The Sonic Frontiers *SPOILER* Thread (With Unmarked Spoilers)

You can get into the Wyvern's area but nothing happens until you complete Knuckles' last quest, I believe.

 

Lots of Unleashed and Generations stage designs reused.
Not to sound mean, but...why am I not surprised...? -_-

 

My understanding of it is
- The Master Emerald already existed on Earth, the Chaos Emeralds are from the Ancient planet [which implies there might be an even older spacefaring civilisation]
- They get attacked by The End, escape using the Chaos Emeralds as a source of power, go to Earth because they're drawn by the Master Emerald
- They settle on Starfall Islands, and make a peaceful civilisation using the Emeralds
- The End follows them, so they turn the Emeralds into weapons instead, but to no avail
- They specifically mention an emergency plan of in case The End gets to the Islands- bringing the Emeralds to the Emerald that had drawn them in, IE, the ME
- They use the Titans to instead lock The End within their cyber world. Their civilisation is destroyed- they're not all dead, but they will die within a generation
- The Kocos are charms they wore. They all uploaded themselves to the cyber world, and their memories have inhabited the charms.
- The Ancients that stayed in Starfall die after a generation, but meanwhile others take the Emeralds to the Master Emerald, implying this is the origin of the Altar we see in Sonic Adventure
- This next detail is just vaguely hinted at. Eggman says their genetic code matches that of Chaos, but that there's been a mutation.
With that in mind, I think the intention is, or at least this is the best reading I can make, that the Master Emerald's radiation mutated the Ancients into Chao. In effect, it's turning the old "Chaos is a mutated Chao" on reverse- this would presumably place Chaos as someone who just hasn't mutated as much as the other Chao and thus still looks a bit like the Ancients.

The questions left here are- what's The End, who created the Master Emerald, what does the "zap" sigyl mean, and is Eggman's reading correctly and are the chao really mutated ancients- personally I'm hoping there might be a bit more for it because if this is the right read, it makes the Chao kinda awkward
Some details still don't quite gel for me, mostly down to presentation. Need to rewatch cutscenes to try and understand the actual events of the game- The End appearing as a surprise villain and the non-linear presentation of Eggman's side of the story makes things confusing. Still not sure why the islands' technology were built to contain the Emeralds for instance, but it's important enough that it was pointed out

 

When you drop a stone in a pond, it causes ripples that reach all parts of the pond...

Not just Chaos either. Raise a Chao correctly and...

 

I mean to be fair, those games have top tier level design so if they wanna pull from past games, those make the most sense to do so from.

 

I honestly can’t connect to any of the cyberspace music. It just sounds like generic BG music from racing games.

 

Guess that explains why I liked the last island's levels so much more than the others lol.

 

Weird decision to backload all the original stages.

 

I'm actually curious if modding could effectively slap a bunch of the original stages these things were based off of on top of the numerous cyberspace stages themselves. It would sure as hell be more variety visually at least.

 

Y'know what I'm wondering?

Was this 'Modern' Sonics last adventure?

Sonic, Tails, Amy and Knuckles are all going their own ways, with Tails saying he wants Sonic to next see him when he's grown into a hero.

Sonic Channel removed the ages of the characters, which prompted Ian Flynn to do a knowing smirk after being questioned about it.

The Cyberspace levels are basically a small celebration of his adventures...

It all just screams "final adventure for this incarnation" to me. Next we see them, they'll be redesigned to look older again, after the whole Classic Sonic > Adventure Sonic thing, as they've all grown.

 

They haven't redesigned these characters in over 20 years, why would they start now?

 

I dunno about redesign, but at the very least the story is incredibly blatant that Sega / Sonic Team want to move on and do new things if this worked out. Whether it manifests as anything of note or not is the real question, or if Sega just says "nah can't have the series evolve again."

 

I guarantee that there will never be a mention of Tails', Knuckles', or Amy's future plans in another game lol

 

I was really thinking that they're setting up for some big setting change.

Especially the mention of Tangle and Sticks, which definitely permanently opened a can of worms they can't put back.

 

People are saying Sticks isn't in the JP script, though this is an English-first game so whatever, but Tangle definitely is. So IDW or at least cast members from it are certainly canon.

And I'm sure at least one writer for IDW is going to be chomping at the bit to get the opportunity to formally bring in Sage.

 

They're not going to drastically alter the status quo of this series, no matter how much lip service they say they will. And Ian Flynn knows that.

At best, next game we'll get a mention of their offscreen adventures. If we're lucky, maybe we can get comics about them.

But no, things aren't changing lmao.

 

Okay I know the plot is finally good again but let's not get carried away here, they're not gonna do some kind of crazy redesigns and have consistent character arcs lmao

I'd bet my left nut Frontiers is gonna be more or less completely ignored in the next entry or at best get a passing mention.
Let's not forget 99.9% of the world was under's Eggman rule like what, 3 weeks ago? And yet everybody's acting like it never happened lol

 

Why did they redesign them in the first place between Classic and Adventure?

Anyway, I never said this would happen, it just kinda feels like it from how everything went down, including a final boss called "The End". Tails even says "you'll hardly recognise me next time we see each other"... I dunno, it just seems like a lot of hints pointing to it.

Personally, I'd love them to also do games based on those adventures in-between. Knuckles Metroidvania with Rouge as a rival, Tails soaring the skies in his Tornado IV, leaving Sonic with the original Tornado, Amy, Cream and Sticks on a roadtrip, maybe do other characters like G.U.N. Agent Shadow doing G.U.N. mission, etcetc.

It's a lot to want, but hey, we wanted a decent Sonic the Hedgehog game again and we got that.

 

Because Yuji Naka felt like Sonic was losing his appeal and didn't want him to be just another cute mascot, so redesigned him into a more Shonen Anime inspired look to bring his coolness back.

Lip service like I said. At best you'll get an offscreen mention.

This series barely has the budget to make a game without pop-in after half a decade of development, in their mainstream games.

And In supposed to be believe they have enough dough for a whole bunch of spin offs?? You'll get some cute animations and some comics probably.

 

I'll echo the praise that people gave to the story earlier in the thread. I enjoy how the characters are written. It's about time we got characters working out their problems and supporting each other in a reasonable manner, unlike how Forces and Lost world handled it, lol. I'm happy that while it gets too "SPOT THE REFERENCE", they acknowledge the other games happened. It's great that they tackled Tails' poor writing in the past games and made it into a nice little arc for him. I'm really curious how they'll handle the characters past this game. They heavily hinted that there might be a bit of a shake-up. Nothing too drastic, but at least enough to feel like they're moving forward.

I also like that the music tells the story. For example, I kind of noticed how Chaos Island starts off very somber but turns into something more hopeful as you continue through the story. I find that it's reflective of Tails slowly moving on from his past mistakes to a new opportunity. I also think the boss theme for the area had pieces of this character development in the lyrics. "Find your flame" is quite obvious, as Tails struggle to find his own independence without falling back to Sonic. The other parts of the lyrics, like "Hear them? They're calling your name" and "'Cause in the end, it's you and your friends", I like to read it as even if Tails reached his goals or even make a mistake, his friends will always be there to back him up. They believe in him, and so should he.

Kinda corny, but I really like reading into music on a deeper level, lol.