One New Preview Says Yes; One New Interview Says No
Will there or will there not be opportunities for other characters to be played in Sonic Generations? And if so, to what extent will they be available?
Last month’s mining of the Sonic Generations demo certainly suggested the possibility, but two conflicting pieces of information on those subjects were released today. The first we find through Sonic Paradise: A new preview from Spanish website ZonaRed which strongly suggests characters besides classic and modern Sonic could be controlled in some missions. In fact, Sonic Paradise’s analysis and translation of the preview notes Sega representatives suggested a 90% chance of such a situation occurring, be it through those side missions or other means.
The ZonaRed preview also suggests a bona fide collector’s edition of Sonic Generations may still be in the works and could be announced by Sega within several weeks’ time. Another level will be ready for a demo in time for September, but it’s not clear whether that will be for press only or the general public, nor is there any indication where the new level will be demoed.
And then there’s this: An interview conducted last week and published today by Segabits and others with Aaron Webber, Associate Brand Manager for Sonic Generations, strongly suggests additional playable characters aren’t happening. When prompted about last month’s demo mining, Webber expressed disappointment at the reveals, and flatly stated only modern and classic Sonic are playable:
Ah the leak. I really wish that hadn’t been published. Several of those assets are from an older build and will not be in the final game. It’s a misrepresentation. As we stated in the beginning, only classic and modern Sonic are playable. You will see many of Sonic’s friends in the game but you will not play as them.
Interestingly enough, despite the above remark, Webber noted in the interview the demo build that many downloaded in June was “a more current build” than what was shown at E3.
So, which side do you believe? Which side do you want to believe? Tell us below in the comments.
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I think both the interview and the preview are right. It’s just about how you look at the issue. Remember that Seaside Hill from Sonic Heroes in in the game – how can a true Heroes stage reimagining be complete without Sonic having partners? Yes, I’m suggesting that for Seaside Hill, Tails and Knuckles will be tagging alongside Sonic and you’ll have to use them to get past certain obstacles. But that will be the extent of those two characters’ playability, which makes the interview pretty much correct in the regard that the only main playable characters are modern and classic Sonic.
^^ This. How can a Heroes stage be there without Knuckles or Tails?
I thought we were done with this? Please don’t Sonic Team. Please don’t.
@Legodex
Well of course people don’t really know them, and of course you aren’t a fan of them… How could anyone be? They were hardly ever used or developed. Wasted potential. Sega created a bunch of crappy (or at least poorly written) characters with way less originality despite having an already sizable back catalog of characters to choose from… it’s almost like they’re too lazy to figure out how best to utilize their own content, so they just make new shit up on the fly (Werehog brawling? Knuckles was BORN for that role!) to fit their needs.
Mighty and Knack and all the other old characters from back in the day COULD be used to make Sonic and friends a more interesting and well-developed cast… but like Amuro said, Sega tends to suck pretty hard at writing (at least in the past), so that’ll probably never happen. I’m not saying either one of them should be in Generations (unless as fan-servicey cameos), but I do believe BOTH of them have more POTENTIAL as unique and interesting characters than Shadow or Silver ever will.
@ChaoticFox
Well maybe not Silver, but I still think Shadow has the potential to redeem himself.
I hope this isn’t true. Sonic Team have tried and failed too many times to have alternate playstyles, and after finally getting a 3D Sonic right (crucially, because he was the only playable character), i’d hate to see them return to their old ways. It would be such a shame.
@Chaotic: And not only that, but Sega never really gave characters like Mighty or Ray any distinguishable personalities. I mean yeah, Fang (or Nack, which ever you wanna call him) was a bad guy in Triple Trouble, but other than that… nothing. Here’s my gripes with some of the characters who’ve appeared in Modern games.
Knuckles shouldn’t be a gullible idiot who constantly goes with whatever Sonic says without a say in anything; he should be friendly with Sonic and Tails, but still be a loner, only involving himself when Sonic needs his help or when it’s absolutely necessary for Knuckles to involve himself.
Shadow shouldn’t be a trigger-happy emo who constantly has episodes flashing back to “MARIA!!!!”, he should be a loner, like Knuckles, who only gets involved in situations when he needs to. If he has a pistol, fine I guess, but don’t try and contort Shadow into some emo Twilight crap that’s trying to appeal to “hardcore” people.
Silver had potential to a good character in 2006, if they put more emphasis on his conflict with choosing whether or not it’s really right to kill someone to save the world, since all life is precious. But they made him a gullible retard who did whatever Mephiles told him to, and didn’t find out who the real bad guy was until it was already too late.
And don’t get me started on Amy and how Sega basically retconned the character development they gave her in SA1. Amy should want Sonic to be with her, but not to the point where she borderlines on obsessive fangirl stalker. She needs to be more independent and rely more on her own abilities rather than waiting for Sonic to come and save her.
@Amuro
“some emo Twilight crap that’s trying to appeal to “hardcore” people”
I’ve been saying that about him since DAY ONE. Obviously not using those exact words, but I feel like Shadow’s SOLE purpose was to replace Sonic and appeal to a new generation of kids raised on Hot Topic and emo music, now that Sonic’s 90s attitude is no longer as hip and edgy as it once was. It’s sad, really.
Regarding Knack and Mighty, of course they never had personalities… nobody REALLY did until the Adventure games and onward… which is why I keep using the word “potential”. Those characters COULD be made into something really cool, if Sega actually bothered to try.
Honestly though, I’m pretty disappointed with the character development they’ve given literally every character in the series, sans Sonic. Sonic’s still as appealing as ever, but I HATE what they’ve done with Tails (8-year old boy genius who nonsensically can create robots on par with DOCTOR Robonik), and it’s a shame how little they’ve allowed Knuckles to develop considering he has the the most interesting backstory of any character and the most potential for real personality and depth out of anyone.
Like I said, Knuckles shouldn’t be some gullible idiot who just goes along with every little stupid plan that pops into Sonic’s head. He should really only involve himself in Sonic’s situations when its necessary for him to.
As for Tails, I never really minded the fact that he can build stuff, but I think that especially with the Riders games and the intro to Sonic the Fighters, Sega took it to a whole other level. This kid’s supposed to be eight years old, and he knows all this cryptic shit about the Babylonians and can build a giant one-seat rocket from scratch? ARE YOU HIGH?
And also, say what you will about Hot Topic, I love their game-themed shirts.
lol, I don’t mind if he wants to be the gadget-y techy guy, but I HATE that he’s considered on par with Robotnik. It’s insane. He’s EIGHT. He can be smart as hell, but he’s fucking EIGHT. He hasn’t had enough time to learn all the shit he knows.
And I agree about Knuckles. One of the things I disliked most about Shadow becoming Sonic’s “rival” is the fact that Knuckles makes a much better choice for the role.
As for Hot Topic, I don’t have anything against the place, really… just the “style” they promote, and the fact that a lot of teenagers tend to basically define themselves almost exclusively by what is carried in their store. Totally off topic though, lol.
Fuck all Sonic’s shitty friends and thier horrible gameplay, Only Sonic is the right way to go SEGA
@ChaoticFox
Do you reslly needed to start flamewar? All right I will say this. Every charavter has potential but classic characters wont come back. Its finished it was stated by Iizuka that they wont come back.
And about Knuckles being better rival. Knuckles hasnt been designed to be Sonic rival. Shadow was. Shadow is better rival but thats my opinion.
Silver have potential too. You have seen him in how many story modes? Like 3? SEGA just have medicore writting thats all.
Note that I grew up with Genesis and loved classic characters but I MOVED ON! They wont come back deal with it. And now that I think about it only good classic exclusive character was Fang rest was… Bland. So yeah you and other retro fans should finally move on instead of looking into past.
Fuck you and your broken English. I’m not starting a flamewar just because my opinions make you feel bad. I don’t remember Iizuka ever saying that other characters won’t come back… if he did, that’s pretty moronic (so obviously I couldn’t put it past him).
Maybe it’s your poor grasp of the language, but you seem to be missing my point entirely. I’m not even going to bother trying to re-state it to try and make you understand.
There’s nothing wrong with multiple characters so long as its done S3K style, where they play the same levels and simply have different abilities and take different paths.
Don’t know why Sega can’t see this, and still insist on this “SONIC ONLY LIKE HOW DA FANS WANT IT HERP DERP” method. Fans don’t hate Tails and Knuckles, they just don’t want to go fishing or treasure hunting or use guns or drive vehicles.
So long as they stick to one gameplay type, more optional characters is only a good thing.
@ChaoticFox
I’m not English. I try to avoid mistakes as much as possible.
I must admit I didnt get your point at beggining and I am sorry.
But I dont know why you hate Shadow and Silver.
@SA3 2011: Knuckles was designed to be Sonic’s rival from the moment he was introduced. Go play Sonic 3 & Knuckles, newb.
@SA3
Sorry, lol. That was probably a little harsh ^^;
But I don’t think this is really the time or place to explain how much I hate those two and why. Suffice to say that I just think it’s a shame that they exist at all, if for no other reason than that it’s disappointing to see Sega creating lackluster new characters (especially hedgehogs) when they have a full cast of much more unique and underused/developed characters already.
Also superpowers – they’re weird. I know Sonic can run fast for no real reason, but at least it’s a physical power, not some random ass telekinetic magic… Shadow’s powers would make more sense if he ALWAYS required emeralds to use them, but I’m pretty sure he doesn’t, and that’s just lame. This isn’t DBZ, it’s Sonic. Keep it simple.
It’s really because of Shadow’s characters that overpowered demi-god fan characters exist in the Sonic fan community anyway.
^Not “characters”, “powers”.
@Amuro
I played Sonic 3 and Knuckles. I even play it now its one of my favourite games but Knuckles felt like anothrer Antagonist not rival. When I first played the game I really hated him for “those” buttons.
@ChaoticFox
I think its matter of opinion. Special powers can be good if they are well executed. For example Shadow powers would be great way to take out enemies but should be limited. Silver’s powers on other hand can make gameplay more varied by for example controling platforms.
Why hedgehogs? Well Shadow’s whole concept was to be hedgehog and Silver well they could make him a mink. But at least his design is very different compared to Sonic and Shadow. I think it will be explained in later games why only they can go Super (I know about Knuckles and Tails but if they could go super now they would do it in heroes so I dont think they super forms are cannon anymore).
Major series writer said that their similiarities and design and names was intentional and will be explained later.
@Amuro
Fan characters shouldnt exist in the first place. In my opinion its the worst thing that ever happened to the franchaise.
And I dont really think its because of Shadow. Just every fan want to make his character powerfull. That powerfull to defeat Sonic. (When I think about it it could be Super Sonic fault O_o) but even if Super Sonic would never exist some fans would still watch DBZ and make such characters.
@SA3: Fan characters have nothing to do with what’s wrong with the franchise. You can avoid fan characters altogether, so why are you complaining about it?
@SA3 It doesn’t affect the franchise, it affects the view of the fanbase. At least, that’s just my view of things.
I still think that Shadow is the better rival, seeing as his physical skill are extremely similar to Sonic’s. Except that you don’t see much of him these days. Same with Knuckles. I like the powers and all, but they shouldn’t go overboard with it like in Shadow and 06. As for Silver…well…he needs a lot of fixing to done, in my opinion. In terms of character, gameplay, and attitude.
^^ *physical skills
@Sonichedgehog
That’s exactly what makes him such a shitty rival. Sure, in terms of competition they’re “equal”, but their similarities make their contrast boring. A rival should be equally powerful, but in a different way, in order to make the conflict between the two characters compelling. A shadow image of yourself is a boring rival indeed.
Also, a rival is SUPPOSED to be antagonistic… that’s sort of what rivalry is.
In terms of gameplay, with some fixing and good programming, any of those characters could be fun to play as, I’m not disputing that… but I still feel that superpowers don’t belong in the Sonic world, and creativity and originality should be valued over copy/pasting the Sonic model and mixing it with anime-style ridiculousness that doesn’t at all fit with the atmosphere of the Sonic universe (at least the atmosphere I fell in love with, not the bullshit anime-esque one with all the humans, demon-gods, and magic hedgehogs).
Sorry, the latter half of that comment was directed at SA3.
Regardless, I really don’t have much more to say on the subject.
@ChaoticFox
It’s also a good thing, someone as fast as Sonic. Someone who’s a challenge, an obstacle to him. Not only that, their view on things is always different. Different personalities, and different characters as a whole. The only similar things between them are the skills and (Kinda…sorta…not really) the look. He still is a decent rival. He only teams up with Sonic when it’s absolutely necessary, His views, like I said, still contrast with Sonic.
Guess you and I just have different concepts of what makes for a good rival. I like the idea of Knuckles being as strong as Sonic is fast… I like the fact that despite not being able to keep up with him, he has been shown to outwit him and remain two steps ahead (at least on his own turf). That made him cool to me. He countered Sonic without Sonic Team resorting to the cop-out writing technique of creating a clone character. I’m sorry, but no matter how equally matched they are, it just makes the rivalry boring.
Metal Sonic makes a better clone “rival” anyway. At least he was BUILT to mirror Sonic, and Sega didn’t try to pretend he was anything but.
If I have to go through another sonic game with ONLY sonic playable, I will be very disappointed. If sega really wants to make this a dream come true, they would let us play as the other characters we know and love.
Sonic Unleashed: just sonic
Sonic colors: just sonic
That last time we played as another character was 5 YEARS AGO in sonic 06. Sega could redeem those characters in sonic generations.
Oh, and you guys should be realizing how great it is that shadow is in the game. You know why? In the past couple games, shadow seemed more like a friend to sonic then a threat, but in sonic generations, shadow is evil again! Sonic goes back to sa2 and fights shadow how he was in that game.
Oh yeah, I forgot to say, the demo will be Modern Rooftop Run. It was found in a hack, and the way it was set up meant that it was different fom the Seaside Hill and City Escape menus and was meant to be playable. Unless SEGA changes their minds….
I love to believe that there will be other playable characters besides Sonic but seeing how they screwed it up on Sonic 06, I hardly imagine that SEGA would do that for a while.
@sonic57289: Why can’t this game be Sonic only? It’s SONIC Generations, not TAILS Generations or KNUCKLES Generations. We’re already gonna have enough play time with Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic. It would be nice to play as other characters, but why can’t this be Sonic only? Ever since Sega stopped shoehorning in other characters, the games have seen massive improvement.
And the reason Shadow is more friendly towards Sonic is because they have a more friendly rivalry. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want Shadow to regress to the emo trigger-happy asshole that he was in Shadow, nor do I want him to be evil again for no good reason.
@sonic57289
Lol. Actually the last time we played as another character was two years ago in Sonic and th Black Knight.
@Sonic57289
Because you want it to be more like an ADVENTURE game?
Well maybe not Adventure, maybe he just wants to see how the other characters fit in with the Unleashed formula.
@Stephan – Yes, I want another Adventure game, but I’m fine with other sonic games. I’m not trying to push this game to be an adventure game.
@Amuro – you got your wish of “just sonic” game with sonic unleashed and sonic colors. I think it’s about time the other characters redeemed themselves. Who knows, they may actually be as fun as sonics gameplay, if not maybe better.
Please yes, SEGA please make more characters playable!
If the other characters bog down this game, I’m blaming you then. lol
I want to believe the playability of other characters, but I have to believe Aaron. Why? It’s been confirmed for some time now that only the two Sonics are playable
@KnucklesChaotix
Where did you find that?
In all seriousness, I think only the two Sonic’s should be playable. Sega might not have enough time to include other characters, and if they shoehorn other characters in and that drag’s down the rest of the game, it would be a major disappointment. Keep other characters out of Generations, and work on them for next game. I’d like to remember Sonic’s 20th anniversary in a good way, thank you.
@Amuro
Not like shoehorning in the others like what they did in Heroes and ’06. Keep a fair amount of characters and ones that Sonic Team has worked on previously. Kinda like Shadow, Knuckles, and Tails.
I actually dont mind if there are more characters playable they haven’t been playable for a while not since 06 so it would be nice of them to return for a change instead of being part of the supportive cast most of the time when they are not playable but they probably won’t I’m hoping they can in some way though but if not fine but I’m hoping for missions at least it wouldn’t hurt would it?
Anyway if not then I hope they will be playable for future Sonic games since Sonic has been going solo for a while but I’ll still be happy if he’s going solo
glad he got a break
but I’m hoping there will be change
Call me stupid for pointing this out now, but if Shadow died in SA2, then his appearance in Generations would have been amazing.
I just hope that we other characters as DLC or something optional.
I really love all the other Sonic characters, but I know a lot of other Sonic “fans” hate anything to do with them.
DLC would let people use their favorite characters while not ticking off Sonic-only purists.
Characters that I would love to see playable again are Knuckles, Tails, Amy and Shadow. Characters that I NEVER ever want to see playable EVER again and were bad ideas from the start are Silver, Big, Cream/Cheese, Charmy, Vector, Espio, Jet, Storm, Wave, Omega, and Rouge.
@Shawtymofo – Characters like Big and Cream I can understand and actually agree. But Rouge, Omega, and the rest are actually pretty fun, and you guys need to give Silver a second chance. I mean the only game where he was playable that wasn’t a spin off was Sonic 06, basically anything regarding game-play in that game was unliked by most fans. I think Silver has a lot more potential.