Yeah, this is a big deal that people overlook or just dismiss. I think they should treat the Switch as the main development platform and then adjust for the others rather than the other way around. Considering the demographics, it’s likely that most casuals will play on the Switch so offering a compromised version is bad practice. Heavily-stylized visuals are almost a necessity to make a game look good while running acceptably on the platform.
I would like to see an "Advance 4" with models that both are styled after Uekawa's art (even his current art is fine) with that shading style (even the recent more X style Channel art shading is fine too), but I'd love to see Arc System Works style shape keys and custom models per animation frame with them trying to recreate the Advance sprite animations but in 3D with Uekawa's style. It can definitely be done in a 2D game with fixed camera angles and that would be amazing to look at.
I’m almost positive the next game is already in development. Well, pre-development at the very least. So maybe not anything playable, but work is being done. I imagine a portion of the team is implementing the update while a smaller group is working on what’s next.
I should clarify that I don't literally want that mod, I was just using it as an example of how the aesthetic can drastically change.
I got my Moor Art Gallery concept art. It looks great, but... The mailman didn't want to walk 20 feet across our flat, empty, easily navigable yard on a clear day, so he folded the envelope in half and shoved it in the mailbox. They are currently being weighed down by the Encyclo-speed-ia and a pair of shoes. Only one of them has a crease that's noticeable enough to worry about, but I want them bent as little as possible before I bother framing them. I emailed Moor, not to complain, but to ask if they had any tips to flatten them back out. Oh well. I'm taking a vacation next week. Might be a good time to play Frontiers again. Been a while and I do kinda miss it.
idk if anyone cares but I just realized it's been one whole year since we first saw gameplay footage of Frontiers
And despite what people may say, both this trailer and the subsequent IGN First footage showed the game looking almost identical to its final form. Everything that they fixed up was pretty much just superficial. The gameplay in the IGN First footage told a pretty clear story of what the game was. It looked jank and ugly not because it was a bad player and early footage, but because it is a hank and ugly game. Whoda thunk it? I can't bring myself to really hate Frontiers or anything. But it's nothing if not disappointing by meeting my expectations every single step of the way lol.
In what possible way is this a clear showcase of the game? It's 7 minutes of randomly cut, out of context footage where we don't have a clue what's going on. There is zero indication of a plot, Cyber Space levels, *anything* that's a part of the core gameplay loop. Everything shown is unexplained. Multiple reporters and content creators agreed that the video was a terrible showcase, and that the game played better than the video looks. I agree that the game did not visually improve much from this video and is still janky as hell, but to say this "told a clear story of what the game was" is just baffling.
I think @Blue Blood was speaking mostly about aesthetic and general gameplay systems. Like Sonic's movement, the general incredibly automated approach to level design. Etc. To be honest, I do think the IGN early clips are very representative of the game. They don't show the story, but otherwise it is a very accurate representation of the game. Running around generic fields, going through automated and isolated platforming challenges, doing rudimentary combat. It isn't completely representative no (we don't see the collectathon loop). But it is pretty close to my experience with the game.
It doesn't show Cyberspace!, plot, combat or boss battles, but everything that it does show is pretty damn accurate.
I could show Sonic running in circles and awkwardly homing-attacking enemies in City Escape, but that wouldn't show the audience what Sonic Adventure 2 is now, would it?
The footage shows us exactly How Sonic barely interacts with slopes How stilted Sonic's movement controls are How platforming is made up of chains of boosters and springs interspersed with entirely automated grind rails and invisible splines How Sonic's animations and even his very physics mess up of you try to make him walk slowly How you run around fairly featureless open areas and then do the aforementioned "platforming" on generic floating objects How egregiously bad the pop-in is It's really not about what the player is doing. It's about how the game is responding to what the player is doing, and in turn exactly what the game expects and allows you to do. You can play any game badly, and you can certainly show off some totally legitimate jank in SA2. But you can't so easily fake how the game responds to player input. The footage showed a game that had all the hallmarks of something like Forces in an open environment. And by and large, that's exactly what the game offers. I don't dislike Frontiers. It's not even a bad game. But if that footage didn't speak very loudly to the telltale signs of the gameplay DNA, I don't know what would. It's like the 3 second footage of S4E1 that told us everything we needed to know about the the fact it was built on Rush and shared similar physics and level design. When you know what you're looking for in a game, it's pretty easy to identify these kinds of things. As @Laura said, it didn't show us every facet of the game's structure and the variety of content, but it did tell us what to expect of the gameplay feel and what Sonic Team were going for.
I have to agree with Blue Blood and Laura on that one. I don't quite agree with the idea that IGN's footage made the game look worse for whatever reason. Admitedly, I wasn't excited at that preview, but like, I was neither disappointed by what I saw, nor surprised by the final game, and I say this as someone who thinks Frontiers is by far one of the best Sonic games. I certainly got more interested by the game as time went on, but that wasn't because of what they showed to us, or how they did it, but because I accepted this new idea of Sonic, and I can't speak for anyone else, but I believe many of Frontiers' enjoyers might be on the same boat without even noticing it. I have a mindset to how I react to newly announced media, and that is to be as acceptive as I can until I'm able to experience the full product and think clearly about it, I'm not going to be too angry at something that looks bad, but I'll also not be excited because that's also not going to help me. It's not uncommon for me to see people end up loving things that they hated initially, even if the actual thing didn't actually seem to change in any meaningful way, or the opposite, people getting excited over a product that really wouldn't interest then if it wasn't for the hype. Sonic Forces is great example for that, because I have friends that thought the game was going to be good, but I insisted to them that everything that we saw looked like complete and utter shit (Yes, my 13 years old self was incredibly annoying about it.), but they still thought the game could be good... then Forces came out and they agreed with every single thing I said about the game before it came out, ironically, I did like Forces quite a lot lol. My point here is that I don't think any of these friends did actually think that Forces looked good, but they thought the stuff we didn't see would save the game, I say that because of them using arguments like "These might just be the first few stages, it's fine". I can't speak for everyone, but it seems that people gave Forces the benefit of the doubt when it clearly didn't earn it. Frontiers seems like an opposite situation to me, where it seemed some people really wanted to not like the game. Now, everyone's entitled to their own feelings, so I can't really say anybody is wrong for thinking that the stuff they didn't show in the first few videos made the game substantially better for whatever reason, but for the people that ended up liking the game when it came out, I feel that they were ignoring anything that might've seen interesting for them otherwise and complained about everything else. I'm not saying that you shouldn't be cautious with the Sonic series when they disappoint us so frequently, but it seems to me that at least a good chunk of the shift people had with Frontiers was caused by an over correction of what happened to Forces. Am I taking a very anecdotal experience and applying it to a huge fanbase of people with many varying opinions and thoughts? Perhaps, but I saw a lot of people in the wild using arguments similar to the ones I head in my circles, so I do think it's at least worth considering it. To make a long story short, your first impressions are the most misleading you can have, that's where the idea of "You have to make a good first impression" comes from, because usually, the public is at its most emotional state at that point. Did Frontiers give a bad first impression? No, I don't think so. But I certainly think that this idea of Sonic was fated to have such a reception when first revealed no matter what, and I don't think the stuff they showed to us afterwards make the game signifiantly more interesting (Silly minigames that are made so even a toddler can complete it with ease, boost stages that follow the same design philosophy of Forces and also reuse old layouts and level themes, the average story, the mostly mediocre guardian bosses, and the admitedly incredibly awesome Titans, but those aren't really representative of Frontiers' gameplay and are just spectacle to end each island), the showcase could've been better, but it's still just Sonic Frontiers, similar situation would be if they showed a new classic game played by someone who thinks Sonic controls like a generic platformer and thus ends up not taking advantage of momentum physics and whatnot, like, yeah, a part of the game isn't there, but for a showcase I see it as superficial, you can still get a good feel for how the game is designed and what it's attempting to be. It could be that these other features were enough to change the minds of many and I'm just making conspiracy theories here, but who knows
As someone whose primary enjoyment of the game was the collectathon gameplay loop, that early footage not showing it was actually a very glaring omission. Same with not showing how you can "slope jump" off of certain rails for big air to fly around the map (a big part of "how the game is responding to what the player is doing") and get memory tokens the 'wrong way'.
We're bound to be getting it soon, considering it's a birthday DLC. Morio Kishimoto also implied on Twitter that it would release on Sonic's birthday. I think it's interesting how they haven't given these updates basically any pre-release cycle at all. The first update was revealed only two days before it was actually released, and the second update has still not been revealed. I imagine that will change with the final update, as that seems to be a much bigger project than the first two updates.
I honestly think a Sonic Central is a possibility but it won’t be for reveals or focusing on fall releases. I could see them wanting to highlight Origins Plus and Frontiers dlc a day or two before they drop.
