?

[Diogenes]

1 minute ago, NoKaine said:

Yeah, he could. We had a similar idea in Galaxy's intro level, with the Mushroom Kingdom on fire and being attacked. We're having Mario in a city too, and similar to the problem with Sonic, Odyssey works because it makes it clear that it isn't normal.

Why is "ruined city" such a no-go zone for Sonic or Mario?

You do realize that a town in the Mushroom Kingdom with a few collapsed structures and small fires is not the same as a fairly realistic modern city that's been realistically destroyed, right? This isn't about the two word on-paper description, it's about the actual presentation. If Galaxy had opened with the Mushroom Kingdom looking like the city in Forces it would've been awful and unfitting.

1 minute ago, NoKaine said:

What I mean is that what is Forces doing so special to warrant complaining about the identity?

It's being a trashy '06 wannabe instead of actually looking like a Sonic game.

1 minute ago, NoKaine said:

Like, okay, so in a game where Eggman wins, where there are many other examples where we see what could happen if he does, like Unleashed, or Sonic CD's bad futures which also comprised of ruined cities, they can't show, you know, the result of Eggman's rule?

Neither Unleashed nor CD have ruined cities in the way that Forces does. Unleashed has...literally no ruined cities at all. And CD has dark, polluted, corrupted cities, not outright destroyed ones. And they're actually styled like they're in a Sonic game rather than being just generic real-world cities.

[Meta77]

You seem to have placed in your own head a set vision for what a sonic gsme should look.  which limits growth. Again thisnis a war torn city. Things get destroyed in war. And look ruined hence the level. Again what is a sonic look like to you. And again seriously were talking about a guy that ran from a city sized truck destroying every car in its path

 fight ing in a giant death star. Running through a underground volcano. Running down a skyscraper. Over water set in a Chinese setting.. there is no set limit on where sonic should go

[NoKaine]

15 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

You do realize that a town in the Mushroom Kingdom with a few collapsed structures and small fires is not the same as a fairly realistic modern city that's been realistically destroyed, right? This isn't about the two word on-paper description, it's about the actual presentation. If Galaxy had opened with the Mushroom Kingdom looking like the city in Forces it would've been awful and unfitting.

What is your actual complaint? It's like visual semantics. It's a problem because the city's realistic? Why, is it Too Soon? Is it weird that Sonic has realistic cities? 

Mario never had realistic cities so yeah it'd be unfitting, but even in the classic games the cities looked like real cities, if stylized for the game. 

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It's being a trashy '06 wannabe instead of actually looking like a Sonic game.

Ah, the old "I'm using Sonic '06 as a negative despite not knowing what Sonic '06 is like".

Sorry, did I miss the humans and the Final Fantasy-like intro in Forces? Did I miss Sonic having to contemplate murdering Eggman?

I mean, '06 had cities, right? So Forces is as bad as '06, right? 

The presentation for Park Avenue and Crisis City are starkly different. In the latter, there was no actual hope or feeling that it could get better, there were no one else, literally no one, but Silver and Blaze, the city looked all drab because it was just lava and ruined buildings, but you didn't really feel Iblis' power besides a poorly made tornado because he never really did anything.

Meanwhile Park Avenue is still a stylized city ala Rooftop Run, there's still signs of life and untouched scenery like the Green Hill-like seaside, we can see what exactly is causing the damage and the scope but we still have the Sonics and the Avatar swooping in and saving the day, the Resistance is fighting back and we have a cheezy but cheerful song for the Avatar about beating the bad guys.

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Neither Unleashed nor CD have ruined cities in the way that Forces does. Unleashed has...literally no ruined cities at all. And CD has dark, polluted, corrupted cities, not outright destroyed ones. And they're actually styled like they're in a Sonic game rather than being just generic real-world cities.

I was talking about Eggmanland and the smog and inherent danger. And yes, CD had ruined cities, in Stardust Speedway in particular, only the background left a lot to imagination. It's mostly rooftops and lights but it still looked rather realistic, like people can live there, only not.

And it's not like the city is the ONLY level in the game because there's Green Hill and the glimpses of other stages look stylized and cartoony.

So again, what's your problem? Somehow being a realistic city is totally no-no, when that isn't AT ALL new to the series?

[JosepHenry]

9 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

It's being a trashy '06 wannabe instead of actually looking like a Sonic game.

Ok, something that I can't understand is when people say that Forces is a '06 wannabe... What they have in common? I don't understand.

[NoKaine]

7 minutes ago, Joseph Henry said:

Ok, something that I can't understand is when people say that Forces is a '06 wannabe... What they have in common? I don't understand.

Oh, well, see, because '06 sucks, and so does Forces! So, yeah.

And, there's burning cities in both of them (in entirely different contexts)...

Infinite is kind of like Mephiles, if you squint and forget what Mephiles is like (remember how Mephiles didn't actually interact with Sonic at all?)...

And, uh, '06 is the obvious bad Sonic game so it's the go-to for any direct comparisons.

And Nakamura wrote both games... that's an legitimate comparison, though.

[Kellan]

 

@Diogenes Ok, I'm confused. Are you saying that realistic cities by themselves go against Sonic's identity? Because we've had realistic cities in these games since, what, 1998? They are definitely a part of the series's identity by now.

[Meta77]

6 minutes ago, Joseph Henry said:

Ok, something that I can't understand is when people say that Forces is a '06 wannabe... What they have in common? I don't understand.

Causes Sonics being serious and the story isn't a light hearted kids novel. Honestly at this point I have no idea. Bit I'm pumped for the TGS

[JosepHenry]

I dunno, City Heights looks pretty cartoony to me. Is destroyed, but is still colorful and cartoony. It looks like a setting from Unleashed with a bit of Lost World, and I adore Unleashed's art style. It fits Sonic so well, is perfect. If Unleashed is a part of the trash heap, let me drown on it.

We still haven't seen the other levels.

 

Goddamn, I wish the next stages to be as wacky and cartoony as possible, IGN themselves said that the City was the most grim scenario.

We can't even show urgency somehow of a city that is possibly going to turn into a Eggman casino. We can show cities already being transformed but we can't see the process.

[NoKaine]

Well, judging by this board I thought Forces' problems would be the story, level design, and gameplay, but apparently it would've been perfect if Park Avenue wasn't a realistic city. 

Y'know, because that's the number one problem with the Sonic Dark Age. If only it was City Escape Zone.

[shdowhunt60]

Anywho, do we have translations of the character profiles yet? Looks like they're putting in a ton of plot details, so spoilers maybe?

[Dee Dude]

On another note, the Resistance artwork implies we'll be seeing new renders of Knux, Amy, Silver etc right?

[Frameratesparkle]

the base is giving me a hub world vibe even though aron said it was not gonna have hub worlds. maybe it is and Aron said that to not spoil anything. he said sonic mania was not gonna have a metal sonic scene like cd and look what happen so just wait and see 

[Bobnik]

Aaaaaaaaanyway, there's nothing really interesting in these background vids. Like, yeah, we got a glimpse on 3 new places (technically 4, but it's a bridge where the Metal Sonic fight most likely happens), but they barely tell anything except for

1) Modern's GHZ looks to be linear

2) Classic's Park-City-Sunset-Heights-Avenue has an upper and lower path, yay...

3) The HQ, while makes sense story-wise (for what little story we have), doesn't look too impressive. I still don't really understand the point of rendering this HQ unless it's used in the game in some form.

Overall, not great, but not bad. Just fine, I guess.

[Dr. Detective]

4 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

If the story events are calling for the characters to change in such a way that suddenly calls for their personalities to be squandered instead of adapted or developed, there's an issue with the story. What Sonic Team have done is take and 'dark' theme and 'mature' story, and wedged a bunch of more lighthearted characters into it by changing them entirely to suit the aesthetic. I'd argue that this is bad because it's an uncalled for change that's completely at odds with what the series normally is. 'Mature' doesn't work for Sonic, so this game feels forced and ham-fisted. Putting the existing Sonic characters into this scenario honestly doesn't work. If other cutscenes manage to dial back this rubbish, then that will be a positive. But that doesn't excuse this. You could even argue that it exacerbates it. 

There shouldn't be a captain to the resistance; there shouldn't even be a resistance in the capacity that this game is doing it. A team of heroes banding together to fight an uphill battle against Eggman would be fine. But turning them into a military crew is not the way to do it.

The world being in this state is a problem in itself. A situation where Eggman has effectively already won should be really fun and interesting, but I'm not feeling that from Forces at all. It's feeling like a very generic war scenario, rather than anything to do with Sonic. 

So far, the potential for the story to go wrong is still hanging in the balance. Based on the previews and what I've seen, I actually don't really have a problem with the elements as they're presented from the standpoint of someone whose yet to see how it'll all come together. I've actually been rather proud of how Amy and Knuckles have carried themselves from the in-game dialogue at the moment. I like Amy as she is but I like seeing them dial it back when there's something important happening. I like the little inflections Knuckles gives about what you should do but also how he adds in his usual small but noticable character quirks when he gets angry about the maximum number of Death Egg Robots being too damn high or his jumping-the-gun enthusiasm at the end of the Avatar's Green Hill stage before the enemy crab shows up. Hopefully this is something that'll give the game a chance to showcase all aspects of their personalities instead of just regurgitating what they think the base form of their character as they are today would do and say, which is what I thought Knuckles in Generations and Lost World did. Granted, it's true, he had little screen time but I couldn't help but be annoyed by what they ended up doing with it. 

Perhaps I'm too married to the way I remember Knuckles from the Adventure games and the early seasons of Sonic X, where he was always so cool and his anger was always subdued by a grumble under his breath before some acting force got under his skin and made the hot-headed nature of his come out. He had that rivalry thing going with Sonic for sure, and it was always a childish thing, but something about him just pushing himself in front of Amy and scrambling to say "I would have finished this sooner" at the end of Lost World in that overly cheery voice made it not feel quite right. I don't know if it was the inflection in his voice or how overtly in-your-face the childish tendency was but it definitely had more the feel of a schoolyard bully trying to reassert himself than simply seeing the intentional character flaw of a hardened brick-house like Knuckles being slightly vulnerable when he's tasked with being at odds with Sonic. I don't think Generations nor Lost World did him a service at all. If anything it felt like a bit of a confirmation on his regression, something that was being harder and harder to defend as the years went by.

However, even if I did agree that Knuckles was still himself nowadays, him being the Resistance leader doesn't work for me either.

I'm not saying this because I'm a Chaotix fan, but it honestly looked more like Vector was taking charge a bit there. Him or Amy would have made more sense based on what was said. Knuckles was acting more or less like his Generations self with a bit more of a calmer edge to him, which is nice, since I don't agree that him being super whacked out all the time fits for him, but at the same time it wasn't anything I'd look at and go, "Yup, he's leader material". Knuckles is most certainly not leader material. In any portrayal of him. He's the kind of guy I expect to be slightly looking into what's going on in the back and then sort of just disappear and reappear throughout the game because he's busy doing things in whatever way he desires. 

Despite that, I do also agree that there shouldn't even be a designated leader though.

The band of characters coming together to fight off Eggman after he's taken over the world is a great idea, and I've always had it be a point of contention with the Archie comics that I wasn't a fan of the Freedom Fighters system treating them like they were all soldiers that worked under the authority of the kingdom. That said, I actually don't quite feel it's hit that point just yet. It may turn out to be similar when the game comes out (doubt it, since there's no kingdom they work under, which is a huge point of contention for me. An alliance with the army works better than them actually being in the army) but that remains to be seen. I don't really have a problem with the soldier "talk" so long as it's used specifically for the sake of carrying out missions and what not. If it's efficient than whatever. There's a way for this to come off as though they've just teamed up with the army to work towards a similar goal together in the end and that's honestly what it still feels like. I'm okay with that and as such I don't have a problem with it. It'll probably (most likely) end up being that way when the game comes out too. 

I don't have a problem with GUN as a concept (in fact I have a mountain of ideas to utilize them for story elements going forward.) but I do see the issue with how they tend to be portrayed. A military aesthetic is fine for a series like this so long as it knows how to work itself into being cartoony and fantastical on the outside. If the idea was to mirror how something like One Piece handles it's military rather than how the literal US of A looks but with maybe an animal soldier or two than they'd be onto something. A lot of the ideas I tend to have relies on them being around but also them having more whacky super-powered and strangely designed people working for them.

I also don't really agree that "mature" doesn't work for Sonic. Being "Mature" works for everything. We've seen it work well for a lot of the cartoons and animated movies coming out in these more recent years. But mature doesn't have to mean "Super serious" and what not. Sometimes being mature can simply mean recognizing what you are and working around that to your advantage. They haven't completely failed at that just yet. It still feels like a Sonic game to me, despite the dark nature surrounding it. But honestly, it's only really in comparison to the last few Sonic games we've gotten. Compared to the likes of Sonic 06 and Shadow, it definitely feels like it's remembering what it is and where it comes from a lot more. I feel reassured that they're aware of what Sonic is here, it's just that trying to figure out what elements to include and how long and hard of a focus some of them need may be what's tripping them up. 

There's some elements here that I'd change. That's for damn sure. However, I also like a lot of what I'm seeing in some respects. It's basically the same song and dance I've been doing with Forces here. There's things I like but things I don't too and it's kept me well aligned with the middle-ground. I can, however, say with confidence that the story elements (not necessarily the story itself because I've seen so little of it) are the things I'm liking the most and are what I'm looking forward to the most without a doubt.

It hasn't yet hit the point for me where it feels like a Generic war scenario despite seeing those elements around and about. It might very well be only because it's got the Sonic characters and the Sonic aesthetic going for it though. I may be singing a different tune at the end of all this and my mind may be imagining something a bit more free for them then what's actually going on. 

I usually dial back the responses in favor of the other characters being playable nowadays but this is a scenario that really, really would have benefited from it. A fun premise like Eggman taking over the world is something I'd want to see done from the perspective of as many of them as possible. 

[The Deleter]

City Heights is one of the most cartoony cities we've ever had in the Sonic series, though...

 

Compared to:

 

 

The only reason it looks "realistic" is because it's destroyed and has detailed rubble. In which case I'm pretty sure you always want rubble to look at least a bit detailed, unless you want blocky polygons and textures from the 2000's back into play... And if you want an environment that's supposed to scream "They've destroyed everything!!!" to be as artistic and stylistically pleasing as possible, well...

 

Again with the flip-flopping on this game, as well. When Green Hill came out we had all the complaints in the world about the environment being too simplistic and cartoony compared to Generations, which had more detail and was "perfect", apparently. (And I'm one of those people tbh, even though later screenshots proved me wrong) Now we have too much detail, apparently, even though it's one zone in the game that will otherwise have the same cartoony art style seen in GHZ and the Tag Team level? And in a game Iizuka himself has said will be composed of much more "lighthearted" zones than City Heights overall?

[DiamondX]

City Heights and Crisis City are completely different.

It's like comparing Sonic and Mario.

The main idea is the same (destroyed city) but it's done completely different.

As others said, City Heights shows a destroyed city but the damage is not too dangerous for Sonic. The damage can be repaired.

Crisis City is a city burning in fire, with no signs of life. The place can't be restored to a normal city.

[Dr. Detective]

I'm supremely beholden to the idea of not taking sides here.

However, I too have to say that City Heights definitely looks like a Sonic level to me. Honestly, my problem with it isn't "realism". The graphics are making it look more detailed and what not but it's still got that cartoony Sonic aesthetic over what's supposed to be a ruined city so whatever. It's not giving off too different a feel from Crisis City in Generations. It probably feels a bit more dark in nature because I'm catching the hint of an actual narrative surrounding it though, but I consider that a good thing. I want to feel things about the things I'm seeing and not just look at the fire and brimstone and be like "None of this matters because the Time Eater plot is actively making it so that it's impossible to care".

My problem is that it looks too much like they kind of just ripped assets from City Escape and then lit it on fire. I mean, it's not a HUGE deal but it's certainly distracting enough to bother me.