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What are some missed opportunities in the Sonic franchise?


Mountaindewandsprite

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The Black Bomb Wisps. From how they look, they’re Wisps so corrupted and tainted they have lost all color, becoming black, with red maws. Yet nobody answers their obvious plea for help of their very appearance. Not even Sonic is concerned for this breed of magic calamari. But what if these Wisps are so tainted that they start corrupting him, and maybe his surroundings? What if they already have? They had such a good idea going! 

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8 hours ago, Miragnarok said:

The Black Bomb Wisps. From how they look, they’re Wisps so corrupted and tainted they have lost all color, becoming black, with red maws. Yet nobody answers their obvious plea for help of their very appearance. Not even Sonic is concerned for this breed of magic calamari. But what if these Wisps are so tainted that they start corrupting him, and maybe his surroundings? What if they already have? They had such a good idea going! 

Does Sonic even encounter them in the actual levels?

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2 hours ago, DabigRG said:

Does Sonic even encounter them in the actual levels?

No, they ended up only as social media trade items, making this sting doubly so. 

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Another missed opportunity:

Not having a Sonic game for the Sega Saturn upon launch.

Sega having that internal civil war in the mid 90's did mess up a lot, between the 32X and the saturn if they didnt have that whole debacle Sega might be still making consoles today.

I mean i can forgive the sega CD as it was a experiment but sega should have never developed the 32X or made it into the neptune.

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16 hours ago, Mountaindewandsprite said:

Hence why I said "some of the cast". And it's not like Shadow's DBZ-esque chaos attacks are any less lame.

Thing is, the characters are all supposed to be very unique in their capabilities. The fact that Blaze actually does have control over fire is what makes her special. And you can say exactly the same for Shadow's Chaos abilities (which have gotten ridiculous at times). The rest of the cast just occasionally have elemental ties when it works contextually. Knuckles isn't "geokinetic"; he's just strong enough to punch the ground to make it quake every now and then. I definitely think it's something that shouldn't be overdone. Heroes arguably took it too far already.

Anyway, the series is rife with missed potential. More has been flubbed than pulled off successfully. You can pick just about any thing and say it's missed potential. But for the purposes of this post, I'm going to go for a bunch of the spinoff titles. R, the Storybook series and Chronicles. Sonic is a high speed platformer based around running. All of these spinoffs had unique opportunities to take the series best known qualities and really put creative spins on them. And how many reached that potential? Zero.

R is the most unbalanced racer that I've ever played, with only five tracks and characters that control more like cars. The Storybook games missed their opportunity to provide creative on-rails adventures in imaginative locations by forcing the worst that motion controls have to offer and failing to capitalise on the theme of the settings (SatSR did it pretty well, but SatBK is just cookie-cutter medieval style). And where to start with Chronicles? It looks awful, it sounds awful, it plays awful and it's narratively kind of awful too. Few RPGs feel as slow and repetitive as it does. In order to inflicted any real damage on enemies you're forced to use special attacks, each requiring the same touchscreen input every time. The biggest offender is the story though. It could have been a fantastic expansion of the history behind the Echidnas, Knuckles position, the Gizoids from Battle and had a unique opportunity to really build on the series' lore a way that wouldn't be possible in any other game. Instead we got an Archie comics clone and a main villain who was literally a palette swap of a random NPC. Fuck that noise.

 

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Where to begin? Much of the series can be described as a missed opportunity.

- Sonic Chronicles should have been on a console rather than a handheld, I don't know why Sega chose BioWare to do it on a DS and setting up a B team to work on the game when their strengths were PC and console then closed the studio when EA bought them. It might have not been able to fix the writing but at least it would have fixed many of the problems that the game had. The music being a big issue with only the battle tracks being any good, had it been on a console they wouldn't have got MIDIs off the Internet and poorly converted but rather something else. Back then BioWare was considered having a good reputation and on their peak unlike now where missed opportunities happen quite often. If it had to be done on a DS, Sega should have chosen a more suitable studio to do the game and maybe had a closer eye on the writing.

- Relating to that, Sonic Boom to stay on the PS4/Xbox One rather than to move it to the Wii U, put it on a console where the engine couldn't cope and released it in the state that the game was. Thinking about it, Sonic didn't get a game there until Sonic Mania/Forces so about nearly 5 years since those consoles launched. While the game still would have had its issues, it wouldn't have been as negatively received. NiGHTS: Journey into Dreams has the same issue to a smaller extent as well moving from one console to another.

- For many of the games, just having the physics right would have been an improvement, at best making a better game more enjoyable and at worst improve a worse game. It would have made Classic Sonic in Generations and Forces better as well as Sonic 4 to be not as a joke even though for Forces and 4, the physics aren't the only problem with the games.

- Sonic and the Secret Rings to have an alternative controls options would have massively improved the game since it is considered one of the worst if not the worst controlling Sonic games out there despite much of the game showing its promises otherwise. To be fair though, it wasn't just Sega to blame but rather Nintendo forcing people to use the Wii Remote controls and some developers didn't know about the alternatives. It affected many games including ports from other systems, even using the Nunchuk would have improved many of the games in terms of controls. Notice a year or two after, games were able to use more control options whether it was the Nunchuk, the Classic Controller or the Gamecube controller, why Sonic Unleashed and Colours played better.

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32 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Instead we got an Archie comics clone and a main villain who was literally a palette swap of a random NPC. Fuck that noise.

Yes but in Ken Penders defense (and i cant believe I am defending him here) he did have his Echidna story line for a while in Archie and I actually thought it was his best work in those comics.

Laura Su may be hated but at least her backstory is actually good (more so than Shade TBH)

 

But thats as far as i go in defending Penders, otherwise he is shite.

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12 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

Yes but in Ken Penders defense (and i cant believe I am defending him here) he did have his Echidna story line for a while in Archie and I actually thought it was his best work in those comics.

Laura Su may be hated but at least her backstory is actually good (more so than Shade TBH)

 

But thats as far as i go in defending Penders, otherwise he is shite.

Oh it has nothing to do with Penders what I dislike what Chronicles did. I actually like the how the story goes about tying together Gizoids and Echidnas. But that aside, it's really nothing more than a shallow copy. It was pulled off pretty badly. That's the issue I have. It was so lazy to lift the story from another part of the franchise and try to pass it off as original. Chronicles feels lazy all over. Just got example, you've got character art lifted from Sonic X stills, often laden with gif compression artifacts. And Swat Bots? Really? It was a lazy mess of a game. They couldn't even get character names right. It had the potential to be a great instalment in the series narrative where normally story isn't the main focus. 

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I kinda have to agree not building upon what SA1 had going is probably the biggest missed opportunity to convert genesis style into 3D. Kinda like how 3D Mario can incorporate a 2D feeling of the games without even being 2D. If they could have perfected those physics I'm sure from a gameplay standpoint we wouldn't have had the rollar coaster of quality over the years.

Not letting Tails grow up. By grow up I mean become more into his own. He coulda been the next Luigi in evolution, but instead they held the poor boy back and put him in a ball and chain to Sonic's image. We had a good start with SA1....kinda saw a pay off in SA2 especially towards the end, and then it died off in Heroes. After that it got worse and worse and he just regressed and became super dependent rather than getting more independent like Luigi. The underdog feeling is just one of the reasons why Luigi is so beloved, and Tails coulda had that too if we kept him as an improving hero over time. But nope. Instead you get either boring exposition character, asshole primadonna, or a total coward with no redeeming features. 

Custom character shoulda been magic based. At least then it would have covered new ground that wasn't stepping into someone else's territory. Gadget could have been Tails easily. They are so damn fixated on Tails and being the smart/gadget guy ad nauseum (Kinda like the fixation with Amy and her hammer) so might as well make a playstyle out of it. But instead was a literal self insert best friend of Sonic who took that very role. At least with magic he would have had his own thing. Could lead to a wide variety of platform abilities.

When Archie had Merlin Prower and introduced Magic to Tails. That coulda been a real cool and neat way of progression for him. Combining magic and technology. So much creative possibility....which was then thrown away. I think Merlina is the closest to magic we've had in the games and she was a one off. A shame. Magic just allows for endless possibility of creativity.

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- The Shadow Android subplot was the biggest missed opportunity ever.

There's people who think Shadow's memory loss subplot was unnecessary. I don't tend to agree that it outright could only have been that way. What was set up at the end of his story in Heroes would have been the perfect lead in to the next game where a lot of ideas with actual promise could have been explored that led actual credence to the fact that Shadow had no memory. Instead of the focus being on him learning a bunch of shit we already knew, it could have been about how Eggman was planning on manipulating Shadow into believing a certain number of things that could have seen him float towards his side... or not, depending on where they took the narrative. The Androids themselves might even be given a big of a spark that drives them to prove they're worthy of taking up the mantle as the true Shadow the Hedgehog.

Imagine Eggman just releasing a bunch of Shadow Androids on the world and the characters needing to go around trying to stop their invasion. Just before he set this plan in motion, Eggman would hold a meeting about how only the strongest one of them could possibly be the REAL Shadow and the one who proves themselves the most or holds out the longest could/would take up that position. He treats it as this weird right of passage due to how much the original experiment meant to his grandfather, and not just "Because he's Shadow". And what being the real Shadow means could mean something different to each android. Of course, we'd follow the exploits of the real one. Eggman would make it clear that he'd implanted memories and information that only Shadow would know in each robot. It would be limited due to the fact that old stuff from Gerald's diary and eyewitness testimony, like his plummet from the Ark, are the only things he could rely on which gives the real Shadow an unknown edge.

The fact that Rouge didn't tell Shadow anything could resurface as a plot point because she honestly wasn't sure if he was the real one or not, and relaying information to him that Eggman may not know could have potentially been dangerous if the doctor decides to flip a switch and take full control of him at any time. The game probably would have been better being something where you could play as both Shadow and Sonic though. I'd have kept the thing where you team up with other characters in each stage, because honestly, that's the best way to handle them when they're not playable. Having them talk about meaningless nonsense in the void like in Forces or stand as literal trophies in Generations isn't gonna cut it. Shadow the Hedgehog actually had the best idea when it came to that. 

I wouldn't really do any missions. If I were to have a morality system I'd probably limit it to 3 possible endings instead of... 11. I'd also probably rename it to "Sonic and Shadow" (reminiscent of Megaman and Bass). 

It doesn't have to go down exactly the way I described it but it would have given closure to something that I did feel had a lot of promise. I originally thought Shadow's game was going to be about the Android thing too but instead it was about aliens... 

So random. All that accomplished was explaining why Gerald built the Eclipse Cannon and had it pointed at the Earth, which, to be fair needed an explanation but I feel like that could have been a bit of a side-plot for a game down the line. Like, there was a reason he was up there aside from just medical research too. He was developing a lot of things for the Government, probably to counteract threats like the Black Arms. They could have come into play eventually but there's no reason Black Doom needed to literally provide Gerald with his blood.

- Sonic 06 in and of itself was a missed opportunity. Obviously. Knowing me, I'd have probably replaced Silver's group with the Chaotix... but you know. That would mean Silver wouldn't exist and... I kind of like him now. I definitely didn't way back when but the comics playing up his naivety and geeky side has made him more endearing. Plus, his voice cracks in Forces. Like a lot. It's so early teenagery. He's like the freshman in highschool whose eating wedgies and and falling into trash cans. It's great.

Plus, if I did that people would have gone crazy about how Amy wasn't playable. We could have just replaced her with Knuckles but then that would look weird and Knuckles has gotta be there because he's Knuckles. Even though, he's got nothing to do with Soleanna and their weird orange-legged Princess.

- The Flames of Disaster could have been a lot cooler. I would have probably gotten rid of Elise all together and made the Flames of Disaster act more as a Monkey's Paw kind of thing. You make a wish on the eternal flame and bad shit happens to you. The idea of making wishes on that flame just stood out to me as this odd detail that that game did nothing with. It'd have been a decent opportunity for some of the characters (namely Tails) to vent about their emotional issues and try and see what would happen if they were confronted with this thing that could just cure them of their self-esteem problems or their impending sense of duty to save the future. I guess that's too deep though. Plus, the writers would need to be experts at utilizing characters in a way that made their actions understandable and pitiable without making it outright selfish and deplorable. That ain't gonna happen.

- Sonic Free Riders shouldn't exist. Or if it was going to exist, it shouldn't have been for the Kinect. They only made one game for the Kinect and that game was one game too many. Now the Kinect is dead and copies of it are gonna rot on store shelves for all eternity or at least until they're thrown in the garbage. All the man-power that was used to make that game could have gone into making or improving something else though. That's something we're never gonna get back.

- Sonic Chronicles was made by Bioware and it somehow ended up being garbage. Dude. A Sonic RPG is my dream. Even better if it were on a home console. Maybe one day I'll actually be able to get that. I'm not someone who owns any handhelds. I'm just not a fan of playing games on small-screens and without controllers. I never played Chronicles but good God was it obvious I didn't have to. With a story that clearly was ripping off the Archie comics and music that instead of sounding like dying cats, might have personified itself, gone out into the night, and actively murdered actual kittens due to being so bad, buying a DS specifically for that game (which is something I considered doing) would have been the biggest mistake of my life. I wanna go back to the past and slap my younger self for defending the game during the lead up to its release when so many people were telling me it looked awful. That's a bad fanboy. BAD! After Forces, I think that part of me is officially dead... so that's good? Speaking of which-

- Sonic Forces Pt. 1: The Characters Being Huddled Together to make the Story more Linear. Scratch what I said about the Androids being the biggest missed opportunity. The entire premise of this game outshines that one because it's the one that takes the negative endgame of the entire series and puts it at the forefront. Dr. Eggman wins and takes over the world. There's almost too many things you could do with a premise like that and the result was something even less substantial than the story in Sonic Heroes in my opinion. You know, at least all the characters in Heroes had different goals in mind and weren't carelessly huddled together for the sake of making things easier. They all had dialogue that was a lot less interchangeable too. That game pretty much HAD to solidify what the personalities of the Chaotix and Omega were going forward. 

You could make the argument that, of course, they'd join forces in a situation like this but not LIKE this. Shadow the Hedgehog did this better too actually. The world was in danger there but all the characters were scattered all over the place, doing different things with their own objectives. The Chaotix didn't even interact with any of the heroes aside from Shadow in that game and what they did ended up basically saving the world. Just shoving everyone together and not taking actual advantage of what their differences in personalities and objectives could have been really sucked. Especially when Team Dark looked like they might have actually been doing that but in the end it just amounted to Shadow and Omega being out of commission for a bit and showing up later to basically do nothing. 

- Sonic Forces Pt. 2: Lone Soldier Prower. Tails got it the worst. Not just in how terribly written he was but how royally fucked over he was by Classic Sonic. They didn't even go with the idea of Tails having "lost it" by imagining that a new Sonic was with him or something. That would have at least been hilariously bad instead of frustratingly so. The idea of Tails being off on his own was exciting to me though. There's a reason the whole "Tails is dead" thing started floating around and why Aaron Webber keeps making jokes about the fact that people thought that. It's because the material we were given leading up to Forces barely showcased him. No one knew where he was or why he was absent despite knowing he was in the game. People even thought he might have been Infinite. 

Then Iizuka told everyone on a panel that he was chilling with Classic Sonic. Immediately, my mind went to the fact that he was away from everyone else and I wanted to bask in the glory that would have been what I was calling the gallant tale of Lone Soldier Prower. All by himself out in the world. Learning lessons in valor and in acceptance at the loss of his long-time best friend Sonic the Hedgehog. Long ago, he learned not to rely on him forever but now that the day had finally come and he was being put to the test, he initially wasn't up to the challenge. His sorrow and stress overtook him despite how hard he initially worked for the Resistance and it saw to him leaving one day and not coming back. Now he's on a personal journey to rekindle what it was about him that made him who he was today. He regains his sense of self and joins back into the fray after a scuffle with some of Eggman's troops and even Eggman himself. It's only AFTER he's learned his lesson that he finds out Sonic is alive, as the message becomes muddled and doesn't stick if he finds out Sonic's still around before he can work up the courage to be true to what he knew he had to do all along.

Now, I'm not saying that's the story they should have written but they're the ones who brought these ideas up. At least do something with them.

- Sonic Forces Pt. 3: Eggmanland. A world taken over by Eggman should have looked way cooler than what we got man. The map should have been like the one in Unleashed but the territories he'd taken over were red, I guess. Eggmanland should have made it's glorious return, only now it was a empire within an amusement park (or vice-versa). We'd see tons of those Golden Statues of himself around. We'd see his throne room. We'd see the daily routine of what it means to be an Eggman servant. How he divides people based on their loyalty to them. Who acts as prisoners. Who acts as slaves. Who lives comfortably in homes within the Empire due to caving in and sucking up the best to him. New PA announcements about it officially being "Draw Your Glorious Leader, Dr. Eggman" hour. Or maybe at "Compliment O' Clock" you'd have to send in letters showering him with praise.

Green Hill would be like it was in that early concept art with the prison, the thunderstorms, the chains, the barbed-wire, and the dead grass. All of that would have been so much cooler than just sand everywhere. The only thing that's gonna scare is Anakin Skywalker. It also would have given Green Hill an actual point to being in the game. A juxtaposition showing what it once was to what it now is would have been the PERFECT reason to have it in the game. But nah. We can't do shit that makes sense. Fuck that. We gotta rile everyone up instead. It makes it so that when I make mention that Chemical Plant looks more like Final Fortress, I'd get someone jumping down my throat about how it's obviously Chemical Plant even though I didn't say I thought it wasn't Chemical Plant. 

Honestly, if this game had just been about showing dilapidated versions of past stages, it would have been cooler and worked better. Not saying they should have done just that, of course. It just would have been better than what they did. Chemical Plant being slightly colder looking and the Death Egg... being basically the same doesn't justify anything. The burning city is my favorite aesthetic in the game and even that had stuff in it that made no sense. The weird looking Green Hill blocks in the background had no REAL explanation, just implied ones. And that area worn out it's magic rather quickly due to repeated assets upon constant revisit, the lack of an actual name, and little connection to the narrative aside from the fact that it was a place that had people in it once. 

Metropolis had some charm to it too, I guess. Nothing too grandiose though. The Eggman Empire Fortress looked so boring and underwhelming. The only time it looked impressive was during Sonic's stage where we got to boost through it in 3D so that we could see the scope of how big and deep it was. That at least felt a bit immersive but it didn't last. Mystic Jungle had an actual name at least and it's aesthetic... was very confused. I guess the casino in the forest thing was a nice enough idea but it was hampered by how distracting it was that they were clearly reusing stuff from Lost World. Plus, it would have been cooler if it was a Zombie Casino Forest. That's what it looked like to me for some reason...

- Team Sonic Racing's Roster. This game isn't even out yet but I'm confident in the fact that it's roster isn't going to change and that there won't be any DLC that fixes it so I'll just say it here. I don't know why they messed this up. It's even worse considering they were only 3 characters short of getting it right. That's literally one more team of three and the criticism I'd have had for them would have pretty much evaporated. Leave Team Rose and Team Chaotix as they were in Heroes and move the Chao over to Silver and Blaze. That's it. It would have made the most sense to do it that way. I've heard the arguments for low budget and time, and I get that. I hate always having to clarify that I know about those things but the fact remains that I don't buy that they were so deep in the well that they had to do it this way.

I've gotten over it a bit as time has gone on but its going to forever be a thing that gnaws at me because of how silly it feels. I'm being extra hard on it because this roster is being presented before me in a year where I'm being given news about Smash Bros. It's hard not to look between the two and wonder what the fuck is wrong with SEGA that they can't even get their full main and secondary cast of Sonic characters into the first Sonic spin-off that's purely focused on playing as them all in a 3D title. The Olympics weren't about that. The first two All-Stars Racers weren't about that. The tennis game wasn't about that. Not even the Riders games were about that. This one is though. And they didn't do it.

It's also one of the reasons why the fact that there are people complaining about Smash Bros. confuses me. I still see comments about Sakurai not caring or being an idiot and he's got 74 characters in the fucker already. You'd think that'd be enough for him to be like, "Okay. Let me try out my Piranha Plant idea" but I guess not. 

 

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2 minutes ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

There's people who think Shadow's memory loss subplot was unnecessary. I don't tend to agree that it outright could only have been that way.

I agree actually, Shadow having memory loss should have been a bigger plot and should have been the real main story of Shadow the hedgehog (game)

Honestly if the game was about Shadow finding out about his origins in a more logical way it could have worked, sure the black doom bullshit storyline is still shit but what if it was better woven into the storyline?

Shadow having a quest of self discovery could have been great, I mean the game could still be filled with big shooty boom booms but if the game was better written it could have made Shadow the most complex character in the series as opposed to the most convoluted.

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5 hours ago, MadmanRB said:

I agree actually, Shadow having memory loss should have been a bigger plot and should have been the real main story of Shadow the hedgehog (game)

Honestly if the game was about Shadow finding out about his origins in a more logical way it could have worked, sure the black doom bullshit storyline is still shit but what if it was better woven into the storyline?

Shadow having a quest of self discovery could have been great, I mean the game could still be filled with big shooty boom booms but if the game was better written it could have made Shadow the most complex character in the series as opposed to the most convoluted.

Shadow's original origin was pretty clear-cut though. He could find that out asking Rouge or asking/threatening Eggman. Unless they added other new twists to it, could it really be spread out over a whole game?

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Oh right Silver. Lot of missed opportunities there. I’ll list some:

Silver isn’t sure if he’ll still exist if he stops iblis. Will preventing the disaster butterfly effect himself out of existence? 

Silver returns to the future he’s created, and finds that his history has been erased and or the huge culture shock prevents him from staying. Remember, the world he came from was more or less the game’s present day but on fire, he has little in common with whatever he finds 

How about not seemingly have written him as an author insertion fantasy persona? A new character who is sort of paired with the newish and popular Blaze shows up and thinks he has to take down Sonic because of a misunderstanding, this is such a fanfic premise. 

Blaze having only two segments in the entire story was a misstep considering her gameplay seems to have been, whether intentionally or not, designed to work around the game’s problems as much as they could. You have the option of double jumping instead of doing an empty homing attack, which is much more controllable, and the attack she did on the ground was great at ripping through the overpopulated enemies. Granted it’s fixing problems they made, but it remains true that she did suit the game the best. 

Wait I just realized, I’m still not actually sure if Shadow supposed to have amnesia in SA2. The weird flashbacks and the way his change of heart scene went kind of give that impression, but it’s also possible he remembered that entire scene through the entire game and only at the end realizes it was worth carrying out because... Amy kind of reminded him of Maria? 

The actual point with Shadow I wanted to make was that just giving him amnesia to where he remembers nothing was a misstep, does he really care that a life he can’t remeber either way was actually his or not? All they needed was for him to have enough gaps in his memory to sow doubt, he doesn’t need to suddenly become a scowly tabula rasa. 

On the subject of doubt, I think they should have poked just enough holes in black doom’s version of events that it isn’t clear how much of what he says is true. If they wanted to rehabilitate Eggman’s villain cred they could have also portrayed him as not actually caring if he was the real Shadow or not so long as he’s the strongest shadow. 

Not a single ending to Shadow the Hedgehog had him realize that he had to go because his planet needed him. They made so many endings and there wasn’t a single joke ending. It’s like they’ve never even heard of Silent Hill.

It turns out I’m not surprised there’s so much to put in a thread of missed opportunities in regards to Sonic. 

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There's far too many to count lol. But I have a few:

-For Sonic X: not using the secondary character Helen (the kind-hearted, handicapped girl) as the focus of the show, instead of selfish rich boy Chris was a HUGELY missed opportunity. I can imagine how much more wholesome and just overall better the show would've been with Helen going on adventures with Sonic and friends. Also it would've made tons more sense for Shadow to be reminded of Maria from another blonde, blue-eyed girl than freaking Chris!

-For Forces: The fact we never saw how the world looked and functioned once Eggman conquered it was straight-up criminal. I was looking forward to all the Egg-propaganda and/or post-apocalyptic, Sonic CD-like atmosphere that the Bad Future levels had.

-The little things like more of a look into Knuckles' past; being the last of the echidnas and living in isolation for years. Or some more happy flashbacks of Shadow and Maria together on the ARK. Its beyond disappointing that everyone's backstories (or what little they had) have basically been erased since Generations, and all just exist.

 

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2 hours ago, Razule said:

Shadow's original origin was pretty clear-cut though. He could find that out asking Rouge or asking/threatening Eggman. Unless they added other new twists to it, could it really be spread out over a whole game?

Yes actually.

We only learned of some of his backstory In SA2, that he was the end result of the "ultimate lifeform" project and this could have been something that could have been expanded upon.

Shadow the hedgehog (game) did shine more light on it but again the biggest issue is it was so convoluted.

The whole plot of Black Doom was such an ass pull too, trying to make something more out of such a generic villain.

I would have done so much differently such as making the Black doom plot a red herring if one must include him or not even make such a crap story in the first place.

Like what if the villain was actually a resurrected Gerald Robotnik?

That could have been so much better than "generic evil aliens blah blah blah" like sega did.

The game could have been so much better in this regard not to mention give bigger scope to Geralds story.

Instead of needing help from an alien race what if Shadow instead of being a genetic descendant of Black doom was created as a techno organic creature?

The "ultimate lifeform" part referring to him neither being machine nor Mobian (and yes i use that term for the humanoid animals of Sonic still, canon be damned) but something in between?

Now why a Mobian hedgehog as a template? Why not a human or other Mobian sub species?

Perhaps he liked the hedgehog because of its natural defences like its quills? I dunno but lets not go too far here as I cannot come up with everything here (and we would be here all day with me rambling like the madman I am).

Anywho Gerald goes mad after GUN betrays him and finds a way to transfer his mind into a android/human hybrid...

BOOM! Creator vs creation

And Gerald creates a whole army of Robot/organic hybrids in revenge and Shadows quest in the game is to either fulfil his creators wishes by joining him or picking the side for freedom and justice.

Its not shakespere but its sure as shit better than the mess in Shadow the hedgehog (game)

 

(and may I add would make one hell of a fanfiction, I would do it if anyone asked)

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16 hours ago, TAILS FOR SMASH ULTIMATE said:


Custom character shoulda been magic based. At least then it would have covered new ground that wasn't stepping into someone else's territory. Gadget could have been Tails easily. They are so damn fixated on Tails and being the smart/gadget guy ad nauseum (Kinda like the fixation with Amy and her hammer) so might as well make a playstyle out of it. But instead was a literal self insert best friend of Sonic who took that very role. At least with magic he would have had his own thing. Could lead to a wide variety of platform abilities.

Amy was the magic user, back when SEGA gave a shit about these characters

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Well... their are a lot of games in this series, that at least have three - five really missed opportunities. A perfect example for me at least, is actually the idea of the whole Sonic Boom spinoff series. I saw many the scrapped ideas they had: concept arts, music tracks, level ideas, story ideas etc. This spinoff had the potential in becoming a very interesting take one on the Sonic series, but something bad happen during the production and we ended up with probably the worst game in the entire series. 

Their are also other games that suffered a similar faith like 06, Shadow, the storybook games and Chronicles, but it is not only the games in general that don't use their full potential. The franchise in general seems to not really have a clue in what to do with their cast of characters. It really seems for me, that Sonic characters are not meant to stay a recurring regulars. The characters feel more like characters from an RPG. Only meant to appear in their debut games, serve a purpose in just this one game and than never meant to appear again.

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34 minutes ago, Scape said:

Amy was the magic user, back when SEGA gave a shit about these characters

Well Tarot cards I believe....though there was that invisibility thing in 06.....

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On 11/9/2018 at 10:31 PM, Blacklightning said:

I'll just get straight to the point.

latest?cb=20110304034920

Someone saw this dude, with stretchy arms that grapple onto things, and for some reason decided he needed to play like a generic God of War clone rather than an analogue for freeform Spiderman swinging, and that just boggles my fucking mind. Nobody expected the Werehog to approach Boost speeds but at the very least this would still have made movement fun.

Could not agree more. Exactly what I thought about this from the beginning. The werehog should not have been slow gameplay. Even in the commercials, you have sonic whizzing by the city scape at night in that form. Seemed pretty intriguing to me until I played what it actually was.

Unfortunately SEGA bought into the God of war hype.

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I think Sonic Team should have refined Lost World's gameplay rather than returning to Unleashed. It's got a nice balance of speed and platforming potential. I would love to have a better version of this gameplay in stages that aren't just kinda bland.

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2 hours ago, Scape said:

 

Yeah but can one count Sonic the fighters as Canon?

I mean it wasnt a very successful game, sure it gave us Bean and Bark (and Honey unofficially) but it really wasnt that well received.

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Whether Fighters is canon or not is beside the point; the attack isn't meant to be magic, it's just cartoon slapstick.

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18 minutes ago, MadmanRB said:

Yeah but can one count Sonic the fighters as Canon?

I mean it wasnt a very successful game, sure it gave us Bean and Bark (and Honey unofficially) but it really wasnt that well received.

It gave Amy her hammer. Why could that be carried forward but nothing else? 

And if reception mattered to canon, Shadow wouldn't still have the black arms backstory.

 

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1 minute ago, Scape said:

It gave Amy her hammer. Why could that be carried forward but nothing else? 

And if reception mattered to canon, Shadow wouldn't still have the black arms backstory.

 

Yeah but I think we can all agree, Black arms is bullshit.

Sometimes Canon can fuck up, and just because its canon doesnt mean it doesnt suck.

Sometimes its just best to say "fuck canon!"

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