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

Sonic Robo Blast 2 is a doom mod. It’s incredible and the folks working on the game definitely have insight into the challenges of sonic level design. But SRB2 has a lot of unique challenges not because classic sonic design in 3D is inherently flawed but because it’s a doom mod. The biggest barrier for new players of SRB2 is it’s camera system which prioritizes a mouse and keyboard.

I feel like we’ve reached a point where we’re talking around frontiers and getting angry at a bunch of stupid shit.

 

Idk how some people are saying this music is bad, to me it's probably some of the best original music in a Sonic game since... Unleashed, honestly. Not saying Lost World or forces were bad either, just that I haven't heard something in the games since then that really hits the way this does.

I think that YouTubers often actually just end up parroting things they see a bombastic portion of the fanbase saying until they have enough to start parroting what other YouTubers are saying. Charlie himself kinda thrives on being way more dramatic than he needs to be about, well, anything. Unfortunately his audience seems to go along with it even if he changes his mind, so I think we might be feeling the sting of this for a long while.

I'll be honest, I think people go in wanting to hate things, at least in a way they don't realize; they have the idealized version of what they want in their head and are hopeful for that, and then they also have the worst case scenario constructed in their head and suddenly ANYTHING from *that* version invalidates whatever the reality of the thing is entirely.
This is a self callout post because I think that's kind of what I did when I finally saw Origins.

 

I never said it was irrelevant, just that they are uncomparable - the missing words I SHOULD have spelled out, but didn't, are "in complexity of game design". Sonic would not be getting little speed boosts from rolling down hills, he would be getting ridiculous ones, because that's what momentum means to Sonic unless you're talking about latter-day DiMPS titles. And the bigger your movement vector is, the harder it is to constrain your funny little guy (or, as spectators call it, the "player character") from doing things you don't want them to do - whether to save them from careening off into deathpits, or reduce the size of your own level design headache.

That's part of the fun with Classic Sonic, but you've only got two axes of movement to worry about. Level designers are free to put big chunky walls in the way without comromising visuals, because you can always see the background. But you do that in 3D and it's just walls everywhere, all the time. This is where SRB2 is at. And, to take it back around to Frontiers (I know you don't think this, but for anyone else invested) THAT is, as its core, the obstacle that makes open world momentum platforming a non-starter.

 

I don't know if anyone talked about this yet, but the Frontiers gameplay reveal has quite a few dislikes on Youtube. I used a Chrome extension to see this so I'm not sure about its accuracy, but if it is accurate then I'm very curious to see how Sega responds.

 

Just throwing in that Frontiers running on PSO2's framework is a myth/baseless rumor.

As a PSO2:NGS player, if this game were built on the framework of PSO2, expect it to drop to 30fps at times with intermittent stuttering, laggy textures, 20 minute loading screens, and occasional crashes with a 2080TI on medium settings. And expect your friend with a 1650 and a Bulldozer CPU, with a potato chip fossilized in solid amber as a RAM stick, to tell you it runs perfectly for them.

The music in the footage is also edited in, which is an extremely confusing choice because in-game music is the one thing that would get people hyped even if everything else was a trainwreck. But I agree, it's very beautiful and reminds me of 06. If Ohtani is on board (and the rest of the so-far-accurate 4chan leaks are true), then there will surely be typical Sonic bangers revealed later on.

 

For the sake of comparison would u be willing to show the like/dislike ratio of the Mania, Forces, Movie 1 & Movie 2 trailers? If I’m asking to much then don’t worry about it

 

Speed caps existed in Sonic 1 and Sonic CD that kept Sonic from going as fast as he did in the sequels; ridiculous momentum gains weren't always the case for Sonic and don't have to be.

For people who understand and care about momentum-based gameplay, retaining the core concepts that made the original game(s) what they are is the desired goal. Reproducing physics/gameplay that's 1-to-1 with the original entries is simply a bonus.

 

I see a lot of people claiming that fans who are fine with how the game looks are somehow responsible for Sonic games not being AAA masterpieces. The reality is that SEGA knows they don't have to put that level of polish in for the games to sell because the target demographic doesn't really care about how good the game looks or plays compared to, say Nintendo or Sony first party games. The bar here is Roblox and TikTok, not Spider-Man 2018 or BOTW. Vocal online fans don't really matter in the grand scheme of things.

Not saying that the game is a great realization of its concept or should be immune to critique, but I think that there's no sense in bashing the game as hard as it's been getting. It doesn't look bad so far and it could pull out some pleasant surprises that we haven't seen yet.

...or it could fall apart when it's actually in our hands and be a complete disaster on a level that trailers won't show. Too early to tell.

 

I mean, this is EXACTLY what happened though.

 

It's just Morio Kishimoto, y'all.

The guy's not only the director of the past three games but their lead game designer. The same man who has got ST to release barely finished games in half-decade development spans is the same man who is responsible for all the clunky game design decisions you see over and over again. His games have much of the same problems with movement, same problems with level design, same problems with underbaked concepts, and same topsy-turvy priorities on what to put focus on. And they all run on variants of the same gameplay engine, a decision that can be easily decided by both roles he takes up.

Even the game that got him locked into this dual-role (Sonic Colors) has many of the same problems, only succeeding by fluke that it's built off the foundation of the previous and concurrently developed games around it, Unleashed & Generations. Which were designed and directed by different people, by the way.

We don't know who to replace him with because we're not Sonic Team staff and we're not Sega executives. We don't know who is capable or not without having seen the individual outcome of their work or their intentions. But we do know the outcome of Kishimoto's, so I think we can say for certain he's got to go. I don't want him fired necessarily (I'm not calling for anyone to lose a job), but he needs to step down from his role. The series needs some sort of fresh eyes.

The rest of the pipeline is just executives and people following orders; those same executives allowing both good and bad things through the gate, and the people following orders are largely a revolving door that also work on other games at Sega too (PSO2, Puyo, Miku, Yakuza, etc) with the remaining veterans being mostly people who are known for the positive aspects of Sonic's current presence (Sonic Channel, Mania/Origins and IDW support, etc).

I can't say this is all that needs to be done (likely far from it), but the team just needs a refresh in priorities, and it's gotta start with Kishimoto.

 

Speaking of delays, it's actually interesting how effectively the "stealth delay" worked. They didn't make a big deal out of it, they didn't announce a release date up front or start revealing big trailers. I like that they delayed it internally and then told us "oh yeah we were actually planning to release this in 2021 but it's gonna come out in 2022", because now the major of people outside the fanbase have NO idea it was ever delayed. If they made a big fanfare about it, who else wants to bet the reception would be EVEN worse among the general public?

 

I'm very interested to see what they spent that extra year on.

 

I can't speak for everyone, but I can at least speak for myself in saying I thought the first Adventure made a good effort of translating what made Sonic so much fun in 2D work in a 3D space.

It’s not a 1:1 translation, but I do think SA1 at least understood the spirit of concepts like freedom of movement and building level geometry around the possibilities of that movement. Using the spindash to create your own shortcuts off an angled bit of terrain or characters with different play styles having vastly different experiences in the same level help give me a better feel for what Sonic in an open world should be than pretty much anything that's come from Sonic Team in the 24 years since.

It's just too bad that after getting so much right on the first try, Sonic Team chased after spectacle and ended up complicating those concepts instead of refining them. That road eventually led to 06, and that experience was so bad that it saw everything thrown out immediately after. Now, here we are some 14 years after Unleashed, and Sonic Team is still squeezing every last bit of juice out of the boost gameplay. But that's all ground that’s been tread over countless times before, and I'll just stop the car right there, because I don’t think anyone wants a detour into the 47th semiannual "They should just make Sonic Adventure 3!" referendum.

As for Frontiers, things like janky animations and reused assets honestly don’t really bother me that much on their own. However, in what I've seen of Frontiers so far, I can't help but think those issues are symptoms of a larger problem of compromises up and down the decision tree. Those are compromises that start at the top from what the game is conceptually and then cascade all the way down into compromises on how those ideas are implemented.

For example, the combat gameplay video reminds me of the werehog in Unleashed, where you COULD learn all the combo attacks to defeat enemies — but you could also achieve the same ends by simply mashing the Punch Monster In The Face Button a lot. Despite being such a big part of the greater Unleashed experience, it never felt like there was a strong commitment to making the combat worthwhile. It's like the designers and developers knew a lot of people don't want combat in their action-platformer, so the solution meant to make everyone happy is something that doesn't really make anyone happy.

Sliding back over to Frontiers, I feel like we’re devoting a lot of time to asking how is the combat, when — very much like Unleashed — there’s a more significant question looming about why is the combat there in the first place.

If the answer to that question is "Because fighting things in a field is what you do in an open world," then I’d have to say that stopping and fighting said things in said field really damages the appeal of placing the fastest thing alive in an open world. But if the answer is grounded in the real-world logistics of "Because we need to pad out the game and don’t have enough ideas for more boost stages," then I think that’s a poor reflection on where the series is creatively.

In either case, I feel like there are some very strong indicators that maybe it's time to go back to the drawing board and reconsider what makes a Sonic game "a Sonic game" and not merely "a game Sonic appears in."

I won't say Sonic can't work in an open world, because I think it can — it's just that I don't think it can work when the approach to that concept is the "It's an open world... for you to play Sonic Forces in again" compromise Frontiers appears to be.

 

Hmm...

 

I'm so tired of thinking about 3D Sonic games man lol. It's like bad joke that keeps repeating itself, and we all end up talking about the same points.

I have no idea what's going on with Sonic Team/Sega/Whoeverthefuck and I really can't be bothered to care anymore lol. Hope Frontiers is fine, but it'll probably be another mixed title and we'll just be pondering about the next game in five years.

I'm very glad Origins is coming out.

 

Sonic Mania Opening Trailer:


Sonic Mania Pre-order Trailer:


Sonic Forces E3 Trailer:


Sonic Forces Launch Trailer:


Sonic Movie 1 "New Official Trailer" (redesign):


Sonic Movie 2 "Final Trailer":


Sonic Frontiers "exploration"/"World Premiere" gameplay:


Sonic Frontiers "Combat" gameplay:


Sonic Origins Official Trailer:


Sonic Lost World Debut Trailer (with gameplay):


Sonic Generations Gameplay Trailer:


(I used https://returnyoutubedislike.com/ to restore the YouTube dislikes functionality in Firefox.)

 

Walls are hardly a problem though -- not to mention speed caps, as @Beltway mentioned. Lack of a general orientation is a much harder issue to tackle, and it's one that no fangame has even tried to solve (SRB2 included).

Then again, lack of any momentum physics whatsoever isn't a problem for Sonic Frontiers as a Sonic game, whatever that might entail: it's a problem for Sonic Frontiers on its own (supposed, presumed) terms. Because you're supposed to defeat a boss by running straight towards it -- like the three-legged thing we saw in the trailer --, not solving puzzles but avoiding elements that throw you back. Essentially, it's a challenge based on moving. If momentum isn't a factor in absolutely any way, even though the game is no stranger to ridiculous speed boosts either (via the blue ethereal speed pads the boss also spawns), the game is hindering its own gameplay.

At least these are my thoughts right now. Of course there are good reasons not to implement it in any shape or form. It just doesn't sound very wise.

 

One channel I follow, who loves just trying to go for Sonic-style guitar work over various tracks in the series if not his own re-arrangement attempts on them, attempted to do a loose idea of a dynamic music drum/guitar backing depending on the action in the footage.


Could probably get annoying at some point or another but I think there's merit in the idea. Wonder if Sega's already doing something like this to some degree since all of the footage has one looping track that never cuts away seemingly.

 

I hope the soundtrack can get a little bit of Sonic and the Black Knight-esque, something like this:


Always appreciate Orchestra mixed with Rock. I also like the Sonic 2006-styledOrchestra as well.

 

Didn't consider this. I wouldn't be thrilled with Sonic being sluggish in the early runnings to make later gameplay feel better, but if it can get better, then at least that's something.