How has Sonic Forces affected your opinion of Sonic Team?

[Zeer]

Nothing good really. It definitely puts me off thinking they can put something out that's good without a major shakeup to the team and/or their core idea of what Modern Sonic should be if they even have a clear direction.

That said, I would like to know more about the circumstances around the development of Forces, in no way does it feel like a game that got a substantial about of development time. I have to wonder if a prototype just didn't work out, team members left or were put on other stuff, if they panicked and tired to make a not-Generations game after the string of failures that came out for Sonic in general between Lost World and it, ran into problems with the NX, or something similar. I have to think there is more going on than simple dev incompetence. 

[CottonCandy]

It only reminded me how flawed they are. This has been a stable for them for nearly 20 years and it sucks. I wasn't surprised by the reception of forces, only a little disappointed. 

Its hard to keep having high hopes for sonic team project. 

[TideKai]

I'm definitely not angry and I definitely don't hate or despise Sonic Team. I'm more like...frustrated. And disappointed, I guess. I thought Sonic Forces was decent. There were a few parts that I had some fun at, but it was overpowered by all the flaws and things I didn't like about the game. I guess that's what frustrates me the most. The game is just...eh. It's like Sonic Team knows how to do the bare minimum to make a Sonic game, but they don't understand how to make it really good or fun. Like they're stuck and struggling around in the mediocre range and don't know how to raise themselves up just a little to make it to the good range. It gives me this weird gnawing sense of disappointment. They know how to not a bad game...but they don't know how to make a good game. I'm sorry if none of this makes sense, I always have trouble describing things.

I always try to stay optimistic and look forward to the next Sonic Team game, but it's hard. I want Sonic Team to get better. I want them to really come together and look at what they get criticized and praised for and try to improve from what they find. But they've shown multiple times that they're not the best at that.

On another note, I've always wondered if Sonic Team should take a break from Sonic. Not abandon it, but just kind of put it away for a while and maybe work on other Sega games or something else. Then, after a bit of time (a year maybe? Maybe less or more?), come together and really discuss what Sonic is all about, where they're failing and what they're doing right, go back to the well-received Sonic games and see what made them fun, maybe bring in some new people and fresh ideas...I don't know, just something that shows they're willing to improve instead of just cranking out lackluster games continuously. 

[Multikaris]

I feel like the games are a sign of a dying developer, being very low-budget when they least needed to be. 

[Marco9966]

The mere fact that Dodonpa in Team Sonic Racing MIGHT be Classic Eggman in disguise makes me think Sonic Team didnt learn ahything from not shoving classic characters in modern games.

[caitash]

My opinion of Sonic Team changed after playing Sonic Forces. Previously I thought they were good when they hit their stride and inspiration. Post-Forces, the impression I get is of shrinking experience in the team. I don’t know how high staff turnover is, but it gives off the impression of a team/company where people leave before they become very experienced and thus what is left is a team of junior talent which is hiring regularly to vacant posts and nothing truly progresses because they have to start again so frequently with new staff. And those new staff don’t truly know the lore, the characters, or the world.  Maybe the team is even shrinking and has to produce these games on ever-fewer manhours. Again this is my impression of them, I haven’t researched why they have fallen into what I believe to be mediocrity with a few ideas that could have been great but executed poorly. 

I really do wish they take a good long look at the cutscenes though because having all the characters standing around doing/saying nothing and looking bored is just irritating. Put in some bloody effort, ST.

[Marco9966]

3 minutes ago, caitash said:

My opinion of Sonic Team changed after playing Sonic Forces. Previously I thought they were good when they hit their stride and inspiration. Post-Forces, the impression I get is of shrinking experience in the team. I don’t know how high staff turnover is, but it gives off the impression of a team/company where people leave before they become very experienced and thus what is left is a team of junior talent which is hiring regularly to vacant posts and nothing truly progresses because they have to start again so frequently with new staff. And those new staff don’t truly know the lore, the characters, or the world.  Maybe the team is even shrinking and has to produce these games on ever-fewer manhours. Again this is my impression of them, I haven’t researched why they have fallen into what I believe to be mediocrity with a few ideas that could have been great but executed poorly. 

I really do wish they take a good long look at the cutscenes though because having all the characters standing around doing/saying nothing and looking bored is just irritating. Put in some bloody effort, ST.

They should hire Ian Flynn to write the game. IDW comics can very easily be adapted into games, as there are many running sequences, badnik smashing, "boss fights" with the huge robots. The new character feel like game characters with the special characteristics (Tangle's tail, Whisper' wispon...)

[Diogenes]

21 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

The mere fact that Dodonpa in Team Sonic Racing MIGHT be Classic Eggman in disguise makes me think Sonic Team didnt learn ahything from not shoving classic characters in modern games.

There's literally no reason to think that Dodonpa is classic Eggman, though. I'll be first in line to shit on Sonic Team but they don't deserve to be blamed for a baseless theory some fans made up.

[ShadowSJG]

1 hour ago, Marco9966 said:

They should hire Ian Flynn to write the game. IDW comics can very easily be adapted into games, as there are many running sequences, badnik smashing, "boss fights" with the huge robots. The new character feel like game characters with the special characteristics (Tangle's tail, Whisper' wispon...)

This. Really, why are Pontaff still writing??????

[Multikaris]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

There's literally no reason to think that Dodonpa is classic Eggman, though. I'll be first in line to shit on Sonic Team but they don't deserve to be blamed for a baseless theory some fans made up.

Well, his body shape sure evokes Classic Eggman. So does the fact Classic Eggman ended up in the modern realm in the end of Plus. 

[Diogenes]

2 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

Well, his body shape sure evokes Classic Eggman.

More than one fat person is allowed to exist at one time.

2 minutes ago, Miragnarok said:

So does the fact Classic Eggman ended up in the modern realm in the end of Plus. 

He got sucked into a portal. We don't know where he ended up. There's no reason to assume he ended up in the Modern dimension out of all possible places, and even less reason to think that this would be resolved in a racing game of all things.

[SaturnWolf]

3 hours ago, Marco9966 said:

They should hire Ian Flynn to write the game. IDW comics can very easily be adapted into games, as there are many running sequences, badnik smashing, "boss fights" with the huge robots. The new character feel like game characters with the special characteristics (Tangle's tail, Whisper' wispon...)

That's awfully presumptuous of you. Contracted writers don't have nearly as much freedom as you might think, everything still has to be approved by Sega, and that's not even counting situations like what Maekawa met with Heroes where the plot is already written and he's only allowed to fill in the blanks.

Comics and games are inherently drastically different mediums. Ask yourself this: would Ian really be able to stretch his wings as far and wide with Sega's mandates breathing down even heavier on his neck?

[Blacklightning]

Friendly reminder that this is a thread about Forces, not TSR. Rein it back in. guys.

[Milo]

Third me among those feeling Forces vindicated personal skepticisms that they don't know how to make good Sonic games.

I will also say that following Forces, my personal interest in future Sonic Team games has dropped to zero for the foreseeable future. I'm pretty much done caring about whatever upcoming products they are planning to churn out in the forthcoming years, especially since SoA now has some control over the series and are delivering/have delivered on what I actually like and what I want out of the series (Mania [Plus] and Mania Adventures).

[Almar]

2 hours ago, DreamSaturn said:

That's awfully presumptuous of you. Contracted writers don't have nearly as much freedom as you might think, everything still has to be approved by Sega, and that's not even counting situations like what Maekawa met with Heroes where the plot is already written and he's only allowed to fill in the blanks.

Comics and games are inherently drastically different mediums. Ask yourself this: would Ian really be able to stretch his wings as far and wide with Sega's mandates breathing down even heavier on his neck?

More or less. I don't know where this notion that getting Flynn or some other writer not working on the games is supposed to fix anything with how Iizuka and Co. are still limiting what they could do with the setting and characters. Unless they back down from decrees like Two-Worlds then such writers wold have to write with those decrees in mind. Which would mean no humans outside of Eggman in Sonic's World.

[Nicky Nicardo]

Honestly, prior to Forces, I didn't really have an opinion about Sonic Team. Since I played the game and liked it a lot, but also saw a LOT of flaws and problems... I dunno, my opinion of them currently isn't particularly negative.

I definitely think they need to NOT overhype games like Forces in the future. That was a major no-no for me. The same goes for what they advertised with regards to Chaos being in the game... and what we eventually got in the finished product.

But in general... I don't think that Sonic Team is awful, or unintelligent/stupid, or that they lack passion, or that they don't care at all about Sonic or the fans. I think they definitely need to DO BETTER for sure, but I don't agree with the more severely negative opinions about them.

[Marco9966]

9 hours ago, DreamSaturn said:

That's awfully presumptuous of you. Contracted writers don't have nearly as much freedom as you might think, everything still has to be approved by Sega, and that's not even counting situations like what Maekawa met with Heroes where the plot is already written and he's only allowed to fill in the blanks.

Comics and games are inherently drastically different mediums. Ask yourself this: would Ian really be able to stretch his wings as far and wide with Sega's mandates breathing down even heavier on his neck?

If you adapt the comics word by word, sequence by sequence, into a game it would work. It would be the best received game since SA1 (in terms of STORY, I don't know hoe much Sonic Team would fuck this up in terms of gameplay).

[SaturnWolf]

8 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

If you adapt the comics word by word, sequence by sequence, into a game it would work. It would be the best received game since SA1 (in terms of STORY, I don't know hoe much Sonic Team would fuck this up in terms of gameplay).

Again, no, it likely wouldn't. I don't know what group of people you've been hanging around with, but from what I see people don't like how formulaic the IDW comics were up until very recently. Sonic runs to a new town, meets a new friend, oh noes giant robot! Destroy said robot, some emotional talk, Sonic runs off.

That, stretched out for a full game? That's not going to work. Let's see IDW actually, you know, go somewhere before we try to act like simply hiring someone will  magically fix every story problem Sonic has.

[Kazhnuz]

12 minutes ago, Marco9966 said:

If you adapt the comics word by word, sequence by sequence, into a game it would work

No. You *can't* do an adaptation like that, it's the best way of doing something that isn't adapted for the new media.

[SaturnWolf]

11 minutes ago, Kazhnuz said:

No. You *can't* do an adaptation like that, it's the best way of doing something that isn't adapted for the new media.

This. I totally spaced on mentioning this.

Look at something like The Walking Dead, the comic is doing fine, but the show is struggling to adapt because it has to take story arcs that last a few issues and stretch that out to a half season or more.

[Marco9966]

21 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

This. I totally spaced on mentioning this.

Look at something like The Walking Dead, the comic is doing fine, but the show is struggling to adapt because it has to take story arcs that last a few issues and stretch that out to a half season or more.

I stopped watching the show and I only read the comics.

Thing is, if Kirkman wrote TWD show with new stories unrelated to the comics, it would be great. If Scott Buck for example wrote TWD show unrelated to the comics, it wouldnt be that good.

Same with Sonic. If Flynn wrote Sonic Forces game (under SEGA's mandate of course like Sonic not wearing jeans) it would be better than the current Sonic Forces because it was handled by writers that didnt care to make Infinite and phantom ruby and Tails consistent (I'm talking about the japanese Sonic Forces writer, not the translators Pontaff).

Conclusion: Get a writer THAT KNOWS and LOVE the series, it would be better than anything written by someone else with no passion for it !!

[SaturnWolf]

1 minute ago, Marco9966 said:

I stopped watching the show and I only read the comics.

Thing is, if Kirkman wrote TWD show with new stories unrelated to the comics, it would be great. If Scott Buck for example wrote TWD show unrelated to the comics, it wouldnt be that good.

Same with Sonic. If Flynn wrote Sonic Forces game (under SEGA's mandate of course like Sonic not wearing jeans) it would be better than the current Sonic Forces because it was handled by writers that didnt care to make Infinite and phantom ruby consistent (I'm talking about the japanese Sonic Forces writer, not the translators Pontaff).

Conclusion: Get a writer THAT KNOWS and LOVE the series, it would be better than anything written by someone else with no passion for it !!

You're, again, assuming that Ian Flynn is a magical, end all be all solution when he isn't. If you think Sega's mandates on the comics are strict, well, in comparison to Sonic Team to has Sega breathing down their necks 24/7 I imagine those are like a tropical vacation.

Passion is great. Loving the source material is great. It can lend yourself well to a project, but it doesn't guarantee that the product will be good. Look at all the Sonic fan games out there. A lot of them good, but most of them rough, sloppy and not very good. 

[Marco9966]

deleted

[Red Hot Jack]

The fact that Ian Flynn manages to work brilliantly even under Sega's pressure, however, does bring points to his favour. He's definitely precious.

About Classic Eggman, I doubt they would connect it to a spin-off, especially when they said TSR is a modern only title. I think he will show up in the next main game.

And to answer the title question: yes, it did disappoint me and change my view on Sonic Team, because Unleashed and Colors were creative and full of passion, Generations was an awesome love letter to the franchise, Lost World... Yeah, maybe it's a Mario game but it was sweet to play and very polished, so for me Forces was the first disappointment (excluding Boom) since '06. Eh. Unleashed, Colors, Generations and Lost World I still love, you can't change my opinion on that.

[Marco9966]

26 minutes ago, DreamSaturn said:

You're, again, assuming that Ian Flynn is a magical, end all be all solution when he isn't. If you think Sega's mandates on the comics are strict, well, in comparison to Sonic Team to has Sega breathing down their necks 24/7 I imagine those are like a tropical vacation.

Passion is great. Loving the source material is great. It can lend yourself well to a project, but it doesn't guarantee that the product will be good. Look at all the Sonic fan games out there. A lot of them good, but most of them rough, sloppy and not very good. 

You can't compare a TV show to a video game.

A TV show season must last between 10-20 hours.

A game must last something like that at best, but don't forget there is also gameplay not only story!

Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2, the 2 longest stories, have cutscenes that last in total 2 hours. (that's less requirment than 16 hours for a TV show season!!)

Sonic Unleashed had cutscenes that last in total 1 hour, Sonic Colors and Lost World and Forces last 30 minutes!

If you take the IDW comics each issue is in a different location , that's 9 levels! Plus all the cutscenes and dialogues, it's not necessary word by word! But I wanted to get my point across. And Sonic is not the only one fighting there, lots of oher characters fight and have special moves even Tails: that's more playable characters to be incorporated in the story and gameplay which mens more gameplay time.

I don't want that the IDW comics be adapted, but I wanted to show that Flynn is capable of writing for the games. Gameplay is another story but be sure that Lost World and Forces would be better received if they had better stories.

Also I don't like your assumption " Holy hell, what an awful idea from someone who has no idea how writing works. "

Just keep the "Holy hell, what an awful idea", we're debating about ideas, not fighting.