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Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by MykonosFan, May 27, 2021.

  1. Iggy for Short

    Iggy for Short

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    I'd like to think I've gotten a little more constructive with my comments on this series over the years, but... more blatantly recycled level design, on top of more Sky Green Plant Zone? Fuck off, SEGA.

    I want to try and appreciate the rest of what the game is doing but wow is that distractingly insulting.
     
  2. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

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    Okay, but you just said the contents of your initial reply were about your opinion.

    And? That still doesn't really invalidate the criticisms, which like it or not is what you were trying to do in your first message.

    But those aren't nitpicks. The cyberspace levels are an important part of the game. If they're insubstantial, or if they're all reused from other games (to be clear, I do not necessarily believe the majority will be reused from other games), people can and should take issue with it.

    Okay, but are the things they're criticizing somehow only perceivable if you play the game? The level design is the level design, regardless of whether you have personally put your hands on the controller. People criticized Forces's levels before it came out too, and overwhelmingly they seem pretty consistent in still not liking them. The only argument you really have is that this is seemingly a pretty small chunk of the game and thus there could be more interesting design later on, or else an abundance of levels such that any specific one not being too replayable is not a huge deal.

    I'm giving the game a chance, I don't think it looks particularly bad, but people who do have very clear reasoning to why they do. You can't just keep saying "wait and see" until everyone stops disagreeing with you.
     
  3. Londinium

    Londinium

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    I'd say Roger Craig Smith actually has a chance this game. Re-listening to the part where he says 'Amy? Is that you?' and I must say, it does sound like there's some actual emotion.

    At least, I don't think that sort of delivery really exists in the Griff and Pontac games.
     
  4. Crasher

    Crasher

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    Just wanna address this because I can see people saying Frontier's combat is bad because of Nier: Automata of all games. Please, please remember that the company behind Nier: Automata has a shitton of ex-Capcom devs as leads and the combat designer behind Nier: Automata (one Takahisa Taura) has spent his entire career at Platinum. Some of the games he's worked on involve high-profile ex-Capcom devs, including the director behind DMC1 - so he's very likely picked up how to make decent feeling and engaging combat.

    Nier: Automata's combat is good because the guy who designed it had nearly a decade of experience at a company that specializes in this gameplay, working with/under people who shaped the genre, (this isn't even counting the experience of the programmers and artists). We have no clue who's designing Frontier's combat or their experience - ideally, SEGA would grab some of the guys who did Yakuza's combat to advise with Frontiers, but considering the attitude SEGA has towards Sonic, I have a feeling this ambitious idea wasn't given the budget (or experience) needed to make it flourish.

    The good thing is that most hands-on impressions about the combat is positive. The presentation/polish is the worst aspect, and imo, that's an issue that's been present in Sonic since 2011.
     
  5. The Joebro64

    The Joebro64

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    A guy on r/SonicFrontiers who claims to have played the game at Gamescom has posted some impressions.

    He says he likes it. He says the controls feel like a combination of the boost games and Lost World's, the combat's fun, and the game overall feels like it's had some good effort put into it. Red Rings award new combat moves. He actually says the cyberspace levels are his least favorite part because the open-world controls don't mesh well with boost level design. However, he says a Sega rep told him that not all the cyberspace levels are reused (like the highway one), and they get longer and more challenging as the game progresses.
     
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  6. RikohZX

    RikohZX

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    Clearly they should outsource future combat to the Ryu Ga Gotoku studio.
    :thatsrad:
     

  7. The "Serious" story in question

    https://twitter.com/OnTheDownLoTho/status/1562959588085080064?s=20&t=37KJTmV3RL6qLnr7oZofBg

    Look at all of that edge, could give Shadow a run for his money.
     
  8. RikohZX

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    It doesn't have to be overly serious all the time, nor does it have to be happy-go-lucky-who-cares-about-consequences all the time. If the characters take what's happening around them seriously but still get to be themselves, with Sonic being the very video game character to codify the concept of a gaming mascot with an attitude in the first place, then I'm fine with it.

    The problem is not that Forces tried to be serious, it's that everyone is super dour and out of character besides certain moments like Knuckles and the water slide joke, while Sonic is spouting off one-liners about friendship like he just doesn't care one iota. Sonic Lost World tried to be mix serious and lighthearted, but it led to Sonic being mopey and yet not learning anything from his mistakes, Amy and Knuckles "dying" and being restored off-screen with no fanfare, and us knowing ahead of time Tails would be perfectly fine, with everything barely dwelled upon whatsoever for any emotional impact.

    Seriously, even Eggman gets hit by this. Lost World, everyone loved how he went from his usual self to being pretty solemn and serious-- and it was all a ploy to bait Sonic into helping him anyway, being perfectly in character. Meanwhile Forces barely gets to use him at all nor have any of his goofier moments in its attempt to give Infinite, who took everything too seriously all the time, the one-time spotlight.

    It doesn't need guns, violence and cursing to be serious. Just having stakes and the cast (and voice actors) giving a damn is all you really need. And for once, Sonic actually has to save his friends (and presumably Eggman to a degree), and it's not just one-off cutscene hijinks that auto-resolve themselves without any input from Sonic or the player.
     
  9. I just find it so weird how binary some people are about this; if Sonic spouts a single joke, he's "not taking it seriously enough" but if there's a scene with any type of drama, then suddenly "the game is taking itself too seriously". Literally no in-between whatsoever, it's either one or the other when it comes Sonic, nuance just does not exist at all and nobody wants to entertain the idea that maybe their preconceived notions are exaggerated and a little unfounded.

    And then we wonder why other people find us annoying to talk to?
     
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  10. Chaos Rush

    Chaos Rush

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    I’m surprised people here see SA1 as “dark”. To me it’s on the same tier as Sonic CD and S3&K.
     
  11. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

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    Holy shit.

    Apparently Eggman's jacket buttons have...functions?! One of them is for recording logs. To think, we've seen this design all these years and we just learned something about it.
     
  12. raphael_fc

    raphael_fc

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    It's like Movie Eggman's gloves. It makes sense I guess.
     
  13. Kyro

    Kyro

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    I swear that we saw him use it for something else in another game. I think in lost world he pressed one of the buttons and a jetpack came out of his jacket
     
  14. It was definitely Lost World.
     
  15. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    SA1 had plenty of death. The ancient echidnas trampling the Chao before getting slaughtered. Tikal basically sacrificing herself. Gamma going on a quest to destroy his brothers and himself. Chaos destroying Station Square, the implication being that most of the NPCs you previously saw there and could talk to died in the flood. The closest things to that in CD and S3K are the bad futures and the backstory with Angel Island's ancient civilization dying, but you can fix the bad futures, and the backstory isn't shown in detail the way it was in SA1.
     
  16. jubbalub

    jubbalub

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    That's the internet for ya. People online are allergic to nuance.
     
  17. Zephyr

    Zephyr

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    Yeah, The Elder Scrolls were pretty big open world games alongside GTA well before Breath of the Wild was a twinkle in anyone's eye. For all the "this is a BotW ripoff" that gets lobbed at open world games released in the last few years, I remember when BotW was being called "Zelder Scrolls".
     
  18. Mana

    Mana

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    I'm going to only respond to this part, not because I'm ignoring you, but because I can use it to summarize everything I was going to spend paragraphs saying anyways.

    Its not fun to come online and see dozens of people bashing a game you're excited for. People who have read the same positive press you've seen only to hear them say they're "being paid off with early access" first . Then when the game opens up and more people get to play it and you hear more and more positive things they say "well they're just casuals". Then when major Sonic news outlets are praising the game they only can say "well game still looks like shit to me."

    It's a bad faith way to keep up with a game and I'm tired of trying to have conversations on the game when half the people just want to see Sonic fail and be humiliated again. It's almost like a refusal to give it a fair chance.

    My cousin kept talking about frontiers when the early premiere looked mediocre and sharing all the negative memes online but the second positive press stated coming in suddenly he didn't have much to say about the game. He's not the only person in the community moving like this.

    You brought up how Forces looked bad from the jump, that's great, they hid Forces for a reason and focused on Mania. They're proudly showing this game off whenever they can and have a level of love and enthusiasm we haven't seen since Unleahed. So it's different but the people who want the game to fail aren't going to acknowledge that.

    When I say it'd be nice to "wait and see" it's because multiple people and sites have literally said it comes together way better when you're in control vs watching someone. That's actually where my earlier Pokémon Legends Arceus comparison came from because it was the same way.

    If I can convince one person to stop secretly wishing the game was absolutely horrible and maybe give it a chance, given the positive things we've heard, then I feel a little better about talking about the game online.

    But, once again, I never said anyone had to be excited or that they couldn't be skeptical. And maybe to some people the cyber level reuse is a valid criticism (even though the majority of people playing this will have never touched generations) I was skeptical too. It's also just nice to see people hope for the best, especially when you're hearing good things.
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2022
  19. Chaos Rush

    Chaos Rush

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    That’s just typical anime stuff. Kid me wasn’t shocked by any of this. Sonic Frontiers seems to be aiming for a similar level of story, and I’m surprised people interpret this as “dark” and “serious”. Like this ain’t Netflix’s Daredevil lol
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2022
  20. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

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    Calling SA1 "dark" reminds me of how kids in the mid-00s tried desperately to counter any claims that Dragon Ball Z was "for kids", using such decisive evidence as a single frame from the Buu saga where Gotenks flips the bird.

    To be fair, though, I see a lot of people calling Cartoon Network shows like Steven Universe "dark". So I guess "dark" these days is anything that isn't a slapstick comedy.