How about: What if Sonic the Hedgehog (2006) is different, and winds up being an actually good (or, dare I say it, great) game?
Any ideas?
That's definitely an interesting idea. I was watching this video recently, and it shows just how much of an impact it made on the Sonic games.
Unfortunately, Sonic '06 was too ambitious for its own good. It was a textbook case of what TV Tropes calls "Christmas Rushed" — as an anniversary celebration, it needed to come out at a certain date, and Sonic Team could barely handle it. In that regards, one can draw a parallel with Sonic X-treme, a similarly ambitious Sonic game which was Rushed, the difference being that X-treme ended up being canceled.
I kind of agree with you there, but I think your criticism is slightly off. Ambition wasn't the true problem. Sonic had historically been sort of an ambitious series, with Sega always trying to go above and beyond. The Sonic Adventure games were ambitious, for instance, and while they had some kinks, they were still amazing and successful. I think the real problem is the latter thing you pointed out: rushed production. Well, that and lack of resources - if Sega hadn't split up the team to account for the Wii set-up messing with their multi-console plan, and if Yuji Naka hadn't left, they would have had more experienced manpower to handle everything. Combined, these two factors turned the game's ambition, which was one of the series' strengths, into its weakness.
And that, as the video I linked shows, was the true price of the game's debacle, as it made Sega very cautious with the game, thus straddling the ambition that gave games like the Sonic Adventures, not to mention the earliest games with their multiple paths, such vivid flavor.
Then again, as same video points out, a lot of the game's problems stemmed from a failure by Sega to recognize and overcome the weak spots of the Sonic Adventure games.
Also, I think it might also be worth taking a step back and having the divergence be earlier with the couple of games prior to 06. Sonic Heroes and Shadow the Hedgehog came out when Sonic was at a peak in popularity, which offered the opportunity for the series to excel even further, but those games had the opposite problem with ambition: a lack of it. Both games have very straightforward levels that are generic and tend to just repeat the same challenges again and again, Sonic Heroes worst of all since the similarities between all the team routes meaning you'll be basically doing the same thing over and over. Plus, these games introduced a couple of issues that would continue on in later games, like the overuse of Shadow and the creation of hp-gauge enemies who slow down the action. If Sega had put more ambition in those, Sonic 2006 wouldn't have been such a stumbling block, perhaps.
As for how Sonic 06 could be improved, the best thing would be to catch all of the various bugs and mistakes that should have been ironed out with more manpower and time. Doing so would have made the gameplay workable and would have made the "amigo" character system, a good idea in concept, actually work. Leaving those aside, there are some other things I'd suggest fixing:
- Soleanna- I loved Station Square in Sonic Adventure, but that hub world had several things that Soleanna lacks. The characters in Sonic Adventure had more of a charm to them, and I kind of enjoyed listening to their chat and seeing how things changed for them over the course of the game. Moreover, I think Soleanna's key problem is that, potentially Crisis City aside, we never actually get to play levels in the city. In Sonic Adventure, there were several levels taking place directly in Station Square - Casinopolis, Twinkle Park, and Speed Highway. In the process, you got to see a side of the city that you couldn't get just with the hub world. In contrast, all of Soleanna's levels are outside the city - often in places in the scenery, but never actually in the town. It's a shame, because a European/Italian-inspired city like Soleanna could have had a lot of possibilities. Here are a couple potential levels that spring to mind:
- Town Level- A level focusing on the European townscape as a whole, from jumping across the tops of buildings to navigating through the narrow streets and canals. Actually, this could be a good opening level for Sonic, starting straight from the beginning of the story rather than waiting for day before beginning the chase.
- Labyrinth Level- Underground catacombs and ruins buried beneath the city, sort of inspired by the subterranean labyrinths of Rome and France.
- Mansion Level- An expansive estate that has been abandoned for some time, leaving its grandeur in semi-decay and allowing Eggman to make a hideout there. You'd run through overgrown gardens, zoological displays, and even a part of the mansion that has since partially sunk into the adjacent sea. Or alternatively, this could be a museum.
- Princess Elise- I don't have any particular dislike for Princess Elise, but I think the issue is that her archetypical princess motif just clashes too much with Sonic's own carefree adventure style, not to mention the game as a whole. It could have been an interesting dynamic to explore if done right, maybe drawing on some of the ways Nintendo has played with Zelda's character in the different games. She might have also worked as sort of another Tikal giving hints to Sonic using magic, which would have been better than the playable characters just spouting off random observations or there being occasionally an enigmatic narrator.
- Chao Garden- They were a fun change of pace in the Sonic Adventures, and they would be more interesting than the dull town missions.
