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

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

  1. Xiao Hayes

    Xiao Hayes

    Classic Eggman art Member
    Everytime a new game it's gonna be released I'm praying for that date to come as quickly as possible to not have the same hopeful and hopeless speculations time and again. Mind you, I'm not talking about those speculations being right or not, just about how they make everything feel more intense than it really is.

    Personally speaking, I'm probably more interested in this game because it's my kind of game in general and not because it's a Sonic game, and probably that why Tutorial Hill looks nice enough and I don't mind the boilerplate gimmicks being there for the sake of it, and I'm ok with the ultra-beasts being the enemies in PSOnic, or the child of the Valtron Ruby being in charge of this party. I'm ok if this game is an undercover remake of something else if it plays right this time compared to the previous version, I'm ok with button-mashing and tunnel boosting too if it feels good. of course, I'd prefer my dream game that had all the good thigs this could be, and it's not that I have low standards, it's that I don't need standards for a lot of things if the essential ones check, and the game's checking them for now.

    On a different note, I'm betting the "real world" in this game is another layer of cyberspace created by the Phantom Ruby or something. There's something very fishy in everything I see plotwise.
     
  2. MontiP

    MontiP

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    Regarding this cutscene... I do like that quick transition from Sonic... uh... standing there, to Sage stalking him from above.
     
  3. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Watch the cutscene when Sonic first enters apotos with Chip and you'll see it's noticeably more engaging than what came after, in my opinion anyway. Sonic juggling with the chaos emeralds, striking a pose ("pretty cool, uh?"), Chip foaming over the ice cream...a majority of the cutscenes have little moment like these that makes them very cute and endearing, even when the characters are basically just spouting exposition.
    Compare this to Colours/Gens/Lost World where characters are walking around in circles and flailing their limbs around and it's not even a contest.
    Really I know it might seem like a cop out but it's all a matter of feelings for me. When watching cutscenes in Colours-era games, I'm bored. When I'm watching cutscenes in Unleashed, I'm not.
    (and it's not nostalgia! I've hated Unleashed for the longest time haha, but its presentation was always its strongest point)

    I'm probably the biggest Lost World lover on these boards, think I have several hundreds hours combined playing the Wii U and PC version, it's unironically one of my favourite Sonic game :p
    But...the cutscenes in this game were terribly boring imo. Like 5993 said most cutscenes were just Sonic and co. standing around talking, and weren't shot in a terribly interesting way either.
    And the action scenes felt stiff and lacked some...oomph to really make them engaging.
    Again just my opinion mind you, I don't want to dunk on someone defending LW, there's too few of us out there :V
     
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  4. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Honestly I'm just happy they finally managed to make cutscenes look somewhat decent. Sonic games pretty much always NEED CG as a crutch because the in-game cutscenes look like garbage. This looks super good, I also love the little things like Sonic's ears occasionally bouncing and swaying, his eyelids and brow being animated in ways that aren't just... blinking. He looks quite a bit more lively than the static animations of Forces or Colors. This series usually ranges from somewhat passable custscenes to jagged, teleporty cutscenes where characters look like lifeless ragdolls glitching around the scene. So again, this is awesome.

    The dialogue is nice too. Nothing revolutionary, but it's quick and clear and concise, and the character is clearly still there without a single shitty Emoji Movie joke in site. No Baldy McNosehair, no "well that just happened", just normal stuff.
     
  5. Starduster

    Starduster

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    Yeah, I personally think it’s pretty plain to see that Unleashed’s cutscenes have a lot more going on than their successors via character animation and Frontiers looks to be picking that torch back up. The scene blocking is better, more dynamic camera angles are being used, the subtle character animation has returned. We of course don’t know whether Ian approached this script in the same way as he does for the comics with regards to giving scene direction (and I doubt we ever will), but clearly something in the pipeline has changed and I’m very optimistic that these cutscenes will do Ian’s writing justice.
     
  6. MrMechanic

    MrMechanic

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    Chances are this was posted. But couldn't find it so... here it is.

    It seems that the reason why we've seen so much today is because... the demo has an exploit.

    https://twitter.com/rob_chp/status/1562825152185847808?t=-vISIXx2F5hFIxlJcyu7gA&s=19

    The demo has a time limit. Once it's over you are booted to the title screen...

    However... people figured out you can use "save states" and when replaying from those states, it starts the timer fresh.

    Which is why we've seen chemical plant, cutscenes and yes even the big hairy one.
     
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  7. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    lmao amazing, never change sonic team
     
  8. Josh

    Josh

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    Thinking on it, I do see what you mean about the characters being a little more animated in Unleashed versus Colors. Although I'd still point to Generations (what was there anyway), Lost World, and especially Forces as being more dynamic. That mirror room scene scene in Generations has always been one of my faves!

    Cop out or no though, I think you're onto something with it being a matter of feelings. I feel that way too, it's just my feelings go the other direction, haha. Replaying Unleashed last year, the dialogue often felt bland to me, and I'd find myself kind of watching them out of obligation and struggling not to skip 'em. Sonic in particular is still pretty squared-away in Unleashed, he just comes across as an Affable Anime Protagonist in a lot of scenes, and that never feels right to me. Whereas in Colors... I mean, I'm not arguing it's top-tier storytelling by any means, but I'm never bored. Everything has a lot more energy and POP behind it, and I love the way Sonic and Tails play off of each other, especially. But like you said, a lot of this is just down to preference, and my conceptions of what tone and style I'd like Sonic to be are just different from yours', so we walk away with different feelings.

    Seriously, thanks for being cool and talking about this stuff. :) Different perspectives are always more fun to try to wrap your head around when someone's focusing on the aspects they DO like versus the ones they don't, and you summing it up as a matter of how it makes you feel really helped me see that.

    Getting back on-track, one concern I have with Frontiers' story so far is that we HAVEN'T seen much personality out of Sonic yet. I'm not saying I need to him to be snarking to the camera every five seconds (save those fourth wall breaks for maximum impact), but it's like... so far, I'm seeing a lot of rugged determination, but not enough attitude. I'm not TOO worried though, Ian Flynn has never had any problem striking the right balance there. "How about some context? Uh, hello?" was a good start!

    (Oh yeah, and I've come around on Lost World too, it's all right! xD)
     
  9. Turbohog

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  10. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    I think he's on site and is the one responsible for a lot of the gameplay floating around
     
  11. Snowbound

    Snowbound

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    Are you still going to gamescom? I’m looking forward to your view of the demo as I’ve pretty much agreed with the criticisms you’ve made so far
     
  12. Kyro

    Kyro

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    He seems to be there himself and has been recording his gameplay on his phone as well, he gave us footage of the drop dash and bounce as well
     
  13. Chaos Rush

    Chaos Rush

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    Mixed feelings on this. On one hand the presentation & production values looks top-notch which is a relief since Forces felt & looked so… “cheap”, but on the other hand the fact that they’re bringing back Green Hill, Chemical Plant, and Sky Sanctuary, whose assets were used heavily in Forces and that Forces mobile game, makes me wonder why they keep reusing zones that specifically appeared in Generations as opposed to say, Marble Zone, or Aquatic Ruin Zone, or dare I say, a new zone (well that city level seems new at least). The overworld levels are brand new and made of new assets, so obviously they don’t have any issue creating new HD assets, so why resort to reusing Generations assets then?
     
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  14. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    You’ve answered it yourself; it’s precisely because they’ve spent most of their time/budget working on the 5 open world islands they had to ressort to using generations assets yet again.

    Sure Marble or Aquatic Ruin would be nice but if they had the time to recreate these zones in HD they’d have time to create brand new levels, but they don’t…hence why we’re seeing Green Hill and Chemical Plant again for the 274th time in a row.
     
  15. Snub-n0zeMunkey

    Snub-n0zeMunkey

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    I think Unleashed's character animation was a bit of a mixed bag. Unleashed was the last Sonic game to use motion capture animation for the cutscenes. Sonic was animated really well because you can tell they made an effort to clean up the mo-cap with traditional key frame animation.
    [​IMG]
    but then there are other parts in Unleashed where the mo-cap looked awful. With Colours they went back to key frame animation and have been doing it that way ever since.

    The cutscene from Frontiers looks cool. I'm not exactly feeling like "holy shit this is amazing" but it's definitely way better than Forces.

    We're at a console generation now where it's definitely possible to have in-game visuals and animation that are on the same level as the Marza CG animations. It really all just depends on how much budget and priority is devoted to the animation. I would love to see this happen one day, personally.

    realistically though, nothing has ever come close to being as good as the way Knuckles was animated in Sonic Riders and I am being 100% honest
    [​IMG]
    [​IMG]
     
    Last edited: Aug 26, 2022
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  16. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Sonic Riders animation was PRIME. Well... at least the actual gameplay animations. The cutscenes are a point of concern. :V
     
  17. DefinitiveDubs

    DefinitiveDubs

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    The WHOLE demo, no cuts, 15 minutes.
     
  18. Overlord

    Overlord

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    I think the tweet is somewhat exaggerating with "massive improvement", to me it seems the cutscene quality is on-par with what we've had up to now. Jury is still out on what the final story is going to overall be like considering the pendulum is lurching back towards overly serious again, but hopefully not as far as it has been in the past - the text of that cutscene isn't too terrible.
     
  19. charcoal

    charcoal

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    I've never cared too much about the cutscene animations as long as its an entertaining story and it's not SA1 levels of pure shittiness, but it's nice to see the animation being improved for this game.

    With that said I think I'm gonna tune out of Frontiers discussion for now. I'd like to experience the game for myself once it comes out without having read literally everything online.
     
  20. MrMechanic

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    I'm going to EGX where frontiers is.

    The plan is to film as much as I reasonably can. Being there on my own does not guarantee this will be very good but I'll try.

    However I'm more concerned that I may only get 1 go at frontiers.

    EGX is looking like a disaster again this year.