What if there was a sandbox style sonic game?

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hms

hms

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So think about it a 3D sonic game thats sandbox style where you can just do whatever you want: go on an emerald hunt, fight eggman, fly in the tornado, use super transformation, anything! How do you guys think that would work out? And please just give it a chance and think about it before you criticise it.
 
You're missing one key ingredient in your description: Platforming. I'm not going to buy the sonic equivalent of Star fox Adventures.
 
Sandbox games are cool because you can play them in tons of different ways, but the downside is that they lose some capacity for specific courses and challenges. Sonic is a platform game character, and I don't think that that could be translated too well into a sandbox-style game. Sonic isn't as versatile as Mario in his ability to shine in different game genres. Look at Sonic Chronicles...it was good as an RPG, but lame as a Sonic game.
 
hms said:
So think about it a 3D sonic game thats sandbox style where you can just do whatever you want: go on an emerald hunt, fight eggman, fly in the tornado, use super transformation, anything! How do you guys think that would work out? And please just give it a chance and think about it before you criticise it.
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Sonic Adventure
 
hms said:
So think about it a 3D sonic game that's sandbox style where you can just do whatever you want: go on an emerald hunt, fight eggman, fly in the tornado, use super transformation, anything! How do you guys think that would work out? And please just give it a chance and think about it before you criticize it.
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Actually it could work, Certain things could open up for later use, for example: The Tornado might need to be used for a fight in the sky; and then you can use it whenever you please after words ( or just for more "Tornado Sidequests).

Emerald hunts; could be slightly different, the only way I could think it would work would be using the "Emerald radar" and finding it before eggman does, if he finds it, you have to attack him before he escapes,and if he does end up escaping you'll have to steal it back from his base.

Fighting Eggman is just simple; make it a plot quest...Maybe he can be in a giant mech, or send a robot after you ( Metal Sonic fight anyone?)

Super form is slightly tougher...The way this works could be if you have all 7 chaos emeralds before a final fight ( this could mean you can get the emeralds before eggman even knows of them via Special Stages or buying them off someone ( Nack, Rouge, etc.)). after that you could buy the skill "Super Transform" and have access to it.

And I think it would be cool to have a similar concept of being good or evil, similiar to inFamous; where Sonic could chose his path as well as perhaps have more Abilities to have access to...

Sonic is a platform game character, and I don't think that that could be translated too well into a sandbox-style game.
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It could be translated, not well, but translated...an example could be the generic "Run through rings" missions, they would work; but it would be obviously something everyone has done... So the challenge is finding something Sonic could do for a side quest that isn't Generic, but also fun...

tl;dr: It's possible, but it just wouldn't work, what needs to be done is find some quests that would fit Sonic's abilities while making it entertaining for the player...
 
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Prince of Persia '08 had a pretty nice solution which combined open world and linearity. Essentially, there were a bunch of routes which could be traveled in both directions which had a lot of intersections. To avoid getting lost, you selected a location on your map and you asked Elika to show you where you needed to go to get to it.
 
You see it probably could work if given a chance some minor things would need to be worked out but overall it would probably be a good game its one those things sega/sonic team might want to consider for future games.
 
Sandbox games really aren't games, they're more like simulations. A game is something with a set of rules and a win/lose outcome. If you're just dicking around (SA City), there's no 'game' involved.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game
 
I tend to think that a open-ended Sonic game would be rather like a Legend of Zelda game: Have a massive, massive overworld that Sonic can whiz through from one end to the other in 10 minutes if he so pleases, with tons of stuff in the middle to encourage exploring and to exploit Sonic's abilities. The platforming and gimmicks primarily comes in with the few and far between action stages (which would be roughly equivalent to Zelda's dungeons).

Basically my idea is to have the exploration of Sonic Adventure, but turned up to the zillionth degree. Not sure if it would strictly qualify as a sandbox game, but it would remedy the linearity that typically plagues Sonic's 3D outings.
 
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Well for one thing I think the first post is actually talking about an open-ended game, rather than a sandbox game. Open-ended allows you to choose your own path, but a sandbox game is were you just do stuff and fool around without ever winning.
I've played RTSs which offer a sandbox mode where all you do is build and build and build. I think the best example of sandbox is Minecraft. You can be a jerk and flood people's mines and all, but generally speaking you're all just in there basically building a level. You don't "win" until your group is satisfied with the landscape.

A sandbox platformer would be like playing Mario 64 without anything but the castle. A sandbox RPG would be like playing a Zelda game without quests. Neither really sounds sufficient for a retail game to me.

Now the question of whether it is possible to do an open-ended Sonic game is another question entirely...
 
Why not just include the "Sandbox" mode as something different once you complete the game as opposed to it being the whole entire game. After a while, I'd get seriously bored.
 
You'd think high speed and big landscape would make for a wonderful combination, but I wouldn't be confident in such a game until they make a control scheme capable of open ended movement. Hell, they're having troubles making one based around linear movement, even with spring and boostpad redirections to assist them.

If all else fails though, you could probably make a strength/speed only character in Crackdown and pretend it's the same thing. Prototype has a few templates of a sandbox Sonic game too, come to think of it.
 
The only thing that springs to mind as far as open-ended/sandbox executed well with an atypical character was Spiderman 2. It was surprisingly fun just swinging around the city, I felt.
 
luis90 said:
For all intents and purposes, the touhou mods are better.
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No. Jesus Christ, no. "GROVE 4 LIFE, NIGGA. 4 LIFE" does not match with "Am I kawaii? uguu~" Jesus Christ, I don't care how many civilians you change, little Japanese girls do not fit in with any of the GTA atmosphere. You can't seriously tell me that any of those mods fit in during the game's recreation of the 92 Rodney King riots.

Oh, and AJ, that is the Shadow skin. It's just colored to look like Sonic.
 
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