My problem with the visuals

[NBOX21]

A common complaint I hear about Sonic Forces that I 100% agree with BTW is that this game looks way worse than previous games in the series like Unleashed and Generations despite being a newer game on more powerful hardware. My take on this is not as simple as you may think it is and doesn't just apply to Sonic games, but video games in general.

Believe it or not, graphics isn't one of the main reasons why this is. It's all because of the visual style and presentation (or lack thereof). It all starts the very moment you turn the game on - I've seen NES games with better title screens due to how bland and uninteresting Forces' title screen is.

The font looks just like any other game released around this time and does absolutely nothing interesting or cool with it. All the menus just look so static and boring with no visual flair or personality whatsoever - they're just flat colours with icons on them.

Say what you will about the cutscene presentation in the Adventure games, but at least those games had interesting things going on in them. As awkward as it looks, you still saw Sonic jump on Tails' plane at the end of Red Mountain, and in Adventure 2, Eggman literally blows up half of the moon. In Unleashed, you saw Eggman break the world apart. In Forces, Eggman takes over the world, but all you get is just text on a black screen.

Did anybody come to a complete stop to look at Sonic's idle animation? He doesn't have one in Forces, he just looks like he's completely frozen, which again, the Adventure games knew how to animate Sonic when standing still.

This is something I feel nobody seems to be mentioning - you can have the prettiest graphics in the world, but without a solid presentation to make it all come together, it won't be appealing to look at whatsoever, which is a recurring problem I have with modern gaming.

Yeah, the graphics are good and show signs of improvement compared to before, but without the visual flair and presentation that previous games had, no wonder why people say Unleashed and Generations all looked way better than Forces.

There could be a few details I may have missed, but let's talk about them further.

[SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul)]

Agreed. The presentation has severely been lacking from the games as of recent and it's kind of sad. Forces does have decent graphics imo, but there's not really anything interesting about it that make it stand out compared to other Sonic games.

Then there's the story, I agree with you that telling the story through the textbox is a little ridiculous, considering we've received full-blown cutscenes in the past. I also think the tone of the story is bothersome through the voice-acting and the writing itself. Eggman has finally received control over the planet and has captured Sonic... who loses that control fairly easily and then Sonic is liberated in like a few levels with minimal impact towards him as a character ._.

The Adventure Duology, Heroes, Unleashed, they had fully-realized stories with plenty of emotional impact in them. And they're much older so I think that may have been a big reason why Forces is just meh. You think as time passes, games become much more complex, but Forces is too simple, through and through for what the series is capable of.

As for the idle animation though, tbf, wasn't that the same for Generations? I know Classic Sonic has an idle animation, but I thought Modern Sonic just had a sort of T-pose? I know this is the case in the hub world, but I'm not sure in the actual stages, it's been a while since I've played Generations. Either way, I do agree that there should be more attention to detail with that.

It sort of feels like that we're just getting a game that had very little care put towards it...

I actually haven't finished the game yet so I can't say, but is there anything worthwhile for completing the game 100%? Because that's another thing too...

Sonic Adventure, if you collected all 130 Emblems, you got the ability to play as Metal Sonic & Game Gear Sonic games.

Sonic Adventure 2, all 180 Emblems, unlocked Green Hill Zone as a stage. You even unlocked costumes for the characters in 2P.

Heroes, all emblems, unlocked Fake versions of the characters in 2P.

I don't know if there's any other Sonic games that have this, but in the classic games, this was also the case, needing to put in effort to collecting the Emeralds & Timestones to get the good ending to 100% the game.

Is it worth the effort to 100% Forces though? I have no clue, but it doesn't really seem like it :V

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

Agreed. The presentation has severely been lacking from the games as of recent and it's kind of sad. Forces does have decent graphics imo, but there's not really anything interesting about it that make it stand out compared to other Sonic games.

Then there's the story, I agree with you that telling the story through the textbox is a little ridiculous, considering we've received full-blown cutscenes in the past. I also think the tone of the story is bothersome through the voice-acting and the writing itself. Eggman has finally received control over the planet and has captured Sonic... who loses that control fairly easily and then Sonic is liberated in like a few levels with minimal impact towards him as a character ._.

The Adventure Duology, Heroes, Unleashed, they had fully-realized stories with plenty of emotional impact in them. And they're much older so I think that may have been a big reason why Forces is just meh. You think as time passes, games become much more complex, but Forces is too simple, through and through for what the series is capable of.

As for the idle animation though, tbf, wasn't that the same for Generations? I know Classic Sonic has an idle animation, but I thought Modern Sonic just had a sort of T-pose? I know this is the case in the hub world, but I'm not sure in the actual stages, it's been a while since I've played Generations. Either way, I do agree that there should be more attention to detail with that.

It sort of feels like that we're just getting a game that had very little care put towards it...

Absolutely. Like I said though, this goes far beyond the actual writing and telling of the story itself, but also the way it was presented and it only got worse with Team Sonic Racing due to every cutscene being nothing but text boxes with absolutely no personality or visual flair whatsoever.

I can't remember, however, if Generations had an identical idle animation. Regardless, it's still a step down from the Adventure series.

One thing I did forget to mention, however, is the lack of personality in the environments themselves. They all look very samey with no real connection between the story and its world. All of Adventure 2's levels, for example, tied into the story in some way making them a lot more interesting by default, thus immersing you in its world and plot. Not once did I ever feel that way with Forces and this issue was apparent as early as the first level.

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

Sonic Adventure, if you collected all 130 Emblems, you got the ability to play as Metal Sonic & Game Gear Sonic games.

Sonic Adventure 2, all 180 Emblems, unlocked Green Hill Zone as a stage. You even unlocked costumes for the characters in 2P.

Heroes, all emblems, unlocked Fake versions of the characters in 2P.

In Heroes, you unlocked the fake versions of the characters via a simple cheat code on the character select. Getting all 120 emblems unlocked all the multiplayer modes and getting all A ranks unlocks super hard mode.

[SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul)]

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

Agreed. The presentation has severely been lacking from the games as of recent and it's kind of sad. Forces does have decent graphics imo, but there's not really anything interesting about it that make it stand out compared to other Sonic games.

Then there's the story, I agree with you that telling the story through the textbox is a little ridiculous, considering we've received full-blown cutscenes in the past. I also think the tone of the story is bothersome through the voice-acting and the writing itself. Eggman has finally received control over the planet and has captured Sonic... who loses that control fairly easily and then Sonic is liberated in like a few levels with minimal impact towards him as a character ._.

The Adventure Duology, Heroes, Unleashed, they had fully-realized stories with plenty of emotional impact in them. And they're much older so I think that may have been a big reason why Forces is just meh. You think as time passes, games become much more complex, but Forces is too simple, through and through for what the series is capable of.

As for the idle animation though, tbf, wasn't that the same for Generations? I know Classic Sonic has an idle animation, but I thought Modern Sonic just had a sort of T-pose? I know this is the case in the hub world, but I'm not sure in the actual stages, it's been a while since I've played Generations. Either way, I do agree that there should be more attention to detail with that.

It sort of feels like that we're just getting a game that had very little care put towards it...

Absolutely. Like I said though, this goes far beyond the actual writing and telling of the story itself, but also the way it was presented and it only got worse with Team Sonic Racing due to every cutscene being nothing but text boxes with absolutely no personality or visual flair whatsoever.

I can't remember, however, if Generations had an identical idle animation. Regardless, it's still a step down from the Adventure series.

One thing I did forget to mention, however, is the lack of personality in the environments themselves. They all look very samey with no real connection between the story and its world. All of Adventure 2's levels, for example, tied into the story in some way making them a lot more interesting by default, thus immersing you in its world and plot. Not once did I ever feel that way with Forces and this issue was apparent as early as the first level.

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

Sonic Adventure, if you collected all 130 Emblems, you got the ability to play as Metal Sonic & Game Gear Sonic games.

Sonic Adventure 2, all 180 Emblems, unlocked Green Hill Zone as a stage. You even unlocked costumes for the characters in 2P.

Heroes, all emblems, unlocked Fake versions of the characters in 2P.

In Heroes, you unlocked the fake versions of the characters via a simple cheat code on the character select. Getting all 120 emblems unlocked all the multiplayer modes and getting all A ranks unlocks super hard mode.

Right, and I could understand if the reasoning is because its not a main-story Sonic game, but Riders 1 and 2, both side-story games had actual CUTSCENES to tell the story. It's almost as if it's just pure laziness at this point or a lack of direction even.

But yeah either way, I agree that it is a step-down from the Adventure series, considering going idle in SA1 allows the characters to comment on their environment in a brief sentence. Not just GREEN HILL'S LOOKING A LOT MORE LIKE SAND HILL everytime you play the same level.

And yeah, I definitely agree with that, it seems like we go from one side of the world to another side of the world in like 3 seconds flat with no direction really. I wanna say Heroes sort of had this problem where we went from one level to the next, BUT Heroes actually allowed us to interact with the environment a bit more and each stage had its own ideas on what it wanted to be. At the very least, you could consider it to be like Sonic 1 & Sonic 2 where there was no transitions, you were just there.

Sonic Forces, however, we could have interacted with that giant worm in the background of Sand Hill, yet it remains in the background, never to be interacted with.

Imagine if Sonic Generations didn't have you be chased by the giant robo-fish in Green Hill, I feel like that would have hurt the stage a bit since that interaction was important.

And that's the same for all the other stages in Forces, I think since we don't really interact with the environment, it hurts the game's stages a lot.

Also my bad, I know that the fake versions are in the game, but I've never unlocked them so I figured that the emblems unlocked them. I didn't know that a cheat code did that. I think it's still one of the issues though of recent Sonic titles since 100% the game should get you something important. Whether it be alternate skins of characters, new stages, etc.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

But yeah either way, I agree that it is a step-down from the Adventure series, considering going idle in SA1 allows the characters to comment on their environment in a brief sentence. Not just GREEN HILL'S LOOKING A LOT MORE LIKE SAND HILL everytime you play the same level.

And yeah, I definitely agree with that, it seems like we go from one side of the world to another side of the world in like 3 seconds flat with no direction really. I wanna say Heroes sort of had this problem where we went from one level to the next, BUT Heroes actually allowed us to interact with the environment a bit more and each stage had its own ideas on what it wanted to be. At the very least, you could consider it to be like Sonic 1 & Sonic 2 where there was no transitions, you were just there.

I'd actually say the laziness in the presentation started with Sonic Free Riders on the Kinect, which is ironic since you mentioned the first two Riders games, both of which had far better presentation overall.

At least in Heroes, the characters commented on various setpieces in the levels as you play through them not just as tutorials but also as a way for each individual level to tell its own story.

In fact, there's one excellent video online that explains why Sonic Forces' first level is so lacking compared to the first levels of other Sonic games, SA2 especially. Not just in gameplay either, but story and presentation as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eny_LkEkWdY

[SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul)]

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

But yeah either way, I agree that it is a step-down from the Adventure series, considering going idle in SA1 allows the characters to comment on their environment in a brief sentence. Not just GREEN HILL'S LOOKING A LOT MORE LIKE SAND HILL everytime you play the same level.

And yeah, I definitely agree with that, it seems like we go from one side of the world to another side of the world in like 3 seconds flat with no direction really. I wanna say Heroes sort of had this problem where we went from one level to the next, BUT Heroes actually allowed us to interact with the environment a bit more and each stage had its own ideas on what it wanted to be. At the very least, you could consider it to be like Sonic 1 & Sonic 2 where there was no transitions, you were just there.

I'd actually say the laziness in the presentation started with Sonic Free Riders on the Kinect, which is ironic since you mentioned the first two Riders games, both of which had far better presentation overall.

At least in Heroes, the characters commented on various setpieces in the levels as you play through them not just as tutorials but also as a way for each individual level to tell its own story.

In fact, there's one excellent video online that explains why Sonic Forces' first level is so lacking compared to the first levels of other Sonic games, SA2 especially. Not just in gameplay either, but story and presentation as well.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eny_LkEkWdY

Oh yeah, I remember seeing videos of Sonic Free Riders and I was just absolutely disgusted with how bad both the gameplay and story is compared to the previous two.

And I agree actually, one of the great things about Heroes IMO, is the voice cast was at peak performance. Ryan Drummond had been through the role of Sonic a decent amount of times at that point, Scott Dreier's 2nd time at Knuckles was much more energetic, Jennifer Doullard's Amy sounded more natural than the previous games. And I think the direction that they had was much better. That really added to the experience when they commented on set pieces for the game. Roger Craig & the others are just not for me, if you or anybody else likes them that's perfectly fine, I just think that they should have really kept the original voice cast (or heck, I'd even take the 4Kids voice cast) and just have them hone their abilities over time because SA1 Drummond is really different compared to Heroes Drummond and I think that experience helped him in that area.

I just watched that video too and I completely agree with the points he made, the games levels feel lifeless and meaniningless to what is supposedly happening in the story. It's conflicting compared to SA1's Emerald Coast with its lively and upbeat beginnings, SA2's sense of urgency with City Escape in which both fit pretty darn well within them.

Not only that, but I just realized something too, isn't Green Hill Zone supposed to basically be South Island? If so, it's rather confusing to start there and then suddenly be in the city after running through it.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

Not only that, but I just realized something too, isn't Green Hill Zone supposed to basically be South Island? If so, it's rather confusing to start there and then suddenly be in the city after running through it.

I don't remember entering anything resembling a city at any point after finishing Green Hill Zone in Sonic 1. All I remember is entering some ancient ruins surrounded by lava pits and spike traps.

[SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul)]

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

Not only that, but I just realized something too, isn't Green Hill Zone supposed to basically be South Island? If so, it's rather confusing to start there and then suddenly be in the city after running through it.

I don't remember entering anything resembling a city at any point after finishing Green Hill Zone in Sonic 1. All I remember is entering some ancient ruins surrounded by lava pits and spike traps.

Lol exactly, I mean later on, there is Spring Yard Zone & Starlight Zone which features city-like buildings, but it's not close to Green Hill I think.

I actually have a theory, not sure if anybody else has the same theory or idea, but it involves the original level order of Sonic 1. If you're not aware, Labyrinth was supposed to come after Green Hill Zone, this was changed though for a better flow of the levels which makes sense. If we keep this in mind though and also keep in mind that Green Hill Zone, which is also called South Island has nothing but green pastures on the island from what we've seen in different games (SA2, the game gear games, etc), I think Labyrinth was supposed to be an underwater tunnel to get to the mainland.

Not sure if this is what the developers were going for, but that's my own little headcanon considering what we've seen of South Island. If this is the case though, it kind of makes Green Hill make a little less sense considering this game starts you there, an island, and then teleports you to the mainland soon after.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

If you're not aware, Labyrinth was supposed to come after Green Hill Zone, this was changed though for a better flow of the levels which makes sense.

I actually knew that. In fact, if you use the Sonic 1's level select cheat, it actually displays the zones in the originally intended order as opposed to the order that you actually play through them.

[SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul)]

Originally posted by NBOX21:

Originally posted by SpongebobTheHedgehog (Soul):

If you're not aware, Labyrinth was supposed to come after Green Hill Zone, this was changed though for a better flow of the levels which makes sense.

I actually knew that. In fact, if you use the Sonic 1's level select cheat, it actually displays the zones in the originally intended order as opposed to the order that you actually play through them.

Oh yeah, I forgot about that. I still think they made a great call to change that though for the beginners, but my headcanon still likes the original level layout.

[Ikagura]

Mario Odyssey looks gorgeous

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by 「︎Ikagura」:

Mario Odyssey looks gorgeous

But even that's nothing compared to Super Mario Sunshine, an early GameCube game from 17 years ago. Plus, the visuals in Odyssey suffer from similar problems as Sonic Forces' visuals like the bland looking menus, HUD and text. Otherwise, Odyssey looks great.

This is why when describing how good a game looks overall I try to avoid the use of the term "graphics" as that's only part of making good looking game. I mean, look at Sonic Mania. That game at least went for the same retro look as the classic games, formed its own visual identity and made the most out of it.

[靈 El Riesgo Siempre Vive]

It looks synthetic, I think it's an artistic decision based on the villain and build-a-mascot gimmick. The loading screens have the square clean cut thing going..

Not a bad idea but it doesn't do much for it either.

[forsanxl]

In defense of the somewhat drab visuals, I personally think it suits the World War theme they were going for.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by forsanxl:

In defense of the somewhat drab visuals, I personally think it suits the World War theme they were going for.

I can see what they were going for and I can at least appreciate it for that. Still would've liked to see a bit more personality and style thrown in there though, from the menus to even the HUD during gameplay.

[Ikagura]

Low-Poly could've been much better