Redesigning Sonic

 Life is a stage loop

Sonic is the fastest mammal alive... excluding Barry Allen I guess... Barry's so fast he can literally go back in time and pass through solid objects by vibrating their particles! Barry's only weakness is... plot convenience. Literally. But whilst their universes remain mercifully separate, Sonic is the fastest thing alive and that singular fact has informed the majority gameplay decisions made around the designs of his games since 1991. With the obvious exceptions; 3D Blast, The Fighters, etc. As such it's quite impressive that in all that time, Sega and Sonic Team beneath them have never quite managed to crack that nut of 3D Sonic. Because when you break it down to the core essentials, conveying and gamifying the acquisition of speed is literally the only piece of connective tissue that needs to connect the 2D era of Sonic to the 3D era; all else is superfluous and/or ill advised. It seems that might be a lesson Sonic Team have learnt with their most recent outing, Frontiers; but then again: they did fill their open world with platforms and grind rails, so maybe not.

I've been pondering this for some time as I've tried to deduce how exactly one might go about redesigning Sonic for a newer audience. Oh, and I don't mean visually redesigning the little blue furball; I've already seen a couple terrible ideas for how that can be done. I'm talking gameplay, where the buck starts and stops, because that has been a constant sticking point for the evolution of Sonic over the years. How do you stay true to the franchise and evolve the brand? How do you make engaging and unique gameplay which takes advantage of the mascot's strengths? How do you convince Sonic Team to stop putting stupidly jarring platforming challenges in their 3D adventure games? They're never even hard challenge platforming either; just the bare minimum of the bare minimum. Is the solution at all formed in jumping challenges, or is Sonic barking up the wrong tree?

The way I look at it, one of the most enduring problems with Sonic has been the attitude towards approaching and designing it. Everytime you'll find developers unwilling to really challenge what it is that Sonic has become in order to redistribute him towards this future, and instead they're always wanted to strike this balance of what Sonic was and what a 3D version of that exact image would look like. But- that's not really sensible, now is it? The original Sonic games were 2D platformers balanced and designed to take advantage of the limited dimensions to offer platforming challenges, level gimmicks and vertical path diversity. 3D games can't really take advantage of platforming very well thanks to the depth perception problem which is difficult to solve from behind the subjects head, and the 3rd dimensions adds a horizontal plane of travel that should really be considered when level designing. (And isn't.)

Sonic Adventure is about the best one could hope for whilst trying to stick to the tenets of what made the original games work, and even then it had it's issues. Levels were linear by raw design and alternate paths seem like unintentional oversights rather than planned routes. The Platforming can be meddlesome and difficult to work, because 3D platforming is a headache, and nailing the sense of speed that Sonic in known for is difficult to do in run sections because you can't really just lock the player in a sprint without sacrificing that sense of control. (Wait until later Sonic games where they stopped caring about that risk altogether.) Later Sonic games should have taken this as evidence to move on from what Sonic was and design him for the future. But excluding 'Boom', which had it's own problems; Sonic Team seem to have been chasing this Adventure high ever since.

Firstly I think Sonic could benefit from a total shift in setting into a world comprised of the core tenants of world design; context, culture and consistency. Somehow we're supposed to consider every Sonic game currently out as all part of some unending canon despite the original games taking place in a seemingly endless scroll of biome diversity, the Adventure games taking place in and around human cities and Forces showing us an entire city populated solely by anthropomorphic animals. There's no unified design philosophy, no conceptual themes around the lore of this world and zero connective tissue unless you squint and try to see it. And if the world makes no sense, it can't be taken seriously and you'll have trouble creating a narrative in which the fate of that world has any consequence at all to a viewer. And I think a consequential world is the first major step of improvement this franchise could benefit from.

As for raw gameplay, my proposition is toward a vast shift in core gameplay tenets. Coming up with revised tenets is a big ask without fundamentals, however; so I'm currently still nailing down what a reimagined Sonic would fundamentally play like; which has me with an image like thus: an open plan game (not necessarily open world but at least open plan level design) wherein speed is the most important factor of gameplay. I see a new angle to combat wherein the way Sonic attacks is by gaining a certain speed, then entering into his ball state (locking his velocity) and barrelling into his target. The faster object wins the collision. Speed acquisition will be paramount in such a system, with momentum based mechanics and maybe boost tricks coming into play, enemies would have to be completely redesigned to all challenge on a speed level, and Sonic's running animations would have several stages to indicate which threshold of speed the player has reached so they judge how to barrel into their enemy.

For bosses I have a few ideas. The first is simply, an elevation upon the main game. Big speed demons every bit the match of Sonic and just as capable, requiring the player to make moves to break enemy momentum and open them up to attacks. Maybe breaking trees that fall down in their run route, forcing them to divert to a smaller momentum building runway; or breaking a dam that floods the stage with water which affects friction. It would be based around disarming the enemy creatively before attacking. The other, more spectacle driven approach, would be in giant mechanoids which the player has to break inside of and destroy from the inside. Dodge enemy attacks to build speed, then pierce within the metal body and break what you can before getting kicked out to repeat. Of course, by it's very nature Sonic has to have unique and different bosses for each encounter; but those are just a few ideas to demonstrate how this style of gameplay could effect this important sector of Sonic games.

Of course, my ideas are just one of many peoples; and as such little more than a trickle in an ocean. But I hope that from a raging ocean of ideas to choose from, Sonic Team would some day recognise the sheer breadth of choice in front of them and not just chase that Sonic Adventure high after all these years. That moment has passed them by and all the gimmicks in the world can't hide the fact that Sonic of today feels played out and dated. But there's something about the little blue guy, all sassy and indignant like he is, that keeps me wanting to route for him and not just write this off as another series gone down the gutter. I hope that Sonic Team can recognise the potential in their hands before that benefit of the doubt rubs off for me and the others of this strained franchise.