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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. Linkabel

    Linkabel

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    I think the things that cause people not to click with the story is how it's told, it's purpose for general audiences, and what seems like like a last minute shuffle.

    1. The game has general scenes that play as you progress, then there's the scenes you get as you talk with Sonic's friends, and then there's optional scenes with them as well. Plus stuff like the memos.

    Obviously you'll encounter what's mandatory, but I've already seen some people missed a lot of context by not going for the optional content. We can blame the developers for going this route or the player for not completing everything all day, but this is an issue I've seen.

    Frontiers is also in this awkward spot where it's in between how stories used to be told in games like SA1&2 and how stories were told in games like Colors and Forces. And this shows in why people feel Sonic getting saved by the corruption is a bit anticlimactic.

    It's the Tails gets brainwashed/turn into a robot by the Deadly Six issue from Colors/Lost World. As you're playing the game you do think to yourself, "Oh shit, am I going to fight Tails now? How am I going to get him out of this one?"

    Only to get resolved in a 1-3 minutes cutscene.

    And the same thing happens in that particular moment in the story. You start thinking to yourself, "am I going to play as the others now? Or am going to get sucked into a Cyberspace level? Or a get stuck in a small Cyberspace world looking for my memories while the others help me? A boss fight?"

    But no, the issue gets resolved in a 5 minute cutscene. Despite being a problem that has been plaguing you the whole game.

    Yes, your friends sacrifice themselves for you again and this leads you to work together with SAGE. But it could've been solved with more stakes and input from the player. Savor the moment more if you will.

    A better way to explain what I mean is by putting it this way, imagine that in SA2 during the scene where Eggman captures Sonic and ejects him into space played out like what I mentioned.

    Eggman would gloat he killed Sonic, Tails and Amy get sad BUT Sonic would Chaos Control immediately back into the room again, have Tails beat Eggman in a cutscene and then just have Sonic go directly into Final Rush after talking to Amy and Tails.

    You get some of the same plot beats, but this way it's an issue that gets resolved quickly and without you.

    At the same time, there are great things in this story. I especially love some of the moments with Sonic and his friends. In my opinion Knuckles really shines.

    SAGE suffers though because there's this disconnect with how we see her in the general cutscenes and the bonus scenes. She also doesn't get to shine as an antagonist like say Eggman, Chaos, and Shadow.

    She gets in your way, we do see her motivations but somehow it feels like we needed to spend more time with her and clicking better with her. She's better than Infinite, but can be improved more. I do hope we see her more in the future. And that the future games take a more straightforward way to tell the story like Adventure 1 which I still think did a good job of telling the story.

    Which brings me to...

    2. Frontiers has to work as both a reboot/introduction for a new audience (Sonic Team mentioned how they're going for more fans, especially after the success of both movies) but also satisfied the feedback and criticisms of longtime fans.

    This is a hard line to walk on since you have reintroduce characters and beats for new players, but not lose them completely when you start mentioning stuff that they haven't played.

    I don't think Flynn is a bad writer, there is a reason why he is where he is now and has done stuff outside of Sonic.

    But one criticism I do agree with that is that sometimes he tends to overdo the "remember this..." dialogue.

    At the same time, this game does need that for reasons stated above.

    There some scenes that are perfect like when they reference the Tikal visions. It feels natural and not forced because they have experienced something similar before.

    Not saying there are some that feel like a slap in the face or make your eyes roll, but I get why they're in the game. And I also understand that there were some missed opportunities (is really no one going to mention the Ancients look like Chaos?)

    3. As from what we've seen from the data mining, seems like unfortunately they had to change what they had in mind during the last part of the game which no doubt had to have an effect on the story.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2022
  2. bookman the stinky

    bookman the stinky

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    I don't get how these characters clearly see these flashbacks the same as we do, with these ancients looking like a slightly lankier Chaos 0, and not a single one mentions it after the flashbacks. I really would've rather not had that little bit of exposition at all cause that connection literally doesn't get explained and all I'm left with is aching balls, blue and swollen.

    I gotta say though, despite this game being a 6-7/10 imo, I've never had so much fun with a 6-7/10 before. I hope the feedback gets taken to heart, and the next title iterates and refines all the gameplay concepts introduced in Frontiers.

    edit: not worth another post but definitely try playing through the overworld stages with mouse and keyboard. You'll have to turbo jack up the mouse sensitivity (and maybe even your own DPI) but it's surprisingly fun as hell.
    Even though it's very very likely that won't happen lmao
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2022
  3. bookman the stinky

    bookman the stinky

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    This might be worth its own post tho.
    >three piddly islands
    Wonder how early in development these voice memos were made lmao
    image.png
     

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  4. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    She's like this the few times you can speak to her in the map in Chaos Island as well.
     
  5. RikohZX

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    She has a couple side story scenes per part of the game, and they're almost always basically Sonic asking "hey why are you being so mean, can you answer anything" up until Ouranos where she's just exposition dumps. But it does feel.. weirdly slapped in there.

    Though one of those side stories does have her straight up say the Chaos Emeralds are also native to the Ancient's world, so that does tie up that loose end of the origins. Just, not who made them at that world.
     
  6. The Deleter

    The Deleter

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    Actually these may still play during the gameplay on Rhea. Apparently adjusting an option in the settings increases the odds of running into them, but as I don't have the game right now, I'm not 100% sure on it myself: https://twitter.com/unclegrandpa30/status/1591922110087454721
     
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  7. RikohZX

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    I did randomly see Sonic say to himself on Ouranos that he needs to hurry up and get the Emeralds. I think the game doesn't so much have positional triggers for some of these things as they are either timers or RNG? It's.. weird, and inconsistent since otherwise I never once had a mid-game dialogue thing like that which wasn't a sort of "Sonic comments on a nearby location at a specific position as the camera pans away" moment.
     
  8. Battons

    Battons

    Shining Force Fan Member
    I once had The End abruptly stop me in place for a good few minutes and lecture me about how to play the game because I wasn't getting the chaos emeralds or talking to Sonic's friends, I was only doing the memory tokens. It was really annoying because I couldn't skip it. Hadn't seen anyone else mention that yet and it was really frustrating.
     
  9. MootPoint

    MootPoint

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    I'm curious about what was the fourth island if the deleted comments in the coding are to go by. I felt like I heard Iizuka mention about four biomes and one of them being related to Water in an interview once? I could be absolutely wrong about that though.

    However, I do think it's weird that they included a whole "oxygen" mechanic and it's very underutilized in the final game, besides that one water balloon enemy.
     
  10. Glaber

    Glaber

    Has Beaten Sonic Genesis for GBA Oldbie
    So that did happen on its own. I think that was meant for island 1, but I some how got it on island 3 and thought I bumped a button.
     
  11. It’s a bit too easy to sequence break on Ares with rail launching. I did it by accident exploring on my second playthrough because I forgot the tower was part of the boss arena. I started hearing the music and got confused what was going on for a minute and ended up having to head back to the title since you can’t warp away in a battle. Nice for speedrunners but the rail launching is too easy of a mechanic that this will definitely happen to first timers. Just put a check on your emerald count and implement a scene where the Wyvern yeets you back to the main play area.

    My biggest complaint with the movement in the game in that boost jumping off the ground gets eaten when you’re even slightly facing down. The natural terrain is so uneven that it feels like a good half or more jumps end up being on a little spot that’s technically a decline, even when the trajectory as a whole should allow you carry your momentum upward. It does function similarly to a downhill jump in the classics/a momentum game but it’s just too strict and doesn’t feel right. Maybe a solution would be for the game to calculate your average upward velocity over the past half second or something and use that for the jumps rather than your current position? Idk, I’m no dev.

    Okay, that’s not a bad explanation. He does bring up his lineage as a reasoning for sympathizing with the Kocos so it makes sense. I guess on some level I just hate Forces’ story and wish it wasn’t even mentioned lol.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2022
  12. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

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    If you've spent any time exploring Rhea outside the paths to the towers, there's a whole area with a bunch of submerged ruins. I imagine if it had gotten the full island treatment that it would have been used there the most.
     
  13. Gnidel

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    The undoing of corruption really undermines the story. I think Ouranos Island could have been awesome if Sonic stayed corrupted and stuck in Cyberspace.
    Making Ouranos Island in Cyberspace could be really fast and simple to achieve - just invert colors for grass and ground textures and add some glitchy effects. Slap some already copypasted assets from Cyberspace on top of the world. Replace hearts with something associated with Sonic like red rings or shoes. Maybe use models from previous games as reskins of some bosses, like Lost World Catterkillers for Tower and Slicers for Ninja... or not, regular enemies would be fine too. Fix the corruption along the process of collecting Sonic's Memory Tokens and talk to Tails, Knuckles, Amy, Eggman and Sage. Then defeat Supreme and The End in the Cyberspace where hacking minigame makes much more sense. Done - awesome finale that ties into themes of Cyberspace.
    Repurposing Ouranos didn't have to be expensive.
     
  14. Trippled

    Trippled

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    I am reminded of a Yakuza 1 situation where they said "1 year, let's make 2 a banger!" and in the eyes of a lot of people Yakuza 1 was a flawed clunky kind of game and then 2 was top tier PS2 masterpiece. That rhythm of iteration been going on for almost 2 decades.

    It's been a while since a "2" game was released and I think a Frontiers 2 no thrills attached would be a good choice, and IMO managable to make in 2 years. Doesn't need more staff.
     
  15. Damn. That’s not a bad idea. It could have played into the whole, “Break the barrier between dimensions,” thing that The End says in the beginning. It also could also let them both break out in the finale for the last battle. Instead of a Chaos Emerald deus ex machina, Sage could have just gone and interacted with Sonic within Cyberspace as she did with Eggman.
    Yeah, I think with the core gameplay now established, the same team could likely do something much more impressive and cohesive feeling with a shorter deadline. I just don’t want to be in my 30s when the next Sonic game comes out TBH.
     
  16. Shaddy the guy

    Shaddy the guy

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    The fact that Rhea is treated as a seperate island without even having a separate map from Kronos and is full of empty areas with no objects, and the fact that Ouranos has Autumn textures but only uses them on one island, tells me that even that would have been too much of a time commitment. It's entirely possible that some of the lategame enemies had already been completed or had in-fact been made for the last third of Kronos, and it all just had to be sectioned off and slotted in.

    It's a disappointment, but I do actually think they made the right decision.
     
  17. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    *cries in 30*
     
  18. :flunked:Seeing that I’ll almost be 30 when Yakuza 8 comes out hurt me lol.
     
    Last edited: Nov 14, 2022
  19. Thinking about my age + the next maingame release is kinda depressing and is a thing I don't want think very much about...
     
  20. MastaSys

    MastaSys

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    You know what.

    I came to like the S3K flashback as it it.
    No room to doubt any atempt to segregate the game canon. No alternative similar events or anything of the sort to protect any Classic Modern apparent divide. It happened just like you remember.

    Whenever it was intentional or not.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2022
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