Sighs
I'm going to try and make this short. I know this laughable coming from me , the guy who makes gigantic posts about whatever video game bullshit he tends to care about but i'm going to try. Emphasis on try here.
After the giant botch that was sonic 06, instead of revaluating what worked , what didn't and making nuanced creative changing in marketing and more importantly game development to fix issues. They just chopped a bunch of shit off the franchise that people liked, that did not work. To their credit they did fix the marketing thing, though the development issue...less so. They opted to go all in on nostalgia the friends back in very reduced roles and personalities. And classic sonic is here, and it only KINDA worked. The people who wanted those characters to be important were still disatisfied. The game generations itself is very flawed the classic sonic stuff isn't that great, the story just...vanishes. everyone who isn't sonic is just kinda there with nothing interesting to say. Its this very mindless celebration of something that to be honest really needs to stop celebrating itself and get its shit together. The game play of 3d parts was pretty dang good.
Fast foward, most of the people who worked on that are gone. The studio itself putting stock into the guy behind colors a game that as time goes on more and more people realize isn't really that great. And its kind of the modern architect a lot of modern gameplay issues with sonic games a long with the guy who helmed it. You have forces a game that seemingly goes all in on various types of nostalgia to get your dollar and it is met with outside of another character being playable the custom avatar and the base premise of a more serious narrative. Its met with all the excitement of a wet fart.
Then, you get sonic mania. Sonic mania is a fantastic game. Why is it a fantastic game? It is , what it is. It isn't trying to appeal to multiple fanbases. Its for people who want classic stuff, and has the time, effort and talent put into to allow it to be not the best version but a really damn good version of this premise. But the team seemingly has just been...brushed away. Now we don't know everything , maybe sonic mania 2 is in development right now , but it doesn't look good.
Sega since, 2006 has made every excuse as to what the problem is, when the problem is at its core, how these games are being developed and in some cases, why. Now I know game development is complicated. So this isn't to belittle them, but there is a problem here. The people giving you the money aren't giving you enough time, and maybe some of the people being handed the money... might need to be replaced. This is ontop of sega's structual issues. IIRC during development mania basically had to be pitched twice to two different parts of sega because east and west sega are still in 2019 on entirely somewhat vitrolically different wavelengths when it comes to sonic.
What am I getting to here.
In my mind. How to fix the problem is , more talent more time. But the company who allows for both of those is allowing for neither. They are also fighting amongst themselves about the franchise. You have comics where characters are being kinda ruined and the comic itself being over policed by a reasonably overbearing IP holder.
So the person with the bag and the time , wont invest in either. Wont invest in people. Wont invest in concepts. Wont invest in the franchise as much as it should . Even when its good like mania besides merch. What is there to hope for ?
Who is this next game even going to please? If i'm a classic fan, after mania why do I give a fuck about 3d sonic. If I am adventure fan you have essentially told me to fuck off, even in your appeals to them. So why would I care. And if i'm a modern fan, appealing to the prior 2, you have basically turned what could have been a good gameplay system and tone into dogshit.
Sega wont invest in anything, which drives customers away, which causes them to invest less. And they seemingly will blame everything except what the issue is.
Shit this was longer than i thought
Well i'm gonna leave this rambling mess off with this.
If some enterprising developer wishes to make a kinda shonen ey platformer about cool animals and speed running . I feel like you could just clean up shop TBH.
