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

We really have run out of things to talk about, haven't we..

What's funny is this is an actual (and somewhat valid) criticism out there. "The game is rough but it looks pretty fun, I just don't get why Sonic is here."

 

My bleary memory of those Crash games was that Titans was solid but Mind over Mutant was basically just the same thing but with less content stretched via busywork.

Anyway, my position is still "show me cyberspace already".

 

https://twitter.com/unleashedforpc/status/1533508960312958977?s=21&t=lEEiiGbPcq8EqkNkNwSsTg

the Werehog is getting the craziest redemption arc ever and I did not see it coming

 

Honestly, revisionism is nothing new within this fanbase. To be honest, Werehog seems more like a Warriors style of combat to me whereas Frontiers looks more suited to one on one in most cases or an approach similar to Marvel's Spider-Man or the Arkham games. That's not indicative of quality, mind, but recall that, until the very convenient timing of Frontiers' combat being revealed, the Werehog has consistently been lambasted as a button mashing pace breaker, and you don't need me to tell you that OP has clearly edited that video to suggest certain feelings.

 

I still stand by the opinion that the werehog's gameplay isn't bad. It's average, boring at worst. I've played much worse GoW clones and it just gets flack because it's not what people wanted from a Sonic game (which is fair!). It has a shitton of flaws (including never needing to do anything but button mash and levels that drag on for faaar too long) mind you, but people kneejerked it back then and continue to kneejerk it today.

Frontier's combat looks... about the same, really. I think it's feedback is much worse - the animations are janky and in some cases, can barely be called animations, but it has more variety in forcing you to approach enemies differently. I do like the usage of the Spin Cycle to bump the mobs up into the air, but the rest of the moves showcased (i.e. that weird dash attack, his punches/kicks, the tornado spin, and even that ranged kick attack that freezes you in the air) have no flow in how they're used.

Which is a shame considering the character.

 

If we have to live through a Werehog redemption arc I will cry myself to sleep every day. It's the most button-mashy, time-wasting stuff on the planet. Hated the Werehog to death, lmao. The werehog itself as a concept is fine, but they didn't execute it well at all. Felt like a fucking slog any time there was a werehog level.

 

honestly my biggest takeaway from that video is that Sonic Unleashed had great animation work and I think that was most likely the point the video was probably trying to make.

Not to go on about Frontiers' poor animation quality for the billionth time but it really can't be understated how good animation work can make a world of a difference for creating satisfying gameplay. They're intertwined with each other.

 

Okay that's fair and I apologise for insinuating as such, but I think there will be a very distinct shift on the narrative of the Werehog that it was some great misunderstood mechanic which puts Frontiers combat to shame and so on. I reckon there'll be a vocal portion of the fanbase saying as such as a reaction to Frontiers rather than having really liked the Werehog all that much to begin with.

 

The part we are only now seeing about the famed Sonic Cycle is that for every point that descends, there is one that is ascending. We live in this constant tug of war between "well-this-was-actually-good" and "well-this-was-actually-bad". The Adventure games -- including alternate gameplays, serious stories and whatnot -- are already redeemed in the public eye, and "true Sonic Adventure 3" must be at the top of the fans' requests. Even Sonic '06 has been forgiven to some extent, while at the same time as people sprung out of nowhere saying it's the classics that were never any good.

This is just Werehog's turn. This is Sonic's curse. We'll forever be stuck, revving up in a spindashing cycle.

 

The werehog fighting sections were repetitive, and the music got old quickly, but it was actually a nice change of pace - and the levels were pretty climatic at night.

I hated certain enemies thought, the small ones. Infuriating.

Other than that, I enjoyed the gameplay.

 

Keep in mind we shouldn't really take that Werehog tweet too seriously lol, that account just posts Sonic Unleashed videos or the word "no" everyday in hopes of manifesting a re-release. It's meant to be a bit of a meme, but since this particular tweet ventured outside its nornal target audience the joke probably is somewhat lost

Also have to agree with Snub, if there's one thing I loved about the Werehog it was how satisfyingly cartoony the animations were. I don't think that style will work in a game like Frontiers, but for Unleashed's Pixar-ish aesthetic it looked pretty cool

 

To be fair, that approach to animation is there much more subtly in what we have seen of Frontiers' animations, but of course buried by the weird issues. The new animations are utilising squash and stretch which I don't think was really all that prevalent in Colours through Forces (outside of Sonic's jump ball animations in Lost World and Forces, among a few other locomotive animations in Lost World).

 

tbh the hopes about Frontiers getting delayed just feels like copium. It's not really so much of a budget issue but an artistic one. It's all over the place in terms of tone and design. I vaguely remember when Shadow the Hedgehog getting clowned on by the gaming media for similar reasons, and that still came out.

I guess it's because of what happened with the Sonic movie, but that's a once in a blue moon type deal. The very design of the main character was scuffed, that's gonna hurt marketability way more than bland gameplay.

 

The fundamentals of the game upset me, but a delay could help with some of the major technical issues. Because quite frankly, what they showed borders on resembling an alpha engine test rather than a beta or simply an unfinished game.

I've seen a lot of betas, some basically being advertising demos, some being genuinely unfinished products, and none of them looked as rough as Frontiers does right now besides like, Battlefield 2042, and that's a game that many argued for a delay that it didn't get too.

 

The problem with this game isn't that scripting exists, it's that between the scripting moments there is nothing, its all binary. All the action movements are heavily scripted and when you're not doing it, the player isnt really doing anything.
Sonic was fun in the early games because the character was fun to control even if you weren't heading towards the goal. For an open world game you had to have realized at some point that this would be essential, even Mario and Zelda have intuitive physics based movement to some degree and with large wide open fields for Sonic, there should not have been too many limitations.


If anyone from Sonic Team or related reads this thread I'm still offering the full $70 i'd pay for this game at launch (i will buy a copy and tell my friends to as well) to hear a short explanation or discussion with you about WHY in an open world Sonic game, you didn't see the value in making Sonic fluid and fun to control. You ported the exact Forces gameplay engine into this game and didn't stop to think about the fundamental difference in style and how the player would feel. I want to know if this is an actual thought you had. I also very much want to know if this didn't at all occur to you. I will buy all of your products this year if you just tell me, it will be much easier to be a fan going forward if you can provide an answer.

 

What even gives you this idea? How would you know what "the vast majority of players" would and would not find fun? What makes you think that an open world game requires what are practically conveyor belts scattered across the map in order to be fun? Breath of the Wild didn't have that. Elden Ring didn't have that. Who the hell wouldn't find "going really fast, jumping off a hill for big air" fun?

How would going fast and making a big jump "break the stage design" in an open world? In a 3D action stage, sure, that might trivialize too much of the platforming obstacles, or might result in the player clipping out of the stage. But an open world seems like a natural fix to that exact problem: more space for them to zoom/fly into, and you'll be revisiting areas all the time, so skipping areas at one point in time wouldn't mean the player never sees it.

And I don't understand your point about games without direction or guidance not being fun "for a lot of people". This follows your sentence about scripting, which would make it seem like you're talking about conveyor belts again, which doesn't make sense because Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring don't have conveyor belts and players seem to have had plenty of fun in those. The following sentence about Utopia makes it sound instead like you're talking about a lack of direction in terms of gameplay objectives, which feels an odd point to make here. That's a common complaint levied at open world games in general. I don't see how having classic Sonic's terrain physics would be what invites that criticism (and, as I've said, having such terrain physics would make navigation itself fun to do, the way riding a bike up and down hills is inherently fun to do, ameliorating one of the common issues with open world design), moreso than it being open world itself. Plus, it's not like you couldn't theoretically just add random objectives to Utopia: kill X badniks, collect X rings, add different collectables about the map, etc. But the idea that skimming on player direction makes it unsellable is also a bizarre point to make. Again, Breath of the Wild and Elden Ring are pretty hands-off in terms of giving the player direct objectives, and those sold pretty well I think. There's a reason every IP seems to be trying open world games right now: extreme player freedom is in right now. Not to mention survival open world crafting games like Minecraft and Rust where there straight up is no real objective beyond just getting by.

As far as technical feasibility goes, the game doesn't have to go for high definition photo-realistic visuals. Breath of the Wild's "watercolor" visual direction makes the lack of detail in distant terrain basically just gel with the art direction in general. Also, if it's the geometry of the terrain itself that Sonic is interacting with more than individual objects, then that's less stuff you'd need to worry about not loading into view fast enough to keep up with the player's speed.

No offense, but this largely reads like a bunch of excuses for a complete lack of creativity at Sonic Team. All that being said, I'm still interested in this game, hope it turns out better than I'm expecting it to, and I definitely still plan to get it when it comes out.