Sonic Forces devs on the game’s custom character
For the first time, Sonic fans will be able to create their own original character in Sonic Forces. Producer Shun Nakamura spoke about the feature in an interview with Polygon.
Nakamura indicated that customization won’t be “as in depth as Fallout or some of those other extremely complex creation mechanics.”
Nakamura explained:
“It’s not gonna be as in depth as Fallout or some of those other extremely complex creation mechanics. What we had in mind when we were making the whole create a character scenario was, out of all the people being depicted in this world, you can choose those characters that populate the world. It’s not complete free creation, but we’re going and making a lot of parts and features and animals that could exist in this world and you’re going to be able to put them together.”
SEGA did seem to take inspiration from fans when thinking about the custom character in Sonic Forces. However, development also proceeded independently.
As Sonic Team boss Takashi Iizuka said:
“I’ve seen so many things in my life, that I have the knowledge of what people want to create or what they have created in the past. I’ve been seeing that for decades now, and I do understand on a certain level, but when the team was creating the customizable character, when they were making content, they just went out and did what they wanted to do.”
“Most of the fan art that we see are hedgehog characters. A lot of the characters are created and designed matching the Sonic the Hedgehog body shape. That’s pretty much what I see in the fan art out there. Nothing really deviates too far from that, so when we were thinking about the customizable character feature, we didn’t really go to far in creating different body types and shapes, because most of what is saw had a similar type of body shape to Sonic.”
