Team Sonic Racing - Upcoming Sonic Racing Game

[Dr. Detective]

That picture looks like Zavok's going in for a high-five on Eggman's outstretched hand.

To be honest, it's hard to care too much. The only choice here that would have interested me was Orbot and Cubot but that didn't happen. I suppose it'd have been funny if it was someone out of left field though.

"That's right Sonic, I've teamed up with ERAZOR DJINN to beat you in a race!"

Oooo~! Or Dark Gaia. Give Dark Gaia a little scooter to ride around in. 

4 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

I mean, story-wise, our friend Dodonpa may contribute to why Zavok is racing with Eggman. If he can force the rest of the cast to race, it suggests he's got some power behind him. 

I guess this speaks to how low I'm keeping my expectations for the story that I didn't consider that. 

[SchemingMinor]

Kind of disappointed that Zavok is the third character on Eggman's team ( Why not one of the Hard Boiled Heavies?) and that kind of seems odd that Eggman is Technique instead of Power considering his history in racing games and an early report one magazine did that mentioned him as a Power type.

Overall though, I am glad they didn't use the pose 'one hand on hip, one fist raised' for Eggman again.

[Fire-N-Space]

7 hours ago, Detective Kaito said:

 

Zavok being here just made this game a whole lot better I really adored the deadly six in Sonic Lost World so I hope this means that Zeena can be DLC!

[Dr. Detective]

I find the statement about Zavok in the official press release to be kind of funny too.

Zavok [Heavy] – the leader of the Deadly Six, a demon-like being that continues to battle Sonic and friends whenever the opportunity arises

Oh does he now? I wasn't aware of that. I guess he must have come at them hard during the Olympics.

I suppose that now that we know the full roster, I'll just go ahead and post what I would have done. 

First of all, I wouldn't have bothered with the team gimmick but I'd still sort them out by teams just to keep things simple. Within reason, my list would probably be like this:

Team Primary Colors (Sonic): Sonic, Tails, Knuckles

Team Dark: Shadow, Rouge, Omega

Team Rose: Amy, Cream, Big

Team Secondary Colors (Chaotix): Vector, Charmy, Espio

Team Time and Space: Silver, Blaze, Chao

Team Eggman: Eggman, Metal Sonic, Orbot & Cubot

Team Babylon: Jet, Wave, Storm

Team Forces: Infinite, Chaos, Zavok

That seems reasonable without going too far into "What the fuck is this fan-fiction day dream" territory. Like Sonic World did. If push came to shove, I could see myself dropping the last two teams but I think the first 6 are a respectable bare minimum. 

 

[Blueknight V2.0]

5 hours ago, Jack in the Snow said:

I have a theory about Infinite.

  Hide contents

He appears in this game via a Forces track as an hazard, creating illusions and obstacles. Would be pretty cool.

 

I'd like to see that. Even if Infinite doesn't appear as a racer and has a role in the story, I'll be fine with that (maybe a DLC racer too).

As for Zavok, I like the character. But is he considered a new rival to Sonic now? And why is he on Eggman's team? Because I thought Zavok didn't like Eggman like he does Sonic. But they could've at least brought in Zazz or Zeena, instead of focusing on Zazz or Zavok all the time. But maybe a DLC for them.

Either way I think Infinite would've been a better choice and could've offered expansion on the character, maybe. But hopefully some expansion can be offered to the Zeti in this game, since they skipped Forces and used duplicate versions of Zavok.

[Dr. Detective]

This Eggman render is the best thing to happen to me.

 

[Sega DogTagz]

Count me in the "Would have preferred Infinite" camp but I'm okay with Zavok.

 

I don't have to justify the Team composition if Zavok doesn't appear in the story mode (they could easily swap him out for one of those Egg Pawn Placeholders) so I could care less about Big Z not being all buddy buddy with Eggman. The roster needs villains and he fits the bill... so whatever.

[Rowl]

7 hours ago, SchemingMinor said:

Why not one of the Hard Boiled Heavies?

Sega wants to keep the Classic characters and the Modern characters separated. Which is the reason we will never see Ray or Mighty in a modern game.  

[Salamander]

6 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

Team Primary Colors (Sonic): Sonic, Tails, Knuckles

Team Dark: Shadow, Rouge, Omega

Team Rose: Amy, Cream, Big

Team Secondary Colors (Chaotix): Vector, Charmy, Espio

Team Time and Space: Silver, Blaze, Chao

Team Eggman: Eggman, Metal Sonic, Orbot & Cubot

It's interesting that, with just one more team, the game's roster becomes not necessarily particularly surprising but at least something that makes sense.  But even then, there'd still be the uninspired visual design, I suppose, so it's probably not worth getting worked up about as if it'd turn an okay game into a great one.

14 minutes ago, Rowl said:

Sega wants to keep the Classic characters and the Modern characters separated.

Unless they're Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman, Metal Sonic, a whole bunch of badniks, or it's another crossover game, that is.

[Strickerx5]

I guess Metal was a given at this point but Zavok? Eh, can't really say that I'm surprised with that one either. Not happy with it... at all, but I guess that's what happens when you don't care about the narrative of your games for a decade at this point. You have real slim pickings when it comes to good villains to use.

Even then, was really pushing for Orbot and Cubot. Chaos could've been a definite alternative. Or one of the Heavies. Would've vastly preferred Infinite too honestly. Hell, even on the fence about Lyric at this point...  I guess what I'm saying is that I really don't know why Sega is suddenly making a big push for the guy lately. They definitely didn't care about him during LW so I don't know why they're acting like he's so great now. Guy didn't even get a proper defeat cutscene in his own game. Even Bowser gets that much. Also can't wait for the story to completely not explain why/ how he's even there.

Honestly, Zavok is really only a better choice to me over the Egg Pawns. Which, to be frank, was what I really thought we were getting so I guess at the end of the day this is somewhat of a plus.

But anyways, that's the roster... yikes, that's the roster... About as underwhelming as I thought it'd be the moment we got Chao as racers. It really only covers the bare minimum of the cast that had to make it in. Well, at least we got Blaze and Silver I guess.

[Flame Lance]

Eh, I am actually glad to have Zavok over something like Orbot and Cubot because he's at least a somewhat credible threat on the level of Eggman and Metal. I honestly am not even disappointed. The disappointment was done setting in the day that the game was announced with a measly 15 characters. Would've preferred Infinite since Zavok doesn't really make sense, but it may be premature for Infinite's return. 

[Rowl]

7 hours ago, FFWF said:

Unless they're Sonic, Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman, Metal Sonic, a whole bunch of badniks, or it's another crossover game, that is.

Don't forget that all the classic versions are now their own characters. Classic Sonic, Classic Tails, Classic Knuckles, Classic Amy, Classic Eggman and Classic Meta-Sonic are not the same characters as Modern Sonic, Modern Tails, Modern Knuckles, Modern Amy, Modern Eggman and Modern Metal-Sonic.   

[Roger_van_der_weide]

11 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

I find the statement about Zavok in the official press release to be kind of funny too.

Zavok [Heavy] – the leader of the Deadly Six, a demon-like being that continues to battle Sonic and friends whenever the opportunity arises

 

Hey Zavok. I think there was a nice opportunity for you to battle Sonic and friends. Little something called Sonic Forces. Contained one or two battles for the fate of the planet, might have been interesting to you. Would have been nice if you showed up in the flesh, to react to your clones, let us know you're still alive, add some dimension and personality to the war. But whatever.

And hey, at least Team Sonic racing promotes him to "some random guy to fill up a slot in Eggman's team" status, so that's nice.
Can't wait for the game to give an engaging and believable reason why he's suddenly best buddies with Eggman.

Maybe he's another Infinite clone. Or maybe Eggman did enslave him again with the conch. Sure would be hilarious if the writers forget to include a scene where Sonic actually rescues him from Eggman and Zavok's doomed to be Eggman's servant against his will for all time. 
Or maybe there's no explanation at all and he's just another demonstration in how all Sonic characters are stripped from their history, context and meaning and are now all soulless shapes dangling in front of the fans as shiny objects because "member game???". Can't wait to find out.


...I'm still surprised that neither Mania nor Forces has any presence in this game. These spinoffs always love advertising the latest flagship game and I was looking forward to seeing the unique elements of Forces and Mania make an appearence. Really dissapointed there. These games had some interesting new characters and locations whenever they weren't resurgitating Generations. But alas.

[Pawn]

I suppose one thing that makes sense about Zavok's inclusion is he seems to enjoy riding machines. That said, I would have gone for Orbot and Cubot or Chaos (as weird as he would be in a car) over him. At least it's not Infinite, I guess.

18 hours ago, DabigRG said:

But you take out Cream, who's been a mainstay for years, for Omochao?

Omochao has far more personality than Cream, though. The Chao in general are probably more popular than her and much of the cast, honestly. Either way, I'm pretty happy with his inclusion.

[DabigRG]

18 hours ago, Mania Pipe said:

I mean I thought that he seemed a bit interesting back when Lost World was coming out.

Really now?

16 hours ago, Marcello said:

All of them were.

I mean, yeah, I'm sure they are individual renders of the characters put together for those images, but Zavok in particular pops.

16 hours ago, Diogenes said:

Well he does have seniority over her.

Does he?

16 hours ago, kalion said:

 People don't care about this choice that the laziness of melding Metal Sonic's car with Zavok's has escaped them.
I mean c'mon Marketing is crucial for any game and nobody QC'd this?

Oh-ho, shoot, is it?

I think that comes down to the layout of that image in general being poor.

[Red Hot Jack]

Omochao is literally the only Chao I'm not happy to see playable but I do like the foursome idea, like the 4 ChuChus in ASR. But yes, he does have more personality than Cream, he's so tutorialish and obvious that he becomes annoying and the series is aware of that and it's quite funny. But still, I would have preferred Cream with 3 Chao's.

And I really don't get how Orbot and Cubot would fit in the team, they are not playable or even villain material, opinions okay I respect that but I would be so bored if they were playable. Zavok is fine, OK choice, at least now we have a team made of villains. I don't mind that he's a Bowser clone, I fucking love Bowser so I'm glad the Sonic franchise has a character like him. It's okay at least.

Although I have to say that, for all the complaints, there has been a lot of people who were cool with this choice and defend it, or even genuinely like Zavok. Wow, the fandom really is divided.

[Salamander]

1 hour ago, Rowl said:

Don't forget that all the classic versions are now their own characters. Classic-Sonic, Classic Tails. Classic Knuckles, Classic Amy, Classic Eggman and Classic knuckles are not the same characters as Modern Sonic, Modern Tails, Modern Knuckles, Modern Any, Modern Eggman and Moder Metal-Sonic.   

Nobody accepts this, but assuming they did, why should it preclude the creation of, for instance, Modern Mighty or Classic Rouge?  Or simply let the originals cross over in the same way as Classic Sonic, Tails, Eggman, Metal Sonic?  Absolute lunacy.

[Diogenes]

11 minutes ago, Jack in the Snow said:

And I really don't get how Orbot and Cubot would fit in the team, they are not playable or even villain material

I mean if you're fine with a couple of chao driving a car I don't see why this is any different.

[Wraith]

Orbot and Cubot are better choices than Zavok by virtue of being characters 

[Red Hot Jack]

11 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

I mean if you're fine with a couple of chao driving a car I don't see why this is any different.

I just think... And it's my opinion, that the Chao are cute and interesting but honestly playable O and C would be boring. It's a repeat of that idea too. If there were more characters? Sure. Hell, I did say I wouldn't mind playable Egg Pawn, since he's already in the game. I mean, Orbot and Cubot would be okay I guess, but I still prefer Zavok in this speficifc case.

[Rowl]

Zavok isn't a bad choice at all. At least he is one of the very few surprising elements of this game. Everything else from the characters, to the gameplay and the tracks is so save it hurts. Seaside Hill again, Rooftop Run again, Planet Wisp again. With this trend the last two track themes will be Chemical Plant and Death Egg.... AGAIN!  

[Detective Kaito]

34 minutes ago, Rowl said:

Zavok isn't a bad choice at all. At least he is one of the very few surprising elements of this game. Everything else from the characters, to the gameplay and the tracks is so save it hurts. Seaside Hill again, Rooftop Run again, Planet Wisp again. With this trend the last two track themes will be Chemical Plant and Death Egg.... AGAIN!  

To be fair, we do have Sandopolis and Sand Hill.

[DabigRG]

16 hours ago, Jack in the Snow said:

I believe everyone expected Team Chaotix and I was in the minority when I said they wouldn't leave Silver and Blaze out, and said they were in a team with Vector. Still, they didn't go for a full Heroes rehash.

Hmph.

I think the distinction is that Blaze and Silver themselves are pretty popular, thus they're inclusion isn't much of a surprise.

16 hours ago, JezMM said:

Honestly the more I think about it, the more I'm okay with Zavok.  In fact, I really wouldn't mind if another mainline Sonic game used the Deadly Six again IF ONLY to allow them to maybe explain the Lost Hex's place in Sonic canon and flesh them out into better characters.  But doing that for six characters while also doing due justice to the series regulars in a game as plot-light as the Sonic cut-scenes tend to be is a bit of a tall order so uhh... hopes staying low on that'un.

Yeah, that's kinda my thought.

4 hours ago, Strickerx5 said:

but I guess that's what happens when you don't care about the narrative of your games for a decade at this point. You have real slim pickings when it comes to good villains to use.

...What, you mean during the Dreamcast and early Modern era? 

4 hours ago, Strickerx5 said:

. Hell, even on the fence about Lyric at this point... 

Now THAT would look weird.

Depending on if/how they wouldn't redesign him, of course.

4 hours ago, Strickerx5 said:

I guess what I'm saying is that I really don't know why Sega is suddenly making a big push for the guy lately. They definitely didn't care about him during LW so I don't know why they're acting like he's so great now. Guy didn't even get a proper defeat cutscene in his own game. Even Bowser gets that much.

Honestly, I sorta got the vibe that Zavok may have really been the character they wanted to do from the beginning, but added in the others to either complement him, contrast him, or just pad out the roster. Also, forced Misters Pontac and Graff to write their introduction on top of coming up with their own story.

2 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Hey Zavok. I think there was a nice opportunity for you to battle Sonic and friends. Little something called Sonic Forces. Contained one or two battles for the fate of the planet, might have been interesting to you. Would have been nice if you showed up in the flesh, to react to your clones, let us know you're still alive, add some dimension and personality to the war. But whatever.
 

Yeah, seriously.

3 hours ago, Pawn said:

 

Omochao has far more personality than Cream, though. The Chao in general are probably more popular than her and much of the cast, honestly. Either way, I'm pretty happy with his inclusion.

Kinda hard to quantify that for comparison to her, to be honest.

2 hours ago, Jack in the Snow said:

And I really don't get how Orbot and Cubot would fit in the team, they are not playable or even villain material, opinions okay I respect that but I would be so bored if they were playable.

Because they are technically minions(with an f in evil), are actually aligned with Eggman, and their snarky servant&dumbbot duo shtick would contrast with Metal Sonic being silent, fearsome, focused, and supposedly scary.

2 hours ago, Jack in the Snow said:

 I don't mind that he's a Bowser clone, I fucking love Bowser so I'm glad the Sonic franchise has a character like him. It's okay at least.

 

Why does everyone keep saying that?

[Red Hot Jack]

Anyway. The teams actually make no sense in this game, in general. How do the Chao fit into Team Rose without Cream? People even called it Team Fodder. And what does Vector have to do with Silver and Blaze? I would call it Team Random, and obviously Zavok hates Eggman, so yeah... Team Villains at best. Nothing makes sense here. The only way they can explain it, and it has been said before, is that Dodonpa forced these teams.

Out of the story, obviously the real thing is that basically, they merged teams which make no sense to include the characters they wanted the most. Like Silver and Blaze are more important and popular than Espio and Charmy. Even the Chao are more relevant than Cream these days, and people want the Chao Gardens back. As for Zavok... No idea, they needed another villain for Eggman's team and that's it, they liked Zavok or needed a power type. This is the only reasoning I can find for the roster selection.

This is why, at this point, if they are gonna do DLC I highly doubt Team Babylon will even be a thing, Wave and Storm aren't that relevant or popular. Maybe just Jet, this is why I predict single characters added as a pack, rather than a new team. Jet, Espio, Cream, Charmy, Egg Pawn (since he is in the game already), Sticks and Zazz are among the possible candidates in my opinion, 3 of them could be added. Then again, it's possible a Sega themed pack might happen, since they have those characters models, and people are desperate about Sega characters these days.

[JezMM]

2 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Why does everyone keep saying that?

Personality-wise they're not very similar, but they have similar aesthetics (big guy, leader, horns, a tail, sharp teeth (or uhh... mouth? in Zavok's case?), physically strong, red in colour scheme) and the fact that his final boss battle in Sonic Lost World was a near-replica of a typical final Bowser boss battle (bad guy grows huge, breathes fire, lava is present) didn't help either (which was further emphasised by Lost World seemingly taking inspiration from Mario Galaxy's planet/gravity-based level design and the aesthetics of the seven zones being a carbon-copy of the New Super Mario Bros. games all the way down to the order said aesthetics appear in (excluding a mountainous region) so people already have Mario on the mind.

It's been a running joke among the fanbase that Zavok is a Bowser-clone since Lost World came out.