Sonic Team leader Takashi Iizuka discussed the future of the series in an interview with the BBC. The question is also arose as to whether SEGA is considering a remake of the popular Sonic Adventure games. Iizuka made it clear that his team wants to focus on new content rather than remaking older titles.
Focus on new worlds instead of remakes
Instead of putting all that time and energy into developing a remake that players have already experienced we could make a brand new game, said Iizuka. Thanks to modern technologies it is possible to create richer, more complex and more interesting worlds.
Goal: A completely new gaming experience
Iizuka said: I think the team is genuinely interested in putting the same amount of time, energy and effort into providing players with a completely new experience.
The next big Sonic the Hedgehog project should not be a remake but something new that exploits the capabilities of current hardware.
I imagine for a Sonic game that Sonic runs so fast time slows down fo Sonic which it has a visual representation for it due to how the environment is. Seeing birds fly slower as you speed and then they seem "frozen in air", waterfall falls slower, IDK even leaves falling slower and all can contributes to this feeling.
And then Sonic may actually "curve reality" as in he runs so fast buildings being bended so thus he can run on their surface without jumping or any interruption, even whole city can be curved like the movie Inception so you go fast around fucked up state of time-space bended city. However it calls for a way to adjust Sonic's speed to intentionally curve the world in the way you want so the curve will depend on how fast you are so you can keep running without slowing down so it can make a sense of "envoirement puzzle" Sonic games tend to use but they mostly use it via dead ends and platforming which is a drag.
Also Sonic can even run so fast he goes back in time so running around the city you see how the city was going backwards in time, so buildings eventually get into their "during construction state" and then no buildings around, just villages and shit. It can be part of a puzzle to running in a particular speed and duration to go back to particular time frame to do some stuff IDK. Also it can be a way to open yourself a way to progress to your destination. And then just for "video game logic", the time will eventually get back to the current time if Sonic doesn't run that fast so Sonic can have 3 speed states. In 1st state he just runs, in the 2nd state he bends the environment, in the 3rd state he bends space-time so thus he goes back in time.
The potential of Sonic IMO was ruined in new games with slower gameplay and more platforming. Sonic can be so fast he shouldn't be limited with running on the ground. There can be more running on the ocean and even "flying in air by running" stuff. It was always cool when he could run on ceiling to emphasize his rebel personality by even defying laws of physics so we can even go deep into quantum yo lol. Despite they wanna do something "different" the difference they can still be limited to ancient video game design and a difference that make the game away from being a Sonic game without any sense of improvement whatsoever.
In the end these ideas are fundamentally used in Sonic games, yet what I mean is improving these ideas for the non-scripted but dynamic aspect of the gameplay. But my idea heavily focuses on visual representations of it for visual masturbation and these ideas IMO enables a fun Sonic gameplay in the context of how Sonic was. IMO Sonic doesn't have to be too different, it can do what it did before better.
I hope they make it FUN again.
Frontier's controls were absolute top-notch, but the game containing them, the awful world/mission design and the insanely embarrassing "serious" or melodramatic storyline just felt out of place and dragged down the otherwise addictive controls.
I hope they make it FUN again.
Frontier's controls were absolute top-notch, but the game containing them, the awful world/mission design and the insanely embarrassing "serious" or melodramatic storyline just felt out of place and dragged down the otherwise addictive controls.
If they really wanted to be brave they'd drop boost for a game and see what happens. I love the boost era for what it is, but man it feels like they squeezed everything they could out of it over a decade ago and it just hasn't really felt fresh or exciting in a long time. I replayed the Adventure games and am going thru with 100%ing them for the first time and I really am constantly amazed at how fun and fluid these games feel. There is so much more you can do with the Adventure formula of gameplay and its a shame we'll likely never see that type of game again in favor of the same boost style we've had for far too long. At least when a new 3D Mario comes out there is some new core gimmick so each game ends up feeling super unique with tons of depth and expression within the movement. Boost Sonic allows for very little of that comparatively.
The open world formula with Frontiers is alright conceptually but the structure and content of the world was just barren and deeply uninteresting. If they do stick with the open areas, I really hope their top priority is just making exploration and puzzle solving more enjoyable somehow.
Writing wise Frontiers was really nice but it suffered from a Halo Infinite type of situation where it was largely a non-story that tries to just reset the status quo by fixing characterization that has been messed up for some 10-15+ years. The good news is that like Infinite it does indeed reset a lot of things and re-establishes the tone and characters as they were in what fans perceive as the narrative golden era, but it sucks that we have to wait for the sequel to see what they actually do with that going forward. Sonic as a franchise is just this endless barrage of "Wow this is cool but also underdeveloped, I sure hope they actually build upon it and go somewhere with this in the sequels," only for them to drop the story or gameplay style they were building. Seriously just need Sonic Team to buckle down and actually iterate on something. Even the thing that has been an almost constant factor in the series - boost gameplay - has barely evolved meaningfully in the past 17-18 or so years it has been in the series.
This kind of story and writing is what fans want to be honest. In fact the last 15ish years of deeply unserious and low stakes stories with regressive character arcs and a lack of Sonic's friends is the primary thing that fans have complained about almost universally. Non-Sonic/casual fans and more hardcore fans have generally had very opposite views on the what the franchise should be. Non/casual fans tend to hate more playable characters or more serious/melodramatic stories. Hardcore fans typically view the more melodramatic games as the best ones and long for more characters to be in the stories playable or otherwise.
GOD THIS!!! I finally let the chao garden bug bite me this year and I am amazed at just how attached I've gotten to these little dudes. Sega is sitting on a bonafide gold mine if they get their shit together!!!
This kind of story and writing is what fans want to be honest. In fact the last 15ish years of deeply unserious and low stakes stories with regressive character arcs and a lack of Sonic's friends is the primary thing that fans have complained about almost universally. Non-Sonic/casual fans and more hardcore fans have generally had very opposite views on the what the franchise should be. Non/casual fans tend to hate more playable characters or more serious/melodramatic stories. Hardcore fans typically view the more melodramatic games as the best ones and long for more characters to be in the stories playable or otherwise.
I’m not sure I really buy that. Fans want an extremely barebones story set in a location that has no identity at all, with characters who are so bland and lifeless they sort of implode on themselves and end up feeling like caricatures?
I just don’t think it fits, and it’s way different from anything that’s been around before. It’s nothing like the sacred Adventure stuff people keep praising, and while I’m kind of indifferent to them regarding gameplay (I liked/appreciated 1 and I hated 2 except for whenever Shadow is on-screen but I don’t care very much about them as I didn’t grow up with them) the atmosphere they were going for in the story was solid as hell, because it was cool and had attitude. Sonic’s most defining characteristic aside from being fast is being cool, and Frontiers doesn’t feel cool at all. It just feels sad. You run around doing worthless videogamey chores that have no real rhyme or reason as to why they’re there, they just exist (Zelda shrines which they were clearly inspired by felt a billion times more logical because the entire game was centered around them and its explained in the first hours), and then you feed Knuckles a hundred coins you got by doing chores (or you can just skip it altogether by fishing with Big for 15 minutes for some reason?) and he gives you some wiki-tier character driven banter, and then you fight an awful janky giant boss set to the worst, least fitting angry white boy music imaginable (also, I’m so sick of games not trying to make creative enemies anymore, they just make some ominous ”dark” archetype with hardly any personality)
There’s almost no story or development at all, and the four (4) characters just stand around acting friendly with Sonic (but only their own special brand of friendly) when he’s there, and when he’s not they’re talking to Sage about him like he’s some kind of misunderstood byronic hero.
It’s like one the most bipolar games I’ve ever played, it doesn’t know what I wants to be but it desperately wants to be something.
Frontiers isn’t similar to the ”serious” stuff that came before it in the slightest. It’s just nothing. A big grey sad boring nothing. I’d rather have him kiss a human girl again because at least he was funny and sassy in that one. I’m not against more story at all, I just want it to be a fun ride. Not whatever the hell this was.
I’m not sure where I’m going with this anymore lol, I just can’t believe the ”story” part of Frontiers is actually what people want because there hardly is any, and it’s nothing like Sonic.
The controls are still TOP fucking notch though, easily the best FEELING 3D Sonic ever made, and nothing even really comes close, imo.
Oh well, I’ll just rewatch the Sonic CD opening another six thousand times and have a great time.
Sonic as a franchise is just this endless barrage of "Wow this is cool but also underdeveloped, I sure hope they actually build upon it and go somewhere with this in the sequels," only for them to drop the story or gameplay style they were building.
I honestly feel like it’s cursed. I don’t think Sonic Team has the talent nor the passion to go further beyond.
Isn’t Sonic also kind of unpopular in Japan to begin with?
Make my bean Cream the Rabbit useful or even Playable
A Modern Sonic game with the Lighthearted, low stake plots of the Classic Era
A 3D game that follows the good parts of those (Adventure and Colors)
Bring back the fishing minigames usefulness of Sonic's friends, as in make them a playable ast again
This one is less serious, but they could vent some frustrations making a Ken Penders caricature as a Boss and make him be defeated in a humilliating way
Sonic has never been the same past the Genesis/SCD age. He's felt unstable after Sonic Adventure. Where the story was even going, Mobius isn't even worth mentioning after everything that has been going on with it. The comic universe was just out there, beyond to where the story makes little to no sense, as far as the games go, we need a core Sonic series to where it's fun to actually go fast, become invincible while at that speed and as soon as he stops, he dime stops. Like don't tell me, no one enjoyed that moment in Sonic 2 where he went so fast, the camera couldn't keep up with him. THAT was fun! At least when the OVA was made, it was classic Sonic and we saw what would we could've had right then and there. It's not THAT hard to see it done in game form.
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