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Would you say we’ve entered a new “era” yet?


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15 minutes ago, dbzfan7 said:

I mean more from a story perspective than a gameplay one. And I like Generations so don't get me wrong. As a game it's one of the series best. I'm not really gonna argue a case here as a thread can be made for that if you're curious as to why I, and others who feel the same way think that. More serious or not doesn't mean much. Sonic Riders has the same light hearted tone as current games, but feels more sincere about it's characters and story.

Disagree on Colors though. It's level design feels far more Mario than Sonic like. Taking it's cue of love of blocks from Tales of Symphonia. 

Colors may not have been your cup of tea, but it is not a game that one can say SEGA wasnt trying. They listened to feedback from unleashed and got rid of the boring gimmick gameplay and tried to design a game around only playing the fun parts of the daytime stages sonic from unleashed. Was it amazing? No. But they definitely tried and it showed, which is why it reviewed well.

We will disagree about story I think. Just because a story includes more dramatic elements doesn't make it more sincere. For me, Sonic 06's story is some of the laziest, most generic garbage I've seen out of this franchise. A total final fantasy rip off that was obvious from day 1. But I've heard fans of the darker sonic games defend it because they favor that tone, making similar statements to yours. To me this amounts to nothing. The game just happened to have your flavor of story, that doesn't mean it was executed well (it was not) or it felt "sincere". 

I'd really need to understand your idea of sincere, I think, to see where you're coming from.

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1 minute ago, UpCDownCLeftCRightC said:

Colors may not have been your cup of tea, but it is not a game that one can say SEGA wasnt trying. They listened to feedback from unleashed and got rid of the boring gimmick gameplay and tried to design a game around only playing the fun parts of 2D sonic. Was it amazing? No. But they definitely tried and it showed, which is why it reviewed well.

We will disagree about story I think. Just because a story includes more dramatic elements doesn't make it more sincere. For me, Sonic 06's story is some of the laziest, most generic garbage I've seen out of this franchise. A total final fantasy rip off that was obvious from day 1. But I've heard fans of the darker sonic games defend it because they favor that tone, making similar statements to yours. To me this amounts to nothing. The game just happened to have your flavor of story, that doesn't mean it was executed well (it was not) or it felt "sincere". 

I'd really need to understand your idea of sincere, I think, to see where you're coming from.

I said Sonic Riders had the same tone as Colors, was barely serious as it was a racing game without huge stakes, and it still felt more sincere. It was more expressive, didn't tell horrid jokes, and didn't self deprecate on itself. Hell you could say it's even more light hearted than Colors as the stakes ended up being over a carpet, and not enslaving cute aliens. So serious and dramatic isn't the what I'm defining as needed in a Sonic story. I mean the Classic Sonic Mania animations also are more light hearted than Colors but also have a different feel to it as well.

To put it simply. Sincere to me is believing in your world, embracing it fully, and helping to make what is currently going on matter to the individuals. From Saving the world, to just beating a bird in a board race. You can also compare drama in later games to earlier ones, and there is a big difference in feel. Compare Lost World or Forces drama to before, and there is a disconnect. Modern Sonic is more meta, which is why it feels less sincere to me.

If you still don't understand the point, that's ok. A thread can be made if I am doing a poor job of explaining. If you disagree that's fine too.

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It might just be me but I tend to get a little uneasy sectioning things off into "eras" or whatever. I suppose when Generations was a thing it was a convenient way to line up the different parts of Sonic's career up to that point, but even then it didn't really work because we had to awkwardly shuffle Sonic Heroes into the Dreamcast "era". Where else would it go as the only relevant title from the PS2 era that Sonic Team is comfortable with referencing and reusing stages from though?

When things feel different, I'll recognize the change. The days of Classic Sonic are different from the days of Adventure-Heroes (where I became a Sonic fan), which felt different from the days of Shadow-Secret Rings, which felt different from Unleashed-Black Knight, which felt different from Colors-Lost World... and so on.

Everything keeps changing and, in my opinion, hardly any of it has been for the better. Now Forces feels like this weird limbo of trying to go back to something more serious but also not having any clue, whatsoever, how to properly do that but also retaining the old ways of making it feel like nothing matters at all by undercooking the cool and awesome concepts you've come up with. None of the promising character motivations we heard about leading up to Forces release meant anything. All the strange stuff surrounding what we were hearing about Tails led to nothing. Omega being demolished by Infinite led to nothing. Infinite's secret identity... the debate around that might as well not even happened.

Somebody get the Scarecrow on this Phantom Ruby shit. He'd have made illusions worth your time. Zavok's the warden of Sonic's cell? Then give the illusions the power to create illusions. Have Sonic be trapped in that cell with the Zavok illusion taunting Sonic with an illusion of him successfully turning Tails into a robot like he said he was gonna. "This is what happened to your buddy after you lost! I finally did it. He's mine now!"

Or something. Anything.

Call this the era of "Coming up with Cool ideas and then Not doing anything cool with them". How about that?

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Going by Sega’s contemporary, two-era theory, we still haven’t. Boom and the Movie are just temporary “mini-eras”, or so it seems, while other adaptations aren’t eras at all, as if they don’t truly matter. However, this current era has seen a slight comeback in Adventure aesthetics and tone. 

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3 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

I guess it depends mostly on what you get out of it. For me so far it's been:

Classic Era: 1991 - 1997

Adventure Era: 1998 - 2004

"Dark" Era: 2005 - 2007/8

Modern Era: 2008 - 2010/11

Meta/Nostalgic/Standup Comedy Era: 2010 - Present

This is basically how I look at it. Why would you have a near decade's worth of games (Adventure 1 to 06) as the name of a console that lasted about 2-3 years? "Dreamcast era" makes no sense, especially 

I would say the modern era started with Unleashed. It created an entirely new art style for the series which basically became the series staple, a mixture of realistic and cartoon-like environments and characters. The characters have looked exactly the same from Unleashed onward. I feel like it's safe to say that, if you want to say we have something called a "modern era", it began with Unleashed. 

The "Dark era" is also fitting for more reasons, not only was it trying to be edgy AF, but the games were so shit that it was basically the real dark ages of the franchise.

I'm really not sure if we entered a new era yet. Maybe? The past 8 years have felt like a bunch of reusing what was good (with varying degrees of success).

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Eras have historically been an imperfect methodology. They are a way to try to group certain events into a chronology, and they can often be helpful despite their caveats. Like, to talk about my own research field, the reigns of Nerva, Trajan and Hadrian are often grouped together as a kind of era. But of course, there are subtle nuances between the emperor reigns which kind of knock the era down. History is messy, not neat, and trying to think too straightforwardly about the past can make things overly simplistic. But nevertheless, my area of Ancient History would be a lot harder without eras to use as a lens.

And despite the subtle differences, I do think you can split the Sonic games into eras:

Classic: Sonic 1, 2, 3, K, Chaotix, CD. Pretty self explanatory, I doubt anyone would argue against this.

Adventure: Sonic Adventure, Sonic Adventure 2, Sonic Heroes, Shadow, Sonic 06.

It's often called the 'Dreamcast' Era, but I think Adventure is a better name. For all the people outcrying for Sonic Adventure 3, we've really had five if you think about the fundamentals of the games above. They all shifted to a far more serious story, took on a darker tone, play very similarly and took on a more hard rock soundtrack. 

Boost Prototype GamesSonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic and the Black Knight, Sonic Unleashed.

I like to think of four rather than three eras. The above games moved us into Colours, but they kept a lot of the formulae of the Adventure era; serious stories, dark tones, hard rock (except Unleashed, and Black Knight had tracks moving in the new orchestral direction), introduced new characters and evil monsters which must be defeated rather than Eggman. However, they also hinted at a new direction for Sonic, becoming far more automated and on rails. It's a hint at the linear and blazing fast direction the series went in.

Also, with the exception of Black Knight, we started to see a focus back on Sonic as the only playable character.

Boost Games: Sonic Colours, Sonic Generations, Sonic Forces.

These game play similarly to Unleashed and share its aesthetic, but are also separate for a number of reasons; they relied far more on nostalgia (Colours introducing old badniks and getting rid of GUN Robots started this), were very linear and automated, had a far lighter and more comedic story, focused back on Eggman as the villain, featured an emphasis on orchestral soundtracks and stopped introducing new characters (aside from Forces).

However, this era is also the hardest to pin down because it's been more experimental. Sonic Boom doesn't fit in here, but Lost World and Mania don't in gameplay but do in tone and reliance on nostalgia. Sonic Forces also broke from the light tone and comedy which the series had established under this era.

Really, this era clearly shows how confused SEGA are about where Sonic should go.

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5 hours ago, SenEDDtor Missile said:

Meta/Nostalgic/Standup Comedy Era: 2010 - Present

Why is having a sense of humor a bad thing? I'll never get this.

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1 minute ago, SBR2 said:

Why is having a sense of humor a bad thing? I'll never get this.

Because most of the humor attempts have been poor and obnoxiously bad.

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3 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

Why is having a sense of humor a bad thing? I'll never get this.

Some jokes don't land so humor is bad 5ever basically.

 

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6 hours ago, SBR2 said:

Why is having a sense of humor a bad thing? I'll never get this.

It's not having a sense of humor that's a problem. It's the quality, the amount, the timing and the delivery of them that's a problem.

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Personally, I classed them as major generational leaps. Classic games are sort of lumped together despite spanning multiple years due to the lack of a mainline Saturn title, Dreamcast is the transitional 3D era where graphics and gameplay shifted and was experimental, and then Modern is the high definition era where the game’s shifted towards some kind of underlying formula with boost, while experimenting somewhat.

There’s issues with that, since under that condition, I would consider Forces a new generation when I really don’t, simply because it frankly isn’t a game changing game that defines a new generation like Sonic 1, Adventure, or even as infamously awful as it was - 06 did. If I had to choose, I’d probably say Modern began with Unleashed because 06 was a broken non-canon mess that fucked around with a worse version of Adventure’s formula whilst Unleashed legitimately defined and started a new formula and path onwards for the series for a time.

In short, I think it’s pretty decently self explanatory until at least Forces, where it begins to be in doubt because that was a worse version of the Boost and still kind of fits with Modern. Mania is another exception, which despite being a Modern era game, I definitely class it as Classic.

In short, it’s confused, and too much trouble than it’s worth.

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If we're going by Sonic Generations' definition of Generations, which means Generation of Consoles, then no.

We've been in the 8th Generation of Consoles since 2012, which includes games on the Wii U, Xbox One, PS4, & Switch plus the handhelds, 3DS & PSVita.

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I'd call the past six years or so the schizophrenic era. Say what you wan't about the Adventure era but at least it had a somewhat grasp on it's own identity in terms of general style and "feel". The past few years however have been a complete mess in that regard. We've had weird experiments like Lost Word, Classic nostalgia pandering like Mania, half-baked adventure era fanservice like Forces, and a completely failed sub-franchise in Sonic Boom, all at once. And the only thing that seems to work is the classic nostalgia pandering, Everything else just falls flat on it's face. In short, the current era is a mess that doesn't know ANYTHING about it's own identity other than the fact that Classic Sonic sells.

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2 minutes ago, batson said:

Say what you wan't about the Adventure era but at least it had a somewhat grasp on it's own identity in terms of general style and "feel".

*looks at SA2*
*looks at Heroes*
*looks at ShtH*

...you sure about that?

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Sonic the Hedgehog has been making drastic changes to itself, stylistically, since before it was done releasing games on the Genesis.

The past 10 years of mainline games is probably the most inline with itself that it's ever been ignoring the weird Sonic Boom offshoot.

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21 hours ago, dbzfan7 said:

I said Sonic Riders had the same tone as Colors, was barely serious as it was a racing game without huge stakes, and it still felt more sincere. It was more expressive, didn't tell horrid jokes, and didn't self deprecate on itself. Hell you could say it's even more light hearted than Colors as the stakes ended up being over a carpet, and not enslaving cute aliens. So serious and dramatic isn't the what I'm defining as needed in a Sonic story. I mean the Classic Sonic Mania animations also are more light hearted than Colors but also have a different feel to it as well.

To put it simply. Sincere to me is believing in your world, embracing it fully, and helping to make what is currently going on matter to the individuals. From Saving the world, to just beating a bird in a board race. You can also compare drama in later games to earlier ones, and there is a big difference in feel. Compare Lost World or Forces drama to before, and there is a disconnect. Modern Sonic is more meta, which is why it feels less sincere to me.

If you still don't understand the point, that's ok. A thread can be made if I am doing a poor job of explaining. If you disagree that's fine too.

No actually I understand better now what you mean. I'm not perfect in my understanding of things, so as long as I'm polite try to be patient with me. I get it though, that makes sense.

I think I might disagree a little with colors because I have heard quite a number of people (read: not adventure fans) who quite like that story and direction. I dont know if that story was among my favs, probably not, but there are parts of it I liked. Not to get into our personal tastes too much but I dont think my opinion is uncommon. I do understand that modern sonic is meta comment, that I would agree with you on. 

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36 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Sonic the Hedgehog has been making drastic changes to itself, stylistically, since before it was done releasing games on the Genesis.

The past 10 years of mainline games is probably the most inline with itself that it's ever been ignoring the weird Sonic Boom offshoot.

Sonic Lost World and Sonic Boom have been way bigger inconsistencies than anything in any other period.

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7 minutes ago, Plasme said:

Sonic Lost World and Sonic Boom have been way bigger inconsistencies than anything in any other period.

Sonic Lost World has a pretty drastic shift in focus in artstyle and gameplay but it has a lot of hold overs from Colors  in terms of mechanics, level design, story, the way the game structures itself etc. I tend to associate it with that game and Forces even though there's a lot of differences between them too.

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1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

*looks at SA2*
*looks at Heroes*
*looks at ShtH*

...you sure about that?

I can only speak for myself, but yeah, I still get more of a Sonic vibe from those games than from the games that followed. Even Generations, which was supposed to be a sort of 'best-of' of the past games, just felt like..nothing, to be honest. Just a "Look at all these games that did things better than this anniversary game does".

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47 minutes ago, Plasme said:

Sonic Lost World and Sonic Boom have been way bigger inconsistencies than anything in any other period.

Why do people keep acting like Boom has any relevance to the main series? It's like talking about Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix as if it was some new direction for the Mario franchise. 

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9 minutes ago, SBR2 said:

Why do people keep acting like Boom has any relevance to the main series? It's like talking about Dance Dance Revolution Mario Mix as if it was some new direction for the Mario franchise. 

Because it was advertised as a console mainline Sonic game even though it was part of a different continuity and made be a different team. 

DmC would be a much better analogy.

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Uh, considering the Modern Era technically started with 06's release and Forces  was preempted by a number of game changing reveals, I'd say yes.

 

23 hours ago, Dr. Detective Mike said:

 

Call this the era of "Coming up with Cool ideas and then Not doing anything cool with them". How about that?

Eh, that's fair enough.-

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If I were to treat any 3D game with meaningful distinction as the start of the modern era it would definitely be unleashed. But even then it is difficult, mainly because every mainline game between SA1 and 06 are so different from each other, it's hard to discern a consistent pattern. That era to me is more known for just throwing things at the wall to figure out how to do sonic in 3D, far more than any other time.

The series clearly had built some momentum in figuring out what the games were actually going to be from Unleashed to Generations. 

 

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I think this attempt at categorizing Sonic into eras only really works when you have years of existing stuff to look back to and it's not something that's possible to determine in the present day. Looking through Sonic's discography I'd say the only two major games that changed things up in the franchise in a way that laid the foundation for future titles are Sonic Adventure and Sonic Unleashed. It's not even specifically based on their respective gameplay formulas sticking around (for example I don't consider Sonic Lost World to be an attempt to start a new "era" even though it had radically different gameplay, and it wouldn't have mattered to me if its gameplay was successful and stuck around for futher sequels) but rather those were the titles that influenced numerous games after that in the biggest ways. Beyond those two games though I think people are a little too obsessed with further compartmentalizing the series which is funny to me since a lot of people complain about Sega canonizing the divide between classic and modern Sonic, too.

In the end I try not thinking about that nearly as much as what future games can do to stand out while learning from what worked and what didn't from past games, and it's because of that that I don't think about eras at all. I think the next Sonic game can learn just as much from Sonic 1 and Sonic 3 as it can from Unleashed, Lost World, and Forces.

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4 hours ago, Sean said:

I don't consider Sonic Lost World to be an attempt to start a new "era" even though it had radically different gameplay

I'm curious if they intended the Lost World formula as a one-off thing right from the start regardless how it would be accepted, or were they experimenting with changing the formula for the series going forward, but the bad reception made them fall back to the boost formula with the next game.

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