I'm always skeptical of YouTube critics, but he makes some good points, and got me thinking about Frontiers again. I agree with him that the presentation of Frontiers is off in some ways. The Islands look good, Ares especially, but the cutscenes are not always of the best quality. The intro in particular was a big let down. When I first saw it before I bought the game, I genuinely hoped it was fanmade, because I couldn't believe how ugly it was. Every mainline Sonic game from Adventure to Forces has had a CGI intro, even Secret Rings on the Wii had a CGI cutscene, but Frontiers? Nope. All frontiers gets is flat lighting, and stiff animations. It's even worse considering that there were CGI ads for Frontiers. What happened? Did the marketing team blow the budget for CGI and leave nothing for the actual game? The rest of the cutscenes vary. Some are more animated than others, the ones with knuckles on Ares have a lot of movement, but many others are just two characters standing still and talking. It was only a small point but I agree with him that the music is a weak point of Frontiers, not the titan boss music mind you, those songs are absolute bangers, but the whole rest of the soundtrack. The island and cyberspace tracks are mostly forgettable. Ares Island movement 3, Rhea Island and a handful of cyberspace tracks are exceptions, but I honestly can't remember most of the songs in the game. There are no bad songs in Frontiers but there are also only a few good songs. Most of the soundtrack is just background noise. The automation in Frontiers is often obnoxious. Usually when I was running around on the islands, I was always actively avoiding springs, and dash pads, and other such things, trying not to get flung into a five-second mini-cutscene and completely lose and lose all my speed and possibly get shot off in the complete opposite direction I was trying to go. This is especially egregious on Chaos Island, the 2D sections littered on the Island are so annoying. Any spring or dash panel has the potential to send you into a 2D section that can take anywhere from 5-15 seconds to escape, and they are EVERYWHERE. Whoever thought 2D sections in an open world was a good idea should be fired. I get the feeling that Sonic Team did not have confidence in Sonic Frontiers when they made it. Which shows in its lack of difficulty. None of Sonic Frontiers is hard, not the enemies, not the titans, not the cyberspace levels, even the S ranks are easy (not 1-2 though for some reason). The complete lack of challenge says to me that they thought if players encountered any adversity or obstacles, they would give up and play a better game. The recent additions of the Cyberspace challenge, battle rush, and extreme difficulty prove this. Now that Sonic Team knows the game is good, they add in challenges, because they're now confident people enjoy the game enough to overcome them.
This is an interesting video I found, it showcases the sound design of Frontiers. Normally I completely take stuff like this for granted, but it's clear a lot of thought and care went into this game's audio, beyond just the music. It really does add to the immersion of these islands.
I am pretty sure Forces and Generations didn't have CG intro, or Lost Worlds Generations had the exact same thing happened to it. the marketing was full of CG scenes, while the game had none of it Sometimes marketing material are just that, marketing material.
Generations and Lost World do actually have a CG intro. Forces on the other hand does not. I don't own Forces so I just looked up "sonic forces intro" on YouTube and found a video that seemed to be a CG intro to Forces. apparently though it was actually just some marketing material labelled as the intro. I can see why Sonic Team would only use CG for the marketing and not for the actual game. That stuff is expensive and pretty and it makes sense to use on material that will be seen publicly and drive sales, rather than tuck it away inside the game where only people that have already bought it will see it. Even if it doesn't make financial sense, I would like to see CG cutscenes make a return. They were cool as hell in Shadow the Hedgehog and 06 and I want to see something on the that level again.
This game at least has reason not to use cg cutscenes - the day/night cycle. Have to account for different times of day. Also I vote all cutscenes should be in engine because mods lol.
First two scenes you see (Everyone getting pulled into Cyberspace) are pre-recorded and pretty short anyways (at least this time they left in the original cutscene data) so they wouldn't be that hard to have done in CG instead, but then we'd be dealing with the awful compression artifacts that the pre-rendered scenes always get. It was awful in Forces and now that's the best footage we have of those scenes even though we can see the compression artifacts from space.
I mean those scenes have awful compression artefacts anyway, even more so than is standard for this series.
I'm more saying that at least we have the assets to make them run in real time instead of a perpetually crusty webm. We wouldn't get something better unless I guess Marza or whatever studio was allowed to put it on their portfolio (that they'd host on Youtube anyways)
I might be misunderstanding what you're saying, but this is literally what 3D platformer level design is. Just do the same thing, except more of it and put these level design pieces in an open world. Just picking random spots in the videos, try 43:43 here 16:14 here Or probably the best example, 54:39 here. It's not going to happen exactly the same way for Sonic, because he's more powerful than these platform heroes. But it's not exactly going to be far off. Just consider what limitations Sonic DOES have (as an example, how far/high he can jump at the various speeds the game permits you to run at) and design level design around them, level design that ask you to go to certain points in the area at various elevations and climb various structures using the play mechanics as well as the environments' gimmicks and platforms so as to get a collectable. Also... Thanks for the new youtube video to watch and then, upon watching it, a new channel to subscribe to.
I said in my previous post they could make better challenges similar to these examples. I agree this would be better and more fun but if it's truly open world you'd still just be going from one destination to another. That's not a bad thing but I think a lot of people expect a huge Sonic themed world that connects without filler space. That would be linear just on a huge scale. So if the open worlds were better and more creative should there not be separate stages like Cyberspace then? I think you'd still need traditional Sonic stages because a truly open environment will probably always allow for "cheating" the terrain.
Tried watching the video. Got 10 minutes in and all I could think is "Man this is so cynical" and honestly I just couldn't do it. I don't think there's anything for me to learn from his assessment of the game and I'm not particularly entertained by how he presents it either. I'm not making definitive judgements on him or the video because I haven't watched the whole thing, this is more just a stream of thoughts that came form what I did watch, so like don't take this heavier than a feather I pray to god do not take this heavier than a feather but it's kind of frustrating to hear a phrase like "creative stagnation of supposedly original titles like [...] Lost World [...]" get followed up by complaints that lead me to believe the same person thinks they got *too* creative by *not* being creatively stagnant. To me when someone says that they liked the "cartoony look" of the Genesis Games's art, I just think of Lost World, which is a direct art interpretation of what would be the 3d equivalent to the original art, but being Lost World is a bad thing + Pandering + Sonic Team is creatively bankrupt, so... What's supposed to be good about looking like the original "Cartoony look"? Do I just have to color the grass and rock textures unnatural green and brown colors to get the look right, or do I just do Lost World? If I was deciding for everyone at Sonic Team, I wouldn't be able to understand what that means, it's hardly a criticism, and it would seem whatever my best guess is if I follow it, I will lose anyways, because what I want to do (stylized textured realism with a slightly bigger realism ratio) is criticized for not being the old stuff, and the old stuff (lost world box square landscape with bug eyed choppers with plastic shading) is criticized for being uncreative. Even though they're clearly choosing "neither" and just doing it game-by-game, people are criticizing whatever they do.
I really don't agree, and I wish I was smart enough to articulate why. In any case, I feel Generations or even SRB2 does a better job at that, though at least with the latter I might admittedly be biased. (SRB2 is still the best Sonic game)
TelekinesticMan raised many good points in his video but I don’t think he really took the time to fully articulate what he meant. His video frankly was not a critique, it was a rant… and I’m saying this as someone who agrees with many of the points he made.
Lost World goes for Classic “cartoony” in the most basic, paint by the numbers way. Yes it takes design cues, like checkerboard dirt and the googly eyed badniks, but it’s all surface level. It reminds me of like the GameCube Mario aesthetic. It tried to be faithful but it looks off. All the cues are there but they’re poorly applied. Now mania, that captures the old feel much better while still making some fresh zones (Mirage Saloon, Press Garden). It gets the spirit of what the old games did with their art. Lost World didn’t and that’s why it looks like Sonic’s running through a Fischer Price set
I don't know if this is a smart of articulating it, but in my opinion Lost World's aesthetics are like the Genesis games' aesthetics after being described in a game of telephone: they're an attempt at recreating the aesthetics of the Genesis games by looking at those games directly and not the sources or concepts that those games' aesthetics were influenced by. Just feels like a flat imitation more than anything imo
I am not complaining in the slightest, but Press Garden especially feels more Freedom Planet than Classic Sonic in it's aesthetic. That judgement might be being influenced by it's music, though.
I can see what you mean, although freedom planet started as a Sonic fan game so it does borrow some design cues. Music is def different. Act 1 feels/looks like a Classic zone though.
The only cutscenes I was thinking of were the two at the very start, and since they are always at the same time of day, it's not a problem. The rest of the cutscenes wouldn't really benefit from being CG, most of them are just characters standing or walking while talking, and those can already be just fine in-engine. Moddability is nice, but I'm fine if some is given up, so that stuff like this can exist.
I think despite your confusion you're actually hitting the nail on the head, here. In line with Dark Sonic's comparison to Fisher Price toys, Lost World just makes the "classic Sonic aesthetic" look really plastic.
But like, what about Mania can apply to 3d without turning out pretty much the same as Lost World? The problem with saying a 2D game got it right is that the 2D game is still 2D and lifts everything directly from the thing that it's trying to mimic, so of course the choppers look exactly like whatever you imagine the original looking like, because they're the original. I guess that's where it comes from. The original sprite art is pretty open to interpretation, but a 3d model is the definitive version of how a thing looks no matter who's looking at it, so then taking cues from that original design and transferring them to 3d is just never going to look "right" to some people, even though it's pretty much as spot on as it can be.
