They also have some job openings for programmers/designers, but they might be for the next M&S Olympics game specifically. There’s also an opening for a script supervisor for the brand as a whole (games, media, livestreams, etc). You’re like someone who fell out of a time portal to a 1990s gamefaqs message board, lol
What the fuck could this possibly mean. What are they cooking. (BTW I'm confused as to whether or not to post this in the spoiler thread, but my interpretation is that official news isn't a spoiler, but any leaks are. If I'm incorrect, mods feel free to move my post)
I'm assuming if they're no longer going with a Classic and Modern dimension and everything is in one timeline, then it's easier to get rid of the ages instead of saying the Classic trilogy happened when Sonic was 13 and Sonic Adventure happened when he was 15. This way Sonic is always an ambiguous teenager. Spoiler Watch that there's a Classic Sonic flashback in Frontiers.
Kinda off topic but I'm glad they seem to be getting rid of official ages. They never really fit anyone outside of the obvious characters like Cream or Charmy who actually act their age. It also just works with how Sonic seems to be portrayed in Frontiers (and in most games post-Heroes tbh), hard to sell him as 15 especially when his movie counterpart is much more in line with a modern teenager.
The ages always made sense in the “kids empowerment fantasy” methodology, because that’s been how they’ve been written from the start. Tails is a genius inventor and flies a plane he borrowed from Sonic, but he was also bullied by the kids on his island, looked up to Sonic in a way a younger sibling would, and later on had supplementary additions like being afraid of lightning and learning to believe in himself in an adolescent framing. Him performing those much more competent and ‘mature’ actions didn’t discount from the age he was intended to be written as, because of course they didn’t; it was part of the characters’ appeal outright. The same can be said for a 15 year old teenage hedgehog who is able to roam the world looking for adventures, help people in need, and fight against a megalomaniacal scientist to save the world. Blaze being a princess at 14 but not knowing how to open up to friends, knuckles being a guardian at 16 but dealing with issues of trust and duty, etc. All this was intentional. If the complaints are being directed at the writing no longer focusing on how these characters are in fact teenagers and kids anymore, that always seemed more like a complaint that should be leveled at the writing itself than the identity of the characters outright. Having adolescent and teenage characters pull off feats and have the freedom of individuals that should be much older than them is an aspect of appeal for YA fiction characters in itself, and missing the point of that feels like it misses the purpose of that power fantasy identity to begin with. Not exactly hung up on exact ages specifically, but not enough people take this into account when discussing how old the characters should be imo.
Other than the opening paragraph which definitely isn't possibly on sky sanctuary... This article is probably far more accurate than people are willing to give it credit for. Based on what I played. Frontiers is skating very fine to the 'this is boring' pool.
It would probably be less boring to them if they engaged in those mechanics, modes, and minigames they neglected, or didn't quit the boss after getting hit twice.
You can still accomplish all of that without the need of giving them specific ages. I didn't really care about it, but giving them specific ages runs into the Ash Ketchum problem where they remain the same age no matter how much time passes in universe. Ash has been ten years for over 20 years, and it gets ridiculous when the series starts acknowledging the passage of time, but the characters don't age.
Welp, Sonic's age being deliberately removed can only mean one thing. Our little blue friend is dead.
I don't think the character ages being removed is gonna be anything major, there was a recent interview with Iizuka only a few months ago where he said Sonic is a teenager so I don't think they're aging him up to be a grown man in his 30's or anything lol. They're probably just gonna go with a more ambiguous age range like 15-17 years old or whatever
Sonic's age being removed does make me a bit sad though. I had fun trying to fit the events of every Sonic game into a timespan of six months (given both Classic and Modern are 15 apparently and the six month gap in Forces) On a more related note, I've been thinking a lot about this game lately and while there's still a lot of things that irk me, something of note is that I just... want to play it more than any previous Sonic game that's been announced past Generations. Forces' announcement and buildup to release for me was just "oh great, more boost levels to speedrun" (though I wasn't aware of how flat that game would fall). This game is looking like it'll give me things to chew on and think about. I don't want to get my hopes up too high, but the positive impressions people have been giving are raising them a little bit. Of course the game still has problems, but I'm expecting a solid 7-8/10 that shows promise for the future of the series gameplay-wise at this point. (For perspective Forces was a 5/10 that showed no promise for me)
you joke but I've had the headcanon for a while that Sonic at least is some kind of trickster entity who doesn't age (particularly with how he's talked about in JP media in the 90s. "he is like the sun" and all that jazz), and this kind of lines up with the other characters too
Yeah it was awful on lower end consoles, unacceptable in fact. I had a blast with it though on my crappy gaming laptop though, and enjoyed the whole game without any major issues. I think my point was, that if frontier's core gameplay is solid enough, then I'm not too fussed about bugs. Not that games should release buggy in the first place, but it just really doesn't bother me these days unless it's super bad like 06. Especially when I see allot of YouTubers purposely break a game and then tell you how shit it is for not allowing them to do some ridiculous movement that wouldn't be replicated through normal gameplay. I get that everyone's tolerance for glitches is different though, and it's understandable.
I mean, what was it? Sonic 3's manual or Jam, then going into Adventure where they finagled some numbers around before? The ages are just fluff information and are either being made more nebulous so they won't have to fix anything in the future or we will possibly see an actual possible change as the timeline is finished that's been alluded to. Either way it's a pretty minor detail to me. It's not like he doesn't age up to be the same age every year anyways, so it's just pretty Simpson esque.
Plot twist: Sonic is mentally unstable and has imagined the entire series. Frontiers is the game where he realises this.
