Stasis-Because the Sonic series is a saga this phase is actually unnecessary. Sonic Adventure showed us what normal life is, so sequels can skip straight to the trigger.
Trigger-Eggman's causing troubling and Sonic shows up to stop him. Power is actually pretty balanced here. Big threating fleet of ships and robots, Sonic smashes them +1S. Eggman Grabs and immobilizes Sonic +1EM. Sonic turns Super and breaks free causing Eggman to run +1S. Eggman tricks Sonic into lowering his guard by begging for mercy and drains him of most of his chaos energy, Sonic becomes monsterous, and Eggman blows open the Earth +3 EM. At the beginning of the story the villain should always be ahead otherwise he's not a threat, and there's no story to tell. This part of the story is incredibly well done.
Quest-Restore the Earth by collecting the chaos emeralds and restore chip's memory. You're right that the game spends WAY too much here It akes roughly 20 minutes just for the quest to begin; So we're a fourth of the way in and we haven't even reached the meat of the story yet?!; however,slow pacing itself doesn't ruin a story, it just makes it tedious. Slow pacing it the equivalent of a gameplay glitch.It's a technical issue.
Surprise- This is where the story is both strong and weak. It's strong because it has a lot of mysteries to solve: What the heck was that giant monster that came out of the Earth? why is Sonic a werewolf? What's chips back story? What happened to Proffessor Pickle? How can the Earth be restored? and by the end of the story all of them are answered. Although, The surprise catergory isn't just about mystery though, but, "pleasant events...obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist."(http://www.
So there are 3 main sensual and emotional value aspects.
Trigger-Eggman's causing troubling and Sonic shows up to stop him. Power is actually pretty balanced here. Big threating fleet of ships and robots, Sonic smashes them +1S. Eggman Grabs and immobilizes Sonic +1EM. Sonic turns Super and breaks free causing Eggman to run +1S. Eggman tricks Sonic into lowering his guard by begging for mercy and drains him of most of his chaos energy, Sonic becomes monsterous, and Eggman blows open the Earth +3 EM. At the beginning of the story the villain should always be ahead otherwise he's not a threat, and there's no story to tell. This part of the story is incredibly well done.
Quest-Restore the Earth by collecting the chaos emeralds and restore chip's memory. You're right that the game spends WAY too much here It akes roughly 20 minutes just for the quest to begin; So we're a fourth of the way in and we haven't even reached the meat of the story yet?!; however,slow pacing itself doesn't ruin a story, it just makes it tedious. Slow pacing it the equivalent of a gameplay glitch.It's a technical issue.
Surprise- This is where the story is both strong and weak. It's strong because it has a lot of mysteries to solve: What the heck was that giant monster that came out of the Earth? why is Sonic a werewolf? What's chips back story? What happened to Proffessor Pickle? How can the Earth be restored? and by the end of the story all of them are answered. Although, The surprise catergory isn't just about mystery though, but, "pleasant events...obstacles, complications, conflict and trouble for the protagonist."(http://www.
So there are 3 main sensual and emotional value aspects.
1.Interpersonal relationship moments: As Clement pointed out, Sonic and Chip have a great relationship with one another. The story spends a lot of time on the interpersonal relationship of characters; Primarily between Sonic and Chip, but between all the characters as well. The key is that when they with one another they are talking like normal people and saying normal people things along with plot relavent topics. The voice acting is also top notch everyone's tone andinflections sounding very natural and human-like. The soothing emotional music also helps set the mood and atmosphere. A step up from the very unnatural, uncanny interactions bewteen characters in Sonic 06. The scene where Sonic first meets up with Tails for example. In that scene their animations are very puppet-like and they say awkward things to one another like "I am going to rape you later" oh wait, wrong script, sorry, but you get the point. Another big thing is...
2.Believable characteristics and behavior:all the characters, main and side, feel like real believable people. They talk to people amicably and personably and exhibit a lot of normal human behaviors. Eating, dancing, going to college; the NPCs tell you about their lives and the town the live in. This helps makes the world of Sonic Unleashed feel like a real believable place despite having an imaginative artstyle.
3.A consistent, believeable, immersive world:The details and visuals are consistent inside and outside of the cutscenes. When you explore the hub it looks the same as it does in the cutscenes. It's all consistent and makes you feel immersed in Sonic's world. A, "living breathing world," as Clement would say, though he was talking about FFXIII-2 vs XIII, but digression.
2.Believable characteristics and behavior:all the characters, main and side, feel like real believable people. They talk to people amicably and personably and exhibit a lot of normal human behaviors. Eating, dancing, going to college; the NPCs tell you about their lives and the town the live in. This helps makes the world of Sonic Unleashed feel like a real believable place despite having an imaginative artstyle.
3.A consistent, believeable, immersive world:The details and visuals are consistent inside and outside of the cutscenes. When you explore the hub it looks the same as it does in the cutscenes. It's all consistent and makes you feel immersed in Sonic's world. A, "living breathing world," as Clement would say, though he was talking about FFXIII-2 vs XIII, but digression.
Now as for Eggman....
Unleashed Eggman is an improvement from 06 Eggman. Eggman's always had a silly side to him. He's not just a menacing badarze. This is the guy who names every robot he makes after eggs! He's crazy! No, not just crazy that's an understatement, he's a crazy megaglomania induced psychopath. Unleashed properly portrays him as such, and makes him intersting again. I disagree that he's portrayed as dumb, it's more so that he gets so over excited and overzealous about his plans that his overlooks the small details. That fits with his personality type of ENTJ. In case you're now wondering Sonic-ESFP, Tails- INFP (same as you), Knuckles- ISTJ (same as me), Amy-ESFJ, Shadow- INTJ, Rouge- ENTP, eh that's enough.
He's much closer to how he was in the Adventure games. In Sonic Adventure Eggman gives a enthusiactic speech to the robots HE programmed. In Sonic Adventure 2 he's a crazy war general who gives an ego inflating, enthusiastic speech to the world, and he blows up the moon!
The scenes in Eggman's ship where he talks to Orbot are really good scenes. As you already dissected, but I'll add that it's a very rewarding scene because it solves some of the mystery and thickens the plot, as well as give Eggman personality as mentioned.
Sonic is back to his oldself too. He's jokes with Eggman, he's emotional and personable with Chip and Tails. He's just very human, and interesting again, without becoming unhonorable like subsequent games. He acts very much like his adventuresome, fun loving, wise cracking, caring self.
So to recap: the beginning of the story is strong and great, then things slow down, but the tradeoff is a believeable, relateable, and emotional story, and beginning with the Eggman Ergo scene and onward the story picks up in intensity, and it starts becoming interesting again which carries through until the ends.
Critical Choice- Sonic must choose to face the dangers of the God like Dark Gaia to help out his new friend that Chip that he's bonded with or leave him to face the beast alone knowing now that Chip is actually really powerful.
Climax- Dark Gaia fight, a result of Sonic helping Chip
Reversal- Chip saves unconscious Sonic's live. The Earth's saved
Resolution-Sonic and Tails run along the Windy Isle continent as the credits play. The game leaves you with a great sense of closure: All the important mysteries are resolved, the day is saved, and Sonic and Tails return to normal life. The credits are really good too. Pictures of the adventure and emotional, moving music. Standard stuff, but good credits really help give and are an essential part of the closure process.
Design: I love the thrill and adrenaline fueled excitement. Visually and mechanically, it's constantly giving me new, exciting things to look at and do, and I agree with Clement that the levels are not terribly unfair and trial and error. Sonic Generations has more sucker punch moments than Unleashed, it's just that you don't die from them but get a less cool path and miss out on red rings, but I hate that more though. Failing at a challenge and then being unable to go back unless I replay the whole level over again is infuriating! I hate missing out on stuff and having to go back through a second time just to see what I missed.
I don't like much exploring in Sonic games. I hate knowing there's places to explore in linear levels when I have stiff control, am moving at mach speeds, can't control the camera, and can't backtrack; so, the linearity of Unleashed is perfectly fine by me. I like the level design. I do enjoy exploration as well though, so they can put it in the game, but I need the camera and controls to be designed for it, but then again if they design the controls for exploration by making your character really powerful at climbing and jumping, but don't change the level design to an open world format, things become boring like in Lost World and Sonic Heroes. So, expecting Sonic to be thrillingly fast and exciting, and control well, and have exploration, but not too much because you'll lost is unrealistic. You can't have your cake and eat it too. A game needs focus. So either make a linear SA2 and Unleashed, or make Sonic Lost have Super Mario Sunshine's level design.
So after the out-of-character Heroes and Shadow, and the Uncanny 06, Unleashed is very refreshing. It's believeably the same world as SA1&2. It fixed many of the problems that the story of the previous 3 games had, and more. It doesn't screw or mess up the canon like Heroes and Shadow, if we take Captain Theories theory about it, it enhances it infact. Well alright it kind of does because we have to wonder where Knuckles Shadow and Rouge are during this affair, but at least is doesn't establish drastic things like Shadow having amensia and being part alien. I still hate the designer doing that in Heroes and Shadow. That is my biggest problem with the Sonic series in general. It doesn't have just 1 fleshed out canon, the executvives tried to make spin-off games part of the main story line NO!!!! Because of Heroes and Shadow, Shadow's story still doesn't have solid closure.
/Sigh/ Contuinty ranting,
Well, that is all.
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