As Nintendo reminded us during the Direct a few days ago, Sonic Forces will arrive on Switch (but also on PlayStation 4, Xbox One and PC) and watching the presentation trailer, very similar to the reveal but with some more 2D gameplay phases and with the introduction of a new character, my love for the blue porcupine started to grow again and to make me fantasize about time line on which this Forces could be placed.
The story is a bit peculiar, the fact that you see the Green hill implies that the tutorial or in any case the first part of Classic Sonic is set in the classic timeline, with a stage that is revisited often but which is not really part of the Modern Sonic universe. As announced by SEGA itself, the new character could be a new alternate version of Sonic, fortunately not the one seen in Sonic Boom: the world of Sonic Forces is a world in which Eggman has won, he has managed to conquer the Earth, but at the same time the technology he uses is "backward", connected to the Classic universe, the Eggbots themselves are reminiscent of those we find on Angel Island in Sonic 3 or Sonic & Knucles, rather than those we saw in Sonic Heroes or Sonic Colors. Even the giant robots are, in essence, the Death Egg, or the final boss that could be accessed in Sonic 2. It's as if everything were placed on a timeline based on the "what if“: If Eggman had won and therefore his empire had been fulfilled, with Sonic himself defeated returning to take his revenge by forming this“ resistance “. It could be related to the world of Blaze, in which there is Eggman Denies, even if the setting, the "mood", is very reminiscent of the destroyed future of Sonic 2006 (and we hope they will stop there).
Certainly time travel in the Sonic universe is quite feasible, thanks to the seven Chaos Emeralds and the Chaos Control; Eggman may very well have managed to use Chaos Control to create a time jump in which Sonic lost, but these are obviously all guesses. He may have gone back to the past to lend a hand to the Classic Eggman and allow him to win, this would also explain the use of a technology based on the Classic style.
The theories can be many, it is all very confusing but some elements that refer to the Classic world rather than the Modern one makes us think of a return to the past, with Modern Sonic catapulted into the world of Classic Sonic. The important thing, of course, is that the title lives up to expectations as stated by SEGA: the fact that they have taken Generations and Colors, the two best games of Modern Sonic, can already make us feel quite calm about the style of gameplay that we will go to meet each other. What I hope is that the same quality of Generations is achieved, perhaps with an updated gameplay and graphics sector, but above all with a better plot that can reach the levels of Sonic Adventure and Adventure 2.
A final hope, which could be a real treat: Sonic Mania which, ultimately, connects and gives us a prelude to everything that's going to happen in Sonic Forces.
