Sonic Synergy

Sonic Synergy was one of the original builds and the original title for the infamous Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric. While the game was spawned independently of the cartoon series to come, they were soon merged into a mass-media production that also included a comic book series, a toyline, clothing, and a new character added to Sonic Team's own roster (Sticks the Badger). The original ideas for the game, however, were very different.

Cut Dialogue
I've been digging up a lot of unused dialogue from this game. Some of it's obviously unused, while others I'm not entirely sure about. In any case, I don't really want to sift through it all and organize it and double check the ambiguous stuff to make sure there isn't just some obscure dialogue trigger somewhere. Also not totally sure how you guys like to format this stuff. I've been tweeting out archives containing download links to these, so I'm gonna drop them here in case anyone wants to go through them and add them to the page.

For the record, the original files are .awb archives; these clips have been extracted as Criware HCA audio and then decoded to wav.


 * Excavation site hub - the characters talk about coming across a giant robot hand. I think the hand they're referring to is actually in the game; it's the one you encounter early in the game in the mines, before finding the first crystal, and I know at least a couple of these lines actually do play when you excavate it with robot parts. There's also some dialogue about going to a place called Seaside Village, which is definitely unused, because that area's name was changed to Bygone Island in the final game. Finally, Knuckles talks about arriving at a beach, something I'm not sure ever happens.
 * Excavation site hub - some QNC dialogue that I didn't recognize. A couple of the shorter ones do play ingame, but not sure about the longer ones - maybe they were cut for being too long.
 * Bygone Island - dialogue referring to a place called Mystery Bay. I think they were probably talking about either Coral Bay or Creeper Gorge.
 * Excavation site/Bygone Island - dialogue from the scene where you fly the biplane from the excavation site to Bygone Island. There seems to have been changes to the plot around this scene, since Cliff talks about Lyric's army closing in, something that doesn't happen in the final. The rest seems to be from an extended version of the scene.
 * River Rush - Amy has lines for talking to Perci, an NPC who only appears on Bygone Island and never does anything. Interesting.
 * Undersea Bolt - Tails and Knuckles have dialogue for this stage, even though only Sonic and Amy are present for it in the final.
 * Lyric's Armada - there's a bunch of dialogue from a cut vehicle stage where you would have controlled the biplane to take on Lyric's fleet. It's been suggested that this stage was Lyric's Armada, a cut level that some concept art has surfaced for.
 * The Pit - they did a horrible job cleaning up the dialogue from this stage. It contains tons of extraneous files; a lot of unused dialogue, 10 different clips that are just edits/takes of one scene, etc. Some of the conversations between Sonic and Knuckles I'm not sure about, but the stuff involving Amy and Tails I'm fairly certain is unused. There's some clips that feature what I presume to be placeholder dialogue from before the actual voice actors were brought in to record. Also, there's clips of Sonic's "oh, shoot" from this cutscene from before the audio distortion effects were applied to it.
 * Ocean Purification Plant - this stage has a lot of unused dialogue. Some seem to reference a cut sequence where the stage would have started to flood. Others provide a lot of detail and backstory on the facility, why there's more than one crystal, why there's ships with cannons in the stage, extra backstory for QNC, etc. that never plays ingame for some reason.
 * Sky Citadel - there's some dialogue about Tails opening a door during the escape. In the final game, Tails is the only character who doesn't open a door; he takes out Lyric's airship instead. Funny enough, there's no dialogue about Tails taking out the airship, and all the clips that actually play ingame are just generic encouragement. Makes me wonder if this was something that changed late in development, and they weren't able to get the voice actors back in to record new lines for it.

So, have fun. I might come up with more stuff later. --Parax0 (talk) 03:55, 18 December 2014 (EST)


 * A bit of non-dialogue related stuff - cut character/enemy biographies from Q-N-C's Database http://pastebin.com/Kya0YYSf --Parax0 (talk) 07:37, 19 December 2014 (EST)


 * More:
 * Ancient Factory - Sonic and Tails have lines about activating the power stations, something that's done by Knuckles and Amy in the final game. Also, there's some unused dialogue from the Shadow fight where there's references to Shadow being controlled by a device on his head.
 * Lyric's Weapons Factory - Some cut conversations between Sonic and Tails and Q-N-C (which probably also explains his cut line from the Ocean Purification Plant about Sonic being familiar to him). Elevator conversation about Lyric isn't actually unused, I just never got it on any of my playthroughs for some reason so I thought it was.
 * Test/debug assets - some textures that would've been used while debugging


 * I think that's about everything unused related to dialogue. That being said, you can check out a dump of all the game's subtitles here, and most of the dialogue subtitles have corresponding voice clips, so if you guys spot anything else interesting in there I can try to find a voice clip for it. --Parax0 (talk) 20:55, 21 December 2014 (EST)

Production History
Around 2007, it was stated that SEGA were looking for Western development teams to revitalize their intellectual properties such as Sonic the Hedgehog, Golden Axe, and more. While Golden Axe: Beast Rider came out to bad reviews and low sales, Sonic's western production was forgotten about. Big Red Button, a squadron of ex-Naughty Dog developers, were called on to produce the game. During the earlier part of development, drastic redesigns for the characters were proposed. Sonic Team dissaproved of these strange designs, and desired they stick closer to the source material.

The game featured a strong storyline featuring the "Ancients", ancestors of Sonic and company's, who sealed the evil Lyric (an owl, the natural predator of hedgehogs) away. Chao, known as "Chaos", were able to be used in the game. Eggman would have been featured, as a younger, thin, and hillbily-like character, implying time travel may have been a stronger component of the experience. Originally, the game was developed for Playstation 4 and Xbox One, and possibly PC, but was moved to Wii U, the first of many production troubles.

As shown via the title screen, a "battle mode" was planned to be incorporated, likely a multiplayer VS. mode. During the game's development, SEGA began their mass-media production of "Sonic Boom", and the game was absorbed into it. Lyric was changed to a snake, and elements from the TV series were added. Due to the surprise critical acclaim of Sonic Colors, the tone of the whole franchise steered towards comedy, and the deeper storyline was excised. Worse, they had a limited time to crank out the game. The end result was one of the most infamous disasters in Sonic history.

Levels

 * Lyric's Tomb
 * Cliff's Excavation Site
 * Abandoned Research Facility
 * River Rush and Undersea Bolt
 * Bygone Island / Craker Lake
 * Lyric's Armada

Voice Cast

 * Roger Craig Smith as Sonic the Hedgehog
 * Colleen Villard as Miles "Tails" Prower
 * Travis Willingham as Knuckles the Echidna
 * Cindy Robinson as Amy Rose and MAIA
 * Nika Futterman as Sticks the Badger and Doc Ginger
 * Erin Fitzgerald as Perci the Bandicoot
 * Kirk Thornton as Shadow the Hedgehog, Cliff, Foreman Fred, Old Tucker and Chef Woody
 * Ben Diskin as Q-N-C
 * Patrick Seitz as Lyric the Last Ancient and Salty
 * Mike Pollock as Dr. Eggman, Mayor Fink and Fastidious Beaver