Sonic Mania is now 1 week old. Yeah that’s right. Sonic Mania. Last I really spoke on this topic, I did nothing but whine and complain that “indie” developers are biased against Nintendo, and wouldn’t make a game for the Switch as a result. I still don’t have a very high opinion of indies, but since that time, they not only announced that it would come Switch, not only that the Collector’s Edition would come to Switch, but I, being the Sonic nerd that I am, couldn’t resist buying said Collector’s Edition (it’s pretty nice, but I’m a little disappointed in the statue. Its chin is totally flat, it barely looks like the picture at all! And then, why wouldn’t they let you put the fake Mania cartridge into the fake Genesis? Seriously. Such a wasted opportunity. I also wish it came with a soundtrack, but now I’m just rambling). So, I’ve got it, I’ve played it, and I’m prepared to make a full, detailed review, from a perspective that you shouldn’t expect to find anywhere else on the internet. I am one of an insanely small handful of people, probably in the world, who can appreciate the classic games, not hate on them just for being old, while also not being completely and utterly blinded by nostalgia. Be warned if you haven’t played the game, as the following review contains immense spoilers. It is also very long, so click the “Read More” tag to show the content.
(Ugh, I can’t believe I just said that.) *clears throat* What I meant to say was, because Sonic game music matters so much to me, I’ve decided to do an entire opinion piece on the Sonic Forces announcement made today. Take a look.
Since I already brought it up, let’s talk about that title first. I guess I can see what they’re going for? They want it to sound cool, and hip, and teen-like, right? Because I have some news for them. Fist bumps aren’t cool. The line which the song title appears in, “One more last fist bump” made me cringe just as much as seeing the title for the first time did, mostly because a solid 70% of the song otherwise sounded pretty good. To move along with the negatives, the first two lines, “I can’t do this alone / Even though I am strong” made me cringe almost as much as the previously mentioned line. As someone with experience writing lines to represent Sonic, having Sonic praise himself in such a context, even when asking for help, appears pitiful and out of character to me. Of course, it’s not too far off from what we’ve been seeing in the past few Sonic games with Roger Craig Smith, but everything we know about the game so far has been leading me to believe that the writers might actually be giving him back his less obnoxious, more serious character seen in games like Sonic Unleashed. Now, what these two negative factors do heavily remind me of is Sonic’s character in the Sonic Boom series, a caricature of the already less-than-desirable modern personality. Then again, I don’t think that character would even be humble enough to admit the need for help, even if praising himself while doing so. I hope I’m on the side of the majority here who wouldn’t want to see the Boom personality in a real game, right?
Now for the stuff I’m not really sure what to think about. As I mentioned before, I like about 70% of lyrics, but the first and last lines are so bad that I don’t know if I can call them good lyrics as a whole. All the stuff about working together and sharing a belief, it fits perfectly for a Sonic song. Nothing particularly special about it, but fitting. I could say the same about the singer. Apparently, the singer, Douglass Robb, sings for a relatively popular band called “Hoobastank.” That news surprised me, because I honestly felt that the singing skill sounded a bit on the amateurish side. I’ll also take this moment to say that this Douglass Robb person sounds close enough to Crush 40 that they should have just gone with Crush 40. I mean, seriously, Jun Senoue is still on the music team for this game, that’s half the band already. Even if the lyrics themselves would still have taken some getting used to (I can say that about plenty of other Crush 40 songs), Crush 40 would have left me with no qualms about the quality of the singing, and could have easily hit the nostalgia cord for myself and hundreds of thousands of Sonic fans like me. Anyways, the sum total of this song sounds…kind of like a fan dub of the instrumentals to me. And I don’t necessarily mean that in a bad way, fan dubs can have some pretty high quality when they try hard enough. And this felt like one of those high-quality fan projects to me, good and thorough, but lacking a certain professional touch. Sort of like good fanfiction, but in song form.
Even though it’s just a song, and songs have had some weird and false implications for Sonic games in the past, I feel the need to analyze the lyrics. Over and over again, it refers to two individuals. Not three. Two. So who’s getting left out? Does this mean that Sonic doesn’t interact much with the Hero character, meaning that this Hero has his own separate story? Or does Sonic not count Classic Sonic because they’re essentially the same person? I’d say either is possible. Either way, I still love the music, and I’m still excited for the Solaris Phase 2/Perfect Dark Gaia style final boss remix.
Long title, but I couldn’t resist. Anyhow, I’ve mentioned a few times before that the general theme of Sonic Forces is very similar to my own ideas for this story, which scares me. I’m getting a little tired of using the words “wait and see.” Well, I waited until today, and I saw. New Sonic Forces footage has been released from E3 (Electronic Entertainment Expo), with more likely to come. This new footage, seen below, actually has me a heck of a lot more excited for the game than I already was, but it also makes me even more scared than ever.
The very first thing you do as Sonic is to go look for Shadow (I think)! It’s so obvious, and it’s so amazing! Story implications for this game just went through the roof! After Sonic Boom, I was really afraid for what they would do with Shadow should he ever reappear in the canon, but now it’s clear that they’re putting him in what is perhaps the exact role I would want to see. But, while nothing absolutely shockingly new happened in this footage (except maybe Silver, but that was already leaked), it put a lot of things in perspective. It is now clear that “Join the Resistance” isn’t just an arbitrary tagline. There is very clearly a larger resistance force at work than just Sonics and the Hero (or is it Avatar now?), especially given the appearance of “Soldier” during the Hero gameplay, suggesting that the forces go beyond even Sonic’s group of friends (a step above what I had planned for at least the first season, so kudos to Sonic Team for that).
Point is, this is turning out a lot closer to what I have than what I was expecting. But it’s not time to abandon ship just yet. Currently, we are finishing up the “Birth of Blacklight” arc. Next up is the “Dawn of Chaos” arc (I’ll give you one guess at the character it introduces). After that was a planned arc which does not have a solidified name yet, which would tie up loose ends and set the stage for Crisis of Chaos. The concept for that…well, let’s just call it “Shadow Forces.” It’s not exactly the same setup as Sonic Forces, but it’s very similar. Sonic becomes incapacitated, and Eggman (as well as another foe) begin taking over the world, with little to stand in their way. Tails manages to recruit Shadow to fight back, then GUN manages to recruit both of them to form a team of generals, composed of all (or most, anyways) of Sonic’s friends. What ensues is a war, including tactics of diversion and defense very similar to those described by the characters in this new gameplay footage. I can no longer ignore these similarities. That’s why I’ve decided to hold back on writing this arc altogether, until I witness the story of Forces for myself, beginning to end. November is quite a ways away. I’ll continue releasing the next two arcs as normal, but after that there will be a long break while I figure this out. I purposefully left room in the timeline for more games to happen between Sonic Lost World and Speed of Time, but I never expected something so heavy on lore after what we’ve been getting over the past 10 years or so. Worst case scenario, Sonic Forces completely obliterates any semblance of canon that my story ever had, and I’ll have to make a spectacular decanonizing special episode very soon into Season 1. That would likely mean that the events of Sonic Forces would be ignored for this upcoming arc, and it would proceed as normal. Best case scenario (which probably isn’t happening at this point because of Silver), everything about Forces falls perfectly into place, stepping on none of my metaphorical toes, in which case I might even be able to convert what I have into a Forces sequel (or at least tie-in).
Speaking of Silver, I give about a 95% chance that I’ll have to start doing some retconning (assuming that I accept Forces as canon to the Chaos Project universe). That would mean literally going back and changing the content of those episodes, and making a note on this website of what was changed. I did what I did with Silver because I assumed he would almost certainly never appear in an important role in a canon Sonic game ever again. Because of that assumption, I constructed the story in a way that does not allow for him to appear between then and 06. But now, he does. Of course, I feel like chances are relatively high (maybe 40% as of now) that this game will end with a giant reset button ala Sonic 06, self-decanonizing the entire contents of the game, including any interactions with Silver. I’m not sure why they would want to do that after the way people complained about 06, but then again, how else would they explain such a rapid removal of Eggman’s influence over 99% of the world? Of course, there are plenty of magic explanations out there, but a time reset would certainly be the easiest and cleanest. One last thing of note is the “Soldier” mentioned earlier. In my story, I have so far inferred and intend to elaborate on the fact that Shadow was one of the only animoids involved with GUN. Of course, there are others, such as Rouge, but the point being made was that it is an occupation dominated by humans. Mr. Soldier was definitely not a human. This doesn’t exactly contradict my story, but I’d say it deserves an explanation. Mr. Soldier may end up with a real name and a character-of-the-week appearance in the Chaos Project. Of course, he might not have been GUN at all, but I’d say the helmet was pretty reminiscent. I’d actually be a little upset if they decided that they should include a military that isn’t GUN. It exists for a reason. But, I suppose Mr. Soldier could be an average joe who only became a soldier when he joined Sonic’s forces, sort of like the Rebel Alliance from Star Wars. I’d be okay with that, but I still really hope they don’t ignore the existence of GUN in this game. It’d be a big waste and a disappointment.
-Until next time, remember, destiny lies before you.
EDIT: 10 steps forward and 1 step back! Take a look.
The preview image for the video alone tells you all you need to know. I was very wrong about the role of Shadow. I’m very fearful of character reversion, but, if we’re being honest, it’s small price to pay for a game with a dramatic, potentially deep and enriching story with continuity to the rest of the series. I won’t even go in to the thousand different theories running through my head. (By the way, Chaos looks gorgeous.)
Starting off, if you haven’t seen the below reveal of this new Sonic game, do that now, first.
Now, where to begin? I guess I first have to thank the developers for not isolating part of their fanbase, and releasing this new game on the Nintendo Switch as well as other consoles. Moving on to more important information. All I can say is that I’m very weary. For one thing, I’m a little upset that they presented this to us specifically saying that this would not be a sequel. And then Classic Sonic comes and ruins that. Not that I have anything against Classic Sonic, or the time-travel implications that he presents. But I was really hoping, as just one thing, that we would actually go back to playing as characters other than Sonic and more Sonic. And at the opening of the trailer, where they seemed to present what could potentially be a narrative the likes of which we haven’t seen since the Adventure era, I was hopeful that that would mean the games could be closer to Adventure era as well. Although, they start with “team that brought you Sonic Colors and Sonic Generations,” which are pretty far off from adventure-style gameplay. Anyways, the existence of Classic Sonic pretty much removes any possible chance of other characters being involved. Other characters were a staple of the Sonic series from Sonic the Hedgehog 2, one of the most beloved Sonic games of all time, all the way to 2006. Excluding spin-offs like Sonic Boom, we’ve only ever been able to play as Sonic (or Sonic and other Sonic) ever since. I just find it so unfortunate, and it stands in the way of so many possible gameplay, and more importantly, story opportunities.
One last thing to mention. The trailer really seemed to heavily infer something relating to the Archie Comics, which scares me. Once again, I have nothing against the comics, but I just think we shouldn’t go mixing universes without a very good reason (which this still could potentially have, which is why I’m worried, not necessarily disappointed). More importantly, I’m worried about how this could conflict with the Chaos Project, which, despite not being in any way directly related to the comics, does share a considerable number of similarities, opening the door for contradictions between this coming game and my own story.
But enough about me. My final conclusions: there’s really no telling at this point, but this game could be very good, or very bad. I was hoping for a good indication of the answer, but that just didn’t happen. What we’ve seen could mean very good things for the story, or very bad things. It’s sort of confusing in a way, I just don’t know what to think. But I suppose that was the point. One other thing I was really hoping for was confirmation of rumors that Crush 40 composed a song for this game, but even if there is no song, then that’s far from a deal-breaker for the game.
Edit: Apparently, the general internet is referring to this game as “Project Sonic” rather than “Sonic 2017” as the official Sonic Twitter called it, so the title of the post has been updated accordingly. Edit 2: The NX is now known as the Nintendo Switch, and I also added a direct encoding of the trailer.
– And until next time, remember to live and learn every day!
