That's nonsense. When a game is heavily reliant upon pre-existing assets, it's an indication that they didn't have the time, staff, or budget to create new assets.
https://twitter.com/Megazx456/status/1537874422278889474?s=20&t=u3Cf88aK2JFZHmWb7KQTPA Do my eyes deceive me or... does the grind step not automatically lock you to an adjacent rail anymore?
That probably makes sense, maybe all the money went into making Starfall Islands. Not only that, but apparently Sonic Team started over the entirety of Frontiers' development more than once before, which may have also affected the budget and led to shorter time periods. (don't quote me on that though, I don't really know how AAA game development works lol)
That’s my general take on 3D Sonic. They continually put out things I’m not super into and I buy them hoping that next time they do it right. Luckily, some of the more recent footage and feedback from people at SG is making me think Frontiers may be fun even if it’s not entirely what I hope for in a 3D Sonic.
The first jump to their doom seemed like a regular jump. Most other rail switches seemed to work as intended but the last jump did seem like it forced the character off the rail, I can't be sure. It could have been for another reason.
Stabilized footage: https://twitter.com/BeatzYT3/status/1537972459873267720?t=aUQqUmO2YZTjLcoEOr64NQ&s=19
come to think of it, even SA1 did that - Icecap, which even has a snowboarding section like the original hahahaha
Looks like Sonic Forces level design all over again (run forward in straight line with maximum automation) which is extremely disappointing.
Wow, this comment is staggeringly ableist. Should we not be questioning why the people making games of the second most recognizable video game character of all time can't get the staff or budget needed to not reuse assets like mad? I just bought a game made by 60 people and it somehow manages to have 9 entirely new environments from its predecessor with the exception of two, and those two were also heavily altered and barely resemble their older counterparts. And it looks gorgeous. Somehow this Italian devteam the same size as Sonic Team currently was capable of making a fully-fledged anti-gravity racing game that is, honestly, way faster than Frontiers: A game that, I must stress again, has 9 massive unique environments. You're telling me Sonic Team has less budget than a studio whose last game had a total peak of 1005 players? Nah. If 34BT can make shit like Redout 2 on a shoestring budget then Frontiers not being able to create new assets for 2-3 minute cyberspace stages is absurd. It's a joke. An actual parody.
Somehow, we are not counting the Open Zones as part of the game for some reason, when it's clear it's where they spent most of their time and effort making They look massive, they are NEW environment entirely with lot of new assets for all we know, Cyperspace levels are equivalent to Special Stages in old Sonic games, or shrines in BOTW -which all looked the same btw- or mines\catacombs in Elden Ring -which also all looked the same- , and those games are with actually higher budgets and manpower, and if that's the case, then they actually are doing more varied content than those games if they reused different assets for different levels
Ya Forces had new levels and that game was very short plus there’s other apparently huge open zones we have not seen. There should be plenty of new environments. I personally have no problem with old levels coming back. I view them as part of Sonic’s world. We don’t know what context they have in Frontiers but I mean it makes sense to me they’re there.
Elden Ring also reuses stuff from other Fromsoft games like crazy. That said, I am a little disappointed by certain things about the way Frontiers's action stages (what we've seen of them) reuse content. We can have a sky sanctuary level, even a level using all its assets, which still distinguishes itself visually. As I've said multiple times, just set these stages at different times of day. Vertex-color green hill's dirt blue and call it Hill Top. Why is the Death Egg BACK in Sky Sanctuary again? Why can't we have a Green Hill zone where it's raining, or Sky Sanctuary at night?
I'm just annoyed that the 30th anniversary game, albeit late to the punch, is seemingly reusing assets and level ideas directly from the 20th anniversary. Every time Sonic Team wants to take a step forward, they have to cloak it with old stuff and visuals, as if they're afraid to actually make anything 100% new because it might alienate the veteran fans. I'm actually in a boat where I'd rather they just double down entirely on making good content in the open world instead of splitting up development effort for Action Stages, if the Action Stages are potentially just cutting up as many old assets as possible to make their development easier to slap into the game all over the place.
Yeah, this game isn't going to be well received. Like it or not, reusing levels to this extent comes off as lazy. A truly well designed game shouldn't require the consumer to excuse flaws due to budget and time constraints. That being said, it seems to me that 1) Sega did not give this game the budget or staffing it needed, which is astounding considering the success of the movies and 2) the majority of the development effort went into the "open zone" and they just slapped some old levels on top of it. I would have MUCH rather had no open world and completely new levels (or better yet no boost formula at all).
Every leaks/most early previews so far : "The cyberspace levels are really good even if they re use some old tropes. They are worth playing through the game to get to them alone" Sonic fans who haven't even had a chance to play the game yet : "They're reusing assets? This game is DOOMED!"
I wonder how much the general public, which does not play every single Sonic game out there, cares about using old levels.
Yeah. I mean it's still kind of hard to tell what's going on in the footage, but I'm sad to see it looks like it'll just be Generations' Sky Sanctuary assets again. Looks super disappointing and I wish there was something different about it, at the least. I still need context though, because the amount of action stages in this game and and the amount of total stages that reuse the same assets is going to make a big difference. Ex: if there are 28 unique action stages in this game that all have unique locales and assets, then I will be less upset to see Sky Sanctuary as one of them because it's just unrealistic for SEGA to create 28 entire stages when Generations actually only had 9 fully unique sets of level assets. And that game obviously didn't have open hub worlds with loads of bosses and minibosses and other things in it, the hub was just a literal white screen and the level entrances used modified stage assets. There's a lot of folks saying they shouldn't reuse assets even if it's to add a little more extra content, and I guess I disagree. If there's a shit ton of content and a decent amount of new stages a la that Spring Valley leak, as long as the old stages make sense from a narrative perspective I really won't mind as much. I would still much rather have multiple acts/stages with the same new level themes, but I guess we'll see what the rest of the stages are like. Reading Twitter posts on this stuff is actively making me lose brain cells though, not so much because anyone was wrong or right about anything but because some people are WAYYY too confident or defensive or going "I told you so! those 8 pixels were Sky Sanctuary, and I knew it! my uncle told me! where are all the Sonic defenders now?!" like ok guy just breathe, pls breathe, we don't need to lose u over this u have so much to live for, god dammit he's going into cardiac arrest
Sonic games take so long to make now that every game is an "anniversary" game. How about they celebrate Sonic's anniversary by making a good game with new levels for once? That's what Adventure 2 did.
