User blog comment:Mystic Monkey/Just to clarify/@comment-25685240-20121003195416/@comment-679780-20121003204910

Well for Sonic Adventure series, in this game you could freely explore the stages while progressing to the goal, this way you can admire the scenes or look around for secrets. This is because Sonic Adventure gameplay is a 3D fully dimensional version of the Classic era of gameplay at the time, thus like the Classic Sonic games, you can freely explore and progress to the goal. When the Boost was introduced in Unleashed this means the levels would have to be remade to adapt to it, so the stages of Sonic Unleashed are more linear. I think Sonic Team knew that there will be fans who, like in Sonic Adventure, like to explore and thus made the nightime stages (whats the point in making beautiful scenary and HD graphics if the player is just gonna dash past them?). The night time stages are rather like stages in Dreamcast only made for a werehog. Sonic Colours pretty much sacraficed the night time stages so backround sceneries in the game were limited. It is in Sonic Generations in which Sonic Team made an attempt to make there stages more like they were but still permitted the boost feature. The levels were still in a sense, reaching the goal but not as linear.

I know Sonic games are about "speed" so I believe Boosting is now a staple feature of Sonic for now on. But at a sacrafice the stages may not be like the stages they were before that we liked. For my Ultimate Sonic project I want to have my levels to be speed base but also be more like the Dreamcast games where you could freely backtrack more.