You’re probably wondering why would Sega include the werehog aspect in Sonic Unleashed if they are going back to the traditional Sonic The Hedgehog ways? It’s quite simple: everybody wants Sonic running fast, but if he were to run the whole game, the game would only last three hours or so.
In the latest IGN Three Red Lights podcast, David Clayman tells us about a conversation he had with a Sonic Team developer regarding why they would include the werehog aspect (19:40).
“I asked one of the developers at TGS, you know I was like, come on everybody just wants Sonic running, like whats up with the werehog? And he was like, well, heres the deal… he runs at this miles per hour, kilometers per hour, and he laid out all of the statistics on how fast this hedgehog goes, and he was like In order to make a game where Sonic is running and everybody enjoys the whole thing we’d have to design this many miles of level, and it was some ungodly number. And he’s like and that would be like maybe a three hour game and I was like wow, well that kinda stinks and he’s like yeah, so we gotta do this other stuff.”
There you have it. Sonic is so fast that the game could only last three hours if he remained traditional. For the game to be an acceptable length, the developers would have to create miles and miles of land for Sonic to speed across.
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