don't click here

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

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

  1. Sonic Warrior TJ

    Sonic Warrior TJ

    Have an ice time Member
    3,370
    202
    43
    GA
    Some more TGS gameplay that just popped up in my recommendations:

    Nothing earth shattering, more exploration of the open zone.
     
  2. Turbohog

    Turbohog

    Member
    923
    117
    43
    Thst chemical plant cyberspace level uniorinically only requires the occasional jump and is otherwise totally automated.
     
  3. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

    The Voice Maestro Member
    926
    775
    93
    Cyber City
    Mega Man Zero: The Definitive Dub
    Kishimoto once said that the first build of Frontiers was scrapped due to it being basic, boring, and uninteresting. I'm seriously wondering what he considers interesting, because this gameplay is honest-to-god putting me to sleep. Part of it is the bland aesthetic, and part of it is how by-the-numbers this "open zone" gameplay is.

    It doesn't even look badly designed or broken. Just boring. And I'm not sure which is worse.
     
  4. Sneekie

    Sneekie

    Sneasy Member
    782
    695
    93
    Is this you trying to not be a party pooper or lol

    It's the first 15 minutes of the game, and 10 of those minutes are a tutorial. It's "by-the-numbers" because it's literally designed to show you the basics of the game. And a pretty good job too, minus the all the stopping and prompts. Lots of places I would love to go to. Screaming at the players for not picking up those items lol.

    I'm pretty sure that when Kishimoto talked about how interesting his 20-hour, full-of-content game is, he wasn't thinking about the first 15 minutes.

    And the fact that most people who played this not only thought it was good but want more... yeah, bodes well for the game.

    It literally has a bunch of alternate pathways, including the twisting paths and how the lower path at the end is more platform heavy with more enemies. It is no more "automated" than the original level it was based on, which had similar pathways.
     
    • Like Like x 3
    • Agree Agree x 1
    • List
  5. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

    The Voice Maestro Member
    926
    775
    93
    Cyber City
    Mega Man Zero: The Definitive Dub
    Can we possibly get through a single goddamned page without you or others attacking people for their opinions?
     
  6. Sneekie

    Sneekie

    Sneasy Member
    782
    695
    93
    1) I'm not attacking you.
    2) That is an ironic statement, considering that you were eager to tell people to not be excited over someone's positive reception of the game by saying that they're not actually positive about it (despite them obviously being positive about it). That was the "party pooper" remark was for. A nostalgic callback, if you will.

    I'll stop doing this. I'll instead be thinking about how much better I could play than those players.
     
  7. Zephyr

    Zephyr

    Member
    3,501
    459
    63
    US
    I've wondered this for a long time.
     
  8. charcoal

    charcoal

    Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be Groovy Member
    1,067
    988
    93
    I’d imagine the first build of Frontiers he was talking about was probably just Forces Sonic plopped into an open field for a basic proof of concept, which does sound boring. Pure speculation, however.
     
  9. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

    The Voice Maestro Member
    926
    775
    93
    Cyber City
    Mega Man Zero: The Definitive Dub
    Except that I was arguing based on the translation I got out of it. I was making an objective statement, and I acknowledge that I was wrong. It's not as if I said Sakurai's opinions weren't valid or that he shouldn't like it, which is what you are doing by making an oh-so-witty "callback" towards me for having a negative opinion about this game, acting like my negative impressions are invalid and I don't know what I'm talking about. It's been that way for this entire thread. Someone questions someone else's positive impressions, and that person gets called an asshole for 10 posts in a row. Flip the situation for someone's negative impressions, and a rebuttal of that gets Like x 12. How about both sides just let people express their opinion without fear of getting judged for it?

    And I think that if the first 15 minutes of your game don't set up what the rest of the game will be like, then that's a failure.
     
  10. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

    Professional Internet asshole Member
    2,086
    1,125
    93
    OR
    [​IMG]
     
    • Like Like x 8
    • Informative Informative x 6
    • Agree Agree x 5
    • Useful Useful x 1
    • List
  11. Laura

    Laura

    Brightened Eyes Member
    I really don't like Sonic constantly looking back to its past. It's tedious. I don't think coming up with narrative justifications (he is remembering his past) makes it significantly better. Contextualises it but doesn't change the fact we've had this recycling of assets for a decade even in spinoffs.

    Remember how Colors and Unleashed had brand new level themes? If its too expensive to do these levels with new assets then go the Colors route of pulling back on graphics. Or come up with a different and slower pace.

    But I'm really so tired of these recycled levels. There's a difference between having tropes and traditions and just completely remaking the same levels.
     
    • Agree Agree x 5
    • Like Like x 1
    • List
  12. Honestly thinking about it, this is an industry wide issue, not just Sonic. Corporations seem much reliant on iconography than ever before.
     
  13. Sneekie

    Sneekie

    Sneasy Member
    782
    695
    93
    You didn't have to make a statement at all, because no one asked you to be the Sakurai Whisperer lol.

    Alright, alright, I'm done! Fighting is over.

    That is indeed raw.
     
  14. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

    Professional Internet asshole Member
    2,086
    1,125
    93
    OR
    I have no comment on the aesthetics of the cyber levels. I hope there are more environments than the ones we've seen. If there really is ~120 of them or whatever, it is gonna be rough seeing that cut across like six backdrops for twenty stages each (why's nobody asked Kishimoto/Iizuka how many there are yet?).

    Where I think things differ on the design front is that there is a wholly different intent to these. The cyber levels are challenge stages, meant to be played multiple times to clear different objectives, and which we assume (and hope) there are large quantities of across the course of the game. Having those be short bursts of quick-step, simple platforming or rail grinding sections does make sense, much more than it did in Forces. Whether they recreate preexisting geometry or not, the fact that they're organized so differently means that the experience, while certainly familiar, is going to be demonstrably different in the context of the game. That doesn't necessarily make it good, mind you, but the conversations about length and depth in Sonic act design make sense in an idiom of those stages being core parts of one continuous adventure, rather than self-contained time attacks.

    You want to explore in the classic games because there are things to find, things that will help you over the course of the stage and the rest of the game. Elemental shields, special stages, extra lives. Not only do those things not exist in Frontiers, they couldn't exist in the cyber space levels. So the purpose of alternative routes is for one thing only, getting to the goal faster (or perhaps getting the red rings). That doesn't mean there isn't room for depth or that they can't be boring or lame to play, just that I think if we're going after them for being short or shallow in these specific instances, it's not necessarily a pervasive issue across the entire game.

    Ultimately...I don't like that very much. Frontiers looks like a solid game to me, but as the foundation of an alleged decade of new games for the series...I dunno, it's not totally speaking to me as a form-factor. Maybe if they made the open world more compact and designed like an actual stage to move through and expanded the cyber levels to a degree where you could have a shield long enough for it to matter, but the fact that Sonic also has all these mechanics, wallrunning, combat, drop dash, which the cyber levels don't even use...it's weird. You have this big split between design so broad that the devs keep pointing at everything that isn't grassy fields and saying "that's optional" and then linear stages with almost nothing in them. I know everything we've seen thusfar is within the first couple hours of an allegedly 20-hour game, but it does not feel like Sonic's abilities nor the skill of the player is being used to their full extent. I honestly do think this is because of the boost. If any of these stages had the complexity of a Lost World level, the game would be an instant buy in my book, but I don't think that will ever coexist with having a button that makes Sonic run at 500 mph at a single press. The boost needs to be seriously slowed down, or removed entirely. One could even make the argument that it's why we don't have Sonic Adventure physics...and that's a little disconcerting.

    Anyway, that Sonic vs. Asura art is nice.
     
  15. jubbalub

    jubbalub

    #1 Sonic Superstars defender Member
    995
    1,222
    93
    Here are some interesting points summarized from 4Gamer's interview with Iizuka and Morio Kishimoto:
    • The game was initially a more traditional open-world game with 3D Sonic elements, but it wasn't recieved well, described as "not interesting at all."
    • Frontiers has undergone external playtesting every few months, throughout its entire development cycle. This checks out with all the leaks from different times explaining the same game. These sessions were studied extensively to improve the game. He specifically mentions the combat and puzzle solving as problematic areas that received another pass after playtesting.
    • Upper management was apparently worried that the game wouldn't be finished on time, but Mr. Iizuka protected the dev team and bought more time. (Almost like people who blame Iizuka for all the franchise's problems are full of shit)
    • Cyberspace levels are NOT required to progress through the game - you can progress the story through other means.
    • The control sliders were added as a result of wildly varying opinions of the control during playtesting. They have no effect in Cyberspace - only the open world.
    • The story in Japan will have hidden messages, and there is "plenty of room for imagination".
     
    Last edited: Sep 16, 2022
    • Informative Informative x 11
    • List
  16. synchronizer

    synchronizer

    Member
    2,191
    92
    28
    It sounds like the cyberspace levels could be considered the filler then, mainly to appease people who are put-off by the change in format. For me, that doesn’t fully justify the lack of originality and the Forces-level length and shallowness of the stages so far, but I can understand it.
     
  17. Snowbound

    Snowbound

    Member
    848
    713
    93
    Honestly I think it’s a smart move that the American version will have less “hidden messages” in the story. The American Sonic fanbase is heavily interested in the lore… and we want answers lol. If I understand things correctly Flynn was given some story beats from Sonic Team he had to follow then he fleshed the story out with dialogue and other details/ideas then it was localized in Japan for Asian markets. That would mean that the US version of the game is the “cannon” or original story. Obviously future games could include references to elements to Japanese exclusive details, however I don’t mind. Given the line at TGS this could be one of the more successful Sonic releases in Japan. The fact that both markets are being catered to is good imo
     
  18. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

    The Voice Maestro Member
    926
    775
    93
    Cyber City
    Mega Man Zero: The Definitive Dub
    I had reason to believe he was mistranslated. I didn't need to be "asked" to say something about that. Just like how nobody "asked" anybody to post here about anything.

    Stop trying to get the last word. If you're really "done", then just shut up.
     
  19. Londinium

    Londinium

    People actually read these? Member
    God I love internet arguments