Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood (the BioWare RPG)

[Keith Justice]

Sounds pretty sweet....

Cover Story with nice artwork
-In game graphics have a water color look, all hand drawn
-4 party members at a time
-Each character can do certain things ex: Tails can float over things (standard stuff)
-11 party members total - 7 known are Sonic, Tails, Amy, Knuckles, Rouge, Shadow, Big the Cat
-Control done fully with stylus - think Hourglass
-Able to split party into teams at certain moments
-Rings are used as currency
-No random battles, see enemies on the field
-Turn based battles, choose commands for everyone in your party before they actually follow through. Want battles to be fast paced
-Elite Beat Agents style special attacks
-Team attacks (like Chrono Trigger)
-"Fatigue Points" instead of MP
-Choose which attributes to increase when you level up
-Purchase and level special attacks
-Bits of story - Sonic's on vacation from defeating Eggman 2 years ago. Gets a call from Tails that Knuckles has been kidnapped by a group called the Marauders, and that 6 chaos emeralds are missing. Eggman not the main villain. But Bioware wants to make him a creditable bad guy again. Something about a "twist" between Eggman and Sonic that goes back to the earlier games.
-2 acts - first takes place in standard Sonic areas. 2nd takes place in a darker world
-Remixed classic tunes
-"fully animated cut scenes"
-simple dialogue trees
-Side quests

 

[Denjin_Zaboga23]

Hmm...sounds cool. Sonic needs a sort of change of pace since the last few games he was in haven't scored very well. Having that waste of space Big the Cat as a party member, though...I'd rather have Omega for crying out loud. And none of the Chaotix as playable members is a disappointment... :disappoin Oh well. I hope Eggman does become threating once again, like the old days...

 

[Badonkadonk]

Nice to see some actual details, but I don't suppose that "simple dialog tree" means decision making?

The first system I owned was a Genesis and I went thru (gamer) puberty on the Dreamcast, so I'm a big fan of first-party Sonic the Hedgehog, I even read the comics for a little while as a kid (don't remember a damn thing about them). I was excited when I heard about this about a year ago, but I didn't think much would come out of it. Glad to see that it looks like this is actually happening!

 

[Silver Wolf]

Courtesy of Hogfather from TSS, scans from the Nintendo Power article which include images of enemies, the combat system, and a new character, Shade, as well as an interview with Bioware on the project and their intentions for the game.

Page 1
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Page 3
Page 4
Page 5
Page 6
Page 7

Personally I think this might actually be a boon for the franchise, it certainly sounds interesting that they are going to connect it to events of the earlier games. I wonder what they'll come up with?

Edit:
Found some zoomed-in scans of the game images and concept art.
Scan 1
Scan 2
Scan 3
Scan 4
Scan 5
Scan 6
Scan 7
Scan 8
Scan 9

Pretty awesome art style if you ask me.

 

[Keith Justice]

Gaming Steve has some pictures up too...

 

[Denjin_Zaboga23]

Well, the artwork looks slick. I can't see the pics for the Nintendo Power article, Silver Wolf, they aren't showing up for me. Is Shade another Hedgehog? I really don't want yet another anti-hero like Shadow again...

 

[Silver Wolf]

I have no idea what happened to the other scans but here's a slightly lower quality batch of them, courtesy of Turbohog from TSS.
See here for a downloadable zip version, if you have filefront. (It's down the page)
http://www.sonicstadium.org/board/index.php?showtopic=28220&st=960

Scan 1
Scan 2
Scan 3
Scan 4
Scan 5
Scan 6
Scan 7- The one with Shade

Shade ISN'T a hedgehog or an animal at all. The character seems to more resemble Chaos 0 and likely comes from the Dark Dimension that Bioware hints at. As for whether Shade is an anti-hero, it's a bit too early to tell, but assuredly Shade doesn't seem to be similar to the other myriad of "new" characters thus far.

 

[Denjin_Zaboga23]

Ah, so that's Shade. As you stated, she doesn't look like any animal that I can make out. Here's hoping that she isn't a char that's only important in this game and none of the others, like Shadow. If you can't tell, I don't like Shadow that much. :laugh: Thanks for the scans Silver.

 

[Kaneda]

This should be pretty cool considering its BioWare.

Dissapointed that there adding yet another character to the Sonic series but Shade looks pretty neat.

 

[Keith Justice]

Mo' screens...