New Sonic game for 2015

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Malchik
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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Malchik »

Frieza2000 wrote:Speaking of SoJ, I bet Iizuka and co. are quietly raising a toast of schadenfreude at the office this week. One can hope they'll take this as an opportunity to show up the Americans and put in the extra work needed to make their next project shine, rather than deciding they've got nothing to prove, getting drunk, and releasing another Olympics game.
This is why I don't think we'll see anymore installments. The competition between the American and Japanese studios of the later nineties almost killed the company. And this is probably the most power the American branch has had since Sega of Japan downsized them to a few cubicals in a rented office. I think this failure is a great excuse for SoJ to again limit SoA's resources and continue to reign-in creative control, exclusively.

Also, as someone who's posted on the official Sega forums, Sonic 4 Episode 1 did extremely well becasue the usual failure enablers Sonic fans bought the title multiple times for multiple platforms. I don't think this will be the case for a game exclusive to a system few people own.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by G.Silver »

Also, as someone who's posted on the official Sega forums, Sonic 4 Episode 1 did extremely well becasue the usual failure enablers Sonic fans bought the title multiple times for multiple platforms. I don't think this will be the case for a game exclusive to a system few people own.
Sonic 4 was also a download-only 2D title. Success for that and success for Boom are going to be wildly different targets.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by G.Silver »

Wombatwarlord777 wrote:Speaking of which, assuming it's true that the total cost of Sonic Boom Wii U was the US $20 million SEGA reportedly gave to Red Button and that their sales forecasts for that game are accurate at 300,000 units, then it means that they'd have to charge... $67 per copy just to break even. Everywhere I see this game being sold, its (retail) cost is $50. So that's a total loss of at least $5,000,000, and almost certainly more.

Of course, this isn't counting complicating factors like shipping, advertising, any profit the cartoon or 3DS game might churn up, or the sale of merchandise like action figures. Speaking of which, is there any news about those at all?
That also assumes that the retailers don't take any cut! But it would be silly to think Sega's expecting to make it all back in one week. I suspect Sonic titles must sell pretty well even when (or specifically when) slashed down to $20 at retail, it happens so fast that it's clearly a part of their business strategy (compare that to Mario, where it definitely is not).

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Popcorn »

cjmcray wrote:As I said before, agree to disagree. I interpreted the games differently.
Defend your interpretation or go away.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Rob-Bert »

Forget interpretation, he's chiding a property founded entirely on an absolutely nonsensical premise... of not making enough logical sense!

Sonic shouldn't be able to talk, stand upright, have blue fur, wear shoes and gloves, or run around really fast because hedgehogs can't actually do any of those things. Right?
Last edited by Rob-Bert on Fri Nov 14, 2014 7:52 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

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Popcorn wrote:Defend your interpretation or go away.
Already did in the New Sonic Adventure Album thread.

To reiterate what I've already said, Intense final boss music in the Genesis games created an atmosphere that you were battling a truly evil character, his ambitions themselves are pretty dark when you think about it. Eggman wants to enslave all of humanity. Not that different from a comic-booky supervillain. Did some other stuff in recent games like blowing up a military base, held a rifle to Amy's head, sent Sonic to what he thought was his doom, and blew up the moon as a warning to everyone on Earth to obey his demands.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

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Also, I find it quite bizarre that Rob-Bert has claimed to have enjoyed SatAM, when that series takes Sonic so damn seriously, that even I, the one who wants a bit more seriousness in the videogames, can't even enjoy it. He is the one saying how ridiculous it would be to take something like Sonic seriously, yet he's also a fan of one of the most overly-dramatic interpretations of Sonic ever. Also, the furfaggotry on that show is off the charts.

Never said I wanted Sonic to be Batman or Watchmen, I just want Eggman to quit being such an idiotic pussy as he has been in recent games and for them to have an overall greater sense of adventure and excitement in the storyline. I still want to see comedic bits here and there. Just to clarify, I don't want future games to be super dark emo crap like Shadow the Hedgehog.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Rob-Bert »

I like SatAM, but independently of the fact that Sonic is in it. If Sonic, Tails and "Robotnik" were swapped out for different-yet-similar characters I'd peg it as being a legitimately great show on its own.

And you completely failed to understand what I was getting at.

And what exactly is "furfaggotry"? When did an idiotic Internet slang term become a legitimate descriptor of anything?

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by cjmcray »

Rob-Bert wrote:Forget interpretation, he's chiding a property founded entirely on an absolutely nonsensical premise... of not making enough logical sense!

Sonic shouldn't be able to talk, stand upright, have blue fur, wear shoes and gloves, or run around really fast because hedgehogs can't actually do any of those things. Right?
Peter Parker shouldn't be able to shoot webs out of his wrists, Luke Skywalker shouldn't be able to levitate objects, Bugs Bunny is a rabbit, he shouldn't be able to talk, the Ninja Turtles are.. Turtles, they shouldn't know jiujitsu. Rocket Raccoon is a talking raccoon who carries an assault rifle. Whaaaaaaaaaaaaaat? Groot is a walking, superhero tree. Really. Your point is moot. Sonic is a fictional form of entertainment. Anything can go. Some of the most ridiculous concepts have been done with a serious, action-centered tone to them and have huge fanbases.

I must re-itirate YET AGAIN, it's my opinion. It's how I have always viewed the series from its inception in 1991. I don't know why it's so hard to just agree to disagree, instead of trying to shove into my head what you think is the "correct" way to view Sonic.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Rob-Bert »

You still completely failed to get my point.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by cjmcray »

Yeah, It's a nonsencial concept. A cartoon blue hedgehog and I'm asking for it to be taken seriously. I got that. As I said, lots of other fictional characters with goofy concepts have been done in a serious manner. I'm not even really asking for serious, because I still like comedic elements here and there, I just want a more fleshed-out story in the games and for Eggman to quit being a bumbling moron.

I am totally okay with the focus on comedy in the Boom cartoon series though. (It's not videogame canon.)

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Esrever »

It's pretty clear when you play Boom that there was originally going to be a much larger, more epic story. I'm kind of curious what it was about.

There's a lot of set up for a time travel plot, which is then hastily written out in an incredibly dumb way in the first third of the game, and then never addressed again. There are giant ancient statues of Echidnas and Hedgehogs everywhere, sometimes fighting each other, that are never explained, but could have been if the game had used more time travel and sent the gang into the past for longer. There's also traces of an actual character arc for Sonic in the dialogue that's left, implying that at some point, Sonic was going to be depicted as more of a loner who was dismissive of the rest of the team, and would only come around to recognizing the value of working with them at the end of the game.

I'm also strongly suspicious that the game was originally intended to be a single-player only character swapping game, rather than a 2-player co-op one. There's a ton of stuff that makes the co-op reek of being a late addition to the game:

- The few two-path areas designed specifically for simultaneous co-op are a relatively small portion of the game, limited to specific rooms, and are generally very blocky and inorganic looking compared to the other areas of the game.
- The hubs feature lots of branch-off areas that are only accessible by one specific character at a time, meaning the second player can't come along
- The game is made in Cryengine, which does not support splitscreen natively at all. Why would you pick Cryengine if you knew you were doing a splitscreen game? Because it makes pretty plants? C'mon.
- And of course, they didn't have co-op running yet even at e3 earlier this year. Presumably because it wasn't ready yet, or at least wasn't running well. If the game was always intended to be co-op it would have been optimized for co-op from the design stage; they wouldn't be scrambling to tone down visuals designed for single-player to work in splitscreen.

We've all heard rumours that the game underwent a major table flipping part way through development. I think co-op was the mandated change, or at least part of it. It just feels like it would explain a lot. I mean, the director said in early interviews that they spent a ton of time prototyping Sonic's locomotion to get the right balance of speed and control. But in the final game Sonic just walks at an ordinary, flat, set pace... the same as the other three characters. He has to, because it's co-op, and the players need to be able to keep up with one another. And the devs would have known that, if it was co-op from the beginning. So why prototype a faster Sonic in the first place? What game did they think they were going to get to make?

Full co-op also means that Sonic can never have a big act two falling out with the other characters and go off on his own, which feels like it would fill the missing part of his implied character arc in the game... the part where he learns the moral that he still proclaims loudly to Lyric at the end despite there being no lead-up to it anymore. And being forced to implement co-op late into existing levels might also explain why the game is so short and unpolished, and why a whole hub area that appeared in earlier promo materials is MIA.

I also think odds are high that the ancients were originally echidnas. I wonder if remoing that was a mandated change, or just an unintentional side result of other cuts? As for the the statues of hedgehogs and echidnas fighting, I can only really think of two explanations: A) the original villain was an echidna too, B) Sonic and Knuckles had their big falling out in the past and it inspired a lot of sculptors for some reason.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Frieza2000 »

Ok, I wasn't going to say anything the first time, but restating the same de facto opinion 3 times in one topic over the course of two days is spamming. Rob-Bert, please have the humility to acknowledge that we don't care that much about your feelings toward the franchise's story direction. We heard you the first damn time. CJ, you can stop feeding him now.
Rob-Bert wrote:A series of electronic toys staring a rubber hose cartoon hedgehog in big floppy red shoes and a punk hairdo who spouts slang quips, collects floating golden rings, runs around on landscapes that look like modern art pieces, and fights against a big fat walrus-faced scientist in a red suit and his army of googly-eyed neon-colored animal-shaped robots has no business being that level of animu grimdark.
Rob-Bert wrote:I like SatAM
Image

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Yami CJMErl »

Malchik wrote:I'm seeing a lot of deluded Sonic fans expressing their confidence in Sega patching this game after release.
Heh, really? Has SEGA ever released patches for...well, any of their games? I know some of them get the odd bits of DLC, but never a full-on patch.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Tsuyoshi-kun »

Sonic Lost World's Wii U version got a patch, I believe. I remember one of the big things about it was that you got 1ups for 100 rings now, which wasn't in the original version of the game.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Esrever »

It also allowed for non gamepad-motion controls for the wisps. All in all it did make the game a lot more tolerable, and I wish it'd come out before I had already finished it!

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by cjmcray »

Esrever wrote:It's pretty clear when you play Boom that there was originally going to be a much larger, more epic story. I'm kind of curious what it was about.

There's a lot of set up for a time travel plot, which is then hastily written out in an incredibly dumb way in the first third of the game, and then never addressed again. There are giant ancient statues of Echidnas and Hedgehogs everywhere, sometimes fighting each other, that are never explained, but could have been if the game had used more time travel and sent the gang into the past for longer. There's also traces of an actual character arc for Sonic in the dialogue that's left, implying that at some point, Sonic was going to be depicted as more of a loner who was dismissive of the rest of the team, and would only come around to recognizing the value of working with them at the end of the game.

I'm also strongly suspicious that the game was originally intended to be a single-player only character swapping game, rather than a 2-player co-op one. There's a ton of stuff that makes the co-op reek of being a late addition to the game:

Full co-op also means that Sonic can never have a big act two falling out with the other characters and go off on his own, which feels like it would fill the missing part of his implied character arc in the game... the part where he learns the moral that he still proclaims loudly to Lyric at the end despite there being no lead-up to it anymore. And being forced to implement co-op late into existing levels might also explain why the game is so short and unpolished, and why a whole hub area that appeared in earlier promo materials is MIA.

I also think odds are high that the ancients were originally echidnas. I wonder if remoing that was a mandated change, or just an unintentional side result of other cuts? As for the the statues of hedgehogs and echidnas fighting, I can only really think of two explanations: A) the original villain was an echidna too, B) Sonic and Knuckles had their big falling out in the past and it inspired a lot of sculptors for some reason.
Aw man.. You're really bumming me out now. :sad: All of that stuff sounds awesome.
Freiza2000 wrote:CJ, you can stop feeding him now.
Thanks. I was getting sick of that whole debate.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by big_smile »

The interviews give a lot of insight into Boom's development. Sega's goal was to create a local co-op title from the start, but they were originally considering split screen, so the Wii gamepad stuff probably came later.

In this interview with Bob Rafei published shortly after the game's reveal, he states Sega approached BRB with their co-op idea in 2011. At this point, BRB were using the Crytech engine. Sega were unconvinced that the engine would be a good fit, but BRB went ahead. The main motive for using Crytech was that it was good at making tropical environments.

I find it odd that Bob would mention internal disagreements publicly. However, I am guessing that at that point, he felt confident that he would prove Sega wrong.

During development, Sonic Team weren't keen on the combat, so they worked with BRB to refine it.

I can't find it now, but there was also an interview where they said that after making the earlier builds they noticed that it didn't feel like a Sonic game, so they had to go back and add in some speed, which isn't a good sign.

The TV show and games seemed to be going in different directions. Sega/BRB were creating a strong narrative world, whereas the TV show was just going for one-shot self-contained episodes.

In short it's no surprise it's a mess as Sega, BRB, Sonic Team and the TV show were all pulling in different directions.

Once again, Sega seems to have failed at basic project management. They've repeated all the mistakes that were made with Sonic 2006. But I also think BRB deserves a big chunk of blame. They are a new studio and so working on an iconic franchise is a major break. When Sega approached them, they should have worked on it a-new instead of trying to graft Sonic onto existing ideas.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Esrever »

Hmm, that's interesting! Well, if it was co-op from the beginning, I guess what we can take away from that was that there was some serious misplaced hubris about their ability to add split-screen capability to the Crytech engine. Because yiiiiikes. Maybe it wasn't always a Wii U game... maybe they thought they'd be doing it on a more powerful system?

I have heard that the addition of the on rails racetrack elements was their way of addressing concerns the game was too slow. I can believe that to a point... there's a number of them that are clearly separate pieces shoved between levels. (It has to stop and load them, then stop and load the next area.) But there are also lots of short and medium-length speed tracks that are really thoroughly integrated directly into the stages. It's hard to imagine they were too late an addition. Maybe the integrated ones were always present, and the larger tracks between stages were the part that got added on to expand their prominence.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by cjmcray »

On the topic of the Boom cartoon..

"Translate This" was.. slightly tolerable? But "Buster" Oh man.. It hurt to watch. Sticks is awful. Just awful.

I hope next weeks episodes will be better. The premiere was really good.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Jingles »

I see the show has taken notes from other popular cartoons right now and is devolving into angsty teenage relationship drama.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

G.Silver wrote:That also assumes that the retailers don't take any cut! But it would be silly to think Sega's expecting to make it all back in one week. I suspect Sonic titles must sell pretty well even when (or specifically when) slashed down to $20 at retail, it happens so fast that it's clearly a part of their business strategy (compare that to Mario, where it definitely is not).
Oh, so that 300,000 unit projection is just initial sales? Okay, that does change a few things.
Esrever wrote:There's a lot of set up for a time travel plot, which is then hastily written out in an incredibly dumb way in the first third of the game, and then never addressed again. There are giant ancient statues of Echidnas and Hedgehogs everywhere, sometimes fighting each other, that are never explained, but could have been if the game had used more time travel and sent the gang into the past for longer. There's also traces of an actual character arc for Sonic in the dialogue that's left, implying that at some point, Sonic was going to be depicted as more of a loner who was dismissive of the rest of the team, and would only come around to recognizing the value of working with them at the end of the game.
God, tell me about it. I initially thought the statues were depicting the ancient hedgehogs and echidnas working together, but I like your explanation better because it justifies why the supposedly peaceful Ancients built giant warbots or bothered to study the Chaos Crystals in the first place.

And yeah, the Wii U game had all the pieces in place for a pretty great backstory but everything was just underplayed. At the very least, they should've had Metroid Prime-esque scannable ruins that would play to this game's emphasis on exploration.

I was actually looking forward to Sonic's character development because it could've been a effective vehicle to reintroduce all the characters to this supposed reimagining of the franchise, as well as being a natural and compelling spin on the main character's personality, which up to this point has mostly been dull as dirt. Hell, it could've made jerkass Shadow's actions a lot more interesting to contrast with Sonic's, if still not justified in any sort of way.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by G.Silver »

Now we're talkin'!

http://www.tssznews.com/2014/11/15/repo ... om-launch/

Good luck, ex-BRB employees! I hope you were able to find new jobs before Sonic Boom tainted your resumes forever.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by big_smile »

It's very strange that they left before development was complete. I mean, they are working on Sonic, one of the most iconic game characters of all time.

I'm guessing there must have been a lot of corporate meddling going on.

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Re: New Sonic game for 2015

Post by Wombatwarlord777 »

Granted, though, the development time on the game was about three years. That's plenty of time for things to go sour, no matter how much of a lucky break this game seemed like at first.

I imagine that in five years we'll have a lot of interesting information from former Red Button employees concerning the development of this thing. Just how did things go so wrong? Bad management? Having to work with an ill-fitting engine? A bajillion other possible things? What?

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