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

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by MykonosFan, Sep 29, 2022.

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  1. candlesonfir3

    candlesonfir3

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    The story in this game is bafflingly bad to me even for sonic standards, I feel like every single cool thing they almost did gets handwaved away by the end, and the game ends up leaving you with no answers and way more questions.
     
  2. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    And we've got a series that's lost a lot of appeal due to recent games being lacklustre, so why not give them an update to better remove that reputation that 'modern' Sonic has accrued.

    No?
    It's something I'd like them to do, not anything I'd actually expect to happen.
     
  3. Well 1) Boom tried that and we all know how well that worked out.

    And 2) It's not really necessary. Sonic's design is already simple and iconic as it is, trying to change it risks diluting that.

    We still have some people here who think the shift from the classic to modern design wasn't needed, we don't need another wrinkle to that.

    You get Sonic's good name back by actually putting him in games that take advantage of his signature abilities.
     
  4. lupinsmask

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    I don't like that. They better not have just tangle in the next mainline game when we haven't had playable Tails or Knuckles in 3D since 2006.
     
  5. Battons

    Battons

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    My bet is one of three things will happen
    A) We get a solo sonic game again
    B) We get multiple playable characters and this is the setup for it (I doubt this one the most)
    C) They are in the next game and talk about how much they learned without actually giving us payoff or reason to care about them going away.

    Personally I don’t care what characters are in a story as long as they actually serve a purpose and if they aren’t doing anything no need to muddy the waters. My hope as I mentioned before is that we see The End again. They set up an actual god that claims it can’t be killed and super sonic isn’t enough, I want to see THAT story first.
     
  6. I want Tangle AT LEAST to appear in next maingame.
     
  7. Epsilonsama

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    So Rhea Island is just the North Part of Kronos Island so the question is, what happened here? There's a ton of unused environments there and it feels that a ton of work went there for it to be ignore over some spires. And Ouranos Island while sharing the same textures as Kronos does seem separate enough but I want to know why was Kronos and Rhea separated. It feels to me that the Rhea section at least feels very last minute while Ouranos feels like they front loaded everything that did not fit Kronos there including 9 Cyberspace stages plus the Guardians. Anyone has any theories of what could have happened?
     
  8. RikohZX

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    We know they scrapped an entire 2019 build or so of an actual open world game and opted to downscale it, and the entire endgame feels.. well, super-rushed, like budget was running out. Ouranos using a lot of the same assets and even the same music as Kronos despite it and Rhea having ostensibly been part of the early reveal trailers showing game areas implies to me that things really fell apart late in development.

    I'm still bothered by how they pull a Chip 2.0 in the ending and then Sonic and co. completely ignore everything that happened in favor of just focusing on their character moments in the game.
     
  9. MootPoint

    MootPoint

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    The climax kinda blows, tbh. I do like what they set up for potential future games, but everything else comes off as flaccid. I thought the final area was gonna be Sonic trapped in the cyber dimension and he gets out right on time for the final boss but I guess that would've been too much work.

    The final boss isn't that good either, including the hard mode exclusive phase. I expected it to be more climatic than just an out-of-place shmup? I prefer the normal ending now because that skips the nonsense filler and gets to the end, lol.

    Apparently, it was supposed to be a normal fight according to a modder, which is a shame. It comes off as if they ran out of time near the end of development to flesh it out.

    Also I only heard this from someone, so don't take this as gospel, but someone found an older version of Kronos Island that included the six towers in the files? Old as in using a slightly different terrain than what we got in the final game. Again though, I only heard that from a friend so it might be misinformation.
     
  10. jubbalub

    jubbalub

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    Now that the game is out I can finally shed some light on this. The Switch version of the game has an early version of Kronos Island's model in the files.
    [​IMG]

    Does that top part look familiar? That's because it's Ouranos Island.
    [​IMG]

    It matches up almost perfectly, right down to the pyramid and the flower patch next to it, and the little peninsulas strewn about. It's not identical, but it's obviously the same thing. This must have been done in the final year of development, considering this early version of Kronos Island is seen in the announcement trailer posted in December. Check out the tip of the pyramid way in the background, that isn't there in the June previews:
    upload_2022-11-10_23-16-55.png

    Another interesting development tidbit: all of the islands are defined in a .lua file, with prefixes based on their assets. w1 is Kronos, Rhea, and Ouranos, w2 is Ares, and w3 is Chaos. Most of the in-game files start with these prefixes. There is a single mention of a "w4" in the .lua file, but it's the only appearance of it anywhere in the game files, and it's even commented out.

    [​IMG]

    One more thing to note: Kronos Island and Rhea Island use the exact same map model. They load the same model in the .lua file. I believe, in the context of the story, the towers are supposed to be on Kronos Island. They don't even try to hide the fact that it's the same island in cutscenes, so I think it's likely in gameplay you were supposed to return to Kronos Island to deactivate the towers. But due to reasons that I'm sure corporate had to do with, it's treated as a separate location in-game so they could tout "five islands" instead of just four.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2022
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  11. RikohZX

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    You can look over the ledge of Rhea's mountains and straight up see the Kronos assets in the far distance, but The End prevents you from trying to go that way, never mind the map and everything, yeah. That explains a lot, they weren't showcasing what was the endgame at the time but rather it was just one gigantic isle and then it got split apart. It also explains why Rhea and Ouranos lack proper intros at all, compared to Chaos beforehand even getting the excuse of Super Sonic flying in like Ares.

    The End effectively having a low budget Ikaruga shoot-em-up secret bonus boss makes sense now. They all but ran out of time to actually make a full-fledged final battle, so they kept the QTE cutscenes and added in the secret fight to try to make up for it.
     
  12. MootPoint

    MootPoint

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    Holy shit, thanks for sharing! That's crazy, I was like "Huh Kronos didn't match up to what we saw in trailers at all". I'm so curious as to why they gave it a complete makeover.
     
  13. jubbalub

    jubbalub

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    Here's what I think happened: the towers segment was supposed to happen on Kronos. You were always intended to go back to Kronos at some point to disable the towers, then you go to "World 4". But for whatever reason, the "World 4" as originally planned didn't happen, so they took part of Kronos and made it the final island. Boom, there you go, four fully-featured islands.

    Then, SEGA or whatever decided they wanted the game to have five islands instead of four. So, to appease SEGA, they decided to use the loophole of treating the towers segment as its own island. Even though in the context of the story it makes literally no sense, because it LITERALLY is just Kronos Island. The cutscenes clearly portray it as Kronos Island, but they decided to do it like this anyway to please the SEGA gods.

    This is all speculation, but I think this is what happened.
     
  14. Epsilonsama

    Epsilonsama

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    Interesting, it does feel like it. Also about Ouranos I found that there's two Big the Cat Towers in said Island which both point to the same place. Anyone knows why that might be the case? As anyone found a 5th Big the Cat Pond by any chance?
     
  15. Sneekie

    Sneekie

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    When I was playing the Switch version on an emulator, I tried to sequence break to get to the water-logged ruins on Rhea from Kronos. Using some rails you unlock by beating a puzzle and a floating platform, I tried to see if I can HABC, but Sonic doesn't go nearly far enough to reach that section, and I would imagine there's an invisible wall there too.

    Still, it does seem like there are objects loaded in that section even on Kronos. Has anyone out-of-bounds their way there?
     
  16. Sneekie

    Sneekie

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    So I've been exploring Rhea and Kronos just to see how big this rabbit hole is.

    1) Rhea is empty as hell, as in there is quite literally no objects or anything to interact with outside of the path that takes you to the towers. Despite this, you can explore A LOT, and by a lot, I mean I'm pretty sure that the same invisible walls that prevent you from going to Rhea from Kronos work vice versa. This wall is the only thing stopping you from fully exploring both islands. You can very clearly see Kronos from Rhea beat for beat, the game does not hide it.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Also, the voice / The End will tell you to not go that way, even after you've unsealed it, heh. The game doesn't give you the "progress through the main story" prompt, though.

    2) I believe that Rhea Island uses the prototype version of Kronos Island simply for the above reason. Specifically, I believe Sonic Team straight up did not have the time / money to populate Rhea, which is why they relegated it to its own island.

    On a similar note, Ouranos Island seems to have been surgically removed from the original Kronos Island.

    Pop quiz: which section is this?

    [​IMG]

    Ouranos, right? WRONG. It's Rhea. The red flower field is the same in both of them, only Ouranos has the full field, while Rhea just kind of... stops existing.

    3) It is impossible to get back to the path to the Giganto boss arena in Kronos. After that battle, the game unloads the first spring in the waterfall. The second spring has an invisible box over it.

    [​IMG]

    Using a nearby rail and the game's rail momentum, you can launch yourself to the third spring, which still exists and can be bounced on, allowing you to climb up the waterfall. Unfortunately, you are stopped by an invisible wall.

    [​IMG]

    You can, however, get to the same waterfall in Rhea, which demonstrates an area you never play in Kronos, because getting to Giganto is a cutscene. This section is one of the images shown on the official website in December.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    Here is another area that is only seen in the December promotion.

    [​IMG]

    [​IMG]

    4) This picture is a shot of the top of the mountains in the tutorial section of Kronos.

    [​IMG]

    An invisible wall stops me from running on these fields. Not the kind of invisible wall where the voice tells you not to go there, just a conventional invisible wall. Not sure what the game is hiding here, but I remember a tweet from the Switch emulator days where someone did manage to explore this area. There were even a few Koco to find (I'm pretty sure Kocos are borderline randomly generated, though).

    5) I mentioned in the previous post that I wanted to sequence break into the water-logged ruins on the right-most part of the map. In that same area, on both Kronos and Rhea, you can see a small alcove and a wall-running section.

    [​IMG]

    This serves literally no purpose in the game, so I wonder how far Sonic Team got with actually creating objects for this whole section of the game.
     
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  17. jubbalub

    jubbalub

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    Correction here, Rhea Island and Kronos Island use the exact same island model. They both load the same model in the .lua file.
     
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  18. Sneekie

    Sneekie

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    I suppose then that the game probably checks for "Kronos" or "Rhea" to determine whether it loads the gigantic towers and the level / object layout for the latter and the rest of the island for the former.

    I agree with you earlier, there definitely was a corporate mandate / decision involved, because I'm pretty sure it would take less work to just simply have the two islands as one and have the player go to the top portion of Kronos.

    I don't even think it achieves the goal of padding out the game, because it would take more time to explain going back to Kronos than to pretend this is a new island.

    Rhea feels so much like a beta map you'd have to dig in the code to find--except no, it's part of the base game experience, lol.
     
  19. jubbalub

    jubbalub

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    I'm almost certain this was the case. The cutscenes, dialogue, and story in general don't make ANY mention of it being a separate location. It's heavily implied to simply be Kronos Island. The cutscene of the towers appearing shows them from the angle of Kronos Island, you can see the inverted pyramid and everything. The only that indicates it's a separate location is the map screen.

    Fun fact, Rhea is the older sister of Kronos. Just thought that was funny.
     
  20. RikohZX

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    I mean, if you complete all of Kronos' challenges, the filled-in map screen shows an entire massive northern expanse separate of the Gigantos fight that you never access from Kronos.. only to have Rhea literally show the exact same full map screen because you run in that space. So not even the map screen is lying, just the name in the UI.
     
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