Just watched the IGN First trailer... So, they're essentially giving us Super Mario Odyssey x Sonic Utopia?
The movement looked better in the last min of the vid when Sonic was going full speed... but it seems that the mario odyssey comparison may be inaccurate for one crucial reason: Mario could roll down slopes in odyssey. We still do not know if Sonic can in frontiers... tho today’s gameplay was not a good omen in that regard
Interesting. I'm not optimistic, per se, but I think I'm willing to cut this game some level of slack while we learn just how it's shaking things up. Some thoughts on Sonic himself: Looks like Sonic has an air dash (not boost) again. Neat. A homing attack from the ground? Interesting. I think despite the occasional mashing the dash seems to be continuous? There are a couple times where Sonic does appear to maintain the state for a while. I wonder what dictates climbing vs running up walls. It doesn't seem like he quite built up momentum to it, so it just holding the dash button? Is it free or will there be some form of stamina? Little to no homing attack momentum even off of balloons is a bit disappointing. A trick system, huh? I guess we'll see what purpose that serves. Seeing it in the context of a more open environment makes me wish they'd take some inspiration from Advance/Rush and let some tricks change your trajectory. Sonic's weirdly-generous-hitbox punch is... odd. Couldn't he at least do an Unleashed-style sweep kick or something? I almost find it funny how little I have to say about the structures and environmental puzzles themselves. Part of me is wondering why Sonic is walking up and clearly hitting "Interact" to manually rotate a stone statue (why not spin cycle in the appropriate direction?), but the rest of me is too fascinated watching him make his way around a massive playground and speculating how it will (or could) feel to do so.
I wonder if you could use the seagull to get to higher places? I'm somewhat more hopeful for the game. I do agree the gameplay could've showed more, there were definitely spots I feel could've been exploited more to break out of the usual boost formula gameplay. The only thing that's rubbing me the wrong way is how stiff Sonic looks. Weird to me how dynamic he looks doing tricks in Generations, but looks so bad in this.
You said you WATCHED the trailer? Thats what you saw? Both odyssey and utopia have a degree of momentum mechanics and look to be designed for an open world. This game is boost game in open world, full of scripted trajectory paths and events, interspersed with boostyness. I mean, again, I'm sure some of it will be nice to look at, but its not going to be a platformer first and foremost.
I have absolutely no stake in "modern" Sonic games but one of my friends posted this trailer in our big community discord. The only thing I can say is "wow". I uh...really respect how optimistic many of you can be. I hope for your sakes that this game is good.
I still don't get how fans can create these massively impressive gameplay and physics demos but obviously lack the level design that really takes time to build around such things, but the modern coming-and-going rookie intern collective of Sonic Team keeps copypasting their tainted code they've been using since Lost World for jankiness from 9 years ago and still can't grasp how to make Sonic's movement seem natural in any way to his environment.
The entire way the open world in this game is designed is...bizarre to be honest; it's like they just made a really flat and generic environment and then at some point after the fact shoved in a bunch of random floating platforms and rails everywhere, presumably to make it more "Sonic-like". Like it literally reminds me of 2018 Forces mods where people (myself included) just stuck random platforms and obstacles into the existing stage layouts to make "new" level design. Also the game is so obviously built directly on top of Forces it's almost painful, I can literally see minor movement jank from Forces that still hasn't been changed like the awkward rail switching and quickstep. The puzzles are braindead Werehog/Rise of Lyric tier junk so I don't understand why they even bothered honestly; the only interesting thing I saw was using the spin cycle to blow out those torches or whatever that was supposed to be. I can give a few positives though; some of the new mechanics like the wall climbing and running seem pretty neat and I'm kind of impressed by how well Sonic seems to traverse more complicated geometry in certain areas like in 5:43 and 5:58. if you tried doing something like that in Forces or even Gens he probably would've just gotten snagged on something or fallen off, so it does seem like the slope physics have been improved somewhat compared to previous games. Overall I'm really not a fan of how this is shaping up, it looks really rough and the map design is poor, but I'm kind of interested ultimately in seeing more, just to see if they end making making greater use of the positive aspects of the game in other areas.
Is Frontiers going through the Pokémon Arceus cycle? Cause for me it feels like it. Or more accurately, I hope it's going through the Pokémon Arceus cycle; a game with polarizing reception pre-release but one that ultimately succeeds in the end, with a few hiccups here and there.
Looks like they need to push that "frontier" out a bit - the pop-in is horrendous. But hey, nice to see the Xbox 360 still getting software support after all these years.
The footage is in 4K now but that just makes the poor performance issues and the pop-in more blatant. And the more I watch the more I realize that for an open world game about exploration, they still automate basically every tidbit of travel. Rails have boosters, boost rings are everywhere, springs still propel you in camera-adjusted fancy moments to collect things, and lazy homing attack chains are still all over the place. They really just can't get over the code being so stiff that they have to automate everything to get people anywhere at a pace faster than "moderate run". It's all the memes of the past decade fully realized as just a persistent truth.
It looks extremely jank, but not in a way that seems positively infuriating like Heroes, the game that turned me off 3D Sonic. It looks more like Adventure 1/Adventure 2 style jank, where there are some issues but they're tolerable enough to keep going through it (as opposed to Heroes Jank where the issues mean you instantly die over and over), which makes me surprisingly optimistic/hopeful about this game even if it turns out to be wasted potential. And honestly, I didn't mind seeing floating rails/platforms waaay off in the distance, because I was finding myself going "huh, how do I get there" even though I wasn't playing it, which is a good sign. I said earlier that having a destination is important for open-world gameplay, and well, there it is. But lmao, that climbing up the magnetic wall into running was giving me SA2 flashbacks, with how there's a few moments in that game where a spinner will push you up a straight wall and Sonic transitions from running to a very noisy falling animation as he slides up it (Final Rush has this near the end IIRC). Still more fluid in this gameplay clip, but still very jank. It's amazing that it feels like there are still existing traversal quirks from a game that came out when I was a literal child. Extremely jank but in a way that's interesting, day one purchase just to be fascinated with it.
yeah ultimately I hope this game does succeed. Frontiers is not gonna be perfect but if they stick to open world games then maybe Sonic Frontiers 2 will be the one that refines the formula. The last thing I want is for Sonic Team to think "Frontiers failed, therefore people don't want open gameplay in Sonic" I'm just really burned by how much of Forces' DNA seems to be present here. I was hoping they would rebuild Sonic's moveset from the ground up.
I've had more time to kind of collect my thoughts... yeah, the more I've looked at it, the worse it gets. This is 5 years worth of development? The worst part is, we don't know what hardware this is running on. If this is next generation, which you'd hope it is seeming as they'd wanna put their best foot forward... then just imagine how poor it'll run and look on last generation. I will assume it's this generation, seeming as it's rendered at 4k and looks native. The pop in is poor, the LODs seem poor, I think the contrast is pushed too high (Colours Ultimate was getting us ready for this I suppose...), animations still seem unpolished. As for the gameplay, it doesn't look bad, but I can't say it's really capturing me either. I hate being negative, but the more I look at it, the worse it gets. For the climbing, as soon as Sonic finishes he seems to do a preset animation. That seems to not be controllable at all by the user, so no momentum could be kept. Imagine running up that wall, and depending on how fast you go, depends on how much momentum you could build up and use to fling yourself to other areas, but that's not a thing. The rails in the air look extremely out of place, just floating in the air doing nothing. The whole idea of open world is to have a cohesive environment... not having floating platforms in the air that don't tie into the main terrain. I get it's somewhat difficult with Sonic, given the levels are more about verticality, but this just looks bad. I had no hopes and was still disappointed. There's still time for that to change, but I dunno.
On today's edition of predictions that age like fine wine: What is even there that can even be said for what's supposed to be a new foundation? Because I'm seeing a lot of the same old design principles from past and recent games dropped haphazardly into an open field. Boost gameplay mechanics haven't gone anywhere, and neither have the automated/scripted controls and stage mechanics. Why bother wall-running up a giant structure on your own accord when there's a dash panel smack dab in the middle to take you upwards? Or wall-run alongside a giant ravine when there's a queue of grind rails and springs/hoops to carry you through the environment? The only real thing that I think is worth commenting are the minute, though incredibly bizarre, new things. - Sonic's controls and movement at low speeds has been historically bad for the Boost games, but even so, here it looks unnatural in a way I don't know how to explain. (1:45 where his walking animation looks faster than his actual speed, where the player is inching along--what even is that?) - Props to ST continuing to find new ways to automate the most simple-ass gameplay actions. At more than a few points the player is just able to immediately home in on game objects without even needing to jump. The multicolored containers at 1:00 is an odd one where Sonic...apparently does something? (The animation changes, but I don't know what?) And somehow all of the containers fall apart? - The "wall climb" mechanic at 1:38 (?????????) Bewildered that the enemies and combat --a major focus of yesterday's 30 sec. gameplay reveal-- were a no-show here, but I guess that will get its own showcase later. It's been five years since Forces and a couple of years since the playtest leaks, but one thing remains true about Sonic Team: their lack of direction and lack of imagination is obvious.
From this tweet, looks like they're reusing assets from Forces despite the game being in development for 5 years. https://twitter.com/SonicForcesFact/status/1532037883850379264 Spoiler: Images
Developers reuse assets all the time for efficiency reasons. That shouldn't surprise anyone and it's not really a good reason to knock the game.
