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

You know, I literally do not know what to expect at this point. Guess I'm just gonna wait.

Good that we are getting a lot of news recently.

 

See the thing is, if it allowed them to make more content, I'm cool with asset reuse, even Green Hill. I know they used some Skyscraper Scamper buildings in Speed Highway, and of course there's the Egg Dragoon. It's just weird when they choose not to do it for stuff they already made. Like, I think most of Forces Green Hill is different from Generations Green Hill despite looking really similar, ditto for Chemical Plant (although Chemical Plant mostly just looks worse). And as much as I think it's really stupid to argue about Sonic's standing pose and quill length, there was nothing particularly wrong with Unleashed's animations, yet they've reanimated Sonic three times since then. Why?

I really have no problem with them ripping themselves off if it were for efficiency, but it's not.

 

IMO there is almost no chance they show a story trailer with no gameplay. I think that's kinda silly. It's definitely been way too long since we saw anything substantial, but we've already seen a cinematic trailer and we've already seen an in-game environment trailer. The logical next step is SOME FORM of gameplay, and ***hopefully actual hands-on footage after the trailer.

The game is 6-ish months out, so I think it's around the time we should start seeing solid, tangible gameplay of the actual product. Anything else would honestly be... mildly concerning.

 

Of course they'll show gameplay, Sega is pretty generous after all
They'll show gameplay just like they showed gameplay for Forces:

Less than a minute long and with no context whatsoever.

 

I'd like to see a 10 minute guided gameplay walkthrough or something like that. I don't want them to spoil the whole game obviously, leave some surprises, but at least give people a good idea of the scope of the game and what they're trying to achieve with it.

 

I'm fully expecting a bunch of gameplay clips, just really short ones so it's super annoying to tell what's going on.

 

man, after 06 I will not trust any gameplay shown, only how it feels when it's actually played. you could get 06's mach speed sections to look like they're great, but they play like shit.

 

I still find it hilarious that that gameplay footage is literally just 40 seconds of running in a straight line, broken up only with a brief amount mashing the jump button to home in on targets. The game is playing itself with no incentive to play differently and not even any visual flair to make the "gameplay" feel any more engaging. It was a pretty accurate representation of Forces as a whole.

 

Christ, this audio mixing is horrible lol

 

Let's be real, the only really interesting level of Forces is literally the last one (Mortar Canyon) so what else really could they show?

 

I kind of want to see the return of the Sonic Adventure style power ups. You know, stuff like the Crystal Ring and the Light Speed Shoes, the ones that you had to find in the Adventure Fields.

Considering this is an open world game, I don't really see why they couldn't pull this off, other than a switch of mindset from 'find the power ups!' to 'we'll just give them to you by default.'

Just another reason to explore the world, and I'm not really worked up about it.

 

I kind of hate the fact that, despite the fact that I REALLY hope this turns out good, I know I'll be buying it day one regardless of the reviews and quality.

Don't make me regret my love of this blue hedgehog again SEGA, I beg you.

 

I wonder if water running will return, considering the relatively large amount of water in the trailer. Maybe as an upgrade?

 

It seems like there are several bodies of water within the islands themselves, like that little marsh or the waterfall section. Tho I think the ocean surrounding the islands will probably be locked behind an invisible wall makes me wonder how you travel between the islands... it would be pretty cool if there was a way to water-run or cross some bridge or something, so all the islands felt like a connected world. One thing that really annoys me about PSO2:NGS is how you have to load into a different server to access different regions of the overworld, and you can't actual travel across the boundaries between overworlds because they're invisible barriers. I suppose it's more annoying just because it's multiplayer, but it's also just kind of immersion-breaking when you can literally see a bordering region and all its geometry right next to you, but the game won't let you cross over.

It would just be nice if everything was connected, like (most of) Breath of the Wild is, and you didn't have to go through a very specific entrance or some kind of teleporter just to load into another section of the overworld. Kind of a tall task I guess, considering there are supposedly multiple islands, but I hope they at least don't cut up the individual islands into separate chunks.

 

As weird as it might sound, I really want this game to full of nice surprises.

I just want this game to throw some curveballs that genuinely make you go "huh... wasn't expecting that"

To me, the excitement of open world games is all about the secrets and mystery you get from exploring the environment. It's the feeling that you've discovered something that most other players might not have even found.

So far, they've definitely nailed the mystery part... mostly because we literally know nothing of the game lol

 

Randomly stumbling across some ancient ruin that takes cues from labyrinth and aquatic ruin would be a cool surprise.

What other level tropes are there going to be though? So far we've seen some forest and a shrine thingy and a desert was mentioned on the website (do we have any images of that yet?). I'm wondering what else there could be, for sure there's going to be some mechanical factory type place for the final boss and maybe a cave but would that work in an open world? The camera would probably suck in enclosed areas and sonic will be balanced around more open spaces so he'd probably just constantly run into walls. I also don't think a pinball level would work that well for obvious reasons, perhaps one of the cyberspace levels will do that instead.

I want this to be a sonic game not a generic open world game. It would be nice for sonic team to innovate a little and add some wacky areas that are definitively sonic, with polygonal trees and nonsensical loops, but I don't think that would happen.

 

The one environment we've seen is depressingly mundane for Sonic. I don't think we're getting super creative and surreal worlds on the level of Mania's four original zones any time soon...or the ARK even (I will always maintain that the ARK was the last gasp of the Genesis trilogy's ethos of surreal geometric zones).

 

I agree with the Ark being surreal, crazy gadget was especially bonkers, I still have no idea what the hell those Tetris pieces were.

And yea these environments are probably the least sonic like in the entire franchise. Despite the more grounded take sa1 and sa2 had they at least had more fantastical elements with the GUN truck and strange city planning. I understand that these are environmental shots meant to showcase the island scenery, but it worries me that there no loops, corkscrews or any interesting geometry to launch off. They may have removed them to get a better look at the scenery but those features SHOULD be the scenery.

 

This environment doesn't seem any less "Sonic-y" than Sonic 06's natural environments.

 

In 06 the environments had a more realistic art direction, but that didn't stop sonic grinding on water. I don't mind the art direction actually, what I do mind is that these are just generic open world areas that any game character could find themselves in, there's nothing to use to take advantage of sonic's moveset.