Speed Highway, City Escape, and Seaside Hill in motion
Most likely part of the embargo that was originally supposed to drop on Monday and was subsequently pushed back, IGN has posted a new Sonic Generations trailer for the “Dreamcast Era” of the game, giving us our first look – both in sight and sound – at Sonic Adventure‘s Speed Highway.
What is most amusing about this trailer is Sonic Heroes officially being co-opted in to the “Dreamcast Era” of Sonic’s history, despite appearing on the Gamecube, Xbox and Playstation 2 over three years after Sega announced their decision to become “platform agnostic”.
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Meh.
@Lucas
I’m pretty certain Dreams of an Absolution won’t be making another appearance, due to legal conflicts with Bentley about royalties.
I’d love to be proven wrong though.
@ChaoticFox
Did’ya see your favorite character at the end!?!? lolol jk jk jk bro
I still can’t believe Silver’s the best rival they could come up with for the Modern Era…
“IT’S NO USE! TAKE THISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS-
-ragequit-
@Jmack
I literally spat with rage at the visual confirmation of something I’ve already known for months!!!
But seriously, it’s nbd. Shadow may be a shitty character, but it’s not going to completely ruin my entire experience because I have to spend two minutes kicking his ass.
I might have been more upset if I hadn’t seen it coming. I just hope this fight is a little more engaging than the Metal Sonic one. Also, I’m noticing a pattern with these in-game cutscenes appearing grossly underpolished compared to their pre-rendered counterparts. Shit, even Colors did better than this. The MS and Shadow scenes look like they were rendered on the 3DS.
Personally, I´m liking more the look and gameplay in the Dreamcast era stages than classic and modern ones. They really seem to have expanded those stages, while being nearly the same as the originals. In classic era, I love Chemical Plant, but Green Hill is just meh and Sky Sanctuary could be a lot better, not having the bosses in there really makes the stage less appealing. Metal Sonic boss doesn´t seem to be an awesome battle, although I´m sure both Shadow and Silver ones will be better than the originals, they weren´t that great to start with.
I hope modern stages are more like the Dreamcast era stages, and I hope we´ll see things like the airship in Spagonia in the other stages to keep things interesting. It´s also a let down that there´s only classic Tails… Classic Amy and Knuckles should have made the cut…
@ChaoticFox
Agreed with the boss fights. Yeah those in-game cutscenes are lookin kinda iffy. Actually now that I think about it I don’t like any of the in-game cutscenes from any 3D sonic game (except SA2 “I can’t stand the poor sound quality though” and Colors.) I feel like they should just have pre-rendered cutscenes through the whole game.
@Jmack
I can understand why they can’t do that, since pre-rendered scenes probably cost more to produce (or at least take longer amounts of time), and they don’t always transition as seamlessly into the gameplay (not to mention loading times), but the ones from Colors were SO good.
These models look and animate like they came from the previous generation of consoles, whereas the ones in Colors, which is a weaker platform, looked and animated so well you almost forgot they WEREN’T pre-renders. I can’t wrap my head around how unpolished they seem compared to EVERYTHING ELSE in this game that’s literally GLOWING with it.
“These models look and animate like they came from the previous generation of consoles, whereas the ones in Colors, which is a weaker platform, looked and animated so well you almost forgot they WEREN’T pre-renders. I can’t wrap my head around how unpolished they seem compared to EVERYTHING ELSE in this game that’s literally GLOWING with it.”
Holy fuck we have a winner for “Biggest Crock of Shit” here, jesus christ.
@Lucas: What the fuck are you even saying? Fix up your grammar, buddy. Then maybe we can comprehend your stupid comments and properly make fun of them.
Anyway, this trailer looks boss.
Also, “Dreamcast Era is horrible and artificial”? So what your saying is Sonic has no right to try and evolve into 2D? You classic fantards never cease to amuse me.
Care to elaborate on that, oh wise one? What makes it a crock of shit?
And I hope to God you’re not jumping to the conclusion that I’m jumping on the hate train just because of a couple of goddamn in-game cutscenes. I’m just a bit shocked at how bad they look when compared to everything else, including the same type of cutscenes from OLDER games on weaker hardware.
Meh, the cutscenes look okay to me.
I’m not saying they’re OMG game-breaking AWFUL, it’s just weird to me because I’m come to expect a lot more out of Sonic Team. They’re fine how they are, it just looks curiously substandard for them.
I noticed Classic Sonic just launched a missile into someone’s office.
The little MS and shadow intros are pretty rough but i’m going to assume the actual story cutscenes are going to be at least at the level of unleashed’s in-engine cutscenes
@X
Oh for sure. The normal cutscenes are easily going to be fantastic… I expect them all to be on the same level as those little clips we keep seeing of Classic and Modern Sonic running around in City Escape/Rooftop Run (so gorgeous). Not at all worried about those.
I thought the pre-rendered cutscenes are good. Just not AS good as the CGI cutscenes from the trailers for City Escape and Rooftop Run.
Sorry for butting in but I can’t help be concerned by what everybody’s saying, are the game cutscenes really that bad? I chose not to watch that 28 minute video because I didn’t want to spoil too much for myself, but as I play A LOT of Alice: Madness Returns and the cutscenes there are incredibly poorly handled (The textures don’t even load properly half the time) is this something I should be worried about, or do you guy’s mean bad as in Sonic Adventure 2 bad or something?
lol I remember when I played Sonic Heroes on SEGA DreamCast.
But seriously, I was wondering how the music would sound and they did better with it than I expected. They took a track I originally had no interest in and made it sound catchy. It also looks as I expected: Nearly identical to Sonic Adventure.
I like how when they showed Shadow they had the cinematic mimmick the one of him from the opening sequence of Sonic Adventure 2: Battle. (Except that was in Radical Highway) Somehow he looks the same but has that SA2 vibe about him rather than looking pissed.
@Logan parr no it’s not bad at all in my opinion, and why would you need to be worried about cutscenes when the gameplay mechanics and level design are much more important.
Oh yeah. About the cutscenes. I noticed too, how they also have an outline of light around the models in some of the in-game cutscene bits. However, I first noticed this in stages. Like Planet Wisp. Everyone praised that screenshot but Sonic looked like crap to me. It was probably a graphically incomplete image from earlier in production not shown til now.
Even the image of Modern Sonic seeing his Classic self in the reflection looked Wii-ish to me.
A friend of mine once showed me a video where the enemy textures (and only the enemies) were like that even in gameplay while everything else was fine. By the final release everything matched up. I don’t think they’d make a game on PS3 and 360 but not Wii due to the whole HD thing and NOT make it look good.
i think the ending with shadow is showing he will be a playable character or a addon to play as him if thats true i would pay 1 buck more
People are bringing up the cutscene quality so let me add to that. These aren’t the same type of cutscenes normally used in the game. Normally they’re movie files that had already been created, but here it’s part of the actual level so it’s done in real time with the level so the cinematic you see hasn’t been “prepped” and is being generated as you are watching it.
Wait…why is Shadow in Final Rush? It isn’t Space Colony Ark…those trick rails were only in Final Rush.
WOW!… now that looks Awesome!!!
Like…this is what I was talking about….
http://prntscr.com/39c59
SHADOW!!!!!!!!!!!!
I finally get to battle the ultimate life form again! Also I hope Live and Learn plays during the fight 
How is Sonic Heroes being in the Dreamcast era funny? I thought it was obvious when the June demo leaks were… leaked.
@SonicHedgehog well the space colony ark, Sonic’s Final Rush and Shadow’s Final Chase are all in the same area. Just like how Green Forest and White Jungle are connected and how after Sonic and shadow both completed City Escape and Radical highway they ran into each other. All of the levels are connected
@Ophelia: I’m not sure if you noticed, but that missile is actually (if I’m not mistaken) the missile Eggman tried to use to destroy Station Square in Tails’s story, with a few different design choices and the like. I mean, the missile even went through a building, for god’s sake. XD
@Jack
I understand the difference between pre-rendered and in-game cutscenes and I know why they do it… something about these scenes just feels off to me, and the models don’t seem to look or animate quite as good as what I’ve come to expect from in-game cutscenes from the same generation.
SA2 ref at the end made me smile big time @) man i still play that game to date
Then again… I suppose maybe there’s even a third type of cutscene I’m not considering that uses the in-game models but is still pre-rendered. I guess I can’t say I’ve ever really seen cutscenes mid-level before, not including Sonic’s “starting” poses. I guess that would explain things. Ah well, problem solved.
@Tatsumaki but there was always rockets in Speed Highway. And wasn’t the rocket that eggman used like HUGE? I remember it being gigantic during tail’s speed highway lvl.
I know this is kinda off-topic, but is anyone able to establish a connection with Sonic Retro? Because my computer can’t connect for some reason.
And by that I mean can anyone access the website?
Oh for fucks sake– never mind. My fucking laptop just likes trolling me. Carry on.
Shadow looks great in the Hedgehog Engine
@Renzy
I meant why would they put Final Rush/Chase in the trailer when it isn’t in the game…
@Renzy: You could be right, but the rockets were waaaaay too small in comparison to the ones Classic Sonic uses in this footage.
And yeah, it was. It was pretty damn huge. But that’s what I was referring to when I said, a few different design choices and the like.
I could be wrong, though.
(EDIT – Inflammatory -T)
I hope SEGA doesn’t totally EFF this SHIAAAT up. Sonic Heroes raped on the dreamcast, so these bwnitches better not fuck it up on the 360
@Jack
I think everyone knew that already. That doesn’t change anything tho since it still should’ve looked better than it does.
@ChaoticFox
Well for one thing, I think these just aren’t the final versions. I mean I bet they made these trailers a lot earlier than yesterday. lol Maybe the final product will look better. But I also suspect you might be noticing the actual animation of the scenes. Like with Metal Sonic’s spin. We’re used to the Hedgehog Engine using a blur for these graphics to make the movements look smoother when in motion, plus the frame rate of this game I THINK is only half the amount as in Unleashed and Colors. Idky tho. The fact you’re watching a converted version of the video not even on the actual site it’s uploaded on may also be a factor. idk that either tho. lol The last thing is the textures are a bit off. But in the picnic-pic (lol) they all look fine graphically. I think that perhaps the Hedgehog Engine rendering just wasn’t applied yet during the making of the trailer. o0
@SonicHedgehog hmm idk its weird, I guess every Rival boss has his own stage to go with it, like Metal Sonic in Stardust Speedway and the Sonic 2 final boss being in the Death Egg stage. I guess Shadow’s fight takes place in a hybrid version of Final Rush/chase with the space colony ark? Lol idk xD
@funandonly
Well aren’t you nice?
@Renzy
Yeah it’s kinda weird. That would be pretty cool though. XP
@Tatsumaki I guess SEGA’s idea was to make some of the designs for certain things bigger, I mean look at those grabber badniks in Chemical plant they look freaking huge now! Lol. But maybe Eggman’s missle will make a cameo appearance. That would be cool
@funandonly
lol, where the fuck is that coming from?
I seriously love how some people think any form of criticism directly translates to THIS IS A HORRIBLE GAME AND I HATE IT AND THE FAMILIES OF EVERYONE INVOLVED WITH IT.
Go back and cry to mommy, kid.
@Foxboy
Guess we’ll see! Either way, these 2 second cutscene things are ultimately not going to drastically affect my experience, so y’know – whatev!
up next modern era trailer, here comes crisis city, although either Kingdom Valley or Flame core would’ve been better, spagonia, and planet wisp, it’s basically confirmed now, oh and we’ll hopefully see rocket and laser, my 2 favorite wisp in sonic colors wii
@funandonly: Where the hell did you come from?
@Nuzamaki: Stupid comments as usual. Troll harder.
Anyway, ever since this morning, I’ve been going back to watch this trailer. I’d be looking at the video showing off the hub worlds, but you know Sega. Removed due to spoilers. :/
Live and learn will be in SG cool ^^
^ posted yesterday though i loved that you ignored it the first time sonic52789 and posted you hope it would me in there today but I won’t bother saying you just didn’t watch the trailer.