Could a character action game work for this franchise?

[Dejimon11]

It's been a while since I started a thread here huh? 

I saw this video a few days ago and I figured it could warrant a fun discussion. While I don't agree with everything he says like the no weapons for Sonic and in terms of switching characters would be like switching styles from DMC3 in a Sonic Heroes way(God no). Plus people here like @Wraith and @Kuzu have pointed out that Sonic and DMC have parallels so why not the extra mile. 

 

 

[Wraith]

I've always had a hard time wrapping my head around this idea because Sonic having an intricate set of moves, techniques and weapons never seemed to fit his approach of just ramming into shit as hard as he could. This video warmed me up to the idea that that could be the point: It would be a simplified action game for the kiddies so Sonic being kinda mash friendly would help them warm up to this type of game. 

But when I imagine this type of game being made truly in the style of the all time action greats, it's pretty obvious which character should be the star.



Shadow already has no qualms about using melee weapons and vehicles. Shadow has access to his own projectile to circumvent the need for firearms. Shadow has abilities that distort space time for slow motion attacks and dodges, allow for crowd control and other shit. Shadow can do parries with his bracelets, wonder women style. Not to mention he has his own built in devil trigger by means of taking his bracelets off. Shadow's chaos techniques have also varied by game so you can make up any moves you want to fill in gaps in his playstyle.

So if, say Sonic and Shadow were both playable in the game you can make Sonic the 'Nero' character that promotes, imprecise, aggressive play and Shadow as the 'Dante' who has a wider range of moves and techniques at the cost of being harder for players to wrap their head around. One character for the babies and one for those of us who live and breathe this type of game. If you were to follow the logic of this game not fitting Sonic at all though you can just replace him with Blaze and give me everything I want. That'd be cool.

This would put a pretty big wrench in the team idea but IMO this youtuber is severely overestimating how much work it takes to get even one character working in these types of games. Two or three would suffice. Maybe four if they wanted to stretch it. 

If I were going purely based off of who could grant the most variety in playstyles Silver instantly comes to mind as a nice way to round things out. Sonic and Shadow would be fairly close ranged brawlers so a slower, more methodical ranged fighter seems like a good fit to me. We'd also get some of that 06 trio shit going in a game that isn't awful.

This game would also probably need more of it's own story and lore to go along with things. Probably a new enemy to necessitate a new reliance on technical combat and weapons. I'll give that some more thought. 

I don't want Platinum games to be the devs though because they suck at making action games now. give me itsuno or riot.

[DryLagoon]

If it's an excuse to have a ton of playable characters again and be fun to play as them, sure why not. The Dynasty Warriors crossover games always gave me that impression, so even if it was more button mashy than usual Sonic game play I think it could work if done right. Silver, Blaze, Knuckles, Tails, Eggman, Shadow, Infinite, Chaos, and so on. Characters that would less likely get a chance to be playable in a main title recently. Maybe even some more obscure characters too.

[Shadowlax]

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I don't want Platinum games to be the devs though because they suck at making action games now. give me itsuno or riot.

I wouldn't say they suck. Because they have games I do like one in particular that I think would play into that. But itsuno in one game that game being DMC5 went " I am the king of this shit " .

That said if it had to be platinum. A game with shadow , that played like revengence would be kind of tight

[Diogenes]

I mentioned this when it came up in the statuses, but I'd be a bit worried about how well this kind of game would work with Sonic character designs, because they're so short and stubby and very few of the characters use weapons. I'd imagine it'd be tricky for an unarmed 3 foot tall hedgehog to match the kind of reach and area control of a full grown man with a big sword; more exaggerated squash and stretch could help, but there's still a limit even for Sonic characters before it would start to look ridiculous. It's not necessarily an unsolvable problem, but it would probably be something they'd need to deliberately address.

Otherwise, if there's a competent developer who thinks they could pull it off, I'd be interested in seeing it. Sonic's got (or at least, should have) the kind of personality and sense of style to carry that sort of game, and it'd be a better option than trying to force combat into a main-series platformer, werehog-style. Just be smart about it and find the right tone and feel for a Sonic game instead of trying to directly chase DMC or Bayo or whichever; the series has enough identity problems.

[Wraith]

2 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

I wouldn't say they suck. Because they have games I do like one in particular that I think would play into that. But itsuno in one game that game being DMC5 went " I am the king of this shit " .

That said if it had to be platinum. A game with shadow , that played like revengence would be kind of tight

Devil May Cry 5 spoiled me so much that I can't get much enjoyment out of Platinum's recent titles. Idk what exactly changed with them but it's like they lost their sense for this kind of thing. 

If we were still talking about early 2010s Platinum I would be on board. MGR is one of my favorite action games even with it's shortcomings.

I think Devil May Cry or Bayonetta would be better starting points though because those games more firmly encourage movement while Metal Gear Rising is deliberately designed around encouraging you to stand your ground no matter what. 

[The Deleter]

I haven't watched the full video yet, and am kinda rough on remembering the meta of each of Platinum's games exactly right now, but ever since Transformers Devestation came out I've been saying this. The emphasis on transforming to dash, close the distance, and attack all at once sets the perfect stage for a Sonic-based enemy design, and the focus on melee attacks, the enemy's ability to ignore/parry that and throttle you if you got careless, and the close-range fisticuffing that came with it always had mad potential for a Sonic-based action game imo

The main problem with Devastation is that the melee wasn't exactly distinct with it's moveset, and it was kind of unpolished with what staggered enemies, what they would parry against, and in general just following the basic combos all other platinum games had that came before it, when it really should have branched off to become more distinctly it's own thing. It's the metagame of the windows where the enemy is open for split seconds due to your speed and range you can cover, the attacks being suited for specific openings like frontal bodyslams, dodging into the enemy to dive underneath, body slamming from above, or just the right kinds of combos to keep the enemy off balance in their own way that made the melee have so much potential.

For example, Blitzwing is an enemy that basically never staggers in the game, and if you're playing with the wrong character on the hardest difficulty, you're kinda screwed unless you're astronomically precise with the dodge while managing your combos and expecting his parry pushes from the timing, kinda brute forcing your way through the fight through memorization. The ranged weapons are the best bet for dealing with him quickly iirc, but if you picked a character class that was heavier than him that could actually grab and throttle him, like Grimlock, or speedier than him, like Sideswipe or Bumblebee, you could add their specific tactics to the fight to make the melee more managable and more exploitable.

Problem is I agree that the parry move probably shouldn't activate witch time like he says, as that also made Devestation simpler than it needed to be, feeling more like a copy of Bayonetta when it could have been more it's own thing, and more intense in the process, but I dunno how to do that without being slightly unforgiving to new players. It'd be like asking them to play a decent match of a fighting game for the first time and immediately grasp how useful invincibility frames are, rather than an entire window of time where they know they can go to town. Witch time makes the system easier to understand, but it's just that: too easy after a point, and can simplify melee to "I'll just wait for witch time to activate again" as the winning strategy.

[Moose the Cat]

I'm not sure about Platinum and that approach specifically, and I really disliked the Bayonetta games, but I DO think a Sonic beat-em-up button masher action game could 100% work as a spin off. Revive the "Sonic Battle" and/or "Sonic the Fighters" name (and re-release the originals)

The original idea for Sonic Unleashed, iirc, had Knuckles doing the fighting levels instead of Werehog. I think it would've gone over a lot better, all else being the same with the game's faults. Simply adding brightness and color and personality to those fighting stages, and not having a corny werewolf sonic but instead having a Sonic and Knuckles team-up, I think that would get a very different reaction.

Sonic the Battle Fighters should be built for Co-op,... ideally on couch, or online, or CPU as partner... 2-4 characters share the screen. You beat up a lot of robots. Three buttons - jump, attack, special.  

Add versus matches, like an online version of Powerstone but Sonic, and... that's a huge hit.

[Shadowlax]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

Devil May Cry 5 spoiled me so much that I can't get much enjoyment out of Platinum's recent titles. Idk what exactly changed with them but it's like they lost their sense for this kind of thing. 

A bunch of thier staff went to do other shit. A lot of them went back to capcom. They are working on RE4 remake rn. ( they were also gonna make a new okami, that shit fell through unfortunately)

But no yeah DMC5 is a game so good it made me look critically at what I have been playing since dmc4 and a lot of it wasn't up to snuff. Itsuno knows his shit

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

If we were still talking about early 2010s Platinum I would be on board. MGR is one of my favorite action games even with it's shortcomings.

 

Fair enough

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

I think Devil May Cry or Bayonetta would be better starting points though because those games more firmly encourage movement while Metal Gear Rising is deliberately designed around encouraging you to stand your ground no matter what. 

I guess i'm thinking more of a zandatsu type system. Like In my brain i'm imaging shadow do chaos control like zandatsu instead of getting sliced, he applies force, and you can essentially do combos into walls, other enmies into other instances of chaos control. And that would be a tool he could use, I guess that's why I said revengce. But DMC would probably be better. Espically considering shadow's moveset is just dante but with vergil's teleport and summon swords.

[DabigRG]

What is that actually? I've heard the term before and have probably played a few, but don't have muxh grasp on the definition.

[Wraith]

9 hours ago, DabigRG said:

What is that actually? I've heard the term before and have probably played a few, but don't have muxh grasp on the definition.

A character action game, or a stylish action game or, as I like to refer to them, an action game is a game focused on in depth combat encounters with everything else about the game being in service of that. Explosive, expressive combat with larger than life characters punishing difficulty, and arcadey game design made to encourage you to play again and again and again for the best score. 

They're distinct from games like god of war and Kingdom Hearts due to having a higher overall execution barrier. It takes a little bit of practice to do more than the most basic of combos in Devil May Cry for instance compared to the vast web of options Sora has available to him at the press of a button. The character you control usually has a dense web of optional attacks that you have to work to unlock and practice to learn how to use properly.

The reward comes from just how cool you can make your character look by mastering the game's hidden depth. 

Some examples are Devil May Cry, Bayonetta, the newer Ninja Gaiden titles and most of Platinum's licensed games. 
 

13 hours ago, Shadowlax said:

 

I guess i'm thinking more of a zandatsu type system. Like In my brain i'm imaging shadow do chaos control like zandatsu instead of getting sliced, he applies force, and you can essentially do combos into walls, other enmies into other instances of chaos control. And that would be a tool he could use, I guess that's why I said revengce. But DMC would probably be better. Espically considering shadow's moveset is just dante but with vergil's teleport and summon swords.

The way I was thinking of using Chaos control was more of a roman cancel type system where Shadow can slow down time on command, probably by spending a resource before extending a combo or juggle with it.

[DabigRG]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

A character action game, or a stylish action game or, as I like to refer to them, an action game 

Kyeh, I'm glad Im also seeing the blanket nature of the term.

But yeah, I wanna say I've played at least one 

[Kuzu]

OOOOH BABY.

I always really did draw parallels between these franchises, but that video did kind of open my eyes on the biggest hurdle of this: it's very far outside of Sonic's target demographic, and the higher difficulty has potential to turn off young players. The games are already cutting corners to make things easy, and Sonic tends to get a lot of shit for being unforgiving towards players. 

The easiest solution to that would obviously to have it star another character like Shadow, but Sega are insecure jackasses and would attach Sonic's face to a game like this no matter what. So you have to find some level of compromise between having the combat be simple enough to engage with young people,  or and having it engaging enough for it to live up to being an Action-game, while still having the game keep its identity as a Sonic game rather than Sonic wearing a Bayonetta/DMC skin. 

I do like his idea of using characters akin to the style system however; it fits in line with Sonic Heroes, and expands on the movesets without needing to give Sonic a weapon.

[BadBehavior]

Snort! Sonic Shorts came up with it first! (Relevent short begins at 1:10)

All jokes aside, it's certainly a novel idea and heaven knows Sonic needs a bit of novelty after playing it safe for so long. Heck, everyones talking about a DMC style technical brawler, but I'd even take a Musou style game. Rooms for tons of characters, no complaints about "shitty friends with different control schemes" since all Musou characters play the same, and Sonic Forces already provided a template for fighting waves of enemies (eggman robots) to defend and capture territory (the planet).