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:
(10 limit attachment, so I'm gonna have to reserve one post per level :<)
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:
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
then you learn homing attacking, rail grinding, and boosting in that order.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
You first learn how to run and jump
then you learn homing attacking, rail grinding, and boosting in that order.
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:
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.
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!
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.
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.
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