So, this is what it all comes down to, huh? After months of numerous fans making all different kinds of opinions on who the new character in Sonic Forces should be...Sega and Sonic Team just officially canonized "Original the Character. Do Not Steal". What do I mean by that? Well, if you're a huge Sonic fan, you might have seen different fans making their own original characters on websites such as Deviantart, Fur Affinity, and any other OC (original character) page you can find. Now, it's actually being turned into a real possibility because of Sonic Forces' latest reveal where the third playable character is...your creation. In other words, it's a custom character. You can make any sort of Sonic The Hedgehog character you can imagine like a fox, a cat, or a bunny to name a few. Now, the tagline for this upcoming Sonic title makes sense..."Join the Resistance!" They're talking to you directly, as in make your own avatar, and join Classic Sonic and Modern Sonic in their adventure to stop Dr. Eggman's latest scheme.
At this point, this finally gives me the reason to finally talk about my overall thoughts of the game. Before this announcement, I wasn't being too vocal about Sonic Forces, unless if you looked at my opinions of the third playable character. The reason why is because even though the setting looked like it was going to be post-apocalyptic...I still thought this was going to be Sonic Generations 2. However, I do appreciate the fact that the Generations formula is back. In 2D, you play as Classic Sonic, while you play as Modern Sonic in 3D (I hope Modern Sonic is just strictly 3D in this game by the way). After the release of Sonic Lost World (which I think is tolerable) and the Sonic Boom games (and those games speak for themselves), this is a good start to bring Sonic back into the action he properly deserves, and I'm glad that Sega and Sonic Team recognized that if it ain't broke don't fix it, so go back to what worked. Also, I'm still going to get the game when it comes out this holiday season, but still... There's nothing else about it that was shocking me at the time like "OH MY GOD! I NEED THIS GAME!!!"
Now, this new custom character feature is entirely different because of the creative freedom that Sonic Team is giving to us fans for this game. With the gameplay footage we have above, one custom character did have a flame thrower, a grabbling hook, and it used the Burst Wisp (from the DS version of Sonic Colors) to defeat robots and get to the next destination. I think the way your custom character is going to progress through the adventure is based on how you customize it. I feel like this is Sonic Team's answer to Super Mario Maker, where in that game the player can have creative control over the level design in the Mario universe. This time, Sega is giving Sonic fans creative control over character design in Sonic Forces. I think this is a brilliant move on their point, but others might think this will hilariously blow up in the faces of all Sonic fans. Why? Because like I mentioned before, everyone and their grandmother already knows a "basis" for that and used it once in their lives...like you CAN'T possibly avoid it.
With the development team and Sega to make this a marketing choice and a reason to buy the game, it's honestly a genius move, especially when kids are going to jump all over this. Not only Mario and Nintendo are marketing towards kids, but also Sonic and Sonic Team (regardless of the quality). I'm going to keep my mouth shut until we get more information about Sonic Forces at E3 this summer, and hopefully we will get an official release date as well. As of right now, I think what we have is going to put Sonic Forces on the map (especially in terms of retail value and marketing). However, execution is another thing, so only time will tell. Then, I'll have the game in its entirety and see this concept in full force.
