Expect Some Universe Revisitation
When does 24 courses not necessarily mean 24 courses?
After speculation started to grow that the 24 announced courses in Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing may be split among as little as twelve areas, Steve Lycett addressed that concern on Sonic Stadium’s message boards Friday.
“There’s not 12 tracks split over 2 IP themes,” he said. “There are other ways of dividing 24 though into equal numbers.”
From there, Lycett inferred that while players won’t necessarily have two courses for twelve areas, there shouldn’t be an expectation that all 24 tracks will be totally unique, either:
What you’ve got to remember guys, is that 24 race tracks is a mammoth undertaking. Look at it this way, in your typical racing game you generally define a single art style – or universe – and then base all your tracks on that same style. You’re a city based racer, or an open road racer, or a racetrack racer, you define your look and use it across everything.
That’s not the case here. Not only are we basing the tracks on a variety of source games, we’ve also got to be true to those games. The more games we try and emulate, the harder this gets, both from defining stage styles, to building a track which fits in it, to actually physically building, texturing, testing and getting it approved. 24 tracks from 24 different games mean 24 times the work of concept, design, build and approval. Remember, we have to work with finite time and budget here!
So it was never going to be 24 tracks all from different games (actually we started with 30, but that’s a different story!) – more 24 tracks, split across certain design motifs from a smaller number of games.
Even then this is still difficult, we’ve still got to make 24 tracks that all play differently, all have unique features and short-cuts. Then we have to find some means of making sure they all fit that one magic art style so the whole thing hangs together. Also then take into account that those 24 tracks have to be made across 3 effective sets of polygon counts (we have a level set for 360/PS3/PC, then one for Wii, and one for DS). Really we’ve built 72 tracks on this game… that’s before the optimised versions for splitscreen too.
So, the bottom line is that the truth lies somewhere in between. There won’t be 24 totally unique, different tracks, but it doesn’t appear as if Seaside Hill–or any other environment for that matter–will have 4 stages to call its own.
Earlier, Lycett also clarified some news that 27, not 24 tracks will be present in ASR, and inferred that the 27 number comes from a combination of the 24 tracks and three arenas, presumably for multiplayer battle royales.
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Huh. That’s interesting. I’m still hanging onto my hidden characters/tracks bit! There still feels like something is being hidden from us. But what…hmm…
The leaked list from the site seemed pretty definitive to me.
That’s not really surprising. Mario Kart has a long history of having multiple tracks per theme, after all. Did we REALLY expect 24 totally unique tracks in this ONE game?
Okay. Nothing surprising here.
I’m not surprised… but… Hey! That’s stupid! They can if they want! Just give the game a year more of work and it will be better! Try to imrpove it as much as you can! Oh Miyamoto… why do they never try to do their best? Yeah, it’s just because it’s a spin off they don’t give it enaugh time! The game will end up mediocre if you don’t put enaugh effort into it! Just look at all other spin offs… not a single one that’s better than just good. They have to give it more time! I’m sure they could make 24 different tracks if they did that!
How could they work so hard on a sega game and when it comes out its sold only for 40$ and not that many people buy it. Hopefully this will be different. I didn’t buy Mario Kart because I was waiting for this game! Nothing like good sonic news early in the morning with a cup of coffee.
The Games will be AWSOME as always
I’m buyin it for XBOX360. I still wish that all 24 were all unique.
if there are multiple tracks per location I hope it is’nt like sonic riders where the second track in a location is basically the same thing with a different background.
Werehog, it’s not merely a matter of “working on it longer”.
Miyamoto is in a unique position: he is a very successful game maker. He can take as long as he damn well pleases and has access to a huge budget, because his games always sell into the multimillions.
Sumo Digital and ASR are not in that position. They have a limited budget to work with. Working longer on a game, means requiring a BIGGER budget. A budget is typically matched to the expected sales potential of a game, and SEGA has no reason to expect this game will sell nearly as well as, say, Super Mario Galaxy. In fact, I can confidently say that it WON’T sell even close to that.
A bigger budget means the game has to sell more to make money. If it loses money, well, thats the end of the All Stars series.
The issue’s more complicated then you think. So no, they CAN’T, even if they wanted to. Sumo Digital, like MOST game developers frankly, have put a LOT of effort into this game. A LOT. And frankly, I think that will show in the final game. Just because the game doesn’t have 24 tracks that are from different IPs, DOESN’T mean the game is suddenly going to be rendered “mediocre”. THe Mario Kart games all have tracks from a single game series. Is that mediocre? Of course not. All this is really about is franchise representation.
It seems to be more surprises for us fans.
If it is so hard to do all these franchisee, then why not do a normal game based on one franchise, then add some guest characters or whatever?
Half the things they chose suck anyway.
@Nuckles87: Yeah, I understand that and it’s just… sad.
Because it will make the game less good. I don’t say that it has to end up mediocre, but it sure can. We’ll see that later.
And Mario Kart Wii is mediocre… or at least almost… But it’s really fun!
I wish SEGA developers DID have the opportunity to work longer on their games. Most of them seem to have problems that could’ve been fixed with only another month, if that. Still sore about Sonic’s UGC not having lock-on, personally. *Sigh.*