Sega Explain 3D Sonic Gimmicks

A Sonic Team developer has discussed the reasons for adding in the werehog in Unleashed.

Since the gaming world's favourite hedgehog entered the 3D realm, he's been greeted with different gameplay experiments - walking around with robot legs, cars, guns, treasure hunting - but where's the 3 acts of speedy platforming bliss?

Sonic Unleashed has taken the series back to basics with the daytime: well-structured, fast levels, multiple routes, less leaps of faith and gorgeous settings. The night-time approach is filled with button mashing sections with the quirky werehog. Although there's decent Mario-inspired platforming, it means less traditional Sonic sections.

In the latest IGN 3 Red Lights podcast, a member of Sonic Team mentions why alternate forms of gameplay have been included in the 3D outings.

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, here's 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.

Thanks to GoNintendo.