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.

Sonic Frontiers... is inevitable...

 This... is... dull looking!

Sonic Frontiers is ever lumbering after us ready to rock our unprepared arses for the crime of looking at the game frankly for the 'meh' it's shaping up as. That original reveal of gameplay has to be one of the most powerful releases of hype ever recorded in marketing, only that release was an exhale of bated breath as most level-headed people went "Wow, this looks rough as heck." Just close your eyes for a minute and try to remember that mess for me. Try to remember the floating railings, the unmatched movement and animation timing, (In a game about movement) the emptiness of the world, the lack of any visual identity... did you remember it all? I hope so because I wanted to do an update on what it is Frontiers has prepared for us now it's so close we can smell it's rot on the very near horizon. Maybe we'll see that the Internet has undersold this game and the believers are the one's who are being vindicated.

A lot of new footage has debuted in the recent months and weeks and of it all I can say this much; I like the new designs of the robots more than then I have in recent Sonic games. Although bare in mind I'm thinking about Forces and their laughably generic enemy robots that weren't worth a iota of brain space to create. These new robots have this cool sleek-metal design that specialises in round shapes instead of sharp edges to create this very monolithic, alien vibe to them. Their grey-black colouring works wonders in catching the light of Sonic Frontier's new engine and emphasising either their size or their shape in a way which feels distinct from other Sonic enemies. The really big creatures even have a vague sense of that 'Shadow of the Colossus' scaling going on, where they sell the disparity between the player and the enemy dynamically and vividly through clever use of a automatically adjusting camera matched with the actual enemy asset itself. 

And unfortunately that remains the only indisputable praise I can throw this game's way because everything else remains fundamentally boring! The world that they've insisted on showing off repeatedly as this point, Kronos Island, is impressively barren looking with it's dull green stretch of nothingness off-set by haphazardly placed grind rails and springs literally floating in the air. Still the game looks like this team just grabbed a generic world map and tried to build their Sonic game ontop of it all without removing that generic beginning asset and replacing it with something that has an identity and soul in the later stages of development. Ah, but now we have a new area in Ares  Island which is... just a bunch of generic brown badlands with grind rails and springs stuck everywhere... it is impressive how this game squanders it's chances at establishing a visual identity, truly.

But some part of Sonic Team must have realised how bland everything felt in their open world and so sought to maintain some sort of balance between old and new, via the brand new Cyberspace sections that are essentially little challenge levels where the old 3D Sonic design philosophy can take over for a brief gameplay section. Unfortunately, when I say 'old' I mean 'new old'. Which is to say, these Cyberspace sections are literally just Sonic Forces style 'run in a straight line and jump a few times, style gameplay levels that are wrapped up in a manner of less than two minutes. Yes, we get to see worlds that look more interesting and evocative of an identity in the Cyberspace worlds, but when they're just back-drops for a lifeless sprint-n-jump; what's even the point? And why hasn't the developers learned anything from people looking at Forces level design and going "Wow, this barely constitutes as a level at all!"

I don't mean to do the 'in my day' kind of rhetoric, but Frontiers just really invites the comparison with it's very rustic approach creating an 'open world'. I heard the affirmation recently that 'open worlds' are just linear games with more space to explore, and I think of that as a gross oversimplification designed as a weak gotcha... except when we're talking about games like Sonic Frontiers. Open World games have to be designed to maintain that sense of immersion and personality both in the heat of the main narrative and the chill of the areas in-between. It has to strike a balance of identify and gameplay across a space that can be explored from any angle and from any direction because the player is not on rails. (At least not to their express knowledge. Clever open worlds know how to subtly guide the path of even the open player with their sheer design.) And to understand the problem with Sonic Team and how they got this wrong, let's look at those Cyberspace levels.

Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were the very first 3d Sonic games and in many peoples eyes, the best of their kind. Now Sonic Adventure missions bought a few of the main mechanisms that inform modern Sonic design, such as sections designed to make you feel fast and easy kill enemies that you can launch off of; but do you know what else those missions had? They had challenges. Platforming, spike pits, bottomless drops; situations where you couldn't just blindly sprint forward else you would end up losing a life. Now the 2d Sonic games focused a lot on sections that could be sped through with sufficient enough knowledge of the map layout, but there was some peril and sections that changed up the speed of the gameplay here and there. Basic variety is the key is level design on a core level and that is something that modern Sonic has been steadily losing sight of.

Sonic Forces was the worst for it, where you could literally speed through a level without really bothering with any of the mechanics and finish every mission in sub two minutes. There was no sense of peril or variety until the boss missions, and none of them were particularly inspired either. I've only seen two Cyberspace levels so far, and I'm sure there's a great stretch of variety through them (at least visually) but of the two entire levels we've seen neither had anything to them but sprint, bounce and lock-on jump. These are linear slices of gameplay levels, there's no reason they can't be grand and challenging and last more than 1 minute thirty! And just seeing that this is the standard the team are reaching has me worrying about what Forces believes a good gameplay loop is; which isn't something I'd worry about with any other game developer in the world, but this isn't any other developer- Sonic Team have proven that they need the scrutiny!

Frontiers looks visually decent. I like the character models, I like the lighting, I like the style of Super Sonic; but artistically and practically the game has yet to impress me still. I want to like Sonic and I want to play the heck out of his games but without the special spark of purpose to his game design I can't see a future where Sonic fits in with the major modern pantheon of games. And the thing is; I know what you'd have to do to make a good 3d open-world Sonic game, I can see the gameplay loop in my head, but Sonic Team are so staunchly stuck in their ways I don't know if they're ever going to match and certainly not exceed what seems like such a simple vision. We need newer and fresher developers with newer and inspired ideas to breath life into Sonic. And if Frontiers does well enough, maybe that's what we'll get! There's something to look forward to I guess...