You know, I think he might actually have kept his gliding. During one of the gameplay videos I thought I saw him do a short glide (it was during one of the fighting segments with Sonic being used).
I'm going to be cautiously optimistic about this game though. What we've gotten so far looks pretty interesting, but we'll just have to see! The redesigns are slowly growing on me, but I still am having some trouble getting over Knuckles's. Even if we do have a justification for it now.