Sonic Frontiers coming to PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC (Holiday 2022, from Sonic Team)

The spincycle seems so NiGHTs like in practice and I kinda love it because of that.

 

I figured it was pretty obvious so I didn't mention it before, but I did a search for "spincycle" in this thread for an unrelated reason and noticed that none of the results mentioned the trailer, so I thought I may as well bring it up myself just in case.

 

One thing that makes me weary about the "spincycle is in the trailer" thing is that the path Sonic follows is already laid out. The trail Sonic leaves behind him, with the exception of the flash, looks like the Boost or just an indication he's going fast. The little flash that happens when he finishes the circle looks like, to the layman, just a fancy effect that helps transition into the next scene.

 

Sonic doesn't boost. He completely disappears from the scene.




He's not even present at the end of the trailer where his trail draws the circle:


I think that lines up pretty well with the whole idea of Sonic warping to cyberspace.

 

I like the concept of the spincycle and how paraloop-esque it is, but the paraloop was in 2D. Accurately running circles around enemies in 3D with the camera mostly behind Sonic could be pretty frustrating if he doesn’t handle just right.

 

It sounds pretty genius to me, but you're right that it will be a disaster if Sonic doesn't control right. The boost games all have Sonic specifically designed for running down corridors; he accelerates quickly and once he's started running be controls like a car instead of a runner. They can't do that here. Forces caps Sonic to walking speed in the Zavok boys fight because the arena is just a small platform and his running controls would be detrimental, but he still controls like absolute arse there. Another bad thing is how in Lost World and Forces, Sonic moves slower when running left/right than when running forwards/backwards (all relative to the camera). Try to make Sonic run in circles in Lost World and you'll find it difficult because his stored changes so much as he turns. It's dreadful.

All of those design choices were to accommodate the boost style gameplay that focused on running at high speed in one primary direction, only needing to veer out of the way of obstacles and rarely needing to turn. All of them world be incredibly detrimental to an open-world game, especially if combat focused on running around your enemies.

 

I don't think it's a crazy idea to think that Sonic IS still in the overhead shot, but they didn't feel like including a detailed render of Sonic?

Considering that, in a lot of media, Sonic is sometimes represented as just a blue streak, it would make a lot of sense in a far overhead shot for them to just show the blue streak and not bother with Sonic. As far as the first scene, the time between the point where Sonic suddenly "boosts" forward, to the point where his trail reaches the end of the screen, is such a small fraction of a second that I think it's pretty obviously just Sonic disappearing from frame to show how fast he's going. Also Sonic's trail isn't going to keep going without him there. If Sonic warped to Cyberspace, why is his streak running in circles without him?

I think we're reading a little too deep into the trailer effects if we're suggesting Sonic isn't actually in half of the trailer at all, but I guess anything is possible.

 

The trailer shows exactly how they're going to do it IMO. The game is going to shift into an overhead shot when it's time to draw shapes like the spin cycle.

 

That would be cool, but I think they would add a "focus on enemy button" as according to the leaks there is combat outside of this move.

As a side note, maybe they will keep how sonic controls in boost games but only while boosting, perhaps like Mach speed in 06. Essentially making the boost a move/power up used to quickly get around the map.

 

The thing that excites me about the spincycle is that it's finally a move in 3D Sonic that actually feels like it wasn't intentionally made to either patch up a hole or otherwise automate the gameplay. The homing attack was made because jumping on enemies in 3D is much more finicky. The light speed dash is an automated moved for flashy sections. The random crap like the tornado and stuff in Heroes were also just flashy moves for automated sections. The quick step, slide, and stomp are all moves designed to make controlling Sonic easier in the boost games.

But the spincycle? That feels like a move made because it's a cool idea that fits with the core thematics of Sonic--momentum. Spindashing into enemies in 3D is quite finicky (even in those myriad of 3D fangames, this remains true), so turn the spindash into an AOE attack focused around chaining together a circle (presumably without stopping or getting hit). We should have gotten stuff like this way the hell back on the Dreamcast, but I'm just glad that for once a move in Sonic's repertoire isn't just "okay, how we automate Sonic" or "how do we patch up a hole in our game design". It feels like Sonic Team actually went back to the older games and thought about what kind of momentum and flow-based move they could give Sonic.

We'll have to wait and see for how it all shakes out, but it gives me a surprising amount of hope, or at least intrigue.

 

Oh shoot, I didn't pick up on that. Good catch!

 

Riffing on what has already been said, I imagine activating the spin cycle state may pull the camera backwards and upwards a bit. Not completely overhead, but definitely giving the play a much better field of view to prevent players having to contend with depth perception. Say what you want about the direction of Sonic recently, but I think the games since Unleashed have generally been good about having a cooperative camera, and the mechanics don't wet the bed nearly as often as the Adventure games through to 06 did.

 

Worth acknowledging the boost games didn’t have a manual camera, though, so that’s an unfair comparison.

It also leaves the results of whatever this open world game will be like kinda unknown, since Sonic’s never had a game where you’d ever have to move it manually.

 

Unleashed had camera control, but later games removed it.

Technically we had that in previous games' hub areas, as well as Sonic World

But yeah, open world is a paradigm shift compared to the set paths of previous games. It remains to be seen how ST will handle it.

I will say, though, that I like to hear that the series seems to be going for more ambitious and experimental title again, especially after Forces.

 

The spincycle gives me hope that Sonic will control very differently in this game than in any of the Boost games... I can't imagine successfully running in a 360 circle in any Boost game.

Spincycle seems like an earnest attempt to try to make "running in loops" fun in a 3D field. If you think about it, all of the loops in the 3D games are essentially quick cut-scenes, from SA1 to present.

I hope that the spincycle creates a wind/tornado effect that sweeps up the enemies rather than just, like, 'blinking' them away into cyberspace. I always liked the idea that Sonic's speed power was evocative of the wind (as opposed to the electric powers of the 2020 movie -- that always seemed like more of a Flash thing to me).

 

There's the possibility that we simply don't control the spin cycle. You press the button and Sonic runs in a predetermined circle and kill everyone inside.

 

oh no - knuckles

That would be awful and is probably the single worst solution ever, but if they keep boost turning physics it's also a simple way to ovoid making a new physics engine and due to Occam's razor that means it's the best solution in the eyes of sega.

Is there any other way they could do it with boost turning?

My idea is to have adventure style control normally then have the more restricted "lane shifting" turn from modern titles ocurr when boosting. So you would have to boost tactically at the right sections apposed to holding it down.

 

Yea I was thinking of the Sonic Heroes tornado myself

 

It's Sonic CD-style time travel. They're Time Rangers.

 

Come on, man, the leak specifically says "if you complete a circle..." (emphasis mine). This is a level of paranoia that makes no sense.