Should Yuji Naka Return To Sonic?

[itsstillthinking1999]

With the overall "meh" reception lots of people have been giving Sonic Forces, many are wondering what the future of the Sonic Series is. Some have been speculating now that Sega should do a Sonic Adventure Remastered, Do another Adventure game or even bring in fans to do a 3d game much like Sonic Mania. While i cant say what option Sonic Team will do as a few months back ( i believe at a toy show) they stated that the road for sonic has been set for Sonic for many years to come, whether forces will change this plan i cant say. But many people have been calling for Sonic Team to get some new blood as they seem in many ways to be starting to be artistically drained in new ideas. Iv been thinking if not new blood is needed but old blood, as the tile of this post says maybe Naka or other original Sonic Team members.  Naka and Naoto Ohshima have been on really good terms with Sega recently. During Summer Of Sonic 2016 Naka said that he over the past year have been meeting with Takashi Iizuka for dinners ect and have been disusing working together on future projects. Whether or not thats a good idea is up for people to decide but i think for Naka being absent from Sonic for over 10 years i think he would bring some new ideas and concepts that he has all those years to think about ect. What do you think?

[Team Andromeda]

It wouldn't work, Naka-san is a genius programmer, not a good Team head or Producer/director and the days of a single programmer being able to make any diff are gone. The current Sonic games are good and made to a high and decent standard, but like with Call of Duty, its so much easier to knock them, rather than to praise them.

The big loss to SEGA and Sonic Team was Yoji Ishii leaving the group imo, he was one of SOJ top producers and knew how to get the best talent all in one room, working on making the best game they could.

 Sonic Team should remake Sonic Adv game with the Boast gameplay and use the Daytime sections from Unleashed along with the better stages from Colors and Gen, could even call it Sonic Gen II

 Sonic Forces is great, but the levels are too short that's my major issue with the game

[OriginalName]

I think it'd be more effective to bring back Naoto Ohshima, because the core problem the team has seems to be figuring out just what the hell Sonic is and why people liked the games in the first place, just from a presentation level. That's honestly the main issue the series is facing -- figuring out how to present itself. Yuji Naka would be a great benefit though, because he has a mind for physics in programming, and I could see that aptitude being good for leading a team of programmers on a Sonic game. If I'm being honest, I think the unsung hero of the original Sonic Team was Hirokazu Yasuhara, the director and lead game designer for the Genesis games. I love Sonic CD, but his absence was sorely missed on that game and it shows in comments on its level design to this day.

The point I'm really trying to get around to is that Sonic Team found an incredible balance of talents and visions that came together to form a cohesive, brilliant unit. The current situation is a mess. I have a tendency to blame Takashi Iizuka because I think he has a lot of bad ideas, but the problem is much more complicated than that because game design is far more complicated today than it was when Sonic Team was formed. So in terms of fixing the gameplay... I'm not sure, but the gameplay really isn't all that bad. The issue is with presentation and direction.

Get everyone together and have them watch the Sonic OVA, go back to the roots and reacquaint yourself with the environmental story-telling of the Ohshima-centric Sonic CD and the original Sonic 1 level order (the settings originally went from least to most industrially developed but was changed around because Labyrinth was a bad second Zone), get input from Hirokazu Yasuhara and Mark Cerny, and COMMIT to going back to the roots and move forward organically from there. The "new" Sonic has been a failed experiment. And that's fine -- it happens in a creative field, and it even made a couple of good games, but the half-measure of reminding us that there was a version of Sonic that wasn't over-complicated, was visually unforgettable, had universally liked character design, had meaningfully implemented gameplay hooks, has not aged, and can still be relevant... and then presenting it as a gimmick side-product is missing the point by a mile.

Go back and commit to that Sonic. That's not a gimmick. That's your product, that's your legacy, that's what you need to live up to.

[itsstillthinking1999]

All good ideas! While i never hated forces like other people (I think people are over reacting to be honest) and have also enjoyed the boost gameplay i think its time to try something new. The only issue is that Sonic Team already tried that with Lost World and while i did enjoy the game, i think the issue most people had is that it lacked a solid structure and again did the "nostalgia" pandering of Generations with little original ideas. Whatever happens i hope that the next game is a step up from forces and having the "Big" three on the next project would not be a bad idea. While the gaming landscape has changed alot since Naka and the rest of the group have worked together, i think the results would be good if they did some work together.