Sonic Generations - Peak 3D Sonic Level Design.

Twins'R'Okay

Mid-tier Pixel Artist
okay tbh I love Sonic Generations to death.

So much so that I'm gonna dissect every modern sonic level to see why I love it so much.

Before I do that tho, I'm gonna be clear on a few things.

Linearity is not a bad thing.
- To be clear: When I say something is linear, I do not mean to paint it in a bad light. Many, many great games get away with linear level design for very good reasons. Mario, Half-Life, Rayman Origins/Legends, Kirby, Mega Man, etc.
Boost gameplay in general will be brought up, but will not be discussed heavily.
- This thread is about level design, not gameplay balance or similar.
General Gameplay comparisons between Unleashed and Generations:
- Sonic Team essentially took Unleashed's controls and made a bunch of changes to them:
- Acceleration has been drastically lowered.
- Top Speed has been lowered, even when boosting.
- Air boost and Jump Dash has been seperated, and nerfed.
- Drifting actually shrinks your turning radius.
- The control stick is used to switch rails instead of the bumpers.
- Homing attack speed has been slightly debuffed.
- Removal of QTEs in favor of a more freeform style of tricks.
- Some other misc. control tweaks.
Anyways, now onto the level design stuff.
This is the tutorial level, and one of the most straightforward and linear stages in the game. The first few moments are all about quickly teaching the player how to play the game.

You first learn how to run and jump
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then you learn homing attacking, rail grinding, and boosting in that order.
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As you can see, this is very plainly a straight line, as, after all, we don't want to overwhelm and confuse the new player. The loop afterwards also gives a brief bit of spectacle before the first 2D section.

Here's a zoom out of the first 2D section:
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And already there's a pathsplit.
In fact, there's a few pathsplits.

Sonic Generations tries to have multiple pathways in every stage.
On top of that, it tries to replicate the high-road, low-road dichotomy seen in the classics.

Basically, what that means is that, in Sonic games, there's a "high-road" and a "low-road".
The low-road is easier, faster, and more lax, but lacks much items outside of the basic necessities.
The high-road however, is harder to traverse, but the reward is better items and other rewards.

Generations takes an interesting approach to this level design mindset, by realizing that modern sonic gameplay doesn't have many tangible rewards for high-road skillful play outside of 10-rings and 1-ups.
However, it often makes up for this, by having the reward be a shortcut through the stage. There's still a reward, but its intangible and not immediately noticeable. In fact, on your first playthrough you'll notice that the bottom path seems faster, but it really isn't.
The devs are using spectacle and loops to make the bottom path seem faster than it already is. This magic trick of level design is the driving force of a lot of multiple pathways, as you'll see a lot in a sec.

The next two sections aren't anything special. It's just a more linear and straightforward 2D section followed by: what I'll call a "spectacle section", which is an often-automated section of gameplay devoted to spectacle. After nearly getting our head bitten off by a giant chopper, we get to our next gameplay section and this drives the high-road, low-road type design home, except in a novel way.

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As you can see, the level design opens up, there are a few platforming sections below, but it's nothing too taxing due to it being essentially level one.


You can already see this spectacle magic trick in action. The top path is far more straightforward than the bottom path. But the game obscures this with a handy-dandy loop in the bottom path; Alongside the bottom path having more verticality to its level design.

Not long after this is a real banger: B e h o l d!
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The bottom path is in front, while the top path is in the back.

You can now plainly see how much faster the top path is if you chose to navigate the bottom path.

This is how you take advantage of the third dimension people. :threat:

The two paths eventually merge, and from there it's a straight shot to the goal ring.
This is level one btw, and it's one of the more linear levels in the game, and already it's committed into not only doing multiple pathways but keeping the pathways varied and different. This is shit that the classics would pull but on a much grander scale, and this is only level one. Things will only get better from here. :knuxsmug:
(10 limit attachment, so I'm gonna have to reserve one post per level :<)
 
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This is turning into a great analysis. As someone who also loves Generations, I think you’ve got it right
 
Welcome to the Chemical Plant
and upon the first few seconds of the stage, we have a very clever pathsplit.
1622071799300.png
You'd think that those pipes are for decoration, but nope!
You can jump to them and navigate to an entirely new pathsplit; Rewarding perception and curiosity.

Both alternate paths lead to, what is essentially, a bunch of platforms beside the main road.
1622071845833.png

Left one leads to a 10-ring while the right one leads to a 1-up and puts you back on the main road.
Once you reach the end of the left path, you can essentially attempt to reach some boost rings in the distance, followed by a light dash trail, pulling this off is ngl a little unintuitive due to the weird camera change mid-air as well as the nearly-bs timing for the last dash ring soon after, but doing all this and being successful will allow you to skip a whole chunk of stage, hell, landing just short of it, you can still aim yourself towards a larger platform towards the bottom and land on that, and from there jump back onto the main track, which still skips quite a bit of stage.
1622071880702.png



From there comes the first 2D section, and there's already a pathsplit.

Top path is more treacherous, yet is more straightforward, giving you the benefit of a time-save.
Bottom path is slower, yet hides the fact with verticality and speed, alongside a simple platforming bit.
1622078289392.png



After another spectacle section with a waterslide, the paths diverge again.
Once again top path straightforward bottom path complex
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notice how the double loops are only accessible at the bottom path
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Everything after this point is a rising water sequence reminiscent of the god damn funnel and after that, the plant explodes, and it's a straight shot to the goal, plus some more high-road low-road shenanigans that I don't think is noteworthy enough to screenshot.

Most things I've shown so far is 2D. But the next stage coming up does a lot more interesting things with the 3rd dimension.
 
Welcome to the Chemical Plant
and upon the first few seconds of the stage, we have a very clever pathsplit.
View attachment 45629You'd think that those pipes are for decoration, but nope!
You can jump to them and navigate to an entirely new pathsplit; Rewarding perception and curiosity.

Both alternate paths lead to, what is essentially, a bunch of platforms beside the main road.
View attachment 45630
Left one leads to a 10-ring while the right one leads to a 1-up and puts you back on the main road.
Once you reach the end of the left path, you can essentially attempt to reach some boost rings in the distance, followed by a light dash trail, pulling this off is ngl a little unintuitive due to the weird camera change mid-air as well as the nearly-bs timing for the last dash ring soon after, but doing all this and being successful will allow you to skip a whole chunk of stage, hell, landing just short of it, you can still aim yourself towards a larger platform towards the bottom and land on that, and from there jump back onto the main track, which still skips quite a bit of stage.
View attachment 45631


From there comes the first 2D section, and there's already a pathsplit.

Top path is more treacherous, yet is more straightforward, giving you the benefit of a time-save.
Bottom path is slower, yet hides the fact with verticality and speed, alongside a simple platforming bit.
View attachment 45647


After another spectacle section with a waterslide, the paths diverge again.
Once again top path straightforward bottom path complex
View attachment 45648
notice how the double loops are only accessible at the bottom path
View attachment 45653

Everything after this point is a rising water sequence reminiscent of the god damn funnel and after that, the plant explodes, and it's a straight shot to the goal, plus some more high-road low-road shenanigans that I don't think is noteworthy enough to screenshot.

Most things I've shown so far is 2D. But the next stage coming up does a lot more interesting things with the 3rd dimension.
I can confirm that the majority of my time on this stage was experimenting with the split paths in the beginning. I was actually pretty mind broken when I jumped off to each path and tried to see the fastest way to get through them
 
Welcome to the Sky Sanctuary
Don't worry about Angel Island, it's probably in an ocean somewhere.
Also don't worry about the Death Egg it's just chillin' :threat:


Anyways, after a short introductory bit, we finally have some actual 3D platforming :wow:
The top path this time is visibly dangerous, and will require some skill to traverse.
Meanwhile the bottom path is nice and chill. Just don't mind the eggrobos
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Sky Sanctuary's approach to 3D platforming is very straightforward, but it gives you plenty of space to move around.
This is also one of the first sections to actively discourage boosting, since there's not much leeway to run on.

A left-right pathsplit happens here, although you gotta put some effort if you wanna get on the right path
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More interesting 3D stuff happens here.
The bottom path leads to a rail leading to a 2D section.
The top path can be fallen off of, which will also lead to a 2D section.
If you clear the top path tho, you'll fucking crash through a window, skipping the section altogether as a reward for showing your skills
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(trick ramp will send you straight into the ramp.)
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This all leads to a fountain featuring another pathsplit.
Both paths lead to the same place so no need to talk about that there.

The 2D section afterwards is the same high-road low-road stuff, but on a smaller scale.
The 3D section afterwards is just p e r f e c t i o n.
B e h o l d
Verticality!
Multiple Paths!
Skill-based sidepaths!
Platforms that R O T A T E!
And the level design is starting to mesh a bunch of these paths into a cohesive whole.
If you want an S-Rank you gotta show some skill
(...is what i would've said if s-ranks weren't a fuckin joke :worry:)
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Not long after is another great example of the game rewarding your perception.
See that pulley in the background? If you're quick enough you can jump off the current pulley you're on and onto the other one.
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You'd think this pulley would reward you with a faster path, and that's what I would say if Sonic Team didn't accidentally make the bottom, most-accessible route the fastest one. :oh:
At least this part is comfy to get across and is another section that discourages boosting. (I really don't have much to say about this section)
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The last 2D section is small, short, and kinda interesting as, in order to be granted the fastest path, you gotta defeat an egg robo before he activates a switch, which is too easy to do whoops.
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After this is another straightforward section that eventually leads to the goal.


Not much to say on this one otherwise, It continues the high-road low-road design the previous two stages have been using up to this point, except it's approach is a little bit more open and freeflowing, and sometimes it changes things up. Definitely an interesting one, that's for sure.
 
Generations has some great boost stages but Unleashed is still the peak level design for him overall (not counting the Night and Classic stages for Unleashed ans Generations respectively)
 

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