What Would You Do Differently? The 2000s Era

[Mike Arcade]

From the ashes of the Dreamcast Sega returned as a 3rd party developer, in this WWYDD we ask how this turbulent time of Sonic had ended up if one of us would have taken the reigns. Now that is cleared up let's begin. To start things off we'll talk about the 3D Sonic game that became a turning point for the series after Sonic Adventure 2...

How would you have done Sonic Heroes? What would you change and why?

[Ishapar]

Don't make the teams clones of each other.  The biggest complaint I heard about Heroes was the annoyance of playing the same team 4 times in a row to receive the final ending.  If you are going to offer 4 teams for people to play the game with, then make each team to be unique enough that playing with them offers an enjoyable experience instead of a tedious chore.  Don't give each team a different mission if the mission is still basically reaching the goal coin at the end of the level.  Chaotix had the most mix-up of the team missions, but even they often followed the same level and reach the goal formula instead of varying the level experience.

From my own experience, Heroes needed to increase the uniqueness of the team members.  I remember spending most of my time using the speed character about 85% of the gameplay and used the strong characters only to take out the robots the speed characters couldn't destroy and to line up the formation for collecting rings and gaining points.  I hardly used the flying character as they were too weak in battle, had the lowest land speed, the worst character formation, and too little stamina to be useful.  When you spend more then 3/4 of the game using only one character out of a team of 3, you really lose a lot of potential of fun gameplay.  The characters' moveset also needed revived:  Sonic relied too much on homing attack to attack enemies and had no good way to increase speed.  Sonic should have retained his spindash and it's gimmicks from the 2d era to give Sonic more variety to his speed gameplay and combat prowess.  Knuckles was handicapped into a brawler:  it was cool being able to wipe out a bunch of robots with your punches, but Knuckles sacrificed his gliding and climbing abilities that gave him an edge for discovering hidden areas and objects.  Poor Tails was just an annoying tag-along:  his flight was nerfed height-wise and he had no real ground movements other than throwing out dummy rings.  If this much work has to be done with the main team, don't get me started with the other 3...

I will give credit with Heroes having some interesting levels compared to the modern gaming era, but one problem was the layout of the level.  I don't know how many times I wanted to explore a certain path in the level only to realize that I couldn't get there due to the limitations of the characters' abilities.  It's one thing in the boost games to not have exploration as the levels are designed more to support the boost gameplay; it's another when the level layout of Heroes appears to be explorable but tricks you into having to take one linear path.  The robot gates were very annoying and seemed to be a precursor to the werehog battles in Unleashed and the boss fights were too repetative with the same gimmick other than the Egg Emperor.  Also, way too many rails in this game.  It's easier to use the rails compared to Adventure 2, but the rails' controls are still tricky enough for a beginner player to be frustrated with levels like Rail Canyon where a mishap will cost you your life.

Giving the robot enemies a health bar is a plus as it meant you either had to level up your character to deal more damage or change your strategy for different enemies.  What was annoying with the level up system was that your characters are too weak in fighting enemies.  When Sonic only deals 1 hit damage to a normal egg pawn, it becomes frustrating that you need to level him up just to destroy the most basic enemy of the game with one hit.  The flying characters are even worse; they hardly deal any damage to enemies other than shocking them with thunder shoot.  I would level the enemies out better so that the most basic enemies don't need a character level up to be easily defeated while still retaining the elite mooks for later in the game.  The hit points mechanic was also annoying with the boss battles as it would seem to take dozens of hit even from the strong characters to defeat the bosses.  I tend to only use the strong characters to fight the bosses just to make the battle go faster.

Finally, a petpeeve of mine, stop making the characters say stupid things when performing any minor actions.  We don't need to hear the characters refer to the 4th wall anytime you accomplish a special move (makes me think this game was aimed for 4-6 year olds).  Use voice acting only when appropiate in the gameplay.

[Mike Arcade]

Interesting, I do agree with you regarding the physics which needed a lot more tweaking as well as the Spin Dash since it's replacement move was completely useless, heck he would have also benefited with the Bounce Attack too for more variety. I would say that Heroes did need to work on the flight characters more with them being on the ground as default and then able to fly everyone like say Tails from SA1. More variety with character moves is what they needed overall, if anything an action button for Team Moves would have been a lot better.

As for what I would have done? For one I'd say the game play should have been a more refined SA2 more than anything else because at least then they would have had a good base, possibly have a choice to either have a Team of 3, 2, or go Solo with characters in their Team before a new set of Levels. As for all 4 teams? Well they WOULD be similar in some ways but of course but all characters while having a base do have unique moves that would fit into their main gameplay which is based and expanded from SA2. Team Sonic would be straightforward as the original game and Adventure games, Team Dark would have focused on "shooting" elements and Combat similar to Gamma/Eggman/Tails but with Sonic's goal of reaching the end of the stage, while Team Chaotix would be Treasure Hunting like Knuckles and Rouge before them. Team Rose I suppose would be the "Easy" Mode of the 4 with a straight to the goal ring and maybe 2 levels less than the rest of them. Speaking of Levels  obviously they should have had at least 2 or 4 exclusive ones for each character it if took too much time to make unique levels for everyone, or better yet have the levels mapped out so each character would have their own sections with a few crossing over intersections within the levels. I mean I felt fatigue playing it when it came out after going through all the same levels again 4 times over. That's my biggest problem with it, lack of variety when you have 4 teams of characters that should be quite unique. Regarding art style they should have tone the colors down and not have given the character models that cel shaded(?) gloss that makes them look all plastic, or just have better character models at least.

As for story wise, okay changing Amy's entire shtick in the game'and dialogue aside I'd remove the one character that shouldn't have been in the game, Shadow. No really after SA2 he needed the spotlight off of him especially since you'd have fans wanting his return. Granted that leaves one spot to fill the team but hey anyone could fill that spot be it an older character like Mighty or Fang, even a new character made for the game would work too. Wouldn't have to change much of the story, you could still have the whole Shadow Android thing too. If they we're going to make a Shadow game no matter what at least then there would have been possible hype for it, especially if they had some sort of After Credits scene hinting at it. On second thought pretty much all of Sonic's dialogue too, it was terrible. Lastly, and this is a minor thing, but the theme song of Sonic Heroes isn't all that great, not terrible but not as good as the previous two games. Would have made for a peppy credits theme though so it could have still been kept, but yeah a better theme song would have been welcome. That and just giving Team Sonic a whole new theme, We Can is pretty bad. So yeah that's how'd I change Sonic Heroes overall. Speaking of Heroes that does bring me to one particular concept that both this game and Shadow's which never really stuck to mean anything despite how big you'd think it should have been...

What would you have done with the Shadow Androids and how would you have used them? For that matter why didn't Metal Sonic use them during Sonic Heroes?

 

[WarTraveller]

8 hours ago, Mike Arcade said:

What would you have done with the Shadow Androids and how would you have used them? For that matter why didn't Metal Sonic use them during Sonic Heroes?

All things said, I don't buy how Eggman made near-perfect replicas of Shadow. If he can do that, on a massive scale no less, why do Metal Sonic and his relatives look the way they do? Why does Tails Doll look like a basic Etsy project? No, I think Eggman got some help out of it. But from who? Considering my plan with Shadow the Hedgehog's story is to take a hatchet to most of the frankly pointless storylines and condense it into three possible timelines (Good, Bad, Neutral, THEN the final story with ending variations depending on which timeline the player played last), the side-story for the Neutral run would be Shadow and Sonic trying to figure out who helped create them. Eventually, it would be revealed that they are also a product of Gerald's research, one forced on him by GUN and modified further by Black Doom. They would be clones of Shadow, their skeletons replaced by endoskeletons so they could be controlled on the frontlines and NOT go rogue. Yeah, that's incredibly dodgy stuff, removing their free will and all that, but it fits in with the rest of the shady stuff that both GUN and the Black Arms forced on Gerald.

Seriously, how did GUN not get raked over the coals for that major screw-up, considering it came back to bite them in the backside no less than twice, and killed countless along the way?

During the game itself, both the Black Arms AND Eggman would release the Shadowbots alongside their regular troops, making it appear to GUN that Shadow is working with everyone and everything. This, alongside a general order from GUN's higher-ups to eradicate all involvement with Project Shadow, would be the reason as to why GUN troops still attack you, even if you're actively helping them. The reasoning for the other two would be that the Black Arms are mindless beasts even with Black Doom's guidance and see Shadow as an abomination, while Eggman's robots would still attack Shadow because...well, it's Eggman.

Finally, during the events of Shadow, I would theorise that Metal was looking behind the scenes while adapting to the Chaos data that Eggman gave him. He would see how the Shadowbots are used, and determine two things; A: that using them would make people cotton on to Eggman quicker, compromising the time he would need to develop his powers and plan and B: the bots just aren't durable or strong enough to be worth using, even as foot soldiers. Notice how all of the enemies in Heroes are vastly more durable and/or threatening than Eggman's designs before or since. Compare the standard Eg Pawn here to the "Eh I'll shoot you I guess" Egg Pawns from Forces that explode if you sneeze on them. A third possible theory is that Metal, owing to his increasing insanity, simply saw the bots as underneath him and the rest of his army, not even giving the time of day to use them.

[Wulfsbane]

On 8/21/2018 at 1:43 AM, SonicSatamX93 said:

I'm surprised nobody's asked this question yet, but...

If Sonic 06 was ever to be remade, how would you do it?

1. Major plot overhaul. I would obviously make it more SatAM based with Sally replacing Elise, Knothole/Mobotropolis/New Mobotropolis/etc. replacing Solenana, etc. The whole 9 yards. As for the plot itself, there's some aspects that can be kept such as Robotnik/Eggman trying to take control of the city, the Flames of Disaster is an interesting concept, but I wouldn't tie it with Sally. The plot I would need time to refigure out.

2. I'd keep the 3 distinct story's and all that. Team Dark actually wouldn't be touched as much, though I'd remove the vehicle stuff from Shadow's. I would make Silver a bit faster and make his glide last longer and his would be more platform element. Amy won't turn invisible. Knuckles has a sideplot with the M.E. Have all 3 stories intertwine better.

3. DON'T RELEASE IT UNTIL IT'S READY

[Akessel92]

Maybe the sword of acorns contains Solaris or something?