The one thing I can say with confidence is that the game is so clearly going for a different aesthetic that I don't think they will do throwbacks. It's easy to be cynical and it's often warranted with Sonic, but I genuinely think Sonic Team have heard complaints about nostalgia baiting and la k of originality and have gone guns blazing for a different direction. To such an extent I have seen some fans complain that its gone too far and doesn't look Sonicy. It's just the different direction is literally ripping off Breath of the Wild. Which, erm okay. I guess it suits Sonic? Sonic Team always seem to rip off other games over five years too late But I guess from this perspective breath of the wild makes sense. That game was in many ways a fresh take on Zelda. If Sonic Team wanted a foundation for a fresh take then I can see how they came to it.
I just find it so ironic that after fans complained for an entire decade of nostalgia baiting and living in the past, they bring out a game literally looks unlike anything before it and now the complaints is that it doesn't look enough like the old games. I do get that there's a lot of nuances to this, but its still pretty funny to me. You really can't win with fandoms sometimes. So for everyone's sake, this game better be good. I feel like the aesthetic change would be accepted more if the game actually plays well. Because then we can just drown out the haters.....until Sega inevitably fucks up and we're back to square one.
I... Havent felt the need to watch a single 'analysis' video on youtube because there is nothing to analyse. Despite me ignoring them my timeline is full of them Some confirmations, some nice open world ish designs, a bit zelda ish but nowhere near as close a rip of as Genshin Impact. Until we see any semblance of gameplay this is just.... fine. Not great, not awful, but i'm happy.
God Getshit Impact can fuck off now. How do people LOVE that game when it clearly rips off BOTW but people hate Frontiers even though it is not ripping off nearly as much of BOTW?
That's exactly how it always goes, isn't it? The vocal contingent only remains vocal until they get what they want, and whatever changed makes OTHER people want to speak up about how now THEY'RE not getting what they want. So it goes for me, too! What was "nostalgia pandering" to some was the return of a core part of Sonic's appeal and identity to me, whereas Frontiers, aesthetically speaking, couldn't be much further from it, haha. The wheel that needs greasing is the one that squeaks. Which is also why it's probably not a good idea to judge the fandom as a whole by its most vocal members. There is no real consensus, there are just people who have reason to be louder than others. As former Sega community manager Kevin Eva put it (as the conclusion of a Twitter thread that everyone really should read), "Half the historical changes were usually done to please the audience, but the audience doesn't remember that because they now want the opposite of whatever it is, was or will be."
Well, it helps that it came out a couple of years ago, so it was when people still might have been hurting for something like BOTW. Now there's plenty of alternatives so "Sonic Team is doing it now guys!" sounds even less enticing than it normally would. Also, genshin is an action RPG. Sonic is a platformer. One of these genres fits way easier into the botw mold than the other.
Sorry for the double post Because its different groups complaining about different things. I cannot stress enough that this fandom is not a hivemind no matter how much it looks like it. Considering just how much Sonic has changed over these last three decades and how his content is of varying levels of quality, its no wonder fans are as rabid as they are. But the fandom gets really annoyed when you tell them that. It really does just come down to good games tho. The vocal group of haters have less of a leg to stand on when the games are actually good. When they're not good...well, what do you think is gonna happen when a franchise consistently puts out mediocre content??? People get mad and start expressing opinions.
I was thinking, this would be the perfect game to use the wisps since Colors, because the developers can actually create the levels with the wisps in mind. And for some reason I don't think we are going to have wisps in this game.
Y’all bring up some good points however I think we should also recognize that so little has been shown off of this game that people are fearing the worst for the game’s artstyle as a whole. Speaking personally I’m fine with a realistic art style but I would not be happy if the entire game just takes place in these grasslands as I like a variety of locations in my Sonic games. While what’s been shown off isn’t necessarily a BOTW rip off it’s not particularly unique either. The key word here is unique. Yes the sonic fanbase is fractured and thus different people have different ideas about what makes something look Sonicy... but it definitely helps to have UNIQUE looking levels regardless of which portion of the fanbase Sega’s trying to please. For instance you can have original level designs fit in with the classic aesthetic; just look at the original zones from Mania. By that same logic you can have realistic looking levels take place in locations other than the field that’s in every other open world game. So I don’t think that the complaints here are totally due to fans being reactionary about going from a more classic sonic aesthetic to a realistic aesthetic. It’s that it’s potentially going from unoriginal nostalgia pandering to bland realism. That said, I have hope for this game’s artstyle as this tweet brings up a good point: https://twitter.com/keithjohnstack/status/1469458393329016832?s=21 I would love to see the game lean into surreal geometric structures with Frontier’s comparatively more realistic style.
Part of it is that it's hard to know how much of the game we've actually seen. Not to sound like a "what if green hill and sunset heights are the SAME MAP!?!?!" speculator, but we've seen a couple of environments that all feel pretty similar, but it's not clear how big the ingame world is, nor where these areas are in relation to each other. If this is a great plateu-style grouping of a bunch of elements for the first area, then the rest of the Starfall Islands could each have their own unique identities independent of what we've seen. Again, I have no basis for this, just reasoning as to why I'm not judging the artstyle too hard yet. I'm one of the braindamaged freaks who actually liked the Lost World aesthetics and was unhappy that Forces diverged, so I'm holding out some hope that there's more to it than green fields and a forest. In addition, we've seen none of the supposed "cyber space" levels, which the original leak (the only credible one, as far as I care) never gave much visual identity towards. So we have no idea what those look like. If the game goes for a contrast between more grounded natural environments and more surreal cyberspace levels, that could actually create a nice effect.
It sort of looks like this game will have a Sonic Adventure kind of vibe to it. Although, it's hard to tell since it was a CGI trailer for the most part (if not entirely). It carries a darker tone than most Sonic games like Sonic Forces did and we don't see Classic Sonic at all in this trailer so it's almost easy to say that this game will be its own thing and not some crossover like the last time. I hope this game lives up to the hype this time around, as Sonic Forces got hammered into the ground so-to-speak due to poor gameplay mechanics and such, atleast from the reviews I've seen. Hopefully the criticism from a few years ago will be considered for this game, as I always feel bad whenever SEGA gets backlash for something they put a lot of effort into, especially when it happens quite a lot.
A big fear I have is that if this game fails critically and even the fans hate it, Sonic Team will never try open world gameplay ever again because we know they love to throw the baby out with the bathwater but then again Iizuka said this is meant to lay the foundation for future Sonic games so I guess it's nice that they're willing to refine it, even if it does fail badly.
How do open world sequels generally fare critically? I think the only time I've played an iterative sequel is Saints Row 4 after Saints Row the Third, and that game manages to reuse the world from the previous game by completely changing up what the player can do. Meanwhile, after playing Breath of the Wild, I wasn't really sure how feasible it would be for Zelda as a series to continue to be open world, and of course that still really remains to be seen. Open worlds are resource intensive, both from a processing aspect and development, and I think the one thing Sonic Team shouldn't do if this game hits is try to reinvent the wheel in the next one. With that said, this may be where the whole "open-zone" concept comes into its own. Given that we'll be exploring the Starfall Islands plural, it could be that the game will be something more akin to a hybrid between Breath of the Wild and Mario Odyssey, where each island is a sandbox but you can't access everything at any time, and the locales are able to have more variety because they don't need seamlessly transition into each other (though Breath of the Wild does pull this feat off masterfully). In that sense, Sonic's early identity as an island-hopping adventurer could be perfectly baked into this formula's longevity, as, unlike many video game icons as his ilk, he refuses to be tied down to a singular place.
For whatever reason, I imagine Frontiers being more like a post-LEGO Batman 2 LEGO game in terms of how they go about making an "open world". For example, in LEGO Batman 2, you can explore the whole city of Gotham, drive cars and find various puzzles and snag collectables and the game's currency, occasionally have the opportunity to fight some enemies, and are tasked with going to specific locations to enter the traditional levels throughout the story. How sequels to LEGO games build on that, they kind of just don't, outside of general revamps to the systems (the way characters that fly fly in the newer games is sooooooooooo good) but it works *enough* for the formula. I can't see this working out for a whole new era of Sonic, but I also don't think every game's gonna be "open world" since Izuka seems confident in the idea of bringing Sonic to new genres.
