Sonic Boom announced for Wii U (from ex-Naught Dog devs) and 3DS (from Sly Cooper Vita/PS3 devs)

[Yanikun]

Bob Rafei, the co-founder and CEO of Big Red Button, has worked on Crash Bandicoot 1/2/3/Racing, Jak and Daxter 1/2/3/X, Daxter, and Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. He was the very first employee at Naughty Dog.

Sonic Boom – first official details

- Will deliver a “fresh approach that will be at once both familiar and new”
- Sonic Boom will extend into television, gaming, merchandise and more
- Won’t replace modern Sonic
- Will take “the franchise to another level”
- Officially the third title in SEGA’s exclusive deal with Nintendo
- Game will take advantage of Wii U 3DS
- Features Sonic’s sense of speed
- New “Enerbeam” mechanic: explore the game’s world in unique ways
- Wii U version focuses on combat and exploration
- Game developed using CryEngine 3
- Wii U title will “operate in harmony with the television series and act as a prequel to the series”
- Big Red Button CEO Bob Raffei said the game will be “a very different Sonic, both in tone and art direction”
- Sanzaru Games handling 3DS version
- Will feature slightly different content on each platform
- 3DS version has different environments and enemies
- CG TV series from OuiDo! Productions
- Will air in North America on Cartoon Network during the 2014-2015 season
- 52 episodes, 11 minutes long
- Wii U version offers two-player co-op in the main campaign
- Will have modes for 4 players
- Game centers on an adnveutre in an ancient land
- Exploration, melee combat, speed
- 3DS version happens in the same world
- Focus on teamwork
- Expanded roles for Tails, Knuckles, Amy
- Each have their special abilities that link up with Sonic and possibly each other
- No online co-op

SEGA/Sonic Boom devs on appealing to the west, structure, characters, not coming to Japan, more Sonic Team games planned

Iizuka on having western devs work on the game…
“As part of completely thinking about the West, we wanted to make sure we had Western game developers and make it a part of Western television. We wanted to make sure it was developed best for Western audiences primarily; this was very important.

“The whole thing started with the television series. Our previous series, Sonic X, was made in Japan and influenced by Japanese anime; the main audience it was made for was in Japan, although it came to the West as well. So Sonic Boom is something made specifically for the Western audience. For the TV series to be successful, we pretty much had to make it for that audience, and the games tie into that strategy.”

Frost adds that keeping Sonic Boom in the hands of western teams was important for the projects’ “synergy”

- Big Red Button chosen because its team had experience making character-driven adventure games

“One of the things is, if you think about it at a high level, all the key aspects of this new initiative for Sonic, whether it’s the cartoon, the game or the toys, is centered on the Western side, and we wanted to be unified in that. It’s very challenging to create an initiative like this where everything works in a nice synergy if you have a lot of people scattered around the world. Granted, we’re doing our [animation] stuff in France, but really, the leads of each group are at Sega of America. And it was really important — I think this is where many other initiatives might fail — is that we really we see each other every day, we’re talking to each other every day, and that was really important.

On the game’s emphasis on combat…
“Sonic Team is great and they make really great speed-oriented games, but this game is not just about speed. Speed is an important aspect of it, but exploration, combat and the strong narrative of the storyline are very big aspects of the game, more so than I would say in the past. So again, we wanted a strong storyline and art design that Western audiences can resonate a little bit better with the synergistic relation for all of us at Sega of America is why we drove toward a Western developer across the board.”

- Game will have a narrative focus
- Will focus on a “wide linear” gameplay approach
- Not a true open-world game
- Series of classic sandbox levels branching out into more levels in a spoke-like system

Rafei on the structure of the game…
“There’s moments where you’re funneled back to the main gameplay and we have to do that also for the necessity of cooperative play, where we didn’t want to have the two characters venture off in two different directions. It’s a classic structured game, so we have the critical path, and part of our project pillars, among many, was to make sure that it’s accessible to new fans. So we want you to be able to finish the game but for fans who want more, you will have to find the additional, the secondary paths and all the hidden secrets.”

- Using familiar adventure game conventions and ideas
- Emphasis was on making sure the gameplay didn’t eclipse the game’s defining Sonic elements

Rafei on Sonic’s scarf…
“We were exploring different outfits and we went through a lot of iterations and the scarf was something I’ve used in the past and it works for me and it works for the character. Really, the history of that comes from the old western days, with John Wayne, and as a kid watching a lot of those westerns, that really stuck with me. And you see the use of the afghan in a lot of action movies because of the soldiers and what’s happened with more association with the Middle East. So that DNA made its way into what makes a character action hero nowadays.”

“I was part of the team that created Uncharted, so it’s hard to take the DNA out of that. We’re making the games we want and want to play and it’s hard not to tap into, what feels right to you. And given our past with a lot of team members worked on Jak and Daxter, Ratchet and Clank, so you want to make sure we’re not just doing the same thing. We took the best of what we know from those games and applied it to what works for Sonic canon. That was really important to us, not to make another Ratchet and Clank game or another Jak and Daxter game. It was important to make sure that it feels like a Sonic game.”

- More combat-oriented Sonic game would allow the personalities of Sonic’s companions to be expressed more fully
- Each character will have specialty abilities that speak to who they are and how they interact with the world
- Amy can clear out swathes of enemies with her hammer and Knuckles can knock out opponents with brute strength
- The action focus also ties into the exploration component of the games
- This will in turn feed into character and story progression.
- Wanted to make Amy and the other characters feel like a subordinate character
- Amy will be more “capable, agile and graceful” for Sonic Boom
- She has her own powerful attacks and positive personality
- Having Amy standing out of Sonic’s shadow was a positive outcome of wanting all characters to stand out

On Amy and the female demographic…
“I want to bring more girls into gaming and have them play characters that they can associate with and not feel like they’re created by just a bunch of men. I want her, if it’s just me purely, and I’m sure the Sega team agrees with me, I want her to be see as a very capable character adventure character in herself. If she was to break out and have a game of her own you’d probably get an idea of what that would look like based on this game.”

- Also emphasizes cooperation among the characters
- New enemy is “darker and more foreboding than Eggman is”
- Still follows Sonic’s principles of fast-paced movement
- But this time around it’s not just about Sonic, with Tails, Knuckles and Amy each getting their chance in the spotlight

“Not specifically towards that but for me, Sonic is about joyous movement. Everything he does is that too maybe. But it’s a key thing. The reason we repeat this stuff is because, from a foundation sense, it’s what so important about these properties. And we wanted each character to navigate and do everything in their own unique way that really sells their personality. For example, Amy is very graceful, she’s like a ballerina. Everything she does which would normally be difficult for someone, she does with so much fluidity and grace. And yet, it balances out because she’s so awesome.”

- No plans to bring the games/cartoon to Japan
- Game is “coming soon”
- Japanese Sonic Team will continue to make Sonic games parallel to Big Red Button and Sanzaru’s games

The funny thing is, Big Red Button had actually showed footage of Sonic Boom's environments in a CryEngine 3 demo at GDC 2013 in March, and no one had noticed -- even though we can see rings.

I think it looks awesome, I'm very excited about the developers behind this. Both versions. Looking forward to seeing what the 3DS version looks like.

 

[PixelKnot]

Sanzaru is developing the 3DS version? That's pretty cool, they did a good job on Sly.
As for footage of the Wii U version, it looks promising.

Not too fond of the character designs, though, it could be worse.

 

[Yanikun]

Yeah I'm very curious to see what a non-Dimps developer can do with a 3DS Sonic game. I hope we get footage of that soon, to compare it with what Dimps did with Sonic Lost World. It was good, but had a lot of flaws.

 

[MadMike]

A lot of people are crying about this, but good Sonic games are so few and far between, that I welcome a spin-off to experiment. Knuckles looks a little too top heavy, but I'm liking the rest of the revised models.

 

[Grover]

I like how this looks. It seems that it's mixing Sonic with J&D and R&C style gameplay. I'm interested.

 

[Yanikun]

Yeah I forgot to mention a lot of the team members worked on Ratchet and Clank. The choice of developers (and game engine for the Wii U version at least) pleases me.

 

[Shampoo XIII]

Awesome a new Sonic game Im getting Jak & Daxter vibes from this.

 

[Lethal]

Am I the only that immediately thinks of Street Fighter when reading this title?

 

[Shampoo XIII]

Am I the only that immediately thinks of Street Fighter when reading this title?

More like Sonic CD.

 

[Lethal]

More like Sonic CD.

I heard the words "Sonic BOOM!" so many times in Street Fighter, it is embedded in my brain.

 

[PixelKnot]

More like Sonic CD.

This. Can't get this song out of my head.

Should've used this instead of Skrillex for the trailer.

 

[Lethal]

I was thinking more of this lol

 

[toxikola]

I love sonic with all my heart. Though the only games I ever truly loved and bothered playing more than once were Adventure Battle(1/2), Advance(1/2), and DX. Other than that it's all pretty much the same and I play it once and done.
While this looks unique and hopefully at least slightly different... EXCEPT for the fact that they ruined my favorite character, Knuckles. Steroids much? I thought everyone else looks pretty cool though, I'm intrigued. The trailer is great as well until I see how long Sonic's legs actually are, it's so awkward when he bends. xD
so to say the least I hope high hopes and disappointment already.

 

[CUD]

Interesting...
I think I'll have to see more before I can decide how I feel about this. The trailer was nice but the character designs I'm not a big fan of. It seems it will play more similarly to Sonic Adventure 2 where you will play as one character per level than Sonic Heroes where you switch between characters mid-level.

 

[lights]

If anyone's interested Sega released a trailer for the accompanying TV series:

 

[Alexei Zadornov]

For me, this looks like the Sonic Cycle. In other words, this game looks like crap.

 

[CUD]

Sonic Boom is a new branch of the Sonic universe and does not replace modern Sonic.

(Source)

 

[Shampoo XIII]

For me, this looks like the Sonic Cycle. In other words, this game looks like crap.

The Sonic cycle was broken years ago with Sonic Colors.