There's no way I'm playing this without a discount, but I'm still pleasantly surprised by it. Even if it just ends up being another well-received entry that I simply don't "get", I'm glad that it's making people happy. With this series especially I don't feel the need to have everything catered to me. I can just be happy for everyone else.
This is the first impression I've seen of the Switch version. It says that many at TGS say it "impresses in quality." https://twitter.com/necrolipe/status/1571117241705316354
I don't doubt that the game will still play identically to the next gen versions. As long as it can maintain a consistent 30 FPS and things don't get too muddy, I can live with that.
There’s a few more points in the interview that I’d like to point out because I think it heavily informs the game’s marketing and what their goals for this game are: One of their main goals for this game is to make Sonic appeal to Japanese fans & fans in Asia in general, acknowledging that Sonic is more popular in the west They (SEGA/Sonic Team) view this as the “3rd evolution of Sonic”, with the 1st evolution being the 2D games, and the 2nd evolution being the 3D games up to now. The reasoning for the “hidden messages” in the Japanese script is to give it more of an atmosphere like Japanese manga, as part of their goal to appeal to Japanese fans Personally, I’m looking forward to this, and this will be the first Sonic game that I’ll buy on release day since Sonic Generations.
If this game does well in Japan, I wonder what it will mean for the series' localisation going forward and if we're at risk of another fracturing of the brand as occurred in the 90s. Certainly not to the same extent, but I wonder what ramifications the Japanese localisation could have depending on the liberties it takes with characters and such.
Do you really think the anime inspired Adventure games that ignored the previous English continuity almost completely were made with the English audience in mind? I'd argue they've never cared about making Sonic appeal to Westerners specifically, since the Adventure era, they just have never been able to get a ground foot in Japan the way they wanted. That's why Japan gets all the special editions and extra goodies that we miss out on, they want it to appeal there first and foremost and that's always been the goal. If they had been making games solely with West in mind from the beginning the Sonic Boom project, literally made to appeal to the west, would have never happened. I don't think anything is going to change with how they do anything if this game does well.
SEGA of America and SEGA of Japan are a lot less trying to actively sabotage each other out of spite so there will never be a fracture as big as American Sonic and Japanese Sonic basically being entirely different brands.
No comparison. The old SoA localizations tended to attempt to replace or ignore nearly everything they could from the Japanese canon while making up their own lore from scratch. This game's Japanese localization sounds like it will try to spice up the story without significantly altering the plot or lore.
I hope that they have two separate subtitle tracks. I like having English subtitles on to make listening to the Japanese audio more relaxing, but it can get distracting when there is a huge divide between the JP script and English one. They’ve been doing it with recent RGG Studio games and it’s great. If not, I’ll just need to suck it up and train my ear better, but considering the differences we’ve seen already, having both experiences available would be nice for the players who want to see each interpretation.
From the info we have so far, to me it seems like the Japanese localization is mainly focused on re-introducing Sonic to the Japanese audience, and isn’t exactly aiming to re-write continuity or anything. For instance, in the trailer from a few weeks back, in the English version Sage says “Sonic, your actions are a threat to us all” (or something like that), whereas in the Japanese version she says, “Sonic, the high-speed hedgehog…”, reminding audiences who Sonic is. Another example from the script tidbit posted by Linkable on this page shows that the “rodent” Secret Rings reference was removed, most likely because Japanese audiences weren’t gonna get the reference (or the translator didn’t get the reference… or the translator didn’t want to check the Japanese Secret Rings script for whatever Erazor Djinn called Sonic in that game…?)
I really hope this game does well in Japan, it'd be cool to see Sonic gain more appeal in his home country. I mostly want a new Sonic anime out of this lol, no disrespect to Sonic Prime but imagine a Sonic series animated by Studio Trigger or something
I personally would love a Sonic animation with Redline artstyle, I think it would suit very well with Sonic.
@Chaos Rush Honestly I figured the “rodent” thing is a reference to SatAM via the comics grandfathering it into canon.
Kronos Island gameplay. The audio is wonky because the author tried to isolate the game audio from the show floor noise, but I think he might've just made it harder to hear. Oh well, it's still nice to watch. As for my opinion, the game looks as fun as ever. I am confident that I am going to enjoy this game quite a bit. Can't wait for release day.
I just wish they’d go back to having original levels again. Colors is kind of the last game to do this. That’s CRAZY.
I just had a crazy thought. What if Sonic Frontiers had a female singer for its main theme? Imagine this but sung by Lzzy Hale from Halestorm. I would be totally down with that.
