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How would you fix Null Space in Forces?


ShadowSJG

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By putting stuff in it. Ironic, I know.

Look, just making it a stage would work. But my guess is that money run out and they wasted so much work they felt bad scrapping it entirely. Which is a shame, that was one of best-looking things in a game.

 

 

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Null Space just doesn't exist in my version of Forces due to a complete revamp of the Phantom Ruby to give it some grounded rules and not be a mcguffin that answers to the writers' whims.

In terms of it being fixed as a level - obviously the first thing is to make it last more than the twenty seconds of a double boost. The second is the colouring. The Phantom Ruby is red. Null Space is a weird blue and purple mess. Null is pretty much the same meaning as non-existent, so aside from the Phantom Ruby's colouring the only other colour would be black. Sonic and Avatar would follow the red paths to find a way out. It would have been the perfect chance to make a level that looked completely different to anything else in Forces.

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^ Considering the red and black motif of the game's aesthetic, that would've actually worked really well.  Both the main theme and the main aesthetic being a major part of the pre-climax climax would've been cool.

 

But yeah, it really is as simple as just making them spend some dang time in the place.  I'd say make it a fairly slow, quiet level to contrast the return to Metropolis too.

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The music while in the Null part of the level would be pretty much good throughout for the atmosphere, or even no music at all with echoing sound effects to really add to the Null-ness of the level.

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TBH, personally, I would had made the Null Space part some kind of "loop", with some condition to meet to get out of it (I don't know exactly what, though, it would need to be something that isn't too boring, but that make going out of it like a "victory") Phantom Myst (the red cube) would damage Sonic and invoke some kind of hazard when we would be in contact with it.

And at the moment when we would be going out of it, some sentance to make it seems like it's Avatar's Phantom Ruby that is the source of their escape.

 

The second part, I wouldn't change anything more than in other Sonic Forces levels, though.

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The way I would’ve handled it is slowing down with Null Space as a whole. Give time to introduce and show the level. Show what effects it has on a person trapped inside of it. It’s meant to be an empty void devoid of anything. I’d run further with the concept. Time is a concept that’s lost in Null Space. Days in Null Space could be seconds in the real world, or vice versa. What if Sonic escaped Null Space only to find out he was gone a week or two - which was only about a day or so for him. In that time, the resistance ran into trouble and even a few captured - that way it builds further to the finale in the final plan to dismantle Eggman once and for all.

Null Space should be a place of just total hopelessness. As Dio said, a mental prison could be even workable, the place staying empty at first, only for the place to slowly start taking form around illusions based on the person trapped inside of it. Like Shadow’s Green Hill on a completely different scale. Instead of Sonic just being filled with cheese and shouting something something power of friends after 15 seconds, use it to actively reflect upon him as a character and force him to confront something that he has to work past as a character. What if we got an illusion of what would happen if Eggman’s rule continued on for years unchecked, instead of the six months that occurred? What if the planet had gone into a worse state and had adopted much more of a “Eggman” flare. 

Or if we don’t want to go down that route, what if Null Space was actually inside of the ruby itself and since said ruby is now apart of Infinite, it’s now tied to him mentally, meaning we could’ve had a fair deal of visual storytelling as Sonic runs through this Infinite ruled Null Space that could show more about his backstory, or his motivations, or whatever else.

I don’t know, in my eyes, the worst part about Null Space was the potential lost. This is literally a world created and ruled through illusion and nothingness which as corny as it sounds - is a reflection of Infinite as a character by that state of the story. It could’ve been an excellent way for Visual Story-Telling as Sonic ran through the level and it kind of sucks that it ended up so underused and boring, it’s even worse because the game itself tries hard to hype it up, with literally the 15 seconds of Null Space gameplay and the corny speech about friendship and whatever else is literally followed up by a hyped up version of Fist Bump. It’s kind of obvious this was intended to be one of the best moments in the story and instead it comes off as laughable, contrived, corny and underused.

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I also think that we would have needed levels between Sonic's and the Avatar capture, and the level Null Space. Having at least one level with the resistance thinking that they have lost Sonic, but pulling together and continuing the fight would have been great. And it would have made their triumphant return after that way more powerful.

 

( Samewise, I think that they also made this mistake with the Phantom Sun. They should have added at least a level (for instance the Classic level), with the Phantom Sun in the background, between when he was invoked and when they destroyed it, with other character making a diversion before the Avatar destroy the Sun, with Eggman boasting how this illusory sun will make all the resistance drop dead in one shot, and some countdown in the Avatar stage… and maybe Infinite attacking (and thus having his last boss battle) just before the Avatar destroy the Sun, and thus having the destruction of the Phantom Sun as a "conclusion" of this arc before having to take down Eggman )

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To be perfect honest, I'm not a game/level designer, so I wouldn't really know what to do with a location that's supposed to be a realm of nothingness outside of making it last a minute or so.

I will say that using the Double Boost to escape it, with Buddy possessing a Phantom Ruby prototype of their own to potentially open a weak gap good enough for Sonic's Speed to dash through and create another portal sounds like a fitting way of reasoning their escape.

 

The only other stuff I can think to do with it is maybe combined the fact that it's opened by the Phantom Ruby and that Infinite's power revolves around complex sensory abusing illusions to perfects generate some obstables, both previously used and entirely unique, for the two to deal with.

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I don't think I'd want the avatar's ruby prototype to be what gets them out of Null Space. They already get their big hero moment with it in the very next level, and I think it works better there; it's a solo avatar stage, and since the prototype will only work for them it can be their "this is something only I can do" moment. Null Space is a tag team stage so it makes more sense to focus on teamwork and the relationship between Sonic and the avatar than "I am special and have a macguffin".

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You don't. You remove it, given infnite's powers is illusion, his powers should focus on that. Nullspace just seems like some leftover stuff from another script from another game.

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Just make it a cutscene, what would that have done to the dev team, added an extra two or three days of work? Make that cutscene involve a way to leave the area, and the second they leave it they are grinding a rail in Metropolis, the next stage begins.

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Ok so quick off the top of my head...

 

In terms of giving it and actual purpose and kinda related to the plot.

I would say that null space isn't so much a place between dimensions as much as it's a state of mind, that when someone has lost all hope, all joy, all the 'fight' they enter a mental state which completely consumes them (null space).

Instead of it being a limbo like area, they still see the world empty of joy, love and feel completely powerless to do anything.

 

You know like how in Silent Hill, when Harry goes to the nightmare world, it's like a nightmare version of the 'real world'... well think something like that. 

Instead of a simple 'double boost' to escape the mental like torture, one has to actually do something to break through it like defeat a boss, or create a simple level that represents their mindset of despair.

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Just because Null Space was a complete void does not mean it could not suck things from Sonic's world into it to provide more level - think Big Hero 6 with all that debris in the portal at the end. With respect to what Diogenes said - the Phantom Ruby should not have been the sole reason that Sonic & Avatar escaped but it should have played some role with greater emphasis on teamwork. Maybe Avatar builds the willpower needed for the prototype to open an exit because of Sonic's inspiration but the exit is small and closing so it is up to Sonic & Avatar's Double Boost to escape?

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