Sonic Rangers Predictions...

[Blue Blood]

Just now, Whatever the WhoCares said:

I would actually not at all mind if the Switch version had an entirely different art style. Cel shading or something. 

I think that's asking a lot; in practice, that would essentially mean close to double the assets required to make the game, a whole different lighting system, and dividing up resources to making the visuals for a game twice. Not to mention it would really change up the atmosphere, tone and entire image of the game. There's a reason that this isn't a common practice.

[PickleBrows]

Gonna go with the assumption that Rangers will be open world here, that's pretty much a worst case scenario for how the Switch might affect the scope of the game. BOTW is obviously exclusive to Switch but I think Immortals Fenyx Rising is a good one to look at.



On Switch, the game's world and general artstyle is kept in tact, with reduced draw distance, particle effects, texture quality and additional world dressing. 

Realistically I think the main target platforms for Rangers will be PS4 and Xbox One, the game's seemingly been in development for too long for that not to be the case. Sonic Forces was nowhere near pushing the power of those consoles before so there's still plenty of untapped scope for them to work in. A lot of open world games do tend to run at 30fps on the previous gen so I think Rangers may see a return to that unfortunately.

For the Switch version I think we'll see a downgrade akin to Immortals. If they couldn't get Sonic Forces running on Switch without making the sacrifices they did then I absolutely expect the same and more for Rangers. I'm personally expecting quite a few jaggies and low-poly assets on show, especially in handheld mode. 

PS5 and Series X I'd hope for 60fps, even if it has to come in a performance mode like Insomniac's recent titles as well as a near-elimination of whatever loading is neccessary on the previous gen.

[Soniman]

I really hope they port "down" a la Crash 4 instead of port "up" I just don't wanna see what could be a grand scope for a Sonic game held back because of hardware limitations that don't need to exist anymore 

[Blue Blood]

29 minutes ago, Soniman said:

I really hope they port "down" a la Crash 4 instead of port "up" I just don't wanna see what could be a grand scope for a Sonic game held back because of hardware limitations that don't need to exist anymore 

So Crash 4 I guess was made for higher end consoles and ported down to Switch after it had already been released on everything else. Development on the Switch version probably didn't start until long after the game had gone gold on other platforms. Wikipedia tells me that the XB1/PS4 version launched in October 2020 whilst the Switch and next-gen versions came out six months later.

Sonic is almost certainly never going to get such release set up. They're going to develop the game for all platforms concurrently, which means that they'll be considering the Switch all the way through development. It doesn't necessarily mean that the game will be held back in any way by being on the Switch, but I guess it's very likely. I hope that the game is almost finished on the more powerful platforms before they start properly working on the Switch version, or that another studio is brought in to handle porting the Switch version. 

Remember when Mania was announced and it wasn't coming to the Switch (then known as the NX) even though Forces was? They eventually realised how insane a decision that was and hired Tantalus to handle the Switch port so that the core development team weren't spread to thin. SEGA have also used other studios to manage PC ports of Sonic games in the past; Devil's Details did Generations PC whilst SEGA Hardlight did Forces PC. I've forgotten who was responsible Lost World PC (and tbh they probably want to remain anonymous for such shoddy work). That would probably get the best results for the Switch game.

[VO.SUPER]

I dont think the Switch will hold back Rangers as much just because of how early the Dev cycle was. This game certainly wasn't made with the PS5 /Series X in mind. 

Now granted for the game after, then yeah it will a big hindrance. 

A Switch Pro couldn't come sooner. 

[Sonikko]

1 hour ago, Blue Blood said:

So Crash 4 I guess was made for higher end consoles and ported down to Switch after it had already been released on everything else. Development on the Switch version probably didn't start until long after the game had gone gold on other platforms. Wikipedia tells me that the XB1/PS4 version launched in October 2020 whilst the Switch and next-gen versions came out six months later.

Sonic is almost certainly never going to get such release set up. They're going to develop the game for all platforms concurrently, which means that they'll be considering the Switch all the way through development. It doesn't necessarily mean that the game will be held back in any way by being on the Switch, but I guess it's very likely. I hope that the game is almost finished on the more powerful platforms before they start properly working on the Switch version, or that another studio is brought in to handle porting the Switch version. 

Remember when Mania was announced and it wasn't coming to the Switch (then known as the NX) even though Forces was? They eventually realised how insane a decision that was and hired Tantalus to handle the Switch port so that the core development team weren't spread to thin. SEGA have also used other studios to manage PC ports of Sonic games in the past; Devil's Details did Generations PC whilst SEGA Hardlight did Forces PC. I've forgotten who was responsible Lost World PC (and tbh they probably want to remain anonymous for such shoddy work). That would probably get the best results for the Switch game.

I think Mania not being confirmed on the NX had more to do with Nintendo not having handed them Dev Kits yet, rather than SEGA not wanting it out on the platform.

 

As for Rangers, I am actually quite pleased with the Switch port Forces had, it has its limitations that's for sure, but considering how the game performance scales on the home consoles and my own pc as well (GTX 1060, i5 6600, it can basically hold 60fps at 1080p but can't push further than that, when I can run Generations at 4k with hires shadows), I'd say that the Switch version's performance makes sense.

Also, I do appreciate the port "down" strategy, rather than having something that looks like The Witcher 3 on Switch. I'd rather have lower poly counts on geometry than something that looks like it really wasn't meant to run on the hardware.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that the game is being developed primarily for PS4 as most multiplats are currently, even Colours Ultimate, so if that's their target performance, a Switch port down wouldn't be out of the picture and pretty functional at that. I just expect 30fps, lower poly counts and the usual stuff.

Lost World PC was SEGA of Europe iirc, and while the port is quite shoddy, it still holds 4k/60fps on my system fine. Also let's not forget that the Switch is able to run Odyssey at 60fps, BoTW at 30fps but BoTW 2 seems to run at 60 from the trailers and a bunch of other impressive games.

Rangers will be fine, I doubt we'll see a next-gen looking Sonic game before 2025.

[A_W]

2 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

I think that's asking a lot; in practice, that would essentially mean close to double the assets required to make the game, a whole different lighting system, and dividing up resources to making the visuals for a game twice. Not to mention it would really change up the atmosphere, tone and entire image of the game. There's a reason that this isn't a common practice.

Actually, SEGA's pretty much already done something like what @Whatever the WhoCares suggested, and it didn't involve them doubling up on assets. Project Diva Megamix, a Switch game, uses the exact same base models and textures as the arcade and PS4 game, Project Diva Future Tone; the major difference is only in the shader used. The new shader uses all the same data that already exists for the PVs and character models, including lighting, but uses it to give the game a brighter, cell-shaded look that's less performance-intensive. People pretty quickly modded it to get the old, more realistic shader back, and the performance hit is very noticeable in some songs, like at the end of Teo when the sun rises (toon, non-toon).

Of course, it does drastically change the look of the PVs like you said, and not really for the better, and the game also relies on other tricks like dynamic resolution which still aren't enough to keep it at a high framerate for really intense parts like the ending of Senbonzakura, so this isn't the greatest example... but it does show that the option is there and cheap to do if they want to squeeze a bit more performance out of the Switch.

[Blue Blood]

5 minutes ago, A_W said:

Actually, SEGA's pretty much already done something like what @Whatever the WhoCares suggested, and it didn't involve them doubling up on assets. Project Diva Megamix, a Switch game, uses the exact same base models and textures as the arcade and PS4 game, Project Diva Future Tone; the major difference is only in the shader used. The new shader uses all the same data that already exists for the PVs and character models, including lighting, but uses it to give the game a brighter, cell-shaded look that's less performance-intensive. People pretty quickly modded it to get the old, more realistic shader back, and the performance hit is very noticeable in some songs, like at the end of Teo when the sun rises (toon, non-toon).

Of course, it does drastically change the look of the PVs like you said, and not really for the better, and the game also relies on other tricks like dynamic resolution which still aren't enough to keep it at a high framerate for really intense parts like the ending of Senbonzakura, so this isn't the greatest example... but it does show that the option is there and cheap to do if they want to squeeze a bit more performance out of the Switch.

You're comparing apples and oranges though. One is a rhythm game with limited player control over environments, camera angles and the action going on, and the other is a full 3D platformer that is likely an open world adventure at that. It would take much more work to give an open world 3D platformer a visual makeover. It's not impossible, but it's not likely. I'd be down for a different art style over a uglier version of the same game that runs poorly. 

 

33 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

I think Mania not being confirmed on the NX had more to do with Nintendo not having handed them Dev Kits yet, rather than SEGA not wanting it out on the platform.

SEGA had access to the dev kits. They were already developing Forces for Switch. But it was just a small group of indies across the world that were working on Mania. SEGA hadn't just not announced a Switch version at the time. They got an entire separate studio to make the port, and created a new SKU for the collectors edition on Switch. 

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Another possibility is that it’s a Switch Pro exclusive, and they just haven’t announced it. 

[StellarBlur]

To be fair, we never actually saw a "next-gen" Sonic game for the ps4/x1. I doubt Sonic Forces pushed those consoles in the same way Unleashed and even Generations pushed the ps3/360. I think Rangers will be the next-gen Sonic game we never got after Generations. The ps5/xsx game will come in another 4-5 years I guess.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

It’s not the “open world” aspect of the game that has me questioning its viability on Switch, it’s the “speedy open-world” thing. Honestly if a friggin Sonic game were in development and you told me that ONLY next-gen consoles could handle it, I’d believe you. I get that the Switch compromises resolution a lot in order to maintain parity in poly counts, but even then, from like a GPU standpoint, how the hell can this console handle an open world Sonic game. 

[VO.SUPER]

I mean, if it was boost speed, I doubt it could. The switch has issues loading up areas if you go a fast enough speed as is. I've seen BoTW speedruns that run into this issue. 

However, if this was maybe Adventure speed I believe it would be possible. The biggest thing the devs would need to do is cheat the terrain. Don't make the environment horizontally big, but take advantage of vertical geometry so that there isn't that much loading involved. 

Even if the world isn't as big as say Hyrule or a Ubisoft open world, it can make up for it with density of things around. Thats one way to work it out. 

[DrParadise]

5 hours ago, Sonikko said:

I think Mania not being confirmed on the NX had more to do with Nintendo not having handed them Dev Kits yet, rather than SEGA not wanting it out on the platform.

 

As for Rangers, I am actually quite pleased with the Switch port Forces had, it has its limitations that's for sure, but considering how the game performance scales on the home consoles and my own pc as well (GTX 1060, i5 6600, it can basically hold 60fps at 1080p but can't push further than that, when I can run Generations at 4k with hires shadows), I'd say that the Switch version's performance makes sense.

Also, I do appreciate the port "down" strategy, rather than having something that looks like The Witcher 3 on Switch. I'd rather have lower poly counts on geometry than something that looks like it really wasn't meant to run on the hardware.

I'm gonna take a wild guess and say that the game is being developed primarily for PS4 as most multiplats are currently, even Colours Ultimate, so if that's their target performance, a Switch port down wouldn't be out of the picture and pretty functional at that. I just expect 30fps, lower poly counts and the usual stuff.

Lost World PC was SEGA of Europe iirc, and while the port is quite shoddy, it still holds 4k/60fps on my system fine. Also let's not forget that the Switch is able to run Odyssey at 60fps, BoTW at 30fps but BoTW 2 seems to run at 60 from the trailers and a bunch of other impressive games.

Rangers will be fine, I doubt we'll see a next-gen looking Sonic game before 2025.

We need to consider this: Forces on Switch was a 2017 port aka the launch year of the console (a handheld that's also works as a home console btw), historically ports on nintendo consoles in the launch year are very poor in performance (look up 2011 3ds ports), its compromised but that's to be expected plenty of 2017 switch ports are like that (Dragon Quest Heroes comes to mind) 

My god I just read the replies, Jesus Christ this is so dumb.

Anyway my take its that it makes perfect sense for open world sonic to be a thing, after the criticisms on forces linear level design going open world seems like the way to counter those complains, I don't get adventure fans getting miserable over this since linearity has been a something you guys hate about the boost games, wasn't exploration a big thing you guys wanted for years? Isn't what you praised for with Utopia and GT? I mean the level design in Unleashed its no different than the one in SA2, the only difference its that the former has 2d sections.

I just want to be suprised, honestly even tho I really like sonic I dont think its worth trying to think that sonic is AAA when AAA games are always look down upon (EA and Cyberpunk as examples)

14 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

The Meta era is made out many different things. Things that aren't inherently bad.
Things that occasionaly happened in earlier Sonic games too.
Perfectly fine, innocent things, when treated with care.
But they weren't treated with care, Sega wore them on their sleeves. And then they tore of their sleeves, put it on a hammer and smashed my skull in with it.

-The 4th wall jokes (It's been GENERATIONS SINCE I'VE SEEN YOU!
-The lack of energy and earnest, all cutscenes are characters yapping for 10 minutes, standing around like a sack of potatoes while circus music plays.
- The lack of indepth character writing or world building. Everything feels shallow.
-The Fanservice that feels disconnected, Green Hill Zone being in the wrong place, Knuckles randomly being a militairy leader, etc.


That's what makes it feel meta. Scared to be earnest and make it feel real, we stay on a surface level, dangle around fanservice and self awareness to fill the gaps.

There's a lot of minor pet peeves, but the greatest issue is this:
I miss earnest "YEAH LEt'S DO IT!" attitude of the earlier games.
Kinda baffles me when Sonic Colors is called the Cheesy one. No no, the older Sonic games were cheesy. "We'RE SONIC HEROES, WHOO!" is cheesy.
Colors is SMUG. "Sonic and Tails go on a 10 minute comedy routine about how cliché and stupid a thrilling climax is before the thrilling climax begins" smug.
Darn shame, because the epic music and the concept of Sonic racing down the elevator of a collapsing themepark is awesome, but the tone of it just destroys it. That Smug self destructive attitude.

This is what I think the meta era's biggest problem is.
It's so busy poking fun at itself, being embarresed about it's history, that the energy and soul is just gone.
I no longer see characters having adventures, I see writers and their lazy attempts to remedy story problems by desperatly juggling fanservice around.

Roger you have made for more than 15 years Sonic animations with humor and tone no better than the official games, how many meta jokes are they in your own work? 

[Soniman]

41 minutes ago, DrParadise said:

Anyway my take its that it makes perfect sense for open world sonic to be a thing, after the criticisms on forces linear level design going open world seems like the way to counter those complains, I don't get adventure fans getting miserable over this since linearity has been a something you guys hate about the boost games, wasn't exploration a big thing you guys wanted for years? Isn't what you praised for with Utopia and GT? I mean the level design in Unleashed its no different than the one in SA2, the only difference its that the former has 2d sections.

1: We haven't seen anything about the game therefore there's nothing to get excited over 

2: Sonic Team has cultivated a reputation the past ten years of being hack developers with their recent 3D outings doing nothing to inspire confidence in this ambitious idea. Even if the idea is nice on paper the execution remains to be seen 

Fans will be happy when their given a reason to be happy. It's like asking  why we should be hard on Forces' crap writing because it's superficially darker and more serious then the last few games and "that's what we wanted" when it's obvious it's not 

[Diogenes]

47 minutes ago, DrParadise said:

Anyway my take its that it makes perfect sense for open world sonic to be a thing, after the criticisms on forces linear level design going open world seems like the way to counter those complains, I don't get adventure fans getting miserable over this since linearity has been a something you guys hate about the boost games, wasn't exploration a big thing you guys wanted for years? Isn't what you praised for with Utopia and GT? I mean the level design in Unleashed its no different than the one in SA2, the only difference its that the former has 2d sections.

More than 2 kinds of game exist. That Forces was excessively linear doesn't mean that the inverse, fully open-world gameplay, is the right direction for the series. It's possible to break away from Forces' linearity, widen the playable space and let Sonic move freely between paths rather than being constrained to exactly the lines developers want you on, while still having an overall linear level flow, with a clear start and end and a winding path between them, much as the Genesis games had a large number of interwoven paths while still having a clear sense of direction. When people complain about the linearity in 3D Sonic, I think that's usually more what they're aiming for than open world gameplay.

[DrParadise]

44 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

More than 2 kinds of game exist. That Forces was excessively linear doesn't mean that the inverse, fully open-world gameplay, is the right direction for the series. It's possible to break away from Forces' linearity, widen the playable space and let Sonic move freely between paths rather than being constrained to exactly the lines developers want you on, while still having an overall linear level flow, with a clear start and end and a winding path between them, much as the Genesis games had a large number of interwoven paths while still having a clear sense of direction. When people complain about the linearity in 3D Sonic, I think that's usually more what they're aiming for than open world gameplay.

So, you want open linear levels?

[Diogenes]

That is one way to put it, I guess.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

More than 2 kinds of game exist. That Forces was excessively linear doesn't mean that the inverse, fully open-world gameplay, is the right direction for the series. It's possible to break away from Forces' linearity, widen the playable space and let Sonic move freely between paths rather than being constrained to exactly the lines developers want you on, while still having an overall linear level flow, with a clear start and end and a winding path between them, much as the Genesis games had a large number of interwoven paths while still having a clear sense of direction. When people complain about the linearity in 3D Sonic, I think that's usually more what they're aiming for than open world gameplay.

Adding to this, it’s not even necessarily about branching paths. The overall direction can be linear without the EXPERIENCE being linear, as long as you give the player some spaces to wander around in, fight enemies, solve puzzles, and find goodies. Emerald Coast is a great example of this, where there really aren’t many path choices, but there are plenty of spots where it feels pertinent to just take a little pit stop for some power-ups and Chao-animals. 

[Zoomzeta]

Well these conversations are dragging on. Why don't we just wait till we get a more concrete trailer showing actual game footage, and based our opinions and observations on that? Because right now, we are going in circles talking about stuff we said a month ago, and even before that.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

14 hours ago, Zoomzeta said:

Well these conversations are dragging on. Why don't we just wait till we get a more concrete trailer showing actual game footage, and based our opinions and observations on that? Because right now, we are going in circles talking about stuff we said a month ago, and even before that.

Nah, this is fun. 

[Zoomzeta]

59 minutes ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

Nah, this is fun. 

I appreciate you chaotic energy at least

[VO.SUPER]

https://boards.4channel.org/v/thread/561578174

I know, I know, "lol 4chan."

A new rumor was posted. Me being as gullible as ever would like for this to be real. 

If it was real, id say this seems less like a departure from what we know Sonic for and more like a reinterpretation of hub worlds with act structures. 

The idea of the Chaos Emeralds individually having properties outside of just giving mass power would be something very interesting to explore as a concept. 

And, please endulge me on this one, we were teased earlier by Ian Flynn that the Chaos Emeralds origins are going to be revealed. Its possible that this game would take the chance to recontextualize them in the world of Sonic. 

I'm not getting my hopes up that its real, but I can at least think that it would be a good idea for a game.

(The pic doesn't convince me. Don't let's be silly. Anyone can photoshop those.) 

[azoo]

Definitely not real.

There's no mention of the ghost girl, the rock creatures or anything when referring to the story. No mention of the skill tree or it's abilities, which can't be written off as a scrapped idea since one of said moves is shown in the teaser trailer. Bowser's Fury esque islands are definitely not "open world" in the sense the original leaks implied, this was specifically mentioned to be a BotW affair. 

In fact the "islands" bit and the Chaos Emerald abilities just sound like Sonic Islands, a fan game a friend of mine worked on (and I beta tested). 

But the biggest thing to confirm it's not real is the person calling Forces a "travesty". No one outside of the fanbase even remembers Forces, let alone has strong opinions of it. This is likely just someone dreaming of a fun idea for a Sonic game and trying to pass their modeling friend's work as real.

Spoiler

Under the circumstance that it IS real, I WILL drink water

 

[VO.SUPER]

16 minutes ago, azoo said:

Definitely not real.

There's no mention of the ghost girl, the rock creatures or anything when referring to the story. No mention of the skill tree or it's abilities, which can't be written off as a scrapped idea since one of said moves is shown in the teaser trailer. Bowser's Fury esque islands are definitely not "open world" in the sense the original leaks implied, this was specifically mentioned to be a BotW affair. 

In fact the "islands" bit and the Chaos Emerald abilities just sound like Sonic Islands, a fan game a friend of mine worked on (and I beta tested). 

But the biggest thing to confirm it's not real is the person calling Forces a "travesty". No one outside of the fanbase even remembers Forces, let alone has strong opinions of it. This is likely just someone dreaming of a fun idea for a Sonic game and trying to pass their modeling friend's work as real.

  Reveal hidden contents

Under the circumstance that it IS real, I WILL drink water

 

Yeah, the first half makes sense. Unless this demo only was meant to highlight the features of the world itself, missing the primary skill tree would be confusing. 

I guess before immediately dismissing (not like there is much else to talk about), what would the purpose of having demos with stripped features be? Unless it was to test a certain other aspect of the game. 

In the part I disagree with, I think Bowser's Fury is still a proper open world, just smaller than most because you still have basically the ability to free roam bit by bit in any order. I dont think some water separating landmass would immediately dismiss it as an open world. 

In fact, if Rangers did use Islands vs standard biomes, that could actually be a very clever way to mask loading times and to at least accommodate Sonic's speed, provided he ran over the water. But that is a hypothetical scenario and not on the point of the rumor itself. 

[Razule]

Quote

You could change Sonic's appearance, he could wear his Soap Shoes, Riders getup, Chip's bracelet and some recolored default gloves/shoes.

Fake. This is too fanservice-y.