15 replies to this topic

[Draykon]

Well, today I picked up JoD today for the first time in awhile, for boredom of playing SSBB over and over again, and not having any batteries charged. I decided rather than my usual bit of just flying gracefully around all the levels trying in vain to beat all my old scores, I'd try just exploring the levels without dualizing when I was met with an interesting surprise.

I dunno why I didn't notice until now, but the levels are all full of invisible barriers, and just-too-high cliffs. What gives? The levels are all absolutely beautiful, so why aren't we allowed to get a good look at them? (Save as NiGHTS, but I wouldn't say we really have good enough camera control to really look around)

Of course, what really gets me is Aqua Garden. All over the level is a recurring rock formation, clearly designed for platforming. These platforms appear at several points along the barrier cliffs, in almost perfect formation for using them to scale them. However every one of these places is missing a single platform, or even covered in an invisible barrier at one point. It's almost as though the original designers wanted the cool temple areas to be accessible, but then at some point later in development it was decided to intentionally restrict the player's movement on foot to the little area (At least relative to the whole map anyway) you start in.

I can think of a few explanations as to why they would do that, but they all sound kind of stupid.

I know alot of commercial games out there- Especially Sonic games- use a separate mesh for collision as for graphical appearance, does that mesh "Get lazy" and only include the areas along the path in the NiGHTS-only areas?

Do the NiGHTS only areas not look as good from certain camera angles?

Or- now this is the stupid one- is it to simply make it less likely for the player to wander such a distance from the NiGHTS cage that it would be impossible to get back in time. (Though that fails to take into account that all it takes to avoid the Awakeners indefinitely is decent dodging skills, a few blue chips, and the occasional high cliff.)

So waddaya think? Any thoughts? Theories? Links to older topics on the same subject I neglected to look for?

[charlie]

I think it's so lazy that they didn't allow us to explore the levels on foot. When I first got the game I walked around every single level and tried to go to new heights or new areas, because you could always do this in the original NiD, but in JoD I would keep walking into invisible walls or hills that couldn't be climbed. There are so many areas that I'd love to take a closer look at but they just don't let us.

At first I thought they probably just didn't have enough time to complete the game and so they had to put up invisible walls to stop you. But that doesn't really make sense because they have each dream world fully modeled so they aren't trying to hide anything, and they already have collision with the ground and objects so it would be simple for them to have it available throughout the entire dream world.

My belief is they lacked the creativity or imagination to think that people would want to explore the world. Or they didn't want to give people any freedom so they just force them to go where they want.

Whatever the reason is it's not acceptable by today's gaming standards.

[Saifer Dracondrali]

I remember the first think I did on JoD was walk around and explore every crevice of the level on foot so I could appreciate the beauty of these dreams... so much for that...

Ya wanna theory? I got a good one.

LAZINESS!

I remember looking at old "how the game was made" vids on the net and thinking... wow... they really put alot of effort into this... but I really don't get that feeling from Sega anymore...

[DiGi Valentine]

I'm calling the 'lazy' card too but i think it's down to them not actually finishing the levels fully and not because they didn't want us to go exploring.

Let's take a look at one of the more important facts about the levels in JoD. Compared to NiD, they are massive. They have so many areas to them. Now, as NiGHTS we fly on a 2.5D angle meaning we're always flying on rails and we CAN'T explore every inch of the level as NiGHTS, only what appears on the rails that we fly on.
The kids, however, are not on rails and therefore could potentialy go anywhere just like in the old game.
I think the reason they put these barriers and high walls in place is because the rest of the levels are probably not solid (i.e. you could probably slip through the floor and stuff).
The reason i say this is because after ViperXmns found this glitch here it got me thinking about the rest of the level and it's structure. If NiGHTS was able to go through that wall then that could mean the kids most definitely would as they're not on rails and NiGHTS was when performing this glitch.

Personaly, i think the reason we can't explore the levels is because Sonic Team didn't make the levels solid. Reason for this? - because they made the areas huge and expansive and they done that thing where they give themselves a ridiculous deadline to reach and therefore had to cut corners. This was a pretty big bloody corner, if it's true. But this is all my assumptions. Why else would they not allow level exploring?

[Kentilan]

I guess that's because the levels are huge. Maybe they thought it would have been too confusing for young children if the whole area was explorable. And trying to look for Dreamdrops in the whole level would have been hellish

And I guess it would have been too much work for them, and since the on-foot exploration is entirely optional, it would have been a big waste of time.

Whatever the reason is it's not acceptable by today's gaming standards.

Could you explain why? Since the focus of these levels are the flying sections, I don't see why it's not acceptable to restrict the on-foot parts. Yes, it would have been nice to be able to explore the whole level, but it's not like they had any obligation to do it. These levels were made for flying gameplay.

[DiGi Valentine]

As far as Dreamdrops go, i think that feature was added in late in development. The whole 'Elliot and Claris' secret character thing was not heard of by anyone other than us until maybe 3 to 4 months before the games release, which is when we heard that NiGHTS was also meant to have his old costume when he dualized with Elliot and Claris but they cut it because they didn't have enough time to iron out the problem (apparently it caused the game to hang or something when dualizing).

So, with that in mind i don't think Dreamdrops were the reason behind stopping the exploration. Plus, games like Grand Theft Auto require you to search every single corner of the city to find 100something hidden packages and god knows what else. In todays gaming standard, exploration is quite a big thing and i think looking at these levels in JoD, exploration was itended but not completed.
Like Draykon has said, in Aqua Garden there are platforms that you can't reach yet they are spaced out as if you are supposed to jump on then. It makes no sense, being honest.

[viperxmns]

I totally agree. I hate that they also eliminated all the bouncing around that highlighted play as the dreamers in NiD. One funny thing, in the Dream Gate you can magically scale part of the side of the cliff like, halfway up back to the main elevation.

[iLLViLLAiN]

Guess they shoulda just went with the purple sea lol. I wish I had a Wii then I could see what you are talking about. When I first played JoD I went straight for NiGHTS so I could fly again.

[charlie]

Could you explain why? Since the focus of these levels are the flying sections, I don't see why it's not acceptable to restrict the on-foot parts. Yes, it would have been nice to be able to explore the whole level, but it's not like they had any obligation to do it. These levels were made for flying gameplay.

I have to agree with DiGi's response that "exploration is quite a big thing" in today's gaming standards. If you look at the most successful games the majority of them let you go where you want or do what you want, and that is where you get the term "sandbox" gaming.

The whole idea of exploration was available in the original NiD more than 10 years ago, and over the timespan of 10 years Sonic Team should be improving the gaming standard, not going backwards.

I can understand that some restriction is required so it doesn't bother me that much, but it's the way they restrict you that bugs me. There is no excuse for invisible walls! They just don't make any logical sense and in my opinion it's just laziness. If they don't want you to go somewhere they should at least make it believable by blocking off the path with an object or making the terrain impassable.

It would make more sense to have something like a force field over the entire level because you'd at least be walking into something. And actually, that is pretty much what they did in NiD with the purple sea. Again, Sonic Team seems to be going backwards in many ways and they are not meeting today's gaming standards.

Personaly, i think the reason we can't explore the levels is because Sonic Team didn't make the levels solid. Reason for this? - because they made the areas huge and expansive and they done that thing where they give themselves a ridiculous deadline to reach and therefore had to cut corners. This was a pretty big bloody corner, if it's true. But this is all my assumptions. Why else would they not allow level exploring?

I would like to think that they had higher goals for the end result and that they planned to do more exploration, but if the main reason they couldn't do it was due to collision detection that's pretty sad. Collision detection is one of the key fundamentals in any game and if Sonic Team still doesn't know how to do this then they deserve to get beaten out by the larger game companies. Once you implement collision detection in a game it should work throughout the entire game, it shouldn't require manual interpretation on every object and every hill and valley in the ground.

</end rant>

[Penelopi]

I'm not really all that bothered by limited on-foot exploration since I don't like walking around in JoD anyways. The Awakers are much harder to dodge than the egg alarm-clock of NiD. Plus, the bouncy feel from NiD is lost in the new game. That's half the fun there for me.

[charlie]

I love the bouncy feel in NiD too! It's so much fun to just go jumping around and it's insane how much height and distance you can get! I love it.

[Kitty]

I know what you mean, its very annoying. The levels are amazing and yet you have only a little amount of walking on foot to look at everything, including with amazing camera control that is not in every games.

I was thinking the other day of you know about MyDream.. You should be able to move some things around such as furniture (the very random foot stool for a fact) That way you can arrange it to how you want it to be, not just go in a random spot, become modly after pians get bored with it and then desapear. (my poor disco area D: it went poof! )

But anyway~
Yeah like in Delight city the stupid cliff that blocks you from the city out of the playground is rather annoying. In Melody forest, everything is high up (but I think you have more of an exploring in that level) As you can tell with the game, some things have been change at last chance as some things were blocked off. Not really fair since they did such an amazing design on the game (and music which won 2007's best music for Nintendo) Sega should take in some more concideration for the enjoyment of the gamers.

[Noctourne Wonderland]

You can actually explore quite a bit in Pure Valley. Obviously it's not nearly as fun as in NiD, but it better than most other levels. We do have the Platforming levels- they're *sort of* like exploring on foot...

[viperxmns]

It goes for the kids' levels too.. NiD introduced the bouncy physics, but instead of building on that notion JoD is all unoriginal real world-ish, like countless other games. So boring. I guess when you think about it, making their physics react with the specific level might be cool.. meaning that they design the levels with the intent of letting you be able to bounce and 'play around' with certain elements.

With the theme of the levels being dreams, it's such a waste that Sonic Team not take advantage of the lack of a need for anything 'real-world' in the game. The goal should be to make it as fun as possible. In JoD's story, the kids' levels are based on their inability to dualize with NiGHTS at the time; well, they play that way too. Like all the fun was sapped out of the game.

Boosh.

[Godwind]

I would have preferred being able to explore areas freely. It would have been a nice reward in my opinion. Some people really get caught up with an environments design. JoD does give a bit of that "Sandbox" feel. Although I wish they kept their Sonic console games more faithful. The new sonic game basically has Sonic NOT running. Screw the Werehog parts of the game. Although every smart person knows if you really want the true Sonic experience, you need to play it on the handhelds, specifically the GBA and the NDS.

[MiTCH]

No running around the levels was JoD's biggest drawback, IMO. In NiD I spend half my time just running around instead of flying with NiGHTS. I love how much there is to interact with. And now it's all gone.