Sonic Titans
The Story:
Dr. Robotnik has built a giant bell called "The Harmony Bell." There's a theory that most things can be destroyed if it's hit with the right frequency of sound waves -- his Harmony Bell should hit just the right frequency to make all of the Chaos Emeralds explode, sending out waves that would cleanse the planet of all life. Then he could finally build his utopia, "Eggman Land." He strikes the bell...But his radar instead shows that the Emeralds have lost their power and luster, and terrible beasts have emerged from them! (Called "Chaos Titans.")
On Angel Island Tikal and Chaos pop out of the Master Emerald. They sense that something is very wrong...They tell Knuckles that the Master Emerald needs a life force in it to keep the isle afloat, so they stick him in the emerald. ("...It is my duty...") Sonic witnesses one of the Chaos Titans running past him and investigates. He runs into Tikal and Chaos, who tell him that the terrible beasts who were long ago imprisoned in the emeralds are now running free and she asks Sonic to put them back in the Emeralds...Also, if he doesn't, the Chaos Titans might try to awaken the most Powerful Titans; the one that the Special Zone was designed to hold.
After the intro level Sonic, Tikal, and Chaos go to Station Square. They figure that they need someone with technology to help them keep track of the Chaos Titans...You can either choose to get help from Gun HQ; The Chaotix Detective Agency; or from Dr. Robotnik himself. Who you choose alters your hub level between stages and the characters that join your team.
Gameplay:
Basic level design is like Sonic levels from SA1/SA2.
After the intro level Sonic has access to his 'base' in the game. It shows a map of the world and where the seven Chaos Titans are currently located. You can talk to the characters on your base for hints and tips, go to a Chao Garden, and some misc. stuff like that at your base. There would be 15 levels with two acts each. When you look at your base's computer you can then choose which one of the Chaos Titans you want to hunt down...If you beat the level without a game over you capture the Titan and get a story scene; if you get a game-over you do not. Either way the Titans re-position what levels they appear in after you beat/lose a stage. As you capture Titans more characters in your base become playable.
The Chaos Titans each have an elemental attribute to them and have a minor affect on stage design. The Red emerald is fire oriented so there's trails of fire blocking off paths, forcing you to take different ones. A path might be flooded when the Water Titan is present; etc., etc. Each level has it's own boss arena that can host any of the Titans, but will have a different color scheme/atmosphere depending on which one it is. (Red-soaked heated atmosphere, Thunderstorm, etc.)
When you've selected a level you then get to choose your 'party'. You are forced to have Sonic in your team, but you can choose (Or choose not) to take up to two other characters with you to a level. It's like the Genesis days...All characters play basically the same, but with small tweaks. (Sonic's specialty is light-speed dash and homing attacks.) Every level has enough pathways that you can beat them even if you don't take a flyer or a climber or whatever with you. It's basically up to the player and what characters they want to play as. As in Sonic Heroes you can press a button to switch between characters in your party...Which wouldn't suck in this game since they're all basically Sonic anyway, instead of being slow as bricks or stuck forever flying.
It basically just lets you play with your favorite characters and ignoring the rest.
When you're selecting levels you also sometimes have contacts in an area. These are characters that happen to be in the area. (Amy Rose, Jet the Hawk, Big, etc.) You can choose to add them to your party while you're in that level. If you beat the level with a high enough rank that character 'joins' your team permanently and can be selected on any level.
There is a New Game Plus mode. It lets you keep all of the characters that've joined your team but start over. Ideally, it would be one of those games like Star Fox 64 that's fun to play over and over again and ideally the titans moving between levels would make for decent replay.
Characters you start with by default:
Tikal, Chaos
(Tikal plays alot like silver, using her ghost ability to throw stuff. Chaos plays like Knuckles.)
Characters that join you in GUN HQ Base:
Tails, Rouge, and Shadow
Characters that join you in Chaotix Base:
Vector, Espio, Charmy
(Charmy plays like Tails.)
Characters that join you in Dr. Eggman's base:
Dr. Eggman, Nack, Metal Sonic. (Dr. Eggman wears slight armor and has an Egg-gun, plays like a sped up Gamma from SA1. Nack can jump super high; Metal Sonic plays like Sonic.)
Characters that join you after you beat the game once:
Knuckles, Silver. -- (Not explained why they can join you in New Game + playthroughs, they just do.)
Characters that are 'contacts'
Amy Rose, Jet, Big, Cream, Vanilla, Mighty, Blaze*
(Amy has her hammer, Jet can glide on his board, Cream is Cream, Vanilla plays like Amy with a piko hammer, Mighty plays like a cross between Sonic and Knuckles, Blaze plays like Sonic with fire attacks. She explains her presence by saying the dimensional barriers were weak and she thought Sonic might need her help.)
On Character choices:
The story scenes revolve around the people in your base and Sonic, Tikal, and Chaos. Extra characters you've got in your team just stand off to the side in story scenes. I thought it would be fun to focus on a slightly different group of characters. I also think it's fun to bring back characters you never thought would come back and have them re-vamped.
The Ending:
After you've beaten the game through all three base-scenarios you can choose a 'final adventure' option. It parks you down in "The Special Zone" hub. All of the characters you've got to join you stand around in the hub. The Special Zone has three acts. In the first one the background is complete white space with strange ruins built randomly. In the second act weird patterns ala Sonic 1 Special stages fly around in the background. In Act 3 the white space becomes dark and everything is tinted with a chaos-Green.
It's revealed that Robotnik knew the Titans would be released and had planned to try to control the Special Titan. He admits sheepishly that he often has illusions of grandeur.
The Final Boss is against The Special Titan, who is trying to get out of his prison. There are three battles: The first one you play as Tikal and you distract him. Your goal is to survive for a minute or two without dying. In the second fight you play as Super Sonic and have an awesome Super Sonic fight.
In the final battle, you play as Perfect Chaos. You can't lose and it's more for the shock and novelty value of the fact that you're fighting as Perfect Chaos.
In the end everyone's happy, world is saved. Sonic remarks that the Special Zone isn't so special anymore. Tikal shakes her head. "That wasn't even a part of the Special Zone's mystery...The existence of the Titans were clearly document in ancient scriptures. No living being has yet discovered the truth about the Special Zone, it's purpose and it's creation, and that likely, no one ever will." She disappears and everyone is thrown out of the zone.
Sonic does not jump up and shout "Yeah! We're Sonic Titans!" He doesn't do that.
I'm all for a Crush 40 song or two. Also, I'd love it if Jun Senoue did some rocking guitar-only tracks like he provided for the last levels of all the paths in Shadow's game.
Oh - and the most important feature:
Quality bug testing.
Sounds like an ace twist on a Sonic game, whilst also having classic throwbacks to the days of old [Special Zones, Mighty] to the older 3D characters [Tikal, Chaos].
I'd see Marine from Sonic Rush Adventure being more unique and playable than Vanilla, but that's just me.
If nothing else this'd make a great fanfic or flash game. Nice work 
I don't know whether it's just me, but this screams to me as being more of a side-scroller on the DS. Good concept, though.
Hi chosenoneknuckles welcome to the board. 
Loving that avatar. Anywho...I hate you Magical Dreamer. That sounds so amazingly awesome that I want it to be real...but we all know this will never happen. =( *dies of sorrow*
Some cool ideas there. But, It quite desperatley needs the Ancient Greek storyline thrown in. Hog of War... 
Can we post ideas for games in here? i can has idears?
Hahaha! Hog of War.
He strikes the bell...But his radar instead shows that the Emeralds have lost their power and luster, and terrible beasts have emerged from them! (Called "Chaos Titans.")
Stopped reading right there. Getting really tired of Eggman constantly causing monsters to take over the world. Remember when Eggman himself was the badguy? When he wasn't doing amazingly apocalyptic things, but just trying to take over small islands at a time? Yeah, it was really basic, but it worked; if Mario can pull off minimal storyline, then why can't Sonic?
minimal storyline
LIKE A LASER BEAM MY EYES ON YOU
minimal storyline
LIKE A LASER BEAM MY EYES ON YOU
"Soooonic Heeeroes....". >_> But yea SH, I know, I know. But apparently....he doesn't do that anymore. *shrugs* I want the Sonic series to go forward one year so we can go back to the Little Planet. I bet Sega andSonic Team don't even know what that is anymore. Tsk tsk tsk.
Yeah, it was really basic, but it worked; if Mario can pull off minimal storyline, then why can't Sonic?
Sonic's really dug himself into a hole with that, though. SA1 set the tone for every succeeding Sonic game with it's (comparatively) complicated plot and voice acting. They'd have to rewrite this 10-year status quo completely to imitate Mario's style. They'd have to:
1: Make Sonic a mute hero, because making him have a set personality to begin with derails the open slate that allows you to imagine yourself as the character that Mario and Link have.
2: Forget any sort of continuity. The reason the plot of Sonic games become muddled and confusing is because they have to take every Sonic game into account, back to S3&K, to satisfy fans completely. What does Mario do? Besides a few reoccurring characters and such, Mario has no plot. At all. Meaning he can pick up and make a new game at any point without giving a rat's ass about continuity. Link can't even do this without confusing the Angry Video Game Nerd.
3: Forget the feeble attempts at creating living, breathing characters. Sonic and company started out as honest attempts at original, multidimensional characters, but have become a tad flanderized over the years, and people despise them for it. Mario's characters are one-dimensional, simple, and loved.
You see? It's no simple task to just "pull off [a] minimal storyline" after what Sonic has built himself up to be. He'd have to destroy his very essence to compete with the ease with which Mario creates fantastic worlds and stories. But as much as it seems to the contrary, Sega cares too much (don't laugh) about what Sonic is to comform him to the hollow cartoon Mario is. Maybe they shouldn't, though. Perhaps it's time to forget the past.
I'd miss it anyway.
Thing is, TTG, the general consensus is that Sonic's "status quo" is being a Final Fantasy-wannabe, and a very BAD one at that. How on Earth is that a status quo that's worth keeping?
Honestly, the (vague) continuity is somewhat appreciated, but the whole "plot" malarky is getting extremely predictable - and worse, every game since Sonic Adventure has been Sonic Adventure (Again), as if that game was the prime of the series (it wasn't, it's just the prime of the 3D games). The original games had minimal continuity with each other (the most really being Sonic 2 and Sonic 3&K both concerning themselves with the Death Egg), so it's not "destroy[ing] his very essence", it's just stepping back to an essence we grew up with - one that actually worked, and damn well.
And Sonic as a mute would actually probably work. Most of his dialogue as it is is corny to the extreme, whereas, when you see him in Sonic CD's intro, he's extremely badass - he doesn't need dialogue to seem cool. Other characters, maybe, but Sonic can return to a few basic grunts and all would be well.
Maybe not mute. But just talk a lot less. Kind of like Rayman. In Hoodlum Havoc Rayman talked but It was like one line per chapter of the game. Globox and Murphy did all the elaborate talking for him.
