Interesting Thought: If Sonic Team hadn't abandoned the Adventure formula, then Sonic Forces would probably have been much better.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 5/27/2022 at 2:30 PM, moonarcana said:

I don't really get this obsession with "formulas". Sonic Forces was mediocre because it was conceptually flawed, just like how Sonic 06 sucked because the ideas weren't good at all. It doesn't matter what formula it'd follow, if the concept is weak and/or executed poorly, the game's gonna be bad regardless of whatever smidges of praise you can dig up for it (see Sonic 06).

Speaking of formulas, why is that even a thing? I get the reasoning behind trying to group together Sonic games based on similarities, but aside from story ties to previous games, a good chunk of games in both Adventure and Boost era could easily fit whatever definition someone has for them. SA2's Sonic/Shadow levels have way more in common with Unleashed and Forces' super linear Sonic stages than anything in SA1, Heroes, or 06. Heroes could easily be described as being similar to Colors with its cheesy lighthearted tone or even Lost World for its radically different gameplay compared to its direct predecessors and its use of Genesis era imagery (though obviously one game pulled this off way better). It's especially odd because the Boost games are pretty much a direct evolution of SA2's speed stages, just like how Rush was a direct evolution of the boost mode introduced in Advance 2.

Of course some people just stick to release dates to define formulas/eras but even that's messy since regardless of story connections or even title connections, SA1-06 are fairly different in both visuals and gameplay. SA1 is pretty much the only 3D game in the series that tries to implement gameplay similar to the Genesis titles, SA2 just ignores all that and goes straight into speed speed speed (not counting the other 2/3rds of the game of course). Heroes and 06 dip too deep into generic action-platformer elements and don't feel like anything else in the series.

I kinda went off on a random tangent but yeah, I don't really get how trying to make Forces like an Adventure game would work when there isn't even a solid definition of what an Adventure game even is.

 

I admitted earlier that it's hard to call expanded combat a hallmark of the "Adventure era" when none of the games with "Adventure" in their title had it, but a focus on extra playable characters is something we can say truly pertains to all but one of those games leading up to 06.  I will concede that my title was flawed but my explanations should make sense. 

Yes; they don't account for how high quality the execution of "Adventure" gameplay ideas would have been in alternate Sonic Forces, but I stand by my opinion that you simply can't do that scenario justice with the sort of level design and mechanics as dominated Unleashed, Colors and Generations.  Even if Modern and Classic Sonic played as well as they did in Generations, that style of game design just does not allow a plot that is ostensibly about freedom fighters overthrowing a dictator to focus on the more interesting things that should entail.

[Wraith]

Yeah one thing I've come to realize over the years is that the Adventure games aren't that dissimilar to the boost games. Iizuka basically said that he sees the games starting with Sonic Adventure as one evolutionary line when talking about how Frontiers would be truly different and when you think about what you actually do in the 3D Sonic games it's easy to see why. Sonic Adventure had some room for freeform gameplay but compared to the 2D games it was a step down. Every subsequent game focused down more and more on barreling down hallways, homing attacking and some kind of slide to get under obstacles with everything else being stripped out. The tempo based gameplay loop they started with Sonic Adventure and refined with SA2 became the core of the series's design. The main difference with the Dreamcast era was a willingness to strap on ill fitting combat or rpg mechanics but if they didn't work there I'm not sure why they would work in this hypothetical Forces retooling.

The truth is I don't think a game about a team of resistence fighters works well with any iteration on the Sonic formula we've seen so far. Heroes is the closest thing I can think of and it's a terrible game specifically because of how many characters and mechanics it chose to take. A game like this needs strategic, oppressive combat at the center of it and I don't think that'll ever mesh well with the series's focus on joyful movement.

All that being said, one thought I had similar to the OP is that Frontiers's combat focus would have made more sense for Forces's premise. Traveling a huge map and freeing settlements fits the idea of a freedom fighter more than a boost game does. It fits so well that many other open world games already use taking back settlements in the core of their design. 

Aside from that, Frontiers has Ian Flynn who's been writing resistance stories for most of his career. I get the sense that Frontiers will be going for a 'back to basics' approach and we've seen from Mega Drive and Seasons of Chaos that he does just fine with that but it just feels like a missed opportunity.

I still don't think I'd be a big fan of this game because I just don't think Sonic should have a huge combat focus, but it makes more sense in my head than strapping this premise to a Boost game.

[Kuzu]

Fans of any longtime series have a really bad habit of dividing products up by arbitrary standards as a way to draw a line in the sand about their specific preferences when it comes to the product and Sonic is no exception.

Being a 30 year franchise means different people have different attachments to different aspects of it, even if they're all pretty similar at the end of the day.

 

Iizuka sees the period of 1999-2017 as just one continously piece, but Sonic fans will swear that the periods of 1991-1994, 2001-2009, and 2010 onward are are completely different iterations of each other due to fan preferences for a few specific elements. Which is why they kind of balked at Iizuka's words because as far as fans are concerned, Adventure and Boost may as well be two different games.

 

Frontiers focusing in combat though kind of fits because its been clear the 3D games have been leaning more into combat than movement, with most of the movements options being restricted to moving forward really really fast. Meanwhile Enemies have had health bars a good chunk of the series.

[Zoomzeta]

3 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Fans of any longtime series have a really bad habit of dividing products up by arbitrary standards as a way to draw a line in the sand about their specific preferences when it comes to the product and Sonic is no exception.

Being a 30 year franchise means different people have different attachments to different aspects of it, even if they're all pretty similar at the end of the day.

 

Iizuka sees the period of 1999-2017 as just one continously piece, but Sonic fans will swear that the periods of 1991-1994, 2001-2009, and 2010 onward are are completely different iterations of each other due to fan preferences for a few specific elements. Which is why they kind of balked at Iizuka's words because as far as fans are concerned, Adventure and Boost may as well be two different games.

 

Frontiers focusing in combat though kind of fits because its been clear the 3D games have been leaning more into combat than movement, with most of the movements options being restricted to moving forward really really fast. Meanwhile Enemies have had health bars a good chunk of the series.

...So Heroes to Unleashed?  Cause that's as far as I remember health bars being a thing outside of bosses. 

[Zadent]

8 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Fans of any longtime series have a really bad habit of dividing products up by arbitrary standards as a way to draw a line in the sand about their specific preferences when it comes to the product and Sonic is no exception.

Being a 30 year franchise means different people have different attachments to different aspects of it, even if they're all pretty similar at the end of the day.

 

Iizuka sees the period of 1999-2017 as just one continously piece, but Sonic fans will swear that the periods of 1991-1994, 2001-2009, and 2010 onward are are completely different iterations of each other due to fan preferences for a few specific elements. Which is why they kind of balked at Iizuka's words because as far as fans are concerned, Adventure and Boost may as well be two different games.

 

Frontiers focusing in combat though kind of fits because its been clear the 3D games have been leaning more into combat than movement, with most of the movements options being restricted to moving forward really really fast. Meanwhile Enemies have had health bars a good chunk of the series.

There are points where I can see both them being the same, and them being different. Now granted, in terms of stuff I've actually played, my main frame of reference is Forces for Boost, but I’ve at least seen some of the others? The two biggest things I can think of that would cause people to separate them don’t necessarily include boost itself. The stories, and the level design. Stories are.. More self explanatory, i feel.

 Level design, the main similarities I see are how the homing attack is used for crossing spaces, rails, and More linear paths (barring some of the things one can do with the spindash in Adventure and 06 having similarly more open paths to walk around. I think the difference lies in how those Linear paths are designed, where some of the levels in the first half of the 3d years had some detours that needed made, and you knew the platforming would be 3D, whereas later entries you get the 3D sections feeling more straight forward running while the platforming, over time, moved more and more to 2D platforming with a 3D aesthetic. But that ultimately makes it come down more to the level design itself over boost vs no boost 

Maybe that’s just my view on it.