Since the next video will be comparing the differences between SA2 and SA2B (will probably be like 1h30m in length), and since I have to lock in for uni in January, I may not upload another video until the end of that month / start of February, even if doesn't really give me any time to take a break. I can still edit a little bit every day as I've been doing, but it won't be as fast as I'd wish. Thanks for understanding :)
I think, what it is, is Sonic Forces is being reworked, like Sonic X Shadow. Sonic Frontiers 2 doesn’t make any sense when you don’t have Sonic Forces reworked to fit the story leading into Sonic Frontiers. And not only just that, having it called Sonic Frontiers 2 meant that it takes a culmination of every game’s story before it and expands it to something bigger with the other characters added. The events of Sonic Frontiers would be treated like Sonic Adventures, while Sonic Frontiers 2 would be treated like Sonic Adventure 2. But it has to have connections to the origins of the Chaos Emeralds. And that is the direction we are heading. Learn the origins of the many characters connected to Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald, then you unravel a part of themselves that never knew before. A whole new arc that rewrites all Sonic’s past events back into the present.
I love how Aaron just keeps bashing his head against his keyboard because of all the plotholes and dumb decisions, he was just like all of us when we first played Forces lol
facts I didnt really know who he was before but after reading on him a bit, I can see how and why he was upset with most of the plot and decisions the team were going with
This script is fucking hilarious. The devs make a game internally called "Sonic Wars" and make it about a war and then go "Waaahh we can't say the word war in our war story!" They set out to make a darker game, and then can't stop themselves from dumbing it down to a parody of itself, despite the script not really being all that much darker than like, the average Disney movie. What a trainwreck.
They should of done what SATAM and Sonic CD did. But instead we got a sanitized version of eggmans take over. The world should look like palmtree panic bad future, Not like sand hill. With classic sonic they could of had his zones be about getting the time zones and getting a good future. IT would of justified his inclusion and given back the CD gameplay. Could of made this work. they really could have.
I find it absolutely bazzare that they were ok with Knuckles saying Eggman was "torturing Sonic for months" but then when we get to see Sonic...having him panting on the ground and showing that he's hurt is "TAKING IT TOO FAR" and "IS TOO DARK!"...like...really? You really walked into that one didn't you? Also gotta love that one line where Vector calls out Tails for not disabling the Death Egg's defenses when at the chemical plant before...only to have them take out the line because it exposes a big plot hole! IAMO! XD XD XD XD
The discussion about Infinite's inconsistent backstory made me realize that it would be really cool if instead his backstory was that was a mercenary like in Episode Shadow, but he had been beat by Sonic. Only for it to be revealed that Infinite was a machine/Phantom Ruby creation made by Eggman implanted with false memories to make him hate Sonic and be loyal to Eggman. That would tie into the themes of illusions, false realities, and how they aren't as strong as true bonds.
I always thought he should've just been a genetically engineered hybrid critter made by Eggman. He'd be another Dragonball reference - Sonic's version of Cell. Eggman decides that since the animal characters can directly use the energy from the magic gemstones in the world, he makes his own animal that can better harness the Phantom Ruby than a machine ever could.
While I like that, imo what they should've done was instead of relegating things to a comic actually show Infinite and his squad being mercenaries. Introduce a squad member that Infinite is really close with, whether it be someone he views as a brother or a girl member he likes. Then after getting to see their dynamic and come to know the characters, then have Shadow decimating them all and whether on accident or on purpose kill the squad member Infinite was close to. That would just really tie in more to how bitter Infinite sounded in episode Shadow and give a deeper meaning to when he said Shadow "blazed through thugs without a thought. To him it was just another Eggman base."
honestly that would have been amazing, & you could still have the Episode Shadow/Preview comic backstory since it's Eggman fumbling with his memories even harder
IDW comics has a story where a character is brainwashed to hate and rival Sonic, and another character is brainwashed to always be by her side, basically becoming comics of Sonic and Tails. U don't think they ever explain their backstory. Hell, we don't even know if they consented to the deal or not.
Even in it's earliest stages, Sonic Forces story was an absolute fustercluck that needed to be rewritten on a fundamental level, not just line changes.
Tbf, lots of stories are probably like that. Iteration is a very important part of making a story- using a first draft is often going to be problematic. It's only after coming through a draft with lots of criticism that you can find out what the most coherent way of making a story would be. In the case of Forces, it was likely a series of ideas strung together with little thought and no iterations upon it to help flesh out and ties these things together. The fact that they settled with just line changes seems almost incompetent. Maybe they were pressed for time and that was just them trying to polish up what they had lying around already?
It's like two monkeys trying to passionately hug the same football, only in text form.
День тому+7
@@areakastudios6704 according to the ingame credits, Eitaro Toyoda and Makoto Goya, with Warren and Graff localizating to english which became the main script.
Rather sloppily. I immediately can say that Tails not being able to defeat Eggman alone this time makes sense, since Eggman, you know, learns from past mistakes.
I find it interesting that after Generations, the chaos emeralds disappeared up until Frontiers. Then in Frontiers, Sonic and Co. are specificially looking for them. Guess that's understandable after what happened in Lost World and Forces.
It took them everything in Lost World, Sonic dying for 6 months and an OC creator to go "Oh, we should probably consider getting the chaos emeralds again".
It's kind of wild to me how they want to downplay any references to war in the script, even though...the game is about a war. And that's pretty much true for Forces in general; there are some loose nuggets of ideas that could've been interesting if it was taken anywhere, but they didn't fully commit to those ideas. Either because they weren't able to do it, or that they didn't *want* to do it. If the early script showed us anything, it's that the final script feels less like a final draft and more like tweaks to a rough draft. When they said that the theme of the game was "bonding", it makes me tilt my head. I didn't get a sense of a thematic through-line in Forces; details are often sparse and there's little in a way of compelling characterization across its characters, so when they start making allusions to teamwork and friendship towards the latter half of the game, it feels hollow to me. The way Infinite is written is confusing; the Phantom Rubies role in the story feel nebulous(I genuinely don't understand what was going on with the ruby prototypes stuff, there's not enough detail there); there are opportunities for the game to tie together a lot of its elements into some sort of a cohesive vision, and it just...doesn't. The impression I get here is that they didn't really think about what kind of story they wanted to tell, and that is Forces' greatest failure.
"The impression I get here is that they didn't really think about what kind of story they wanted to tell, and that is Forces' greatest failure." Forces' greatest failure is that the whole development team did not know what to do with Forces. Like, they had essentially no vision or direction of what they wanted to do with Sonic going forward.
@@CosmicSponge2004Exactly. Just because Forces was god awful doesn't mean what we have in IDW and Frontiers isn't any better. It still has the same problems as Forces more or less. He's the Tanabe of Sonic. The "mandates" seemingly only apply to his work but no other writer like the movie writers have the same problem. No one is above criticism and he's just another writer for Sonic. But people treat him like a god and it's creepy
@@Nighterac what we have in idw frontiers IS way better idk what youre talking about. Also if were gonna be critical on ian flynn the movies writing definitely have their own similar share of problems, if not more, depending on what youre looking at. Idk what the sonic franchise looks like from your perspective but your view looks very nonsensical to me
@@davebob4973 It isn't because Ian Flynn writes better than Pontaff that he is devoid of criticism or can't be compared to Pontaff. They have very stark similarities that come at the cost of the stories and characters quality, like obnoxious pandering, bad retconning, inconsistent characterization and lack of arc, meaning, quality or clarity behind their stories. It's better in SXSG but that was a team effort, everyone was participating in making the game's story good, and that game still has a story with an unclear arc, inconsistent characterization (see Gerald telling Shadow to follow his own path when he built him to cure Maria), retconning (Shadow) and multiple obnoxious stupid references to past games, take the very dumb conversation that Shadow has with Sonic. Ian Flynn's writing is very flawed, no denying that.
I dunno... if the Time Eater inadvertently pulled Mephiles from an erased timeline and one of the unused Eggman voicelines confirmed the Ruby pulled Classic Sonic from another reality and not as a copy, it wouldn't impossible to think the Ruby would pull Mephiles out from another reality either.
@ The thing here is that the characters RECOGNIZE Mephiles. Everyone had their minds wiped about what happened during the events of 06 because they end up erasing Solaris from existence, thus the events of the game are undone. In Shadow Generations, Shadow clearly states that he doesn't remember Mephiles because of this.
@SonicTheCutehog I don't think it's surprising that some characters remember Mephiles. Besides the phantom ruby having mcguffin powers, it's already been confirmed in japanese TSR script that Sonic remembers the entirety of 06 events.
I'm SO glad you touched on the fact we don't actually know if the lines about Infinite near the end of the game *are* mistakes or not. Many people tend to overlook what Amy and Tails say as "The writers didn't mean to include that", but there's never any evidence for that. Really have to wonder what happened to leave Infinite so overlooked though. I'd love to have the developers confirm one day if Infinite really was a projection fused with the phantom ruby. It'd make sense, as it explains why he was so extensively tested on, why he'd remain loyal to Eggman and why he'd be absorbed by the Ruby at the end of the game, and while it's still awkwardly phrased (this isn't where he's "brought into the world" or "built"), it is the closest explanation we have to the lines Amy and Tails have. Not sure if that makes him a clone though or if these are so minor that they might be overlooked by writers in the future, but it'd be nice if these things were confirmed and expanded upon. It's just such a massive confusing hole in Infinite's character otherwise. One of the most bizarre unexplained details I've ever seen in any story.
This video makes me sad that Infinite wasn't used well in the game. Sonic Japan really care about Infinite with how many stories they have him in it, I hope this means he will return one day in the games.
They were trying to keep Sonic rated E10, but they struggled to keep the consistency of the story going as they were editing out dark words that would’ve rated them higher than E10. Too many things were going on at once that would’ve risked them at Rated T instead of their usual Rated E or E10 that they had for every Sonic game before it. Current games now are rated E10 or E and have been consistently those 2 ratings till this very day. Shadow the Hedgehog being the only exception with minor languages is still E10.
This makes me wonder when was the connection between Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces pitched. Christian Whitehead refers to the Phantom Ruby by that name instead of "Valtron" in his Sonic Revolution interview where he talks about how the two games ended up connected.
51:26 I don't think there necessarily is evidence to suggest this, but it's my theory that they actually planned some kind of post-game live-service component for this game early on which is why that line is kind of like that. Even the final script's line sorta alludes to you doing more, and I'd even stretch it out to say the stuff like the daily quests / rent-a-hero mechanic are leftover remnants of this system because they literally feel like the most random additions in this game. What really happened is just like what happened to the rest of Forces' ideas, they didn't think it was feasible to implement in a year so they shelved it with the others
Really a too many cooks in the kitchen sort of deal here. Someone needed to go over the final script personally, as being designed by committee led to some lines becoming non sequiturs in the final. That was never such a big problem in scripts before or after outside of Heroes's "It's a self destruct switch. Why did it self destruct?" during Team Sonic's Final Fortress, instead of "Why have a self destruct switch in the first place?" from the original Japanese, which was due to poor translation not dumb rewrites like here, so it's a Forces unique problem.
I'd guess Aaron Webber's role, as someone who understood better the general state of mind of the fanbase, was precisely to correct those issues, which is corroborated by some stuff he complains about being changed. However, most of the stuff he criticizes is essential to the story and would require a complete rewrite (which they, most likely, didn't have time to do). I'd guess that Graff and Pontac also have a bigger say into what actually makes it into the final localization, so nothing massive could've been changed anyways
This is just my opinion, but I've always kinda believed this was a legit script leak. Forces had a decent amount of stuff leaked at the time, i recall someone giving out pretty accurate details way before release on a fourm post. Calling it Sonic Wars and how it was only gonna be the playable avatar stages.
18:57 You rarely put too many jokes in these videos and I’m kinda glad about it, you pull out one like this and it just catches me off guard, great job
We can still complain about Ian when he deserves it (which is just regular constructive criticism). But that line is just awful. >_> Makes me appreciate the "generations" line from the final game a bit more. At least it feels in-character for Sonic to exaggerate. It makes no sense for Tails to say the other Sonic feels more "classic". This adjective just doesn't work without the meta context. "Generations" sorts of works (but it's still silly). *EDIT:* WAIT I DIDN'T GET TO THAT PART YET WHEN I WROTE THIS COMMENT HOLY SHIT THAT ONE'S EVEN WORSE
I'd argue those "monkeys" silhouettes you see in Final Judgment's tubes ARE the Infinite clones, just incomplete. Like the tubes shown at the beginning of the game having cubes or whatever attempting to take form, I'd argue those black silhouettes inside the tubes are either incomplete (as in, in the process of being made) or downright failed attempts at making what eventually becomes Infinite. However as you mentioned, Infinite's origin was changed to be a mercenary as seen in both a comic and Episode Shadow. Despite this, the final game both keeps the tubes and the Amy and Tails lines, as well as Infinite being absorbed into the Phantom Ruby, meaning that Infinite is both a mercenary that joined forces with Eggman and also an artificial being Eggman created? I dunno, maybe they changed his origin to a mercenary because he would basically be Eggman's Project Shadow, and such a plotpoint demands to be acknowledged and compared to Shadow and his past a lot more (maybe Episode Shadow is a remnant of this comparison they would make?) Either way, this old scripts are fascinating. Forces is such a strange but interesting game, because of how big its ideas were and yet underdelivered all of them. Thanks Alt Sonic, it's been classic.
I do think Infinite is Eggman’s Shadow. Especially when he is powered a unique chaos drive that is the core of Shadow’s existence, and Infinite’s song speaks about reality and illusions being almost indistinguishable. It makes a lot of sense if Infinite was created with false memories for the sake of him being a viable test subject to study from afar. Like Black Doom has done to Shadow. Making the Ruby Infinite’s black doom.
The part about Eva's central dogma is probably meant to refer to _terminal_ dogma, where the failed Evangelion prototypes are and which looks a little more similar to FInal Judgement's cavern.
52:22 They clearly wanted to do something with Null Space based on this concept piece. Infinite as a final boss IN NULL SPACE would’ve been sick as hell. (Even if the gameplay still sucked in this hypothetical, it would’ve still looked cool, as the game’s visuals are pretty good.)
Isuka needs to grow some pants, dude wanted a sonic game with a dark tone but wouldn't allow the writter to use the word "war" or "kill", the game would have sucked regardless, but he could at least not have been part of the reason why.
God this proto-script is so messy and weird, it feels like the writers couldn't care about what they were making. But, the initial implication that Classic Sonic as a hallucination is actually really interesting, since Tails fumbles with machines and interacts with the Prototype Phantom so much, he could've been the MOST affected by its brain alterations, causing him to hallucinate or go a little crazy and physically see Classic Sonic when its just some random person. The reason why he sees Classic Sonic could be because it was his first memories of him being bullied and CS being there for him, its a strong emotional attachment his brain is using to comfort him. He's a kid still growing so he would be the most vulnerable. We can take this a step further, Omega himself was attacked by Infinite and the Phantom Ruby LOVES machines, what if Tails causes a spark with Omega that causes Tails to see Chaos, this would create a very unique twist to the whole game imo, its still weird and convoluted but better than the shit we got. When Tails reunites with Modern Sonic, he could still make the Generations quote but towards both Tails and Classic Sonic, showing that its not really towards Classic Sonic but to the viewers it is. Tbh that seems a big vacuous of a scene, I'm just throwing that out there. Honestly I think it would be interesting to have Classic Sonic be another character, or possibly the avatar that Tails hallucinates. Maybe he's like what Infinite was original designed to be, a collection of Phantom Ruby constructs, and Classic Sonic is one of them. This could by represented through the Phantom Ruby sounds that even Sonic hears, when defeating Chaos or interacting with Omega, the sound could be the hallucination going back to its source and for Tails, he basically is becoming a Phantom Ruby conduit like Infinite, absorbing the sound and hallucinating further. Then when Tails gets the Phantom Ruby Prototype from the Avatar, it could absorb most of what Tails had accumulated, powering up the Prototype but also curing Tails for the most part. Then when the Mega Death Egg Robot and the Phantom Ruby are destroyed, Tails is fully cured and Modern Sonic takes the place of where Classic Sonic was located. It would also bring lots of symbolism to Infinite, he was just some normal person but snapped in the Phantom Ruby's presence, going so insane that he screws up during battle and creates a false reality around him, lending merit to Silver's comment about Infinite's lies. It would also explain why he ignores Tails eavesdropping them or not seeing the Prototype the Avatar has. It would also explain why he just... runs away from the Resistance, he's a kid going crazy and not seeing things correctly. It would also not muddy up the timeline.
1:25 Did you know, the original script writers wanted to keep this in the game SO badly that they instead settled on assassinating Tail's character instead? 🙃
What these lines alone implies I guess. 2:39 Tbf, this line specifically doesn’t state if Infinite is fake or not. Just that he was being cloned. 7:58 This line could imply that Sonic was originally in the city. Not in Green Hill.
The gameplay may or may not have been doomed to begin with, but the idea behind the story (assuming the concept art was made before the script) could've been salvaged. But if we were going off the actual script, yeah this would've sucked to begin with (with iconic moments like "It's been classic") 💀
@@Robotta drives me crazy that there is still a small group of loud people that are pulling a revisionist that the old stories/writers were actually good compared when this was the type of crap they were cooking
It sounds like Infinite was originally meant to be some sort of robot or android created by the doctor to control the Phantom Ruby. Based off how the early script explains some details. And how there are even some remnants of this plot point still in the final game… for some reason. Before Episode Shadow retconned this to Infinite being a mercenary hired by the doctor and given the Ruby after being humiliated by Shadow. I kind of wish the original backstory for Infinite was kept because it sounds like an interesting concept.
Infinite himself has a weird existence because it feels like they wanted him to essentially be a rogue clone trooper in the Final Cut. It doesn’t help that Infinite is perfect for being Sonic’s Mephiles. Who is sealed by the very thing that granted him his power. An object that could’ve been created by the inspiration of Mephiles.
21:47 Actually, Sonic does say the first line during the part where Sonic is acting as the avatar’s conscience in the cutscene before the second infinite fight.
Forces is a game that suffered a thousand papercuts, i still like it. Even if it is HEAVILY overclocked by automation. Also intresting to see some things that could've helped the game stand, only to be restrained from Sega and fans alike with their symbiotic relationship, amongst other issues. Still fun vid, intresting info too.
16:00 It’s funny how people says Ian makes really forced and bad references, and make memes that sounds like this line. When I personally think this is worst (quality wise) than like 95% of Ian’s references in the games alone.
Flynn can actually right a solid Sonic story, references and all because he actually respects the characters he's writing. Also people are really blowing out of proportion the flaws of Flynn's stories most of the time imo.
Many of the changes to make the story not-darker by Iizuka’s request’s definitely helped make the game feel like the dark-tone was never fully realized.
I think so far I'm grateful with the current writing in the games, even with complaints and stuff that can't improve, because this script and the final were barely hanging lmao
Holy sh*t. I didn't think the original concept would be so much WORSE than what we got, but here we are. I wish they stayed with Infinite as an Eggman creation tho, him having a backstory was so pointless.
I find it funny how Infinite was originally way worse, just being a mindless drone that rarely spoke and never said anything to Eggman. That would've essentially made him a second Metal Sonic lol. While they definitely still flunked on everything else about Infinite, what they did get right was his design (obviously) and his personality and relationship with Eggman. I love how he gives his opinions and raises his own questions on some of Eggman's decisions as y'know he's a living being who can think for himself. I also love how he is loyal to Eggman, genuinely being grateful for the power bestowed upon him. Yeah he throws some sass at him but he never gives any indication of betrayal and I'm so glad he doesn't, very refreshing to not have something Eggman makes or uses betray him AGAIN. It's still baffling to me that Aaron Webber rightfully called some problems out yet they didn't do a thing to fix them, like yeah why tf is Silver just here. Why not idk at least show Tails trying to fight back and have him get overwhelmed by Infinite or Eggman's new robots, would've been more believable. Thank goodness they didn't throw Mephiles in there as in no point of the early script is he ever even used for anything major. He'd have suffered the same fate as Chaos in the final game and would've just been there for "remember this cool character from this game" bait. I think one part of the early script mentions that Eggman would've used the Mephiles phantom copy for something off screen and that's it. Don't really know why you're trashing on some of the lines in this game that are fine though. I liked Sonic's little Generations comment to Classic Sonic, it made me chuckle. Thankfully they didn't over play it as they did in the early script and even I agree that Tails saying "goodbye, it's been classic" is hilariously awful lmao. Like what does that even mean. Overall though this story really is just a case of trying to do way too much at once, the whole game is that tbh. And with only a year to do it all after spending the rest of the time making HE2 yeeeah this was never gonna end well. After seeing how they did Sunset Heights in Shadow Gens however, I would genuinely like if they just remade Forces. Remake the controls, story, everything.
37:20 - 37:25 idk abt the other localizations but at least in the spanish one (which is always based on the english script), that line actually came off weird since Sonic is clearly talking abt Metal, but the connection there was completely omitted and the dialogue didn't get any idioms either In spanish, being "(like) a machine" at something already means to be good so it would've worked just fine, but for some reason they focused solely on the avatar as Sonic's partner and went with "We were like a formidable pair(/couple) fighting... another formidable pair...", which ofc makes absolutely no sense in context (...unless you had someone like Infinite on Metal's side instead of recycling his boss fight near the end of the game... but then again, that never happened, making it even more of a missed opportunity)
The conversation at 12:12 is so funny because the supervisor makes the point that Vector's large size makes him seem reliable, so they should make knuckles talk to Charmy instead. The crippling irony is that the scene in question has the characters literally talking about how looks can be deceiving. Tracks, coming from devs who knew from the jump that the tails characterization was dumb and just straight up did not care.
There's a timeline out there where this game released with a Tails with both esquizofrenia and amnessia, with memorable quotes such as "Thank you for helping us Alt-Sonic, It's been classic", "Whoa! You're... really handsome", "Sonic! Sonic! Sonic! Sonic! Sonic!", "Like a dream so real if you cut yourself in it you'll bleed (?)", "and (at the risk of sounding mushy...) love!", "Not now, I need to save Sonic! I guess we'll be together, Sonic", "I said, KEEP CALM, COOOOL IIITTTTT!", where Mephiles appears and destroys every remaining bit of logic in the Sonic canon, and where my brother in christ, Silver, says "DoEs AnYoNe BuT yOu BeLiEvE yOuR B.S?". Outside of the funny stuff (Which I don't think it's that big of a deal, I'm pretty sure there was a lot of misscomunication and bad direction that shouldn't be blamed on the writers), this video does a really good job showing how the writting evolved over time, keep up the good stuff!
y'know, that "It's not working, Sonic" line would work great for Tails loosing it according to knuckles, like, he lost his mind still doesn't make sense cause in adventure it was a whole story about him needing to stop following sonic and follow his own path but still
I actually played Forces for the first time this year and WOW was the script bad, I honestly thought it was a really early draft The fact that the script got revised so much is really funny
You know, having Mephiles in the game makes no sense, but having him kind of 'take over' Infinite like a virus might have been interesting. Maybe Eggman creating something so close to what Mephiles was (powers wise, I suppose) brought some remnant of him conscious again? Good that it didn't, since there's no way Sonic Team at the time could have executed it well, but it would have been way more interesting than the game we got I think.
i know this might be a long shot but i really hope one day we can have a take 2 on sonic forces i really feel like it has so much potential and maybe with sonic teams new outlook they can do the game justice a 2nd time around its very obvious that the game was rushed and a lot of elements were left in a shattered state but the fragments that we have leave so many questions and so many theories on what a fuller game could have been like and with sxsg we have seen that they are willing to refresh older games and do some rewrites we might never get to fully see what was originally planned but maybe if given a chance we could see a more realized version of forces personally i feel like the phantom ruby and infinite were very underutilized and the final boss was so interesting to me with just how monstrous the heart of the deathegg robo was and how little it was explained
46:04 They Really Said "F*ck The Power Of Love", Some Goku (Super) Shit Buddy: I'll Defeat You With The Power Of Friendship(Sonic) And This *Gun* I Found(Wispon)
Man... I feel so bad for Infinite. Like, he could have been an AMAZING villain. Cheesy? Edgy? A bit lame? Yes, but those are the reasons I feel he WOULD have been amazing. He's like a canon "Cold Steel". In a game where you make an OC yourself.... But, as seen in both the final, AND the beta scripts.... He just fizzles out with no fanfare. Just "I-I can still fight!" And he's never seen ever again.... It's really too bad Ian Flynn wasn't writing the game. Like, I know some people don't like his style. But, I personally love the callbacks, and the consistency. Also, God bless Aaron Webber.... He tried SO HARD to get Sega to not fuck the game up. And... they sadly didn't listen to him much....
you're telling me that even in the early stages they still didn't know what they were doing with this game's story omg Sonic Satam and Archie Sonic is RIGHT HERE JUST COPY THE HOMEWORK.
42:01 It's NUTS that seeing the Phantom Ruby glow is all it would take for escaping Null Space to go from an asspull to an interesting payoff (if still a bit disappointing)
I find it funnier that Izuka said not to reference Cocoa Island to prevent the impression the game has more areas than what we got, but then somehow Seaside Hill was allowed to get referenced when that wasn't an area in the game either???
2:13 So same storyboards, different writing. Pretty much what I was expecting. Fan rewrites tend to get a little overambitious for the game dev's context.
I hope you know that I really enjoy your videos, it's incredibly nice to have someone willing to dive deep into these topics that others would simply gloss over or not cover at all, thank you :]
So, to put it simply, the game almost took the edginess way too far to a laughable degree, and when they tried to tone it down, they took that too far too.
For some criticism I have towards Ian Flynn's writing, after hearing "Thank you Alt. Sonic. It's been classic" and "You've got that classic appearance, like you're from a different generation", I'd easily take what we have now (especially with Shadow Generations).
I saw your older video on this, but I couldn't help but still be excited for this new one. Forces is such an interesting failure. They had more dev time than usual, yet they still fumbled by overexerting their team on an engine overhaul that heavily carved into their development time only for it to wind up in an artistically bland game compared to generations...
2:40 makes me think this definitely is official. The dev commentary is very similar to '06's "think trunks from dragonball" description for silver. Additionally, the Evangelion references held strong in frontiers, which makes me believe that frontiers had a lot of ideas they had probably wanted to do reference wise in forces
Any corrections I write here 7:18 He never mentions burning Sonic’s world in the final. While Orbot does say the boss does mean buisness this time in the final.
Honestly it just makes you think why Tails is even in this game if this is how he gets treated. Could have just said he fought back and was imprisoned by Eggman instead of what we got
I get that feedback is always needed on most things, like storytelling, but if I was giving feedback on the JP side, I’d be questioning if the writers even know who these characters are, I’d rather constantly tell someone that the “photoshop” line can’t be added, then constantly tell someone that the characters don’t make sense because of character development.
Sonic Forces is such a mess, but I'm still glad it exists because sonic team have learned their mistakes and now we are getting sonic villains an amazing sonic fan-film based of sonic forces
There's quite a few really interesting things in this, and I think the most interesting is the Phantom Ruby itself. It's very clear Sonic Mania's existence put a huge wrinkle in the game rather late in the writing process. The Phantom Ruby in Mania was already an odd object because it's shown to change reality, but the changes it makes are presented as real. It Really does warp Sonic and co around the world, it really does change those Egg-robos into the Hard Boiled heavies. But in Forces, if this leak is to be believed, the Valtron was some kind of machine designed to project some sort of temporary illusion onto the world and into the minds of people exposed to it. the two are a little similar in concept so I assume a higher up though they were being clever and decided to tell the writers to sub the Valtron with the Phantom ruby, without knowing that the Forces Vatron was something Eggman made, while the Mania Phantom Ruby was some kind of Echidna Artifact the egg-robos dug up. Its already known that original pitch for Mania didn't include returning stages and Sega asked them to make the game mostly previous levels, so I'm guessing When the game was originally conceived, Classic Sonic wasn't even in it. considering how he has nothing to do even in this older script, and even the writers seem to have forgotten Classic already met modern, I think They had something else in mind in the conceptual phase and had to change it following a mandate. All this has made me very conspiracy brained, because if I'm being honest, given the terms used, I no longer think the "Boom Sonic was supposed to appear" theory is too far fetched anymore. I have no evidence to back it up and I might be really reaching here, but too many things seem weird about the way the game shaped out, from the Avatar's proportions and grapple gun being eerily similar to Boom Sonic's body shape and laser grapple thing, and the fact that classic has nothing to do in the story, and the way they kept harping on him being from "another dimension" despite Sonic generations not indicating any intentional timeline split. Considering Sonic Boom was released in 2014, and forces started development immediately after lost world in 2013, and Forces supposedly in development for Four years, only for that dev time to be cut by the Hedgehog's engine have some sort of problem that needed at least a year to fix, and If Boom was supposed to be a big franchise relaunch, It would make sense for the next Mainline Sonic game after Lost World to try and tie it in to the normal series. But when the Boom game was a catastrophic '06 level failure, the idea might have been scrapped during the whole Engine switch and Classic Sonic was awkwardly shoved in to fill the narrative gaps, with Mania being forced to tie in to explain it away. Again, very conspiracy brained, but I can't help but feel like it would explain a lot of why the game is so conceptually wonky. The timing fits too well, they apparently spent the two years after the engine was implemented on "conceptualization". Why would that be necessary, unless the original concept had to be drastically changed suddenly, because for example, the game they originally meant to tie into was a huge failure?
Since the next video will be comparing the differences between SA2 and SA2B (will probably be like 1h30m in length), and since I have to lock in for uni in January, I may not upload another video until the end of that month / start of February, even if doesn't really give me any time to take a break. I can still edit a little bit every day as I've been doing, but it won't be as fast as I'd wish.
Thanks for understanding :)
Good luck with your studies! Thank you for all these in-depth videos you've uploaded this year ❤
I think, what it is, is Sonic Forces is being reworked, like Sonic X Shadow.
Sonic Frontiers 2 doesn’t make any sense when you don’t have Sonic Forces reworked to fit the story leading into Sonic Frontiers.
And not only just that, having it called Sonic Frontiers 2 meant that it takes a culmination of every game’s story before it and expands it to something bigger with the other characters added.
The events of Sonic Frontiers would be treated like Sonic Adventures, while Sonic Frontiers 2 would be treated like Sonic Adventure 2.
But it has to have connections to the origins of the Chaos Emeralds. And that is the direction we are heading.
Learn the origins of the many characters connected to Chaos Emeralds and Master Emerald, then you unravel a part of themselves that never knew before.
A whole new arc that rewrites all Sonic’s past events back into the present.
Oh nice, i just got sa2b.
I love how Aaron just keeps bashing his head against his keyboard because of all the plotholes and dumb decisions, he was just like all of us when we first played Forces lol
I always thought he was kinda annoying but this certainly improved my view of him
What the fuck are you doing here?! I literally just saw one of if not a few of your videos on my feed! I miss your covers…
facts I didnt really know who he was before but after reading on him a bit, I can see how and why he was upset with most of the plot and decisions the team were going with
Silver saying “bullshit” was no in my end-of-the-year bingo
This script is fucking hilarious. The devs make a game internally called "Sonic Wars" and make it about a war and then go "Waaahh we can't say the word war in our war story!" They set out to make a darker game, and then can't stop themselves from dumbing it down to a parody of itself, despite the script not really being all that much darker than like, the average Disney movie. What a trainwreck.
They should of done what SATAM and Sonic CD did. But instead we got a sanitized version of eggmans take over. The world should look like palmtree panic bad future, Not like sand hill.
With classic sonic they could of had his zones be about getting the time zones and getting a good future. IT would of justified his inclusion and given back the CD gameplay.
Could of made this work. they really could have.
I find it absolutely bazzare that they were ok with Knuckles saying Eggman was "torturing Sonic for months" but then when we get to see Sonic...having him panting on the ground and showing that he's hurt is "TAKING IT TOO FAR" and "IS TOO DARK!"...like...really? You really walked into that one didn't you?
Also gotta love that one line where Vector calls out Tails for not disabling the Death Egg's defenses when at the chemical plant before...only to have them take out the line because it exposes a big plot hole! IAMO! XD XD XD XD
The discussion about Infinite's inconsistent backstory made me realize that it would be really cool if instead his backstory was that was a mercenary like in Episode Shadow, but he had been beat by Sonic. Only for it to be revealed that Infinite was a machine/Phantom Ruby creation made by Eggman implanted with false memories to make him hate Sonic and be loyal to Eggman. That would tie into the themes of illusions, false realities, and how they aren't as strong as true bonds.
I always thought he should've just been a genetically engineered hybrid critter made by Eggman. He'd be another Dragonball reference - Sonic's version of Cell. Eggman decides that since the animal characters can directly use the energy from the magic gemstones in the world, he makes his own animal that can better harness the Phantom Ruby than a machine ever could.
While I like that, imo what they should've done was instead of relegating things to a comic actually show Infinite and his squad being mercenaries. Introduce a squad member that Infinite is really close with, whether it be someone he views as a brother or a girl member he likes. Then after getting to see their dynamic and come to know the characters, then have Shadow decimating them all and whether on accident or on purpose kill the squad member Infinite was close to. That would just really tie in more to how bitter Infinite sounded in episode Shadow and give a deeper meaning to when he said Shadow "blazed through thugs without a thought. To him it was just another Eggman base."
I think a brainwashed merc who was made to believe Eggman "saved him" would fit well, especially if you listen to his theme
honestly that would have been amazing, & you could still have the Episode Shadow/Preview comic backstory since it's Eggman fumbling with his memories even harder
IDW comics has a story where a character is brainwashed to hate and rival Sonic, and another character is brainwashed to always be by her side, basically becoming comics of Sonic and Tails. U don't think they ever explain their backstory. Hell, we don't even know if they consented to the deal or not.
"Yes, he will meet Sonic in the afterlife." is a line that's been permanently seared into my brain since this script leaked.
Ian wasn’t cooking
@@john_negs7720IAN WAS NOT EVEN WRITING?, I hope you are joking he is one of the best writers of Sonic, look at shadow generations, it is pretty good.
@@john_negs7720Ian Flynn catching strays on a game he had nothing to do with 😭😭😭
@ he made the early script lol 💀
@@Faz10do987 he wrote the early script for forces bru😭
Even in it's earliest stages, Sonic Forces story was an absolute fustercluck that needed to be rewritten on a fundamental level, not just line changes.
Tbf, lots of stories are probably like that. Iteration is a very important part of making a story- using a first draft is often going to be problematic.
It's only after coming through a draft with lots of criticism that you can find out what the most coherent way of making a story would be. In the case of Forces, it was likely a series of ideas strung together with little thought and no iterations upon it to help flesh out and ties these things together.
The fact that they settled with just line changes seems almost incompetent. Maybe they were pressed for time and that was just them trying to polish up what they had lying around already?
Who even wrote this game??
It's like two monkeys trying to passionately hug the same football, only in text form.
@@areakastudios6704 according to the ingame credits, Eitaro Toyoda and Makoto Goya, with Warren and Graff localizating to english which became the main script.
So Aaron Webber was trying to save us all
Aaron Knew that this made no sense
Rather sloppily. I immediately can say that Tails not being able to defeat Eggman alone this time makes sense, since Eggman, you know, learns from past mistakes.
@@AgentB7 Yeah but he didn't even try
@@MrDiana1706To be fair if my best friend got killed right in front of me by something I never saw before, I probably wouldn't try either
can i ask what his first comment was about? is it just that all of the games just end and don't have continuations'?
lmfao aaron didn't hold back at all 😭😭
Yea holy crap
Considering who he is I'm not surprised
Hey Watrid 😱, lol i know right
Thank you for helping us the mario, it's been awesome
I find it interesting that after Generations, the chaos emeralds disappeared up until Frontiers. Then in Frontiers, Sonic and Co. are specificially looking for them.
Guess that's understandable after what happened in Lost World and Forces.
It took them everything in Lost World, Sonic dying for 6 months and an OC creator to go "Oh, we should probably consider getting the chaos emeralds again".
16:05
The fact that we could of gotten two generations pun lines is actually wild to me
It wouldve been better than “yOUr FrOm aNoTHeR DiMEnsiOn”
we got robbed of peak
"Thanks Alt Sonic, it's been classic" was also robbed from us.
"You've got that classic appearance" is dealing me critical damage
@SonicTheHedgehogX15 based on how it was shown in the script, it looks like the dimension line wouldve still been before it
"We're gonna make serious scary game about war"
"Okay, war"
"Please don't say that, it hurts the age rating and my money"
isn't one of the more infamous lines from Forces's final script "none of this is good, that's why it's called *war"?*
@robertlupa8273 that makes it even worse they had one shot at saying the word and it became THAT
It's kind of wild to me how they want to downplay any references to war in the script, even though...the game is about a war. And that's pretty much true for Forces in general; there are some loose nuggets of ideas that could've been interesting if it was taken anywhere, but they didn't fully commit to those ideas. Either because they weren't able to do it, or that they didn't *want* to do it.
If the early script showed us anything, it's that the final script feels less like a final draft and more like tweaks to a rough draft. When they said that the theme of the game was "bonding", it makes me tilt my head. I didn't get a sense of a thematic through-line in Forces; details are often sparse and there's little in a way of compelling characterization across its characters, so when they start making allusions to teamwork and friendship towards the latter half of the game, it feels hollow to me. The way Infinite is written is confusing; the Phantom Rubies role in the story feel nebulous(I genuinely don't understand what was going on with the ruby prototypes stuff, there's not enough detail there); there are opportunities for the game to tie together a lot of its elements into some sort of a cohesive vision, and it just...doesn't.
The impression I get here is that they didn't really think about what kind of story they wanted to tell, and that is Forces' greatest failure.
"The impression I get here is that they didn't really think about what kind of story they wanted to tell, and that is Forces' greatest failure." Forces' greatest failure is that the whole development team did not know what to do with Forces. Like, they had essentially no vision or direction of what they wanted to do with Sonic going forward.
@Kelps.mp4 precisely
I can't believe people complain about Ian Flynn now, but they don't remember what we had.
Wow this might be my highest liked comment on UA-cam.
I complain about both
@@CosmicSponge2004Exactly. Just because Forces was god awful doesn't mean what we have in IDW and Frontiers isn't any better. It still has the same problems as Forces more or less.
He's the Tanabe of Sonic. The "mandates" seemingly only apply to his work but no other writer like the movie writers have the same problem.
No one is above criticism and he's just another writer for Sonic. But people treat him like a god and it's creepy
@@Nighterac what we have in idw frontiers IS way better idk what youre talking about. Also if were gonna be critical on ian flynn the movies writing definitely have their own similar share of problems, if not more, depending on what youre looking at. Idk what the sonic franchise looks like from your perspective but your view looks very nonsensical to me
I still complain, not going to lie.
@@davebob4973 It isn't because Ian Flynn writes better than Pontaff that he is devoid of criticism or can't be compared to Pontaff. They have very stark similarities that come at the cost of the stories and characters quality, like obnoxious pandering, bad retconning, inconsistent characterization and lack of arc, meaning, quality or clarity behind their stories.
It's better in SXSG but that was a team effort, everyone was participating in making the game's story good, and that game still has a story with an unclear arc, inconsistent characterization (see Gerald telling Shadow to follow his own path when he built him to cure Maria), retconning (Shadow) and multiple obnoxious stupid references to past games, take the very dumb conversation that Shadow has with Sonic. Ian Flynn's writing is very flawed, no denying that.
If they did go with having Mephiles copies in the final game, that would have created so many continuity errors.
I dunno... if the Time Eater inadvertently pulled Mephiles from an erased timeline and one of the unused Eggman voicelines confirmed the Ruby pulled Classic Sonic from another reality and not as a copy, it wouldn't impossible to think the Ruby would pull Mephiles out from another reality either.
@ The thing here is that the characters RECOGNIZE Mephiles. Everyone had their minds wiped about what happened during the events of 06 because they end up erasing Solaris from existence, thus the events of the game are undone. In Shadow Generations, Shadow clearly states that he doesn't remember Mephiles because of this.
@SonicTheCutehog I don't think it's surprising that some characters remember Mephiles. Besides the phantom ruby having mcguffin powers, it's already been confirmed in japanese TSR script that Sonic remembers the entirety of 06 events.
@ The recent Twitter takeover says otherwise
Japanase and American Sonic stories are different @@mikan7908
I'm SO glad you touched on the fact we don't actually know if the lines about Infinite near the end of the game *are* mistakes or not. Many people tend to overlook what Amy and Tails say as "The writers didn't mean to include that", but there's never any evidence for that.
Really have to wonder what happened to leave Infinite so overlooked though. I'd love to have the developers confirm one day if Infinite really was a projection fused with the phantom ruby. It'd make sense, as it explains why he was so extensively tested on, why he'd remain loyal to Eggman and why he'd be absorbed by the Ruby at the end of the game, and while it's still awkwardly phrased (this isn't where he's "brought into the world" or "built"), it is the closest explanation we have to the lines Amy and Tails have. Not sure if that makes him a clone though or if these are so minor that they might be overlooked by writers in the future, but it'd be nice if these things were confirmed and expanded upon.
It's just such a massive confusing hole in Infinite's character otherwise. One of the most bizarre unexplained details I've ever seen in any story.
This video makes me sad that Infinite wasn't used well in the game.
Sonic Japan really care about Infinite with how many stories they have him in it, I hope this means he will return one day in the games.
They could of made him work. the problem is poor writing. Too many people think its best to throw it away but they could do something cool with it
What a fucking mess. It's hard to believe that the script was even worse at one point
yup. While some stuff was sadly cut from the final, it just goes to show that the game was doomed from the get-go
@@Cifesk i mean it makes sense, new staff and then trying to make the game in a year while also wasting another full year just upgrading the tech lol.
Still much better than the Frontiers story. Not saying it's great, but 1000% better than Frontiers or Colours Wii/Ultimate.
@@genyakozlov1316 What was wrong with Frontier's Story?
@@genyakozlov1316 0/10 Ragebait
It's been generations sense we've seen you!
Sonic Forces a reference.
*since
"consider This your final Horizon"
“Chip, I’m gonna unleash”
“No likes or subs? Im outta here, i like tik tok better”
They were trying to keep Sonic rated E10, but they struggled to keep the consistency of the story going as they were editing out dark words that would’ve rated them higher than E10.
Too many things were going on at once that would’ve risked them at Rated T instead of their usual Rated E or E10 that they had for every Sonic game before it.
Current games now are rated E10 or E and have been consistently those 2 ratings till this very day. Shadow the Hedgehog being the only exception with minor languages is still E10.
This makes me wonder when was the connection between Sonic Mania and Sonic Forces pitched. Christian Whitehead refers to the Phantom Ruby by that name instead of "Valtron" in his Sonic Revolution interview where he talks about how the two games ended up connected.
Its interesting to think the phantom ruby in mania was just supposed to be its own thing at one point.
51:26 I don't think there necessarily is evidence to suggest this, but it's my theory that they actually planned some kind of post-game live-service component for this game early on which is why that line is kind of like that. Even the final script's line sorta alludes to you doing more, and I'd even stretch it out to say the stuff like the daily quests / rent-a-hero mechanic are leftover remnants of this system because they literally feel like the most random additions in this game.
What really happened is just like what happened to the rest of Forces' ideas, they didn't think it was feasible to implement in a year so they shelved it with the others
So what you’re saying is that Forces was almost the Suicide Squad: Kill the Justice League of Sonic. Possibly.
Really a too many cooks in the kitchen sort of deal here. Someone needed to go over the final script personally, as being designed by committee led to some lines becoming non sequiturs in the final. That was never such a big problem in scripts before or after outside of Heroes's "It's a self destruct switch. Why did it self destruct?" during Team Sonic's Final Fortress, instead of "Why have a self destruct switch in the first place?" from the original Japanese, which was due to poor translation not dumb rewrites like here, so it's a Forces unique problem.
I'd guess Aaron Webber's role, as someone who understood better the general state of mind of the fanbase, was precisely to correct those issues, which is corroborated by some stuff he complains about being changed. However, most of the stuff he criticizes is essential to the story and would require a complete rewrite (which they, most likely, didn't have time to do). I'd guess that Graff and Pontac also have a bigger say into what actually makes it into the final localization, so nothing massive could've been changed anyways
This is just my opinion, but I've always kinda believed this was a legit script leak. Forces had a decent amount of stuff leaked at the time, i recall someone giving out pretty accurate details way before release on a fourm post. Calling it Sonic Wars and how it was only gonna be the playable avatar stages.
18:57 You rarely put too many jokes in these videos and I’m kinda glad about it, you pull out one like this and it just catches me off guard, great job
Thanks Alt Sonic, it’s been classic.
"Thanks Classic Sonic, this sure was a classic journey through generations"
I don't want anyone complaining about Ian Flynn's writing again after i heard tails say "It's been classic".
We can still complain about Ian when he deserves it (which is just regular constructive criticism).
But that line is just awful. >_> Makes me appreciate the "generations" line from the final game a bit more. At least it feels in-character for Sonic to exaggerate. It makes no sense for Tails to say the other Sonic feels more "classic". This adjective just doesn't work without the meta context. "Generations" sorts of works (but it's still silly).
*EDIT:* WAIT I DIDN'T GET TO THAT PART YET WHEN I WROTE THIS COMMENT HOLY SHIT THAT ONE'S EVEN WORSE
@ LMAO I know, I was mostly joking around, I was dying laughing when I heard the “it’s been classic” line
I'd argue those "monkeys" silhouettes you see in Final Judgment's tubes ARE the Infinite clones, just incomplete. Like the tubes shown at the beginning of the game having cubes or whatever attempting to take form, I'd argue those black silhouettes inside the tubes are either incomplete (as in, in the process of being made) or downright failed attempts at making what eventually becomes Infinite.
However as you mentioned, Infinite's origin was changed to be a mercenary as seen in both a comic and Episode Shadow. Despite this, the final game both keeps the tubes and the Amy and Tails lines, as well as Infinite being absorbed into the Phantom Ruby, meaning that Infinite is both a mercenary that joined forces with Eggman and also an artificial being Eggman created? I dunno, maybe they changed his origin to a mercenary because he would basically be Eggman's Project Shadow, and such a plotpoint demands to be acknowledged and compared to Shadow and his past a lot more (maybe Episode Shadow is a remnant of this comparison they would make?)
Either way, this old scripts are fascinating. Forces is such a strange but interesting game, because of how big its ideas were and yet underdelivered all of them. Thanks Alt Sonic, it's been classic.
I do think Infinite is Eggman’s Shadow. Especially when he is powered a unique chaos drive that is the core of Shadow’s existence, and Infinite’s song speaks about reality and illusions being almost indistinguishable. It makes a lot of sense if Infinite was created with false memories for the sake of him being a viable test subject to study from afar. Like Black Doom has done to Shadow. Making the Ruby Infinite’s black doom.
24:40 REALLY sounds like what they ended doing for Giganto’s introduction from the few hits to how he’s slammed through buildings and a slow fall etc.
Aaron Webber tried to save us man. They just didn't listen.
I think by the time Aaron pointed the major holes in the story, little could be done about it, as it could demand a whole rewrite of some parts.
IT'S A THREE DAYS AFTER CHRISTMAS MIRACLE
The part about Eva's central dogma is probably meant to refer to _terminal_ dogma, where the failed Evangelion prototypes are and which looks a little more similar to FInal Judgement's cavern.
I've always felt like Forces was supposed to be either an RTS or a Strategy Based RPG originally, and this early script is somewhat proving me correct
0:13 Lookin’ fluffy, Joker.
10:06 less "missing in action", more "gone completely insane"
"yeah, that's right, i'm calling him alt sonic now" is so painful it hurts
So you’re telling me we got robbed from, “so what are we, some kind of Sonic Forces???” 😩
You could say Sonic really *forces* its humour huh
52:22 They clearly wanted to do something with Null Space based on this concept piece.
Infinite as a final boss IN NULL SPACE would’ve been sick as hell.
(Even if the gameplay still sucked in this hypothetical, it would’ve still looked cool, as the game’s visuals are pretty good.)
Isuka needs to grow some pants, dude wanted a sonic game with a dark tone but wouldn't allow the writter to use the word "war" or "kill", the game would have sucked regardless, but he could at least not have been part of the reason why.
I can get kinda behind excluding kill _IF_ the replacements don't sound forced or silly. "War" should've been used more however.
God this proto-script is so messy and weird, it feels like the writers couldn't care about what they were making.
But, the initial implication that Classic Sonic as a hallucination is actually really interesting, since Tails fumbles with machines and interacts with the Prototype Phantom so much, he could've been the MOST affected by its brain alterations, causing him to hallucinate or go a little crazy and physically see Classic Sonic when its just some random person. The reason why he sees Classic Sonic could be because it was his first memories of him being bullied and CS being there for him, its a strong emotional attachment his brain is using to comfort him. He's a kid still growing so he would be the most vulnerable. We can take this a step further, Omega himself was attacked by Infinite and the Phantom Ruby LOVES machines, what if Tails causes a spark with Omega that causes Tails to see Chaos, this would create a very unique twist to the whole game imo, its still weird and convoluted but better than the shit we got.
When Tails reunites with Modern Sonic, he could still make the Generations quote but towards both Tails and Classic Sonic, showing that its not really towards Classic Sonic but to the viewers it is. Tbh that seems a big vacuous of a scene, I'm just throwing that out there. Honestly I think it would be interesting to have Classic Sonic be another character, or possibly the avatar that Tails hallucinates. Maybe he's like what Infinite was original designed to be, a collection of Phantom Ruby constructs, and Classic Sonic is one of them.
This could by represented through the Phantom Ruby sounds that even Sonic hears, when defeating Chaos or interacting with Omega, the sound could be the hallucination going back to its source and for Tails, he basically is becoming a Phantom Ruby conduit like Infinite, absorbing the sound and hallucinating further. Then when Tails gets the Phantom Ruby Prototype from the Avatar, it could absorb most of what Tails had accumulated, powering up the Prototype but also curing Tails for the most part. Then when the Mega Death Egg Robot and the Phantom Ruby are destroyed, Tails is fully cured and Modern Sonic takes the place of where Classic Sonic was located.
It would also bring lots of symbolism to Infinite, he was just some normal person but snapped in the Phantom Ruby's presence, going so insane that he screws up during battle and creates a false reality around him, lending merit to Silver's comment about Infinite's lies. It would also explain why he ignores Tails eavesdropping them or not seeing the Prototype the Avatar has. It would also explain why he just... runs away from the Resistance, he's a kid going crazy and not seeing things correctly. It would also not muddy up the timeline.
49:32 im suprised there are no notes on mephiles inclusion because it makes ZERO sense cause he was erased from existence
1:25 Did you know, the original script writers wanted to keep this in the game SO badly that they instead settled on assassinating Tail's character instead? 🙃
Sad times 4 Tails
What these lines alone implies I guess.
2:39
Tbf, this line specifically doesn’t state if Infinite is fake or not. Just that he was being cloned.
7:58
This line could imply that Sonic was originally in the city. Not in Green Hill.
The story and game was doomed by the start LMAOOOOO😂😂
The gameplay may or may not have been doomed to begin with, but the idea behind the story (assuming the concept art was made before the script) could've been salvaged.
But if we were going off the actual script, yeah this would've sucked to begin with (with iconic moments like "It's been classic") 💀
50:42 I very audibly groaned when I heard that pun. I can't believe someone thought that was a good line of dialogue
IT'S BEEN CLASSIC!🗣️💨
I'm gonna end it all
And people complain about Ian Flynn's references...
@@Robotta drives me crazy that there is still a small group of loud people that are pulling a revisionist that the old stories/writers were actually good compared when this was the type of crap they were cooking
It sounds like Infinite was originally meant to be some sort of robot or android created by the doctor to control the Phantom Ruby. Based off how the early script explains some details. And how there are even some remnants of this plot point still in the final game… for some reason. Before Episode Shadow retconned this to Infinite being a mercenary hired by the doctor and given the Ruby after being humiliated by Shadow.
I kind of wish the original backstory for Infinite was kept because it sounds like an interesting concept.
Infinite himself has a weird existence because it feels like they wanted him to essentially be a rogue clone trooper in the Final Cut.
It doesn’t help that Infinite is perfect for being Sonic’s Mephiles. Who is sealed by the very thing that granted him his power. An object that could’ve been created by the inspiration of Mephiles.
On one hand, Mephiles being reintegrated into Sonic games would have been neat. On the other hand, it makes the ending of 06 make no sense whatsoever.
20:20 This might actually explain why, when he leaves the prison in the final, he sees the Death Egg in the distance instead of coming from it.
21:47
Actually, Sonic does say the first line during the part where Sonic is acting as the avatar’s conscience in the cutscene before the second infinite fight.
17:51 sonic about to meet Gerald and Maria
Forces is a game that suffered a thousand papercuts, i still like it. Even if it is HEAVILY overclocked by automation.
Also intresting to see some things that could've helped the game stand, only to be restrained from Sega and fans alike with their symbiotic relationship, amongst other issues.
Still fun vid, intresting info too.
I also love Forces!
16:00
It’s funny how people says Ian makes really forced and bad references, and make memes that sounds like this line. When I personally think this is worst (quality wise) than like 95% of Ian’s references in the games alone.
Both are worse and excessive imo
both are bad
Flynn can actually right a solid Sonic story, references and all because he actually respects the characters he's writing. Also people are really blowing out of proportion the flaws of Flynn's stories most of the time imo.
0:29 lies. Puns always fit the atmosphere. No matter what that atmosphere may be.😜
no
@@Synergetic32Xyea
Been looking forward to this everysince you announced it. Didn't disappoint either 👌
Many of the changes to make the story not-darker by Iizuka’s request’s definitely helped make the game feel like the dark-tone was never fully realized.
It really makes one wonder why they even wanted to go in that direction in the first place.
@ right? “Kill sounds too violent” bro; it’s Sonic Forces. The game you marketed as being dark.
Iizuka really (really) wanted to go balls deep with the whole "Sonic is meant for kids!!1!" mentality.
I think so far I'm grateful with the current writing in the games, even with complaints and stuff that can't improve, because this script and the final were barely hanging lmao
Aaron was thinking the exact shit we were thinking, especially the ending.
thank you mario bros... its been super!
This was really intresting, thanks for this great vid man
24:30 did they reuse that bit for the Giganto cutscene in Frontiers? that's kinda neat
Holy sh*t.
I didn't think the original concept would be so much WORSE than what we got, but here we are. I wish they stayed with Infinite as an Eggman creation tho, him having a backstory was so pointless.
I find it funny how Infinite was originally way worse, just being a mindless drone that rarely spoke and never said anything to Eggman. That would've essentially made him a second Metal Sonic lol. While they definitely still flunked on everything else about Infinite, what they did get right was his design (obviously) and his personality and relationship with Eggman. I love how he gives his opinions and raises his own questions on some of Eggman's decisions as y'know he's a living being who can think for himself. I also love how he is loyal to Eggman, genuinely being grateful for the power bestowed upon him. Yeah he throws some sass at him but he never gives any indication of betrayal and I'm so glad he doesn't, very refreshing to not have something Eggman makes or uses betray him AGAIN. It's still baffling to me that Aaron Webber rightfully called some problems out yet they didn't do a thing to fix them, like yeah why tf is Silver just here.
Why not idk at least show Tails trying to fight back and have him get overwhelmed by Infinite or Eggman's new robots, would've been more believable. Thank goodness they didn't throw Mephiles in there as in no point of the early script is he ever even used for anything major. He'd have suffered the same fate as Chaos in the final game and would've just been there for "remember this cool character from this game" bait. I think one part of the early script mentions that Eggman would've used the Mephiles phantom copy for something off screen and that's it. Don't really know why you're trashing on some of the lines in this game that are fine though. I liked Sonic's little Generations comment to Classic Sonic, it made me chuckle. Thankfully they didn't over play it as they did in the early script and even I agree that Tails saying "goodbye, it's been classic" is hilariously awful lmao. Like what does that even mean.
Overall though this story really is just a case of trying to do way too much at once, the whole game is that tbh. And with only a year to do it all after spending the rest of the time making HE2 yeeeah this was never gonna end well. After seeing how they did Sunset Heights in Shadow Gens however, I would genuinely like if they just remade Forces. Remake the controls, story, everything.
Aaron Webber complaining about the friends cheering is hilarious
37:20 - 37:25 idk abt the other localizations but at least in the spanish one (which is always based on the english script), that line actually came off weird since Sonic is clearly talking abt Metal, but the connection there was completely omitted and the dialogue didn't get any idioms either
In spanish, being "(like) a machine" at something already means to be good so it would've worked just fine, but for some reason they focused solely on the avatar as Sonic's partner and went with "We were like a formidable pair(/couple) fighting... another formidable pair...", which ofc makes absolutely no sense in context
(...unless you had someone like Infinite on Metal's side instead of recycling his boss fight near the end of the game... but then again, that never happened, making it even more of a missed opportunity)
The conversation at 12:12 is so funny because the supervisor makes the point that Vector's large size makes him seem reliable, so they should make knuckles talk to Charmy instead. The crippling irony is that the scene in question has the characters literally talking about how looks can be deceiving. Tracks, coming from devs who knew from the jump that the tails characterization was dumb and just straight up did not care.
Mania really ran away with 2017. Forces was such a fundamental mess even before it released.
50:48 this would have landed in the absolute worst sonic quotes of all time if this went through. its so bad that its not even good its just Terrible
It's basically one step behind "this sure was a sonic forces" in terms of quality, it's so bad.
There's a timeline out there where this game released with a Tails with both esquizofrenia and amnessia, with memorable quotes such as "Thank you for helping us Alt-Sonic, It's been classic", "Whoa! You're... really handsome", "Sonic! Sonic! Sonic! Sonic! Sonic!", "Like a dream so real if you cut yourself in it you'll bleed (?)", "and (at the risk of sounding mushy...) love!", "Not now, I need to save Sonic! I guess we'll be together, Sonic", "I said, KEEP CALM, COOOOL IIITTTTT!", where Mephiles appears and destroys every remaining bit of logic in the Sonic canon, and where my brother in christ, Silver, says "DoEs AnYoNe BuT yOu BeLiEvE yOuR B.S?".
Outside of the funny stuff (Which I don't think it's that big of a deal, I'm pretty sure there was a lot of misscomunication and bad direction that shouldn't be blamed on the writers), this video does a really good job showing how the writting evolved over time, keep up the good stuff!
y'know, that "It's not working, Sonic" line would work great for Tails loosing it according to knuckles, like, he lost his mind
still doesn't make sense cause in adventure it was a whole story about him needing to stop following sonic and follow his own path but still
I actually played Forces for the first time this year and WOW was the script bad, I honestly thought it was a really early draft
The fact that the script got revised so much is really funny
31:19 I frickn’ love it when you throw in a joke or sarcastic comment, it catches me off guard every time 😂
It’s wild to think we got the best version of forces…
18:58 sick burn 🔥🔥🔥
You know, having Mephiles in the game makes no sense, but having him kind of 'take over' Infinite like a virus might have been interesting. Maybe Eggman creating something so close to what Mephiles was (powers wise, I suppose) brought some remnant of him conscious again?
Good that it didn't, since there's no way Sonic Team at the time could have executed it well, but it would have been way more interesting than the game we got I think.
i know this might be a long shot but i really hope one day we can have a take 2 on sonic forces i really feel like it has so much potential and maybe with sonic teams new outlook they can do the game justice a 2nd time around its very obvious that the game was rushed and a lot of elements were left in a shattered state but the fragments that we have leave so many questions and so many theories on what a fuller game could have been like and with sxsg we have seen that they are willing to refresh older games and do some rewrites we might never get to fully see what was originally planned but maybe if given a chance we could see a more realized version of forces personally i feel like the phantom ruby and infinite were very underutilized and the final boss was so interesting to me with just how monstrous the heart of the deathegg robo was and how little it was explained
46:04 They Really Said "F*ck The Power Of Love", Some Goku (Super) Shit
Buddy: I'll Defeat You With The Power Of Friendship(Sonic) And This *Gun* I Found(Wispon)
Genuinely amazing that an already incredibly mediocre game could’ve been somehow worse.
Man... I feel so bad for Infinite. Like, he could have been an AMAZING villain. Cheesy? Edgy? A bit lame? Yes, but those are the reasons I feel he WOULD have been amazing. He's like a canon "Cold Steel". In a game where you make an OC yourself....
But, as seen in both the final, AND the beta scripts.... He just fizzles out with no fanfare. Just "I-I can still fight!" And he's never seen ever again.... It's really too bad Ian Flynn wasn't writing the game. Like, I know some people don't like his style. But, I personally love the callbacks, and the consistency.
Also, God bless Aaron Webber.... He tried SO HARD to get Sega to not fuck the game up. And... they sadly didn't listen to him much....
you're telling me that even in the early stages they still didn't know what they were doing with this game's story omg Sonic Satam and Archie Sonic is RIGHT HERE JUST COPY THE HOMEWORK.
42:01
It's NUTS that seeing the Phantom Ruby glow is all it would take for escaping Null Space to go from an asspull to an interesting payoff (if still a bit disappointing)
I find it funnier that Izuka said not to reference Cocoa Island to prevent the impression the game has more areas than what we got, but then somehow Seaside Hill was allowed to get referenced when that wasn't an area in the game either???
2:13 So same storyboards, different writing. Pretty much what I was expecting. Fan rewrites tend to get a little overambitious for the game dev's context.
I hope you know that I really enjoy your videos, it's incredibly nice to have someone willing to dive deep into these topics that others would simply gloss over or not cover at all, thank you :]
At this point I think it's safe to say the development of Forces was just as messy as 06 despite the safe walls feeling around it.
My favorite is the fact that some of the crew didn't like the avatar being named Buddy officially since it felt childish in a Sonic the Hedgehog game.
This game is just another of those pieces of media where the writers wanted to push the envelope, but the higher-ups didn't.
So, to put it simply, the game almost took the edginess way too far to a laughable degree, and when they tried to tone it down, they took that too far too.
And people say Shadow 05 is edgy, this game is the epitome of edge, lmao
For some criticism I have towards Ian Flynn's writing, after hearing "Thank you Alt. Sonic. It's been classic" and "You've got that classic appearance, like you're from a different generation", I'd easily take what we have now (especially with Shadow Generations).
I saw your older video on this, but I couldn't help but still be excited for this new one. Forces is such an interesting failure. They had more dev time than usual, yet they still fumbled by overexerting their team on an engine overhaul that heavily carved into their development time only for it to wind up in an artistically bland game compared to generations...
Bro, this is a very cool video! Can you tell me if there is an early Sonic Frontiers story? If there is, will you make a video?
I have no idea. If there is, it hasn't been leaked I don't think
@@Cifesk OK, is there any cut content from Frontiers in the plans?
@@BrotelloBB9 yeah, I'll just wait a little more
@@Cifesk 🥳🥳🥳
Didnt that game a lot of “leaks” that were bit similar to the released game? Week or two before it’s release
I forgot to wish a Merry Christmas. And I remember a story of a leaked forces script. Funny that part of it was made on my birthday.
2:40 makes me think this definitely is official.
The dev commentary is very similar to '06's "think trunks from dragonball" description for silver.
Additionally, the Evangelion references held strong in frontiers, which makes me believe that frontiers had a lot of ideas they had probably wanted to do reference wise in forces
Any corrections I write here
7:18
He never mentions burning Sonic’s world in the final.
While Orbot does say the boss does mean buisness this time in the final.
The writters just hate tails for no reason, my god his dialogues is worse than the original lmao
Honestly it just makes you think why Tails is even in this game if this is how he gets treated. Could have just said he fought back and was imprisoned by Eggman instead of what we got
I get that feedback is always needed on most things, like storytelling, but if I was giving feedback on the JP side, I’d be questioning if the writers even know who these characters are, I’d rather constantly tell someone that the “photoshop” line can’t be added, then constantly tell someone that the characters don’t make sense because of character development.
Where can i find the excel file? The link in the pastebin is dead and i really wanted to check out all of Aaron's comments lol
Sonic Forces is such a mess, but I'm still glad it exists because sonic team have learned their mistakes and now we are getting sonic villains an amazing sonic fan-film based of sonic forces
There's quite a few really interesting things in this, and I think the most interesting is the Phantom Ruby itself. It's very clear Sonic Mania's existence put a huge wrinkle in the game rather late in the writing process. The Phantom Ruby in Mania was already an odd object because it's shown to change reality, but the changes it makes are presented as real. It Really does warp Sonic and co around the world, it really does change those Egg-robos into the Hard Boiled heavies. But in Forces, if this leak is to be believed, the Valtron was some kind of machine designed to project some sort of temporary illusion onto the world and into the minds of people exposed to it. the two are a little similar in concept so I assume a higher up though they were being clever and decided to tell the writers to sub the Valtron with the Phantom ruby, without knowing that the Forces Vatron was something Eggman made, while the Mania Phantom Ruby was some kind of Echidna Artifact the egg-robos dug up. Its already known that original pitch for Mania didn't include returning stages and Sega asked them to make the game mostly previous levels, so I'm guessing When the game was originally conceived, Classic Sonic wasn't even in it. considering how he has nothing to do even in this older script, and even the writers seem to have forgotten Classic already met modern, I think They had something else in mind in the conceptual phase and had to change it following a mandate.
All this has made me very conspiracy brained, because if I'm being honest, given the terms used, I no longer think the "Boom Sonic was supposed to appear" theory is too far fetched anymore. I have no evidence to back it up and I might be really reaching here, but too many things seem weird about the way the game shaped out, from the Avatar's proportions and grapple gun being eerily similar to Boom Sonic's body shape and laser grapple thing, and the fact that classic has nothing to do in the story, and the way they kept harping on him being from "another dimension" despite Sonic generations not indicating any intentional timeline split.
Considering Sonic Boom was released in 2014, and forces started development immediately after lost world in 2013, and Forces supposedly in development for Four years, only for that dev time to be cut by the Hedgehog's engine have some sort of problem that needed at least a year to fix, and If Boom was supposed to be a big franchise relaunch, It would make sense for the next Mainline Sonic game after Lost World to try and tie it in to the normal series. But when the Boom game was a catastrophic '06 level failure, the idea might have been scrapped during the whole Engine switch and Classic Sonic was awkwardly shoved in to fill the narrative gaps, with Mania being forced to tie in to explain it away. Again, very conspiracy brained, but I can't help but feel like it would explain a lot of why the game is so conceptually wonky. The timing fits too well, they apparently spent the two years after the engine was implemented on "conceptualization". Why would that be necessary, unless the original concept had to be drastically changed suddenly, because for example, the game they originally meant to tie into was a huge failure?
Just bought a membership, was surprised that it costs so little! Definitely not a waste of money
Thank you!