If the game series were to be completely rebooted, what game should it start with?

[Scape]

If the game series were to be completely rebooted, (I mean a real reboot, not something that requires 15 years of context to begin making sense) what game should it start with? Should it erase everything after SA2? Or everything after S3&K? Or fully reconceptualize the first game?

[Wraith]

Starting after SA2 is basically the same as making a modern Sonic game now.  The status quo of Sonic's world, the characters, and their relationships to one another is solidified in Sonic 3-SA2 so it'd be functionally the same as it is now. The only characters, locations and concepts that would be off the table are things they don't use anyway.

The only way to take a serious crack at redoing the characterization/lore is to start from the beginning.

[Scape]

2 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Starting after SA2 is basically the same as making a modern Sonic game now. The only characters, locations and concepts that would be off the table are things they don't use anyway.

The only way to take a serious crack at redoing the characterization/lore is to start from the beginning.

They've been using Zavok though

[Wraith]

2 minutes ago, Scape said:

They've been using Zavok though

You'd wipe out 20 years of continuity just to get rid of Zavok?

[Scape]

9 minutes ago, Wraith said:

You'd wipe out 20 years of continuity just to get rid of Zavok?

Full reboot. New design. New creative direction. New stories. Get rid of everything.

[Diogenes]

If you're gonna reboot, commit to it. Having a cutoff point, saying "everything after this is gone but everything before this definitely still matters" is the coward's choice and shouldn't even be called a reboot at all. And honestly nothing this series has ever done narratively is so importat or vital that it must remain part of the canon, unaltered, forever. Better to wipe the slate clean and try to build something more coherent from the ground up than try to weld meaning onto whatever slapdash story you felt was the last worthy one.

[MetalSkulkBane]

Agree with @Diogenes, half measures are cheap. With that said, I still find idea of full reboot to be a waste of time.

Why do it?
- So we can pretend 06 never happened? We're already doing it and it won't change the fact it did happened.
- So we can re-tell classic stories better? Stop living in the past, tell new stories. Classics are fine as they are, that makes them classics.
- So we can clean up continuity? Nobody cares! Except for hardcores fans. Fans who like Emerl and Marine and Vanilla and Babylon Rouges, and reboot will officially kill many of them. Because who's to say new Reboot will give a dang about events of Rush games?

Rebooting something like Sonic is a joke. In fact we already did it, it's called Boom. Sometimes we laughed, sometimes we didn't.

If someone at Sega really would want to IDK, explain Nega clearly, all they have to do is publish a written story, like they did last year with Sonic Calendar. It's cheap, it's clean, fans will appreciate it, common folk will never touch it because they don't give a damn about Eggman Nega. Perfect solution.

[Wraith]

I can see some merit in it if it's done right. Starting the series off again with more consistent lore, characterization and storytelling and sticking more rigidly to it sounds like it would be more rewarding to long time fans than what they do now.

I'm not really excited about the idea though because the execution, whether it be from fans, outsiders or SEGA proper, is just so lackluster wherever you look. Fans mostly either want to make minor adjustments to continuity that don't actually fix any real problems or just "disqualify" games they don't like as being a part of the series even though they're actually not doing any real harm. As for outsiders, you only need to look up that Good Blood Sonic video to see how much damage an outsider who doesn't understand anything about the series could do in a high position of power.

As far as Sega goes, it seems like whenever an opportunity to reboot Sonic's continuity comes along they shove him into whatever popular cash grab story template he wouldn't have fit into before, and I really don't want to see that happen to the main games as much shit as I give them.

[MetalSkulkBane]

@Wraith, name reboot that accomplishes what you're hoping for.

Few rules
- Franchise OG continuity been going for a long time. It wasn't dead like She-ra or just never ending reboots like TMNT or Batman movies.
- Franchise been telling stories and main cast is somewhat well defined. So no Castlevania or Arcane.

 

[Wraith]

16 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

@Wraith, name reboot that accomplishes what you're hoping for.

Few rules
- Franchise OG continuity been going for a long time. It wasn't dead like She-ra or just never ending reboots like TMNT or Batman movies.
- Franchise been telling stories and main cast is somewhat well defined. So no Castlevania or Arcane.

 

"name a reboot that is good. one condition: you cant name any good reboots"

[MetalSkulkBane]

I'm just pointing out that Sonic's situation is drastically different.

LoL and Castlevenia franchises weren't that invested in the story, because their games weren't telling one. With Sonic any changes you'll make will clash with original depictions.

[Wraith]

6 minutes ago, MetalSkulkBane said:

I'm just pointing out that Sonic's situation is drastically different.

LoL and Castlevenia franchises weren't that invested in the story, because their games weren't telling one. With Sonic any changes you'll make will clash with original depictions.

I've met people that don't like the way the new Castlevania series and Arcane clash with the original depictions of the characters, so I don't think Sonic's situation is that different at all.

[Zoomzeta]

If I am being realistic, if we are referring to its 3d output, the Adventure games would be the place to start.

[Kuzu]

A reboot should only be used when the previous continuity has reached an endpoint and exhausted it's plot, because at that point there's no more story to tell and so a reboot is the only way of starting from scratch to tell a new story...or shift the perspective to an entirely new set of main characters. 

The former doesn't apply to Sonic and the latter sure as hell isn't going to happen. So what's the point of rebooting??? Whenever a fan suggests this, it's never for the intention of telling new and exciting stories, it's always just to get rid of characters and plot threads that they didn't personally like. And like sure, I understand that, but that's a really bad reason to want a remake. 

These type of discussions are always so hypocritical too; Sonic fans want to keep the stuff that they personally like, and get offended when a person suggests otherwise, but have no problem suggesting getting rid of stuff that they didn't like regardless of how anyone else feels about it. And this is like...every type of Sonic fan; Classic, Modern, etc etc 

 

At that point, it's not even worth entertaining anymore.

[Dummy Bear]

I'd start with a Sonic Generations-esque game spanning across Sonic's life that re-establishes the world, lore, continuity, characters, rules of the universe, what's canon and what isn't, then work my way from there.

Something of a soft reboot, really, just to re-establish solid ground rules of Sonic's World.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

On 2/6/2022 at 8:24 AM, MetalSkulkBane said:

I'm just pointing out that Sonic's situation is drastically different.

LoL and Castlevenia franchises weren't that invested in the story, because their games weren't telling one. With Sonic any changes you'll make will clash with original depictions.

I don’t know too much about Castlevania, but yes the hell they were invested in story with LoL. Riot Games have gone the extra mile and beyond to include profiles, comics, a map, and a slew of worldbuilding over the course of a decade for anyone interested in their setting—and that’s without getting into their alternate settings.

You wouldn’t even have Arcane were it not for that investment, both from the fans (who’ve been asking for such for years) and the creators (who finally delivered). It’s why you see them trending in the top ten on YouTube every time they make a new release these days, because there was a point where Lol’s lore and setting were an even bigger mess than Sonic’s was today. (Compare it’s old map to its current one for example)

Funny thing about this is that Riot Games reboots are done to keep as much as they can while remaking what doesn’t work into something that does instead of abandoning it completely. You know how folks tend to say “Don’t fix what isn’t broken” only to turn around and throw away something that is broken without bothering to fix it? Yeah, LoL doesn’t do that—if it’s broken, they fix it, and even then there’s always room for improvement, and only as an absolute dead last resort (or severe imbalances) do they actually remove things.

You wish you could say that for Sonic on the idea of a reboot given how often it drops its ideas for the latest trend rather than setting one like it once did starting out.

@WraithArcane is a prequel to LoL. It doesn’t clash with their original depictions so much as set them up for what they become in the game—there are in-game chats between characters in LoL connected with Arcane, and many of the characters hit differently because now people understand their backgrounds more than before (Jinx’s insanity, rivalry, and relation with Vi—people were speculating for years before Arcane over whether they were sisters—Viktor’s health leading to his obsession with a Glorious Revolution, Jayce being the defender of tomorrow, etc.). 

[TailsGotTrolled]

dont even bother.  Just break the moon again and forget that sonic x style two worlds nonsense and were good

[Multikaris]

Soft cutoff point is SA2, hard cutoff at Unleashed. Retell an abridged version of Heroes-06 for the first game of the reboot, then be more original from there. One of the differences in the retold version is that Shadow seals himself away at the end, fearing he is a danger to others and that his condition will de-stabilize over time. This allows Rouge and even Omega to become more independent. While the new stories after this are original, elements from past games and even adaptations (even western ones, not just X), are usable in them, albeit re-interpreted.

[Razule]

I can't help but think there's more to lose than gain. And the things that'd be lost aren't being used anyway. In a hypothetical world where I had that level of power over the Sonic franchise, I'd just make the current canon that we have now better. Write the characters consistently good, utilize different ones for different games instead of bringing everyone in to do nothing, some sense of continuity for fans to notice, etc. 

Heroes - 06 and Unleashed - Forces had their ups and downs, but it just isn't a big deal. Most games are standalone. You won't need to play Sonic Unleashed to understand the plot of Sonic Frontiers, and you don't even need Sonic Adventure to understand Sonic Adventure 2. The only ones still fixed on 10-20 year old games needing to be removed from canon are hardcore fans. There are a lot of characters and concepts introduced in those games that a lot of people are fond of. In a reboot, you could just re-introduce all of those things, but.. why bother? They already exist. Giving Silver a better game to debut in and giving him a new backstory won't erase Sonic 06 from people's minds. The bad games happened, and they can never be undone. It was dumb when Sonic became a Werehog or kissed a human, or his clone used a gun, but it's over now. It'd be easier and lot less complicated to simply move forward with what's already there, and do better in the future. 

[KnuxDLX]

As someone already mentioned, Boom was the reboot and the point at which Sega claimed to be recommitted to making quality Sonic games again. 

[Zoomzeta]

23 hours ago, KnuxDLX said:

As someone already mentioned, Boom was the reboot and the point at which Sega claimed to be recommitted to making quality Sonic games again. 

Was it a reboot? I mean, they made it clear that was meant to be a new sub-franchise of sorts. It wasn't really meant to replace the current franchise up to that point as much as exist alongside it. 

[KnuxDLX]

1 hour ago, Zoomzeta said:

Was it a reboot? I mean, they made it clear that was meant to be a new sub-franchise of sorts. It wasn't really meant to replace the current franchise up to that point as much as exist alongside it. 

Oh you’re right, Colors was the first game they released after pulling the poorly-reviewed titles from stores (a decision I have feelings about as mixed as those games’ reception). The mainline games still took a similar nosedive during that period, and the Boom games possibly had more visibility because of the show. They certainly moved significant figures for their poor quality, about half a million each, no doubt souring many fans in the lead up to Forces. I think 2010 was a reboot of sorts at least from a gameplay and story standpoint. Not by trying to recreate the franchise but by literally tossing a lot of stuff out the window, effectively retconning it. Of course the long-term effects seem to have exacerbated the identity crisis that started around 2005.

 

So no I don’t want a reboot. Even the Boom games gave new opportunities to build in the right direction. Don’t throw it all away.

[VO.SUPER]

4 hours ago, Zoomzeta said:

Was it a reboot? I mean, they made it clear that was meant to be a new sub-franchise of sorts. It wasn't really meant to replace the current franchise up to that point as much as exist alongside it. 

Had Boom the game been allowed to be the more serious origin story the game was supposed to be, and ONLY IF that actually turned out to be somehow successful and high quality (hah) I could've seen SEGA considering retiring the main franchise and treating it as a reboot. But that would have required such a colossal turnaround from reality, that it's pointless to speculate on.

The Boom we got was the product of messy, messy, messy decisions to the point that the outcome of Boom (or Synergy) that was originally intended is barely even tangible to realize.

[Zoomzeta]

10 hours ago, VO.SUPER said:

Had Boom the game been allowed to be the more serious origin story the game was supposed to be, and ONLY IF that actually turned out to be somehow successful and high quality (hah) I could've seen SEGA considering retiring the main franchise and treating it as a reboot. But that would have required such a colossal turnaround from reality, that it's pointless to speculate on.

The Boom we got was the product of messy, messy, messy decisions to the point that the outcome of Boom (or Synergy) that was originally intended is barely even tangible to realize.

I still don't think that would have lead to the main franchise being retired though. 

13 hours ago, KnuxDLX said:

Oh you’re right, Colors was the first game they released after pulling the poorly-reviewed titles from stores (a decision I have feelings about as mixed as those games’ reception). The mainline games still took a similar nosedive during that period, and the Boom games possibly had more visibility because of the show. They certainly moved significant figures for their poor quality, about half a million each, no doubt souring many fans in the lead up to Forces. I think 2010 was a reboot of sorts at least from a gameplay and story standpoint. Not by trying to recreate the franchise but by literally tossing a lot of stuff out the window, effectively retconning it. Of course the long-term effects seem to have exacerbated the identity crisis that started around 2005.

 

So no I don’t want a reboot. Even the Boom games gave new opportunities to build in the right direction. Don’t throw it all away.

...OK. 

Edited February 8, 2022 by Zoomzeta

[KnuxDLX]

If Boom had been at all successful it could have essentially replaced the main franchise at least here in the West. Of course I’m glad it didn’t, but there were no ST games released during that timeframe, so it certainly was given that chance.