Would you take an Unleashed remaster if it was done like Colors Ult.?

[KHCast]

There’s been a lot of talk about how Colors Ultimate is looking to be a disappointment (which I agree with personally), and people have gotten to bringing up how they may feel relieved Unleashed dodged a bullet. Figured I’d make a topic to flesh out discussion on this hypothetical. Would you guys still be down for a Unleashed remaster done similarly to Colors Remastered, or would you rather it stay on 360/PS3? 

[Wraith]

No.

Thankfully, judging by the reaction Unleashed got on the summer of gaming stream we'll never have to worry about this.

[SenEDDtor Missile]

If they're willing to half-ass/put all the focus in the wrong places for remastering a game that was relatively well received (even if it brought a lot of bad habits to the franchise) like Colors, I REALLY don't like the idea of them trying to do the same for a game that had a polarizing reputation and only relatively recently became somewhat vindicated, especially a game that has a lot of sentimental value to me.

[KHCast]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

No.

Thankfully, judging by the reaction Unleashed got on the summer of gaming stream we'll never have to worry about this.

Wait was it that bad? You’d have thought them showing the daytime sonic gameplay during that would have at least softened the blow 

[Blue Blood]

Even though @Wraith has already said pretty much everything that needed to be said on the matter and raises some excellent points, I have a couple of things to add.

Unleashed is flawed. It's very, very flawed. But it's a very good game too, and was judged far too harshly by critics and a lot of the wider gaming community when it was new. Also it had performance issues, but I'm going to gloss over that because they should by all expectations be gone in any port/remaster. The game only found favour with the dedicated fans and the younger audience, whilst everyone else wrote it off for the inclusion of the Werehog. Now the Werehog is problem because of how much time it takes up and how it negatively contrasts with the faster, more traditional (and more fun) daytime gameplay. It's just a strange part of the game that gets in the way of why many people would want to play Sonic. That gameplay style had never been seen in the series before and has never been seen since. It didn't play remotely like a Sonic game. But it's there, you can't make it go away now, it's actually not awful and it can be improved. 

The medals and progression systems were also unsuitable for Unleashed. You had to explore during all the levels to find these medals that were mandatory to unlock subsequent levels. And sometimes, new levels arbitrarily wouldn't unlock until you visited Professor Pickle and he told you to go to said level, even though you had met all other requirements. You could walk up to a gate with all the medals needed and previous levels cleared, but you wouldn't be able to go in because Pickle hadn't explicitly said so. It was asinine. The game was also littered with optional collectables in the form of art books, records and video tapes, but it forced you to go out of your way to collect medals too. That wasn't an egregious task in the Werehog stages that were slower and more suited to exploration. In the day time stages however, it completely went against how the game otherwise played. What's the point in optional collectables that are practically no different to the mandatory ones? 

So if Unleashed was ever to get the remaster treatment, this is what I think needs to happen:

1. The Werehog needs to start off with better base stats, so that combat encounters aren't so drawn out by such long periods of button mashing. He needs higher strength and more combos available from the start.
2. Some of combat encounters in the Werehog levels need to be removed. It often feels like you can't move 10ft or activate a single switch without a new fight starting. Some encounters should have the number of enemies/waves of enemies reduced by half.
3. In addition to some fights being removed/reduced, many others should be made optional; don't lock the player into an arena every time that enemies are near by. Give them a choice to engage in combat for points and safer exploration, but don't necessitate every fight. 
4. The Werehog battle music needs to stop. It should be used sparingly for just a couple of specific, longer fights. The regular stage music should continue uninterrupted for most fights.
5. Medals should not be required to unlock mandatory levels. They should only be used for unlocking the optional acts.
6. It should be made clear to the player which mandatory levels are open to be explored next. A simple on-screen check-list viewable on the world map and within the hubs would be nice. It would just be 2 or 3 lines long in the upper sight of the screen, with each line listing  a single task like "explore Spagonia during the day time" and "open the boss gate in Adabat". Items would get cleared off the list as you completed them, and new lines added.
7. Optional collectables should be kept, but they need a proper tracking system. Similar to the Red Ring counter in Colours, every collectable (medals, tapes, records, books) should be given a unique spot on the HUD (when paused) and menu screen. This way you would have a rough idea of where to look in the levels. In its current state, Unleashed only tells you that you've collected a certain number of medals in a level, but not which ones. Instead of saying "6/7 sun medals", it should show you that you've collected #1, 2, 3, 4, 6 and 7, which means that you need #5 still and know that it's between #6 and 7.

And a few last bonus points about controls unrelated to everything else but every bit as important:

• Sonic's controls ought to be tightened up a bit, as he's too slippery. I think that Unleashed actually controls better than any 3D Sonic game to come out since, with Sonic actually responding to left/right inputs on ground and in the air (seriously, Colours, Generations and especially Forces are dreadful the moment you try to do anything other than move forward in one direction). But damn does he move like a stick of butter in a frying pan. This includes the drift, which could be tightened up too. He needs to be snappy instead of "slidey" when changing direction, and should brake much more sharply. This actually also applies to the Werehog's run too because he slides a lot as well. And it would be nice if the Werehog could turn on the spot without taking a couple steps in any given direction. That would help a lot in tight platforming sections. Those balance beams with spikes on either side are tedious for all the wrong reasons.
• The air dash/air boost issue is also a nightmare because halfway through the game, the rules on platforming and correcting your jumps get changed. Jump + jump = air dash/homing attack. Jump + boost = air boost. Basically every other Sonic game does it this way, so I don't know why Unleashed felt the need to be special. Just speaking from my own experience here, but I always go out of my way to skip getting the air boost in Chun-Nan. It's supposed to me mandatory, but avoiding it is for the best.
• The lives system could be removed, because that's just a normal thing these days. Unleashed even made a habit of placing 1-ups in the middle of the path just before difficult sections, meaning that you were unlikely to Game Over in the game's hardest areas. The lives serve no purpose if the game is handing them out anyway.

Those issues are what I think Unleashed needs from any port or remaster. Everything is just tweaks and refinements to existing systems. I'm not advocating any major overhauls to levels and gameplay systems. The ground work is already there, the building has already been built. It just needs to be made more accommodating. The biggest change that needs to be made to the gameplay is within the Werehog levels; fewer and shorter enemy encounters, and not starting off so pathetically weak. 

Everything else about Unleashed can just be left intact. The level design is solid, the music is delightful and the visuals are the best that the series has ever seen. It may not be as advanced as Forces in the graphical department, but it looks 10 times better. A direct port at higher resolutions and 60fps would look way nicer than Colours Ultimate. I'd also welcome higher resolution textures or re-mapped texture in certain areas, as the original can look blurry and stretched at time. As I said at the start, it's a good game with some very obvious flaws. The biggest flaw is the very inclusion of the Werehog, and it's nowhere near the deal-breaker that it's made out to be. Tweaks and refinements will make the entire game better, both the Werehog and the rest of it.

Now let's look at Colours. Colours was never as good as Unleashed and it was made for much weaker hardware. But it was still a solid enough game, and it didn't have any one major issue that negatively impacted the rest of the game. Despite being on the Wii, it boasted some beautiful graphics. The soundtrack was fantastic too as you would typically expect from the series. Aside from some control tweaks and the typical graphical updates, I really don't think that much could be done to improve it. It's just fine. Freshen up the paint job and it would be good to go. That's all it needed.

And that brings us to Ultimate... Ultimate is looking like a disaster.

• The visuals are more advanced technically, at the cost of the bright, vivid and saturated colours of the original. Lighting is pre-baked and unnatural. Certain areas of level geometry have been remade with higher polygon counts, but background elements are still made up of 2D planes with artefacts and seams all over. Even the foreground in Sweet Mountain is covered in seams where textures aren't mapped correctly. Lighting is outright broken in some areas, with random objects like grass and waterfalls lit up in the middle of shadows, or the enormous water falls in TR2 sometimes being almost invisible. The appearance of the original has been neutered. It's a small technical upgrade and an enormous aesthetic downgrade
• Sonic's model is higher poly, and that's it for changes to him. Maybe the Wii would have struggled with certain techniques and animations, but that's no excuse not to include animation blending now. Watching Sonic jerk left and right when turning is awkward. His eyes aren't animated anymore in Ultimate, even though they were in the original. The boost effect is still sparks on the ground, which doesn't make any sense when jumping (that's a real nitpick, but I'm surprised that passed in both the original and Ultimate).
• The entire soundtrack has been remade. For God knows what reason, somebody decided it would be great to take the one aspect of the original that didn't need to be touched and remake it entirely from scratch. I think that some of it sounds bad, although that is just subjective. I don't think anyone is going to say that a remixed soundtrack was necessary, especially when more focus should have been put on visuals for a remaster.
• New cosmetic items have been added. Okay? Pointless, but whatever.
• The lives system has been removed and replaced with the Tails Save system. I don't have any issue with this and don't see any need to keep lives, but surely this could have been an option? The game also decided add in a bunch of new and intrusive dialogue from Tails over the top of the gameplay, telling you about enemies and pits. That's really fucking annoying and totally over bearing. 
• There's a new homing attack system, allowing you to get a boost bonus for perfect timing. This is a nice idea.
• Metal Sonic races and the Jade Wisp have been added. Sounds nice, although we haven't seen how they work yet. The races could be glorified time trials and the Jade Wisp doesn't sound like it adds much. I am just jumping the here though I'll admit, as we've yet to see how either works.
• Some strange stylistic choices have been made, including making the spring sound effect play over the top of other sound effects. It's not a huge issue, but it sounds messy. It doesn't make any sense either.
• Everything else looks the same. It does at least run better. 

Ultimate sticks its oar into the original game and really messes up shit that was perfectly adequate to begin with. For some unknown reason, it changes up things that didn't need changing and doesn't focus on the areas that should have been focused on at all. The visuals of Ultimate are just plain bad. So many bad choices have been made when it comes to them. Tropical Resort is so incredibly dark now. Even if that was intentional to make it more closely match the FMV intro and what real amusement parks look like during the night, the end result is like neither and it's ugly. Colours Ultimate really ought to be renamed "Sonic Colours DX: Director's Cut", because it's got the SADX treatment through and through. The core game is the same and the differences between the original and the remaster aren't going to make for totally different experiences though. I have to make that clear. Colours Ultimate is still fundamentally just Colours. 

The 'Ultimate' or 'SADX' treatment for Unleashed would mean botching the visuals without giving the necessary touch ups, possibly remaking the soundtrack for no good reason, adding in a couple of fairly unsubstantial new bells and whistles and completely ignoring more pressing avenues for improvement. Unleashed needs a second chance to prove itself. It didn't get a fair shot before, but it's so good and with the right improvements it could be even better. It needs those improvements to get a second chance. Can you imagine it being re-released without any real effort to raise it up, and several things that make it worse arguably than the original?

Fuck that.

 

lol I didn't mean to write a 2000 word essay on this

[Wraith]

If Sega thought Sonic Colors's difficulty needed to be tuned down, lord knows what they would do to Unleashed. Granted, there are a lot of bullshit sucker punches all over that game and you can make a sound argument that stuff like the QTEs don't really add anything but a headache for less dexterous players, but I don't trust this team to be able to tell the difference between that and an intentional challenge. They'd do shit like remove the lethality from water running entirely even though it's one of the only meter management tests in the game and is pretty easy to deal with after the first couple times.

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, KHCast said:

Wait was it that bad? You’d have thought them showing the daytime sonic gameplay during that would have at least softened the blow 

Let me put it this way: I was significantly demotivated in pushing for the 3D Sonic games to get released going by the reactions to that brief snippet of Unleashed in the chat/on twitter. Maybe people will warm up to it if they give it another chance like I did, but that's assuming they're even interested enough in buying the sonic werewolf game again to begin with.

[Diogenes]

I haven't even been convinced to buy Colors Ult, and I like Colors more than Unleashed. If I ever do get the urge to replay Unleashed I can just go back to the original, rather than paying money for a slapdash port.

[Strickerx5]

Short answer, no. Blue really nailed it on the head but to add my small 2 cents, one of the things I love about Unleashed is its attention to detail. Going off of what's going on with Ultimate, a lot of that would be snuffed out. Not to mention the many other small changes for the worse that are likely to happen. Unleashed doesn't need a second go if that go is going to be worse than before.

That being said, I'll still be fighting for a port of the game. Though, admittedly, I'm now in the "how little do they need to touch the game itself to put it out there and just have modders pick up the slack" mode. Ultimate is simply making me loose trust that current Sega could actually go in and make the game anything other than worse. Though, get the base game up on Steam or something and we'd at least be able to up the res and reach 60fps (the only things I need honestly). From there we can work with the medals and everything.

Though, I do fully realize that it would probably put the game in a bad standing for those who don't know much about the modding scene and would simply be out of the question for console players in general but... idk man, I just want a 60fps Unleashed... why is that too much to ask for? lol

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Unleashed isn't nearly as good as Colors, but it was still a shame to see it getting dogged like that.

[iambitter21]

HAHAHAHAHAHA... hell no.

[Dr. Detective]

At the end of the day, I guess I don't really need an Unleashed ultimate. A lot of it's issues clear up once you've already beaten the game and the ones that don't, while it would be nice to see them fixed, I don't see actually being the main focus were they to actually make one.

I also don't wan't to risk seeing what I still consider to be the most beautiful looking Sonic game being "touched up" to look like complete ass.

I'd take an Ultimate version of any much older games though. Either of the two Adventures or Heroes. Those would demand more effort to work right from the get go. They might as well be full on remakes so I guess it's not quite the same thing.

I'd just prefer they re-release older games to newer consoles more often in general. A collection of all those Sonic handheld games I never played would be greatly appreciated but I doubt it's going to happen.

[Spin Slasher]

I think yes because We need the Werehog fourmula back and all those Hub Worlds and The Composers of Sonic Unleashed will be able to remix the Music for Unleashed's Remaster, and I think the release date is unknown, But SEGA might announce it soon in the Future.

[Jango]

Yes if @Blue Blood is the director. He's got everything that needs to be done. I'll fucking pay your plane to SEGA, I swear I will.

[Blue Blood]

Just now, Jango said:

Yes if @Blue Blood is the director. He's got everything that needs to be done. I'll fucking pay your plane to SEGA, I swear I will.

Thanks! I happen to think I'm a great armchair game director and idea man. If everyone just listened to my enlightened ideas and made games based on what I said with absolutely no technical or industry knowledge myself whatsoever, video gaming would truly be a better place for us all.

[Jango]

I know you're being ironic, but there's truth in what you said. It's obvious that it ain't easy for everyone to point these issues with the games, as we're seeing with Colors right now. What I meant is that we need someone who can do this, and then pass said issues to a team, those with the technical knowledge, to resolve it. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

I think some of the ideas Colours Ultimate presents could be good in the right context, but Colours Ultimate isn't currently handling them in that context.

Like for example, I think the idea of Colours' soundtrack being remixed could actually work for an Unleashed soundtrack, but not as a full replacement. Instead - combining with the point @Blue Blood made about the Werehog battle music, I feel like they could remix the main song of the level into a battle theme that transitions in and out of regular combat/exploration, much like Kingdom Hearts II for example:

Non-Combat:

Combat:

 

Boss:

 

I feel like something like this for the Werehog would work wonders - keep the general theme and motif of each song, but ramping it up for when the player enters action and seamlessly transitioning them as the player goes in and out of fights, while also stopping the current Werehog music from being obscenely repetitive due to how frequently it appears, and how it appears in each and every single level, interrupting the level's actual theme. Along with making more combat encounters optional like Blue mentioned, it would do a better job of not making each combat sequence feel so utterly cookie-cutter.

The difficulty again is another example. I do think Unleashed could probably do with an optional easier mode that doesn't punish  players as heavily. The reason I say this is as J's Reviews said in his review, Unleashed has a much more harsher difficulty and learning curve. It's designed much more like an arcade-type experience where you need quick reactions, and memorisation in order to avoid insta-kill hazards and the like. There's parts where the devs cranked the dickhead level design up to 11 to the point they felt the need to add extra life tokens right next to each sequence to Game Overs wouldn't happen, which especially make Hot Dog Missions especially brutal and unfair.

I don't think the difficulty should be removed outright, because it's a unique element to Unleashed as a game, but I do think it would certainly tighten up it's gameplay and accessibility to have easier options such as no lives, or hell - even adding checkpoints to the Hot Dog Missions so it's based around simply beating the time/score constraints, instead of having to survive start to finish.

Beyond that, @Blue Blood more or less hit the nail on the head. 

[McGroose]

No, stop trying to take the game I liked and justify selling it back to me at a price greater than what it's really worth nowadays just because you added a bunch of shit nobody wanted or asked for. I wanted a port of the original game with a higher framerate and maybe a glitch fix here and there, that's it. 

The best I'll do is 'buy' the game if it's free for something like a PS plus monthly game giveaway or whatever, but even that I'm reluctant to do cause now that means I'm a +1 in Sega's databank. 

[SBR2]

This is going to be a surprise coming from me, someone who argues there's no problem with Sonic being simplistic, but God no!

Colors Ultimate looks entirely too hand holdy. Like I know it's aimed younger but Colors is a game that was already pretty friggin easy so making it easier feels extremely pointless.

Graphically I think it looks fine but I don't know it's not like Colors needed to be made an easier game. 

[Natie]

Considering how Unleashed's presentation is its best feature, no.

[Lord-Dreamerz]

Considering SEGA would probably outsource it to some third rate studio who only worked on random mobile games beforehand or some other nonsense... I gotta give a flat NO. I say everybody is better off with no port instead of any bad remaster port.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

I’d much rather an Unleashed remake than a remaster a la Colors Ultimate.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Depending on how Colors Ultimate ACTUALLY turns out, some of the answers given here are liable to age poorly.

[Tornado]

I think Unleashed is a good enough game aesthetically, and modern enough from a target development platform that's in the timezone of modern graphics, that it doesn't need to be dicked around and "remastered."  Just port the fucking thing to modern consoles/PC and charge $15 for it or whatever. The 360 version that has already been tweaked somewhat to run on the Xbone should be reasonably straightforward to just port without trying to ruin the graphics by having some nobody studio change them away from the original artistic intent into what they think looks better in the 2020s.

 

 

 

If Sega want to lie through their teeth and act like rereleasing a game using PC version graphic settings is enough to consider a game "remastered" like EA did with Hot Pursuit 3 a couple years ago, that's fine by me as long as they actually leave the game alone.

[LegoFedora]

If unleashed got the colors ultimate treatment, I would absolutely buy it.

Colors Ultimate changes some weirdly specific parts sure, but I don't see it as enough of a problem to think it's a bad port. I'm just glad to see sega showing love to older games again (that aren't the genesis era games).

I think unleashed could really benefit from being remastered, as well as running higher than 10 fps on most modern consoles. I doubt Sega would feel the need to touch it up graphically since unlike the Wii, Unleashed's home console a generation behind power wise. The game looks more than good enough to warrant a rerelease with little to no change graphically, something that I personally believe Colors would not have had as easy of a time doing.

Regardless of what happens, I'm just excited at the idea of sega reaching into the sonic catalog to bring out games that aren't as easy to play nowadays (not everyone has a wii or especially a wii u laying around nowadays). I hope Colors leads to Unleashed, Generations, and maybe even Lost World remasters/rereleases.