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Sonic Frontiers Thread - PS4, PS5, Xbox, Switch, PC

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by MykonosFan, May 27, 2021.

  1. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Let's also not forget that there is more evidence of this being a sort of deeper-seated SEGA issue than just "devs bad". As much as we all thrive off of the "but Dimps made this" / "but Red Button made this" / "but Blind Squirrel made this" copium, there has got to be a reason why there is such a low amount of quality control even when it comes to outsourced titles. Even if SEGA isn't directly credited as the developing studio, they have some responsibility to give the studio a general direction and guide development, and even if we were to argue that SEGA is 100% blame-free for the production of these titles, they have a history of outsourcing games to these studios again, and again, and again.

    When you consider that, on top of Sonic Team having a roster of devs who have worked on blockbuster titles for other companies, I think there is sufficient evidence that Sonic is just in bad hands. We are quick to blame 13 underpaid employees with the title of "3D Environment Artist (Overworld)" when historically, Sonic has underperformed regardless of who is making the game... the common denominator is just SEGA as a company oversees everything.

    Mania is probably the only exception I can think of in recent years... but even then, SEGA (and Iizuka himself) continually intervened to change the original vision for Sonic Discovery, drastically reduced the number of new levels and bosses, asked the team to remove features, and shoved Denuvo into it. Yippee.
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2022
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  2. Hamzawesome

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    Sorry if this is off topic or something, but I dream that one day a trailer for a modern 3D Sonic game can make people as happy as this Mario Odyssey trailer.



    Frontiers just isn't it. They've been given more than enough time to deliver a good product, but they didn't. Sonic Team needs more talented people.
     
  3. Snowbound

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    Wait I thought Sonic Discovery was only going to have the 4 original zones we got in Mania? Whitehead said in his recent Sonic Revolution panel that he wanted to make more zones for Mania PLUS but Sega shot him down. Where’s the source for this?
     
  4. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Sonic Discovery was presented to SEGA as a game of entirely new stages and content. You may be right in that there were only 4 stages in the initial concept, but bringing back a bunch of old stages wasn't in the pitch, that was SEGA's interjection. TaxStealth wanted to make a whole new game.

    Sonic Mania Plus wasn't part of the original pitch, but if that is true and SEGA shot them down **yet again**, it only really proves the same point.
     
  5. MH MD

    MH MD

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    Wasn't it just a small game that was supposed to be included in a collection? and Iizuka actually suggested it to be a full blown game that remixes old zones as well instead of it being just a collection
     
  6. Plorpus

    Plorpus

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    Sonic Discovery was meant to be a small bonus game and Iizuka came up with the idea to make it its own thing and add remixed classic levels. Sonic Mania itself was an Iizuka-led project. By all accounts the process was collaborative and the dev team wqs able to do largely what they wanted. The Sonic fandom really loves their narrative of Mania being some ascended fan game that SEGA tried to sabotage and is jealous of, but that’s just not the truth.
     
  7. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Maybe I'm drunk then, my bad for misreading the interview. Their original pitch was supposed to be some original zones as a bonus packaged with a re-release.

    Take that bit out of the picture though and the point still stands, there is a track record here and Iizuka collaborating on Mania is still the outlier.
     
  8. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    No, that's just Sega Europe.
     
  9. Snub-n0zeMunkey

    Snub-n0zeMunkey

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    I saw this GIF and I'm gonna be honest it's more or less what I wanted out of Sonic's movement in Frontiers lol

    I don't think a delay would be enough to add momentum physics into the game, that would probably require them to rebuild the game with a completely new direction, but I do think maybe it could at least help create more satisying animation work and also maybe help take a load off the dev team's back.

    One last thing I'll say is lately I've seen a few popular YouTubers make videos trashing Frontiers (and I'm not just talking about the sonic focused channels, I'm talking more popular youtubers with like 10million+ subscribers). I'm not pointing this out to be like "lol wow SEGA should delay the game because youtuber 'Moist Cr1TiKaL' with 10 million subscribers says the game looks horrible", I just think it's intersting that they managed to capture the attention of non-Sonic fans but in the worst ways possible.

    just more proof that the critique of Frontiers seems to be going way beyond our little circlejerk of Sonic nerds :/
     
    Last edited: Jun 4, 2022
  10. MH MD

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    Yeah that's another thing
    past Sonic games, past bad ones, didn't really have such negative reactions before release, it's usually just apathy or making fun of it and moving on..or actually people getting excited for it

    Here...they were PROUD of this, that they showed like 15 minutes of footage already, and counting, but showed it in a manner that make it look incomplete, and garner such bad reactions, that it already became a sort of a meme and like EVERYONE is making fun of it, fans or otherwise
    This hasn't happened before, and this time i don't know what SEGA will make of it, being proud of something only to show it and everyone make fun of it gotta feel extremely bad, would they delay it? cancel it? cut their losses and release it anyway and move on? probably the last option

    it kinda reminds of of Prince of Persia Remake announcement, it got similar reaction that they delayed it, changed development teams, started from scratch, and the project in a limbo now, it was originally supposed to be released in 2020, now it won't even make it in 2023, and that's a REMAKE
     

  11. I didn't say what I said to dunk on them, just calling a spade a spade. I'm sure there are many factors at play here, but they always lead to the same end result; a subpar, mediocre Sonic game that leaves nobody satisfied. Its always the same.

    I do agree that I feel like nobody over in Japan really gives enough of a damn about Sonic to actually do anything about it, and yet they're insistent on continuing the series despite that. So Sega are stuck making games they don't want to make and fans are left continuously unsatisfied. Nobody on either side is happy, but Sega are too stubborn and prideful to just cut their losses and admit that they simply can't make good Sonic games.

    I don't like being so blunt about a franchise that used to mean a lot to me, but there really not giving me much of an option. At this point, anything good about Sonic has been from anyone but the people who have been in charge of managing the series. And rather than recognize that and just simply let other people who actually give a damn handle the series, Sega seem willing to just trudge along no matter what. So what else can I say but call them incompetent at this point?
     
  12. RikohZX

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    I think another thing really grinding my gears with Frontiers is that Sega really don't want to tell us much about it.

    Forces? The premise is right there in the first trailer, a full on war with both Sonics going in even before the Avatar was revealed, "JOIN THE RESISTANCE" as a tagline for fighting what seemed to be Eggman taking over the world in full force. We could debate whether the game handled that well at all but that's not here and now. The Avatar got revealed not long thereafter.

    Lost World's big reveal? Deadly Six, gameplay snippets, Sonic's parkour. It basically outlined the gist of everything anyone would really need to know about the game going in, gameplay warts and all at first blush.

    Frontiers? Vague trailers, cutting from actually showing full story scene bits altogether so they don't reveal too much, while being insanely cryptic about the level design and world. And these demonstrations are incredibly curated to hide the HUD and be non-descriptive about objectives, why we're collecting things, why we're doing these puzzles and so forth, just.. Here's weird new enemies, and Sonic running around an empty overworld riding rails, breaking boxes, collecting crystal hearts and fighting new robots with no context.

    We dunno how much Ian Flynn is writing as I noted before. He could be localizing like Pontac in Forces, he could be writing the English versions of scenes while Sonic Team makes the core story and scenes beneath like Colors through Lost World ala the Pontaff duo, or he could have full story creative control for all we know. But Sonic Team and Sega don't want to show us any of it whatsoever to even give anyone a reason to care. I like some Sonic stories, even the 3D ones, I really do! But it's kinda hard to care when they're holding it like an ace up their sleeve as if it's super sensitive stuff they don't want to budge on.

    If the leaks talking about hub town stuff were true in any capacity, maybe there's an evolving story in a Zelda like fashion, going out into the zones to do stuff and return to the hub for quests and character interactions. Or maybe the game is just straight up completing each zone to move onto the next with little to no plot. We have absolutely no idea and I don't think Sega wants to reveal it any time soon.
     
  13. SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Yeah this game's marketing is absolutely awful, but...
    I will disagree on the notion that Forces' marketing was anything but garbage. They didn't reveal the avatar "not long after", it took them 10 MONTHS to reveal one of the main feature of the game, and we had to wait 7 MONTHS to get actual gameplay.
    So that's why I'm not terribly surprised with Frontiers' marketing being rubbish; they're doing the same bullshit they did with Forces: having to wait an entire year to get shitty gameplay videos doesn't even faze me anymore lol.

    I mean...I liked Forces, and I know I'll like Frontiers. But god damn, just what on earth has been going on at Sonic Team this past decade?
    Why do we have to wait 4 to 5 years between releases for a simple platformer series? And why is the marketing so bloody awful?
    They're treating the games with the same level of mystery as something like Grand Theft Auto or Elder Scrolls, but this is Sonic we're talking about. We need gameplay, level showcases, anything.

    I was 16 and in high school when Forces was announced. I'm now 23, working toward a Master's degree and... it's still the latest entry in the series lol. I really hope they go back to yearly releases after Frontiers; I don't think this kind of long development cycle do the games any good.
     
  14. Snowbound

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    Whatever happens with the story all I hafta say is that Sega better not scapegoat Flynn for the game’s failures.
     
  15. RikohZX

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    Man I should've remembered this, apparently the Avatar was revealed around May 2017? I'm trying to find trailers and everything's horribly dated or missing on Youtube, and I guess I got that wrong.
     
  16. foXcollr

    foXcollr

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    Why... would they scapegoat Flynn? That doesn't really seem characteristic of them.

    Sidenote: Goddamn I hate using this forum on mobile ;--; Nevermind that I suck at typing, it's hard to not mess up the quote function and for whatever reason it keeps recalling posts from several pages ago and pasting them in
     
  17. MontiP

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    Now I may be wrong, but I don't believe Sega is the kind of company who scapegoats a game's failure towards specific individuals (if anything, they scapegoat it on gameplay features lol).

    From my perspective, it's the disgruntled fans who scapegoat these individuals and then some, even those who don't have anything to do with the games and/or their developement whatsoever (like the social media accounts).
     
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  18. MH MD

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    unfortunately this is like an industry-wide problem at this point, games just take longer to develop nowadays ,even yearly games actually struggle a lot those days, COD can barely keep up, and they have the entire activision studios making it

    The "simple" solution to reduce wait would be:
    -Assigning multiple development teams to work on main games - i mean we had that in the past, including the portable games -
    -Said main games would be on a smaller scale
    -Heavily reusing assets -something that will scare the fanbase- but it worked well with Yakuza series, another SEGA franchise


    SEGA actually opened a new studio recently in Sapporo, japan, and it was stated that it will help making Sonic games , so they in fact are working on speeding development process or helping it...or they are there to develop content for Frontiers, implying they are planning on supporting the game on a long term
     
  19. SuperSnoopy

    SuperSnoopy

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    Slice of life visual novel, coming soon...?
    Yeah all of those would do wonders I think, as long as the asset reuse is smart like in Frontiers; and not "HeY GUys HEre'S GreEn HiLL zOne aGAin" I'd be totally satisfied.
    I know we're in a era were games are pretty expensive and lengthy to make, but if Capcom can release 4 triple A Resident Evil games since 2017 I think Sonic could do more than 1 game at least. I wish Dimps would keep making original 2D games at the very least.
     
  20. qwertysonic

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    creating the biggest sonic collection
    Never thought I'd this sentence anywhere, much less here on Retro.