Team Sonic Racing - E3 Demo Footage/Impressions

[Meta77]

I'd love to see infinite in this as a boss or something. Infinite was or could have been great. What Sega did was they wrote a character 9n paper that was literally the most OP character in the series to date but dropped the ball on his writing/ tuned him down

[LukA8]

I've just realized, if the Eggman team ends up what everyone expects it to be (Eggman, Metal Sonic and Egg Pawn), the Doc will be the only character in the trio to manage all the shittalking. And while we all know he'd handle that marvellously with his history of one-liners, it would be really weird with the story mode and all the focus on cooperating to have their interactions go like:

"Someone better get me a load of this Wisp right now!"  - "Beep! Beep!"

"No way! I can't believe this!" - "..."

Now, which lackeys would bounce off Eggman a lot better than silent machines, and have active voice actors?

...Orbot and Cubot! I'm calling it now, they will be involved in his team in some form, either as one racer with Metal Sonic/Egg Pawn in the third slot, or even as two separate characters. I couple this with my second, more uncertain prediction...

...I still have a hunch there will be a Team R as bonus characters. Metal Sonic has been a DLC racer in all of the Sumo titles, and with the focus on the "R" in the teaser, what better surprise would there be than to have him teamed up with Tails Doll and Metal Knuckles as a team of silent killing machines? Tails Doll is easily the biggest icon of that game, and I would be surprised not to see a reference to the thing somewhere.

[Pengi]

6 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

I don't think Vector would be split from the rest of the Chaotix in most circumstances. The reason he was with Team Rose in Free Riders seemed more like they wanted the Chaotix, couldn't get all three in because the rest were established in the Riders series, so Vector was squeezed into team Rose (since Big wasn't there already and they could argue Blaze was paired with Silver for the consideration of teams) and given a reason in-story as to why. 

 

I think you're overthinking it. They needed Power type characters for Amy and Shadow's teams, but Big and Omega would probably have been too large and wide for the purposes of the game (hit boxes and such).

[Pawn]

40 minutes ago, LukA8 said:

Now, which lackeys would bounce off Eggman a lot better than silent machines, and have active voice actors?

...Orbot and Cubot! I'm calling it now, they will be involved in his team in some form, either as one racer with Metal Sonic/Egg Pawn in the third slot, or even as two separate characters.

I'd forgotten all about them. Yeah, I think there's a high chance that they will be a pair, working together in one car, alongside Eggman and Metal. Unless they accompany Eggman in his.

[Sonic Fan J]

I could see Orbot and Cubot as a pair in their own vehicle rounding out Eggman's team with Metal Sonic. Conversely, I could also see Metal Sonic being grouped with Blaze and Silver as easily marketable "Leftovers" DLC of what is otherwise the main Sonic cast.

[cakito123]

I think Eggman won't be playable in Story mode, which would make one team off-story.

So the last team would be unlockable characters that has no co-relation: Eggman as Power, Blaze as Speed, and Silver as Tech

[Sega DogTagz]

12 hours ago, VEDJ-F said:

 

Nowadays though, you can see in Runners/Runners Adventure/Forces that they're more willing to have all the Chaotix from the get-go than make sure any semblance of team Rose is present, so really I think it's only them that are the wildcard right now, and that we'll get all three Chaotix. 

 

Normally, I'd be right there with you, but that 15 character roster looms over that line of thought. Even with the heavy Sonic Heroes vibe with the inclusion of Team Sonic and Dark, I just don't think SUMO would be willing to juggle the characters necessary if they devote 3 slots to the Chaotix.

Its just basic math. If you bring the roster up to 9 with the Chaotix, then that leaves six slots for characters like Eggman, Amy, Silver, Blaze, Metal, Big, Cream, Classic(shudder) and whoever they are referring to by "some characters you haven't played as in a while" be they the B. Rouges or the Sonic R cast.

If you limit the Chaotix rep to just Vector, or even Vector and Espio it helps ease some of that pressure on the last few slots. Kill two birds with one stone by covering Team Rose and the Chaotix in the same 3 man team.

 

Of course all this is mute if the roster spans past 15 via unlockable characters. And then further muted via DLC.

[Multikaris]

35 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

 

Normally, I'd be right there with you, but that 15 character roster looms over that line of thought. Even with the heavy Sonic Heroes vibe with the inclusion of Team Sonic and Dark, I just don't think SUMO would be willing to juggle the characters necessary if they devote 3 slots to the Chaotix.

Its just basic math. If you bring the roster up to 9 with the Chaotix, then that leaves six slots for characters like Eggman, Amy, Silver, Blaze, Metal, Big, Cream, Classic(shudder) and whoever they are referring to by "some characters you haven't played as in a while" be they the B. Rouges or the Sonic R cast.

If you limit the Chaotix rep to just Vector, or even Vector and Espio it helps ease some of that pressure on the last few slots. Kill two birds with one stone by covering Team Rose and the Chaotix in the same 3 man team.

 

Of course all this is mute if the roster spans past 15 via unlockable characters. And then further muted via DLC.

Or put the Chaotix and Babylons into one car each and seat them within another team.

[LukA8]

With Vector's car in the demo, I have no doubts about the Chaotix making it in as a three-character team, if they made up less than three slots the vehicle wouldn't be themed solely after him.

I could have seen them excluded as a whole since they're the only characters next to Silver and Blaze who have no team connections to the original All-Stars cast, but with all the character interactions and a story meant to introduce the characters to the audience, they wouldn't just mix them up randomly. The Babylon Rogues were pretty much the go-to "Green team" for the Riders series so there was no need for the Chaotix, and Vector had to be tucked into Team Rose when Free Riders moved closer to Heroes as some representation, but ever since the Chaotix have rarely been apart: They were the only complete team in Generations, the second team to join Runners after the classic trio, one of three teams in Runners Adventure and were complete in Forces as well as Speed Battle. Three of those titles released last year, and all of them excluded Team Rose, so I'm willing to bet that Espio and Charmy will get in over Cream and Big.

Amy's team is definitely the most unpredictable here. Assuming she's indeed a Technique type, it would be bad news for Cream and only leave the Speed slot for Blaze/Silver (which has happened before, though I do dislike the hedgehog = Speed formula), and Power for Blaze/Big.

..Also regarding the Babylon Rogues, Tails has pretty much turned into Wave character-wise : P

[Jango]

The fact that many of us are considering characters DLC before the game is even out is very concerning, especially because this is a mascot racing game and a spin-off of the Sonic series, and you all know the implications of this genre. But then again, I'm pretty sure this is another case of Sonic Team's unjustified fear more than anything. Highly doubt Sumo would consider only 15 characters for this, when not even their first SEGA/Sonic racing game had this few. Not to mention the likely roster is the most standard you can get, with 12 character slots coming straight from ye' good old Sonic Heroes. Same rule will probably apply to the track selection. Realy hope they're keeping stuff in their sleeves and 15 is the starting roster, and there's at best 10 other characters to unlock. But I doubt. Probably gonna pass this one like I did with Forces.

[Skull Leader]

20 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

If Amy really is a Technique Class, than that could pave the way for Vector to return to Team Rose as its power member. Now that we have confirmation that teams can be mixed and matched in some of the modes, Vector is no longer tied to the hip of a potential Chaotix team. In that case, Charmy is likely the first casualty of the 15 man roster anyway, and even Espio could be squeezed out for more prominent characters like Silver and Blaze.

 

Or you can do something completely stupid and pull and Sonic Runners to make Blaze the power type of the team... despite that making no sense whatsoever lol.

 

 

Like I said in another thread days ago, what if it's actually Amy being drafted into the Chaotix as a one-time guest member?

While I do like Charmy, I think the more important members will always be Vector and Espio, especially when spinoff titles like the Olympic games are yet to include Charmy as playable. 

Likewise, the most important member of Team Rose is pretty much just Amy, since most of the time she joins other characters until their problems are solved, after which she heads to continue her Sonic chasing ways, while the other characters just go back to their lives and, as much as I adore Big and loved playing as him and making fans of the more popular characters ragequit, they're really not that relevant to warrant being represented... especially when ST might be unaware of how it were memes what kept Big from being forgotten. Had this game been more of an initiative from the western side, I'm sure we'd have more characters being represented without the casualties that comes with the arbitrary three-character teams.

Like you said, it would be killing two stones with a bird, plus it would make for a more interesting combination than what the more obvious teams offer.

[LukA8]

I've said this before and I'll say it again, if there were more than 15 characters in the game, they would advertise it as such six months before release, because the number does seem low to everybody and would be atrocious marketing otherwise. People keep making comparisons to Transformed, but this probably has half the budget of that game. After Sega's "restructure" to mobile, their games of the Wii U-exclusive deal all tanking and the whole Boom fiasco, I didn't have any hopes of getting another Sumo racer. Of course, it were Sega's own mistakes that led to Forces and this being budget titles, but we're the ones stuck with it sadly.

The reason people mention DLC is because pre-order characters seem like the only chance of raising the 15 character limit, and Transformed, Lost World and Forces all had bonus editions so it's a popular strategy with Sega right now. Also, Iizuka has made comparisons to Fortnite and Splatoon before, so they might try to keep interest with some post-launch content (oh boy..)

 

[Celestia]

I mean...if we get new characters post-launch for free ala Overwatch (at least as far as I understand it), that'd actually be pretty cool. Though uh, considering the kind of game this is compared to that, it'd probably (hopefully!) be at a faster rate than "one every few months," lol.

[Plasme]

Interesting news update.

- The game's team is mostly made up of new staff who haven't worked on the previous all star racing games. The lead designer is new to SUMO.

- Confirmed that there are different difficulties which affect vehicle speed ala Transformed.

Looking at Richard Acherki's Linkdin, who's the lead designer of the game, he's worked at sumo as a lead designer at SUMO for around a year and a half and he confirmed at SUMO that this is his first game with them. So maybe the game has been in production for a while?

[Celestia]

IIRC it was mentioned in the Iizuka interview that the game was pitched about two years ago, so yeah that adds up.

[Badnik Mechanic]

4 hours ago, Plasme said:

.

- The game's team is mostly made up of new staff who haven't worked on the previous all star racing games. The lead designer is new to SUMO.

So maybe the game has been in production for a while?

This isn't too much of a surprise. A lot of staff who were at Sumo during ASRT have left the company and moved onto other projects.

This isn't a bad thing like Big Red Button situation. This is leaving to progress/change of careers.

 

Regarding development length. Well... we have crush 40 doing music.... and remember that old tweet that was accidentally posted way back in 2016?

[Dejimon11]

21 minutes ago, Mayor D said:

remember that old tweet that was accidentally posted way back in 2016?

Care to elaborate on this?

[Badnik Mechanic]

42 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

Care to elaborate on this?

There was a social media slip up which said music was being made for a game.

 

[Salamander]

So in other words, the Sumo Digital that is working on this game is essentially a different Sumo Digital to the one that worked on the All-Star games.

[Plasme]

I wouldn't take the Amy comment seriously. We haven't heard that anywhere else and the E3 demo explicitly only contains Team Sonic and Team Dark  Eggman and Amy are obviously not going to be in the same team so, a select number of journalists saw two other teams in addition?

Highly unlikely. Probably just an error.

[LukA8]

We finally have some Omega gameplay thanks to SegaRetro. Sadly again no Ultimate theme for us. At 2:25, Omega also gets hit by the Speed Type's Radial Burst move and is knocked into a wall despite being in front of Sonic. One of these types will probably end up overpowered again.

 

[Jango]

One thing Transformed got so right was balancing the characters. Hopefully they don't miss that point too.

[GentlemanX]

13 hours ago, Mayor D said:

This isn't too much of a surprise. A lot of staff who were at Sumo during ASRT have left the company and moved onto other projects.

This isn't a bad thing like Big Red Button situation. This is leaving to progress/change of careers.

Do you know if Steve Lycett is still with Sumo? He was the one that was active here during the release of the All Stars games, right?

[Plasme]

I don't think he is working on the game.

This game goes against a lot of Steve Lycett's philosophy for the All Stars games. He said that the All Stars games he designed were all built off existing SEGA properties to feel authentic (Sega Superstars Tennis = Virtua Tennis, Sega All Stars Racing = Outrun). Team Racing, on the other hand, is influenced by current teamwork trends (overwatch etc), and isn't rooted in Sega's heritage. I think this is part of the reason this game doesn't appeal to me.

It seems to me that they are treating this project as very much a chance for new members of staff to get used to working with SUMO on. As far as I'm concerned, this isn't made by the SUMO Digital we know, but by an entirely different team who have yet to prove themselves.

[MegasonicZX]

I guess it would make sense that this game would have a lower budget than normal if it's an entirely new team making it and admittedly, learning that has dampened a lot of the hope I had for this to be better than how it looks right now as much as I really don't want to discourage the new guys from getting their time to shine. Doesn't really help that forces fell under the same conditions and we all know how that turned out and while it still looks like it plays the same as transformed at least it might not have the mechanical nuance or superb track design that the last game had. Needless to say, hype has been deflated heavily for me until this manages to prove itself.