SRB2's setting?
- Thread starter h0is
- Start date
Unknownlight
Member
This is where SRB2's story originates from.
The planet is Mobius, which ties in to how the original Sonic Robo Blast began in Knothole from SatAM.
Dark City and Brak, however, are from the Sonic OVA, which takes place on Planet Freedom. The background image from quitting SRB2 also shows Knuckles wearing his hat from the OVA.
Everything else about the game obviously pulls from the Classic era.
...I'll let you draw you own conclusions over how well-thought-out the story and setting of this game is.
The planet is Mobius, which ties in to how the original Sonic Robo Blast began in Knothole from SatAM.
Dark City and Brak, however, are from the Sonic OVA, which takes place on Planet Freedom. The background image from quitting SRB2 also shows Knuckles wearing his hat from the OVA.
Everything else about the game obviously pulls from the Classic era.
...I'll let you draw you own conclusions over how well-thought-out the story and setting of this game is.
Solid SOAP
Member
Not that the established lore or world of Sonic has ever been consistent or anything, haha. The old games in America took place on "Mobius," but in Japan it was South Island. After that the games take place on Earth with humans, but now in Sonic Forces Earth seems to be mostly inhabited by animal characters...
h0is
Member
That's not really a good or conclusive answer. I know SRB1's plot, and just because it takes place in a certain area doesn't mean SRB2 also takes place there. It's also reasonable to expect that any kind of SatAM-related lore had been retconned out of SRB2, so SRB1 really doesn't tell us anything.
The actual answer is that anything we didn't write out simply wasn't worried about. The plot is such a minor aspect of our game, and while we did finally get around to updating it a bit for 2.2, it remains unimportant. The plot is simply an excuse to go beat up a fat man, which shouldn't surprise anyone.
Take this entire concept with a grain of salt because it never got approved by anybody else, isn't evident in-game in any fashion, and I'm not even on the team anymore so it could totally get contradicted going forward. Nonetheless, since it exists as a concept you might as well see it!
I did this in 2018 based on an incomplete map as designed by community member Teapot. I was probably the developer on the team who cared the most about anything relating to story or non-immediate content, and this was about as far as it went in terms of trying to justify the connective tissue between zones, or why Sonic would have to cross a sea and he didn't have the option to just run around on land. Think of it vaguely like the channel between the United Kingdom and France, I guess? Same continent, different landmass. So probably not an existing landmass, since none of the ones from any official (or otherwise) Sonic game have an arrangement quite like that.
Not sure if there's anything else worth mentioning, aside from that it WAS proposed that the Metal Sonic you play as is the good guy one from the ending of the OVA, versus Just Another Metal Sonic Built By Eggman With No Personality as the villain. It's all a bit of a blur, of course, and there's no evidence of this - especially not the battle damage as seen in the movie itself - but we thought about having some sort of nod to it at some point.
I did this in 2018 based on an incomplete map as designed by community member Teapot. I was probably the developer on the team who cared the most about anything relating to story or non-immediate content, and this was about as far as it went in terms of trying to justify the connective tissue between zones, or why Sonic would have to cross a sea and he didn't have the option to just run around on land. Think of it vaguely like the channel between the United Kingdom and France, I guess? Same continent, different landmass. So probably not an existing landmass, since none of the ones from any official (or otherwise) Sonic game have an arrangement quite like that.
Not sure if there's anything else worth mentioning, aside from that it WAS proposed that the Metal Sonic you play as is the good guy one from the ending of the OVA, versus Just Another Metal Sonic Built By Eggman With No Personality as the villain. It's all a bit of a blur, of course, and there's no evidence of this - especially not the battle damage as seen in the movie itself - but we thought about having some sort of nod to it at some point.
Moose the Fat Cat
Member
Disagree the plot isn't important. That's subjective first obviously. But secondly its wrong! Sonic's design, and the idea of Sonic being an adventure character is as core to the character as speed, moreso than to any one type of gameplay. He's fast, he's amusing, he's on an epic adventure. He's Felix the Cat with Goku's hair on backwards and he's the color of the company logo; his shoes are because kids like Christmas, kids like Santa, the idea of Santa is the Coca Cola red/white version. He was always intended to be appealing for American children (and why SoA didn't need to futz with the design like they did for "attitude"). What's more American than coke, and r/w/b? He's a friendly cartoon animal on a grand quest. Looney Tunes + Dragon Ball z = Sonic.
Cartoons/comics/games have varied on the specific executions of "epic adventure" but the memorable ones are more successful at achieving it. That's part of why Sonic has endured, and part of why the character hits differently than Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse or Mario, why there's a multi-generational thing and a fanbase stretching from Gen X to Gen Z and beyond maybe. That feeling of epic adventure is essential-- in the games, it's shown best in classic via background & minimal animation -- Sky Chase/Death Egg in Sonic 2, Stardust Speedway in Sonic CD, and Sky Sanctuary/Death Egg/Doomsday in S3K.
In SRB2, Metal Sonic and Metal Eggman provide that in gameplay, but the context is vague. I guess Egg Rock will use the comet like the Death Egg? And Metal is there to stop you. Then destroying Eggman's brak armor destroys everything, and the Emeralds protect the comet? Sonic dies with Eggman but he's remembered in the stars...? Thank you Sonic. Bless the troops. Hashtag we're all in this together.
I'm guessing Dark City will bridge Red Volcano and Egg Rock narratively as much as in gameplay? I like the idea that the boss arena of DC3 is the spaceship that takes you to Egg Rock and previously appeared in the background of DC1 and DC2 as the big egg HQ of the city.
I think (pitched this before) that switching the order of Deep Sea & Castle Eggman makes the narrative progression of levels much more logical and they're about equal in difficulty, drowning or spike maze. CEZ makes more sense in 3rd spot because it's so impressive and unique and fun and platform-y, and shows a new idea after two traditional hills/factory settings. Also THZ3 ends in a train, it's odd to then end up in the ocean?? It would make sense for the train to take Eggman to his home, his stupid castle carelessly built in the deep forest on the burial ground of an ancient culture (the cat pyramid temples underground; idk who made it cats but I like it as a flipside/counterpart to South Island being associated with birds/flickies/owls in characters and in the totem poles and other background design. It's funny and counter-intuitive for cats to live near the ocean, in the same way a hedgehog being fast is contradictory. In my mind it's because this cat culture is not so ancient; the water became poisoned and unsustainable because of Techno Hill factories. No more fish, no more food for the cats, time to go elsewhere. They warp ring to Angel Island or Westside or somewhere away from Eggman's fracking.
And I like Infinitylight's idea of Amy Rose becoming playable after Castle Eggman; she's being held captive there as bait for Sonic. After humiliating Eggman on his home turf, Sonic frees Amy from the capsule. She does her hug/love animation; character responds with idle animation. Then the ground beneath them blows up. The stadium was built on top of a well that drops into...
Deep Sea Zone, the ancient labyrinth beneath Eggman's gaudy "new money" castle in the forest. You land in a cavern near an ancient temple on the edge of the deep sea. The current took Amy elsewhere, we assume.
(The rain in CEZ foreshadows water; as it is, I take it as we've come out of the sea into the moat. Either way the castle is raining because it's by the ocean. We can add additional connective tissue by changing the color of the black bottomless pits in CEZ and under the collapsing bridge -- could be the moat / bottomless water. Blue instead of black. And then from the well in CEZ3, you're dropped into the current that takes you out to sea.)
The plot in SRB2 could be more coherent, fun, and original without anything other than just rewriting the copy and maybe rearranging the images for the opening to set the stakes for the levels that follow, instead of being a strange mix of nice images and child-like fanfic writing. And I understand why, that's how the whole thing started, and then just "well, who cares, why change it" --- well, other things got a facelift. Why change anything? It could all be just as amateurish as it began instead of what it's become. It's a shame to have the SRB2 story be bad because the plot isn't essential to the work of a level designer. But it's a misreading for why there's interest in Sonic to begin with, to conclude the plot doesn't matter, and it's silly to pass up the opportunity to actually do something cool with what's already there.
Why not have the opening intro be at least as fun/clever/epic as the Dark Souls bit in CEZ1?
Ian Flynn nails it in the comics, but it's a bit different for this and wrong to play it like a comic book or a silent cartoon like Mania Adventures. I think I'd go more minimalist absurdist storybook style in a classical almost Lewis Carroll kind of approach to vibe within "Looney Tunes + Dragon Ball Z." Not jokey, it too easily becomes tryhard/corny in Sonic, but comically whimsical is right, and the slapstick provided by the images/expressions.
The images could be spread out between the levels (press any button to skip) to add value, rather than just using them all at the beginning. The images of Sonic confronting Eggman in his base could be re-contextualized for the end before the battle. Some of Eggman and Sonic/Tails/Knuckles could be before GF3. Heck, there's probably a way to arrange them so that there's no prologue at all, just the start screen, and the images are used as connective tissue for the classic/minimal story between key levels. Instead of the level transitions of S3K, it's these storybook pages. A blend of S3K, CD, 3D Blast but better. Another benefit, in addition to using the existing resources more meaningfully rather than wasting them, this also serves to further incentivize the first-time player to continue playing the campaign; to continue the story. One page at a time between levels improves the value of both and has a bigger impact on the player. Optional to skip; optional to watch them all together once completed; doesn't impact Record Attack obviously.
Lots of ways it could be punched up while retaining the same core spirit and story but improve the execution, just like the levels. We've got ideas!
---------- Post added at 06:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:04 AM ----------
I love this, and that map is fun!! That's how I'm picturing the campaign for sure. I like thinking of DSZ as a gulf like the UK / France example, that's cool.
As I just posted, I think CEZ would be more logical on the other side of the gulf, a train ride away from the factory on the coast (move THZ down to the bottom-third, so the bottom-most brown island is GFZ3 (facing the mountain now, acts 1-2 running away from mountain) which connects to THZ on the right, which has a trainline for Eggman to go from there to his castle retreat (the forest coast / other side of Mountain Eggman). So CEZ would be where THZ is now, west of DSZ. Then the other side of the gulf is a little more untamed -- from the sea into the tall desert mountains (it's a long drop down the canyon) around a volcano. Out from the mountains there's a dark city. From there, the capital building is in fact a grand ship that takes a trip into space to look at a rock where it'll be even more fun to hold our other rocks.
Cartoons/comics/games have varied on the specific executions of "epic adventure" but the memorable ones are more successful at achieving it. That's part of why Sonic has endured, and part of why the character hits differently than Bugs Bunny or Mickey Mouse or Mario, why there's a multi-generational thing and a fanbase stretching from Gen X to Gen Z and beyond maybe. That feeling of epic adventure is essential-- in the games, it's shown best in classic via background & minimal animation -- Sky Chase/Death Egg in Sonic 2, Stardust Speedway in Sonic CD, and Sky Sanctuary/Death Egg/Doomsday in S3K.
In SRB2, Metal Sonic and Metal Eggman provide that in gameplay, but the context is vague. I guess Egg Rock will use the comet like the Death Egg? And Metal is there to stop you. Then destroying Eggman's brak armor destroys everything, and the Emeralds protect the comet? Sonic dies with Eggman but he's remembered in the stars...? Thank you Sonic. Bless the troops. Hashtag we're all in this together.
I'm guessing Dark City will bridge Red Volcano and Egg Rock narratively as much as in gameplay? I like the idea that the boss arena of DC3 is the spaceship that takes you to Egg Rock and previously appeared in the background of DC1 and DC2 as the big egg HQ of the city.
I think (pitched this before) that switching the order of Deep Sea & Castle Eggman makes the narrative progression of levels much more logical and they're about equal in difficulty, drowning or spike maze. CEZ makes more sense in 3rd spot because it's so impressive and unique and fun and platform-y, and shows a new idea after two traditional hills/factory settings. Also THZ3 ends in a train, it's odd to then end up in the ocean?? It would make sense for the train to take Eggman to his home, his stupid castle carelessly built in the deep forest on the burial ground of an ancient culture (the cat pyramid temples underground; idk who made it cats but I like it as a flipside/counterpart to South Island being associated with birds/flickies/owls in characters and in the totem poles and other background design. It's funny and counter-intuitive for cats to live near the ocean, in the same way a hedgehog being fast is contradictory. In my mind it's because this cat culture is not so ancient; the water became poisoned and unsustainable because of Techno Hill factories. No more fish, no more food for the cats, time to go elsewhere. They warp ring to Angel Island or Westside or somewhere away from Eggman's fracking.
And I like Infinitylight's idea of Amy Rose becoming playable after Castle Eggman; she's being held captive there as bait for Sonic. After humiliating Eggman on his home turf, Sonic frees Amy from the capsule. She does her hug/love animation; character responds with idle animation. Then the ground beneath them blows up. The stadium was built on top of a well that drops into...
Deep Sea Zone, the ancient labyrinth beneath Eggman's gaudy "new money" castle in the forest. You land in a cavern near an ancient temple on the edge of the deep sea. The current took Amy elsewhere, we assume.
(The rain in CEZ foreshadows water; as it is, I take it as we've come out of the sea into the moat. Either way the castle is raining because it's by the ocean. We can add additional connective tissue by changing the color of the black bottomless pits in CEZ and under the collapsing bridge -- could be the moat / bottomless water. Blue instead of black. And then from the well in CEZ3, you're dropped into the current that takes you out to sea.)
The plot in SRB2 could be more coherent, fun, and original without anything other than just rewriting the copy and maybe rearranging the images for the opening to set the stakes for the levels that follow, instead of being a strange mix of nice images and child-like fanfic writing. And I understand why, that's how the whole thing started, and then just "well, who cares, why change it" --- well, other things got a facelift. Why change anything? It could all be just as amateurish as it began instead of what it's become. It's a shame to have the SRB2 story be bad because the plot isn't essential to the work of a level designer. But it's a misreading for why there's interest in Sonic to begin with, to conclude the plot doesn't matter, and it's silly to pass up the opportunity to actually do something cool with what's already there.
Why not have the opening intro be at least as fun/clever/epic as the Dark Souls bit in CEZ1?
Ian Flynn nails it in the comics, but it's a bit different for this and wrong to play it like a comic book or a silent cartoon like Mania Adventures. I think I'd go more minimalist absurdist storybook style in a classical almost Lewis Carroll kind of approach to vibe within "Looney Tunes + Dragon Ball Z." Not jokey, it too easily becomes tryhard/corny in Sonic, but comically whimsical is right, and the slapstick provided by the images/expressions.
The images could be spread out between the levels (press any button to skip) to add value, rather than just using them all at the beginning. The images of Sonic confronting Eggman in his base could be re-contextualized for the end before the battle. Some of Eggman and Sonic/Tails/Knuckles could be before GF3. Heck, there's probably a way to arrange them so that there's no prologue at all, just the start screen, and the images are used as connective tissue for the classic/minimal story between key levels. Instead of the level transitions of S3K, it's these storybook pages. A blend of S3K, CD, 3D Blast but better. Another benefit, in addition to using the existing resources more meaningfully rather than wasting them, this also serves to further incentivize the first-time player to continue playing the campaign; to continue the story. One page at a time between levels improves the value of both and has a bigger impact on the player. Optional to skip; optional to watch them all together once completed; doesn't impact Record Attack obviously.
Lots of ways it could be punched up while retaining the same core spirit and story but improve the execution, just like the levels. We've got ideas!
---------- Post added at 06:15 AM ---------- Previous post was at 06:04 AM ----------
Take this entire concept with a grain of salt because it never got approved by anybody else, isn't evident in-game in any fashion, and I'm not even on the team anymore so it could totally get contradicted going forward. Nonetheless, since it exists as a concept you might as well see it!
I did this in 2018 based on an incomplete map as designed by community member Teapot. I was probably the developer on the team who cared the most about anything relating to story or non-immediate content, and this was about as far as it went in terms of trying to justify the connective tissue between zones, or why Sonic would have to cross a sea and he didn't have the option to just run around on land. Think of it vaguely like the channel between the United Kingdom and France, I guess? Same continent, different landmass. So probably not an existing landmass, since none of the ones from any official (or otherwise) Sonic game have an arrangement quite like that.
Not sure if there's anything else worth mentioning, aside from that it WAS proposed that the Metal Sonic you play as is the good guy one from the ending of the OVA, versus Just Another Metal Sonic Built By Eggman With No Personality as the villain. It's all a bit of a blur, of course, and there's no evidence of this - especially not the battle damage as seen in the movie itself - but we thought about having some sort of nod to it at some point.
I love this, and that map is fun!! That's how I'm picturing the campaign for sure. I like thinking of DSZ as a gulf like the UK / France example, that's cool.
As I just posted, I think CEZ would be more logical on the other side of the gulf, a train ride away from the factory on the coast (move THZ down to the bottom-third, so the bottom-most brown island is GFZ3 (facing the mountain now, acts 1-2 running away from mountain) which connects to THZ on the right, which has a trainline for Eggman to go from there to his castle retreat (the forest coast / other side of Mountain Eggman). So CEZ would be where THZ is now, west of DSZ. Then the other side of the gulf is a little more untamed -- from the sea into the tall desert mountains (it's a long drop down the canyon) around a volcano. Out from the mountains there's a dark city. From there, the capital building is in fact a grand ship that takes a trip into space to look at a rock where it'll be even more fun to hold our other rocks.
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Unknownlight
Member
Moose the Fat Cat
Member
d'oh. Sorry, Unknownlight.
Not gonna reply to the rest of your post because that is a lot of words taking SRB2 too seriously for what it is (don't worry, I can relate), but figure I should at least address some of the misconceptions here, since I worked on the ending cutscene.
- The player doesn't die; after defeating Black Eggman, they flee the Egg Rock on an escape pod shaped like Eggman's face, which you personally control the player into doing before the cutscene begins. You can see this escape pod travelling down to the planet ("Mobius", Earth, Sonic's world, whatever you wanna call it) if you watch closely, especially as its heat shields start burning on re-entry. Obviously you never see them make it back to safe ground, but that's a limitation on the number of sprites required for all the custom characters and could probably be handled differently in a future version.
- The aqua-green energy is meant to be a teleport effect - you can see this in action in the intro cutscene when the Black Rock teleports into this dimension, so it'd be logical to assume that the same energies glowing at the end of the game belong to the same process. It's not exploding. The particles are meant to be a firework simply to represent either "Eggman still has the upper hand" or "You've won, congratulations!" - they're also seen when the Little Planet travels through time, and that planet didn't EXPLODE because you can clearly see it's fine/ruined after the credits in that game.
- Speaking of after the credits, in this game you see the Black/Egg Rock in its "home dimension" of the infinite black void. If you got the bad ending, the Egg Rock pulses ala Mecha Sonic's appearance in S3K's post-credits bad ending scene for Knuckles. This is to indicate that Eggman's survived and is just gonna try again the next time he returns to our dimension in 5 years, or maybe even sooner!
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Icarus
Phantasy Savior
I agree a lot with you all, I wish Sega kept the story in their game like that too. Mobius being the official name of Sonic's world and having simple stories about a blue hedgehog going at the speed of sound to chase a fat scientist with the help of colored stones. Like the creator of the game where SRB2 was based off: the story in a video game is expected to be there but it's not that important.
PS: I am still curious about why you changed Greenflower city in the test, was it too dark for a Classic Sonic story?
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Moose the Fat Cat
Member
It's nice to know there was that kind of thought went into it! Also - I was kidding about assuming Sonic dies at the end, but I actually have NOT noticed the pod flying back to Earth in the end or maybe I did but didn't track it was supposed to be the player's pod. I'll keep an eye out for that next time I play the final levels!
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Mario A. Roach
¡Reremy
So, there is no Ice level? I think I remember seeing some stuff about an Ice stage in 2011... I might be crazy though.
Unknownlight
Member
You're probably thinking of Blue Mountain Zone. A long, long time ago (2009-ish) the devs considered making Act 2 of Red Volcano snow-themed. Like, the inside of the volcano would all be rocks and lava, but the outside is a snowy mountain.
The idea was scrapped ages ago, but I kind of wish it stayed. Not as an Act 2, but integrated into both acts. I think it would be cool if the current outdoor sections of Red Volcano were ice-themed. It would be a pretty unique aesthetic.
time gear
Eternity in an hour
Ice levels in platformers rarely turn out well on account of how ice physics mess with the player when they are trying to maintain control of their character. Snow levels are much better because they maintain a similar theme without necessarily needing ice and therefore ice physics. As such, I would be fine with a snow themed level but ice levels should be reserved to bonus levels.
Mario A. Roach
¡Reremy
Yeah, that is it. I didn't know it was scrapped out :c - I would like to see that stage reconsidered. At least an act or maybe a Zone :O