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

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

  1. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    If by balance you mean between the Classics & SA1 and SA2 to 06, maybe.
    By I never saw Unleashed as a spiritual successor to SA1's plot & play styles.

    At that time, I didn't think much of it. SA1 feels like a progression of the Classics.
    I enjoyed SA2 (and still do), but I can see how it departed from the era of Classics & SA1.
     
  2. BadBehavior

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    And I really don't wanna go back to the Colours era of writing (which was just a different flavour of "ignoring what came before and writing what appealed to the writers") so I guess not wanting to be like the past is something we both have in common, funnily enough. Just hoping Flynn can thread that needle.
     
  3. Josh

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    Whereas for me, Sonic Team seemed to completely lose interest in telling Sonic stories around SA2, and we didn't really get back on track until Colors. :V So yeah, to say Flynn needs to thread a needle is an understatement, but I'm not really worried, the more I think about it. Ian's historically threaded that needle like it's a superpower.
     
  4. This whole division about SA2 never really made much sense to me, because everything in that game just felt like a natural extension of what came before it. The only things that I might feel are out of place is the inclusion of a military organization that was never seen before, but beyond that? Its still Sonic in its core. The story revolves around the main villain's grandfather and a dark foil to the main character, as well as another power for the Chaos Emeralds. But that's somehow out of place compared to introducing six random aliens with no connection to any character whatsoever?

    You guys are taking a quote by the writer and extrapolating it to be way worse than it is. What writer doesn't put their own spin and sensibilities into their writing? Why is that being treated as a bad thing? Would you even still feel that way if SA2 didn't have a military and Shadow never existed? Some of y'all got the weirdest chips on your shoulders about SA2.


    And I say this as someone who doesn't hate the games from Colors onwards as most fans do; but I feel like it says an awful lot when the most memorable character to come out of the entire last decade is....the original incarnation of Sonic. Not even a different character...just another variant of the main one.
     
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  5. Josh

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    I mean... it's okay if you don't agree that it was all THAT different. But it didn't tear the fandom in two for no reason, y'know? As theghz.com put it around the time the game was released:

    upload_2022-7-17_4-17-2.png

    SA2 has always been something that some fans loved and saw, like you said, as a natural evolution (or at least not an *unwelcome* change), while other fans hated it and saw it as, and I'm quoting a thread we had here once upon a time, "the death of the Sonic I knew and loved." I started out hard on the "love it" side, but I've wound up falling somewhere in the middle.

    I will agree that we shouldn't over-extrapolate on Maekawa's words. We can't get his tone or his intent from text. It's just that when I read them, it kind of shined a new light on how SA2's reception has played out over the years, and why Sonic under Maekawa's pen so rarely came across like Sonic to me.

    (Having said that, this is the Sonic Frontiers topic, not the, "Let's debate SA2 pt. 61,901" topic, so maybe we should steer it back in a more modern direction. :V)
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2022
  6. Yes, SA2 is divisive, but the foundations for it were already starting to show in Sonic 3 and Sonic Adventure with its more cinematic approaches to the game, and Adventure 2 is simply culmination of that.

    Like, one of the main reasons SA2 is even more contentious than it usually would have been, is because of Shadow and 06. Its the same bullshit where people use Forces to retroactively shit on Colors and both of those examples completely ignore the reception both games received at the times of their release. Its putting the sins of newer games back on older ones, but completely ignores all of the contexts surrounding them.



    Part of me feels sorry for Ian Flynn, because anything he writes will be scrutinized to hell and back regardless of its actual quality, because that's just where we're at right now. I'm sure he'll do fine, but I definitely do not expect everyone to see it that way.
     
  7. Blue Spikeball

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    I can understand people who feel SA2's story was a significant shift. What with it de-emphasizing the mystical elements and ancient lore, and introducing government conspiracies and bioengineered lifeforms. That said, I feel it still had plenty of recognizable Sonic elements. The plot still revolved around the Chaos Emeralds. The ARK was basically a reimagined Death Egg. There were still references to previous games, like the Emerald Altar replica. And the whole thing culminated in what's probably the closest thing we'll ever get to a 3d version of The Doomsday Zone.

    It was Colors when I felt the plot and tone became unrecognizable. Suddenly Sonic was spouting jokes and cheesy lines every time he opened his mouth like you'd expect from a parody or a bad fic. Tails went from humble little guy who looks up to his cool "big brother", to a more sardonic dude with the occasional tendency to snark at the guy who is supposed to be his hero. Gone were the Chaos Emeralds (story-wise), the epic final battle as Super Sonic, the supporting cast, and the worldbuilding. We had Sonic visiting alien planets and saving an alien race, but neither got any lore or backstory. Gone was the sense of adventure. Instead we had Sonic and Tails running back and forth in an amusement park (a massive intergalactic park made up of multiple planets, but still) rescuing aliens, and a plot that repeatedly trolls the player into thinking it's about to move forward only to backpedal. Eggman has Tails under mind control and is about to force him to fight Sonic! Oh, never mind. What was even the point of that scene? Finally, Eggman has finished his mind control cannon and is about to put it to use! Never mind, it malfunctioned and blew up, taking the park with it. Guess Sonic and Tails weren't needed after all :V
     
    Last edited: Jul 17, 2022
  8. Starduster

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    Sonic was instrumental in making that happen, though. If Sonic hadn't shown up and started wrecking Eggman's shit, Eggman wouldn't have sicced Rotatatron on him, leading to Rotatatron blowing up and getting his arm logged in the mind control cannon, which ended up causing it to go critical. Sonic and Tails still needed to be there even after that though to free the enslaved and converted Wisps, with Tails (as he says in the story) being necessary to translate what Yacker's saying so Sonic didn't end up running blindly around the amusement park. The Wisps in particular serve very much a similar role within the setting as the small animals did in the original games. Honestly, I wouldn't even say they needed a huge amount of world building dedicated to them since they're funny little scrunglies and I wouldn't want the game to get bogged down in overexplaining them (though they could've explained why they're spread across different planets by saying that they basically move across space with the Mother Wisp and left it at that). Don't get me wrong, I like my Sonic plots to be more involved, but I don't think it's fair to call Colours a complete betrayal of Sonic's identity.
     
  9. I quite agree, but I think that all started back with Sonic 2, with ST looking to add new characters with each new game and then they started to become playable and a much bigger focus with S&K, its why I like Sonic and Sonic CD the most for the 2D games and while Sonic Adv did have all the extra characters, you could just play and finish the game as Sonic (all the extra character story arc's were optional) and all most all the levels of Sonic ADv were really defined around Sonic. I know you couldn't see the true ending mind, playing just Sonic alone

    I loved the graphics in SA2, but hated Eggman, Knuckles' and Rouge's sections and how you had no choice, but to play them. I loved the fact that Sonic Colors looked to go back to core Sonic and just have Sonic playable. Hopefully the same will be true for Sonic Frontiers
     
  10. I can't find IGN or Sega calling the reveal gameplay footage in May an environmental showcase so I'm curious where you're getting this idea, the closest thing to an environmental showcase would be the reveal trailer back in December that had in-game tracking shots of the environment instead of gameplay. What's an highly expressive Avatar and what does that have to do with any of this?
     
  11. The 1st one was the environmental/world showcase and then the 2nd one was a battle/combat showcase. It was only after those, did we star to see real gameplay unless I missed something?
     
  12. Yes you missed that those first two videos were indeed real gameplay and labeled as such by IGN, there’s no need to be obtuse about this.
     
  13. Deep Dive Devin

    Deep Dive Devin

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    I can't believe this is still going on -- OKAY, let's clear some things up here.

    @Team Andromeda, more than anything, my main takeaway from your Halo comparison (which I still don't think is a good one) is that you seem to believe the reception of the initial gameplay footage was somehow unwarranted or unfair. I partially agree, but while I think people exaggerated a bit, you need to understand that everyone's reactions were their own. If someone didn't like what they saw, it didn't all come from some innate anti-Sonic synapses firing off in people's brains.

    This is just as true of Halo, where people were unhappy because the game that was first shown off...looked bad. People didn't just suddenly decide to have different opinions, the game got another year of development and released in a better state. Sonic is releasing in less than six months now, and we should only be so lucky as for the initial reveal to have been poor while the game underneath is solid.

    Your current rhetoric is to suggest that the initial reveal didn't give off a proper idea of the core mechanics, and therefore doesn't count. I'd argue that the negative reactions to the first couple videos are precisely because they do count, and it should've given an idea of the core mechanics, because it was the gameplay reveal! That's what it's for!

    The simple fact is: there are noticeable issues in that initial footage, and SEGA didn't do a good job with it. Whether the game itself is bad doesn't even matter here, but you are currently downplaying the reveal as just an "environment showcase" to invalidate people's right to opine on it, which is not a strong defense.
     
  14. Antheraea

    Antheraea

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    See like, what I had noticed even when I was a kid was the duller "more realistic" (that is, city streets, grimy prisons, ... the literal metal harbor) and most of the enemies being these grey samey robots that drop these dull Chaos Drives as opposed to the brightly-colored kind of wacky animal robots that actually drop animals when you smash them in Eggman's stages. The major changes of the ordinary enemies you fight in "more grounded" concrete-and-metal locales, combined with the addition of "more realistic" antagonists as opposed to Eggman's slightly slapstick mad science, was something that put me off when I was literally nine and playing the game on the Dreamcast, so I don't necessarily think it's a kind of overreaction.

    holy shit you put it into words
     
  15. As I said, everyone's experiences are different. But I feel like there's a significant reason why Sonic Adventure 2 is still held in such high regard to this day. If it was just nostalgia it would have faded away ages ago, but it hasn't. It's legacy has endured and grown with age.

    I just feel like after playing roughly five or so games focusing on whimsical and mystical adventures, the next logical step is going towards a science fiction route given the main villain who is a mad scientist is one of the main playable characters.
     

  16. In the 1st video, how much did you see Sonic looking to battle different types of enemies? In the Voice over, it was made clear that it was showing off the new environment, then in the 2nd video, it was all about showing off the new battle system. Only after them 2, did we start to see the whole game been opened up/shown off, with all elements in place
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2022
  17. Sonic Team along with 343 just get so much hate and any time they show off something or look to announce something, many of the trolls are ready on their warrior keyboards. When I 1st saw the Halo 8 min demo, the gameplay looked fabulous, the music and sound effects were pure HALO. it was just the graphics were such a letdown and nothing the One X could have done. That was my biggest disappointment with the showing, how it never looked anything like next gen at all, but at least the gameplay looked very solid.

    You then had people make fun of Craig, It didn't look great, but you to go up close to an NPC in Elden Ring?, they're lacking in detail and its game engine looks very last gen and nothing is said, the double standards are shocking. We then move on to Sonic Frontiers, it again didn't blow one away graphically, not helped with the crappy IGN feed and lack of 4K upload at the start, but internet bandwidth has been an issue since the start of COVID

    I quite liked the music (but people looked to hate on even that) But I really like the fact that proper full controls seemed to be back in a 3D Sonic game and it looked like it controled like Sonic in Sonic Adv My main issues with Sonic in the boost style games, is how hard Sonic is at times to control and how at times, you don't seem in control of Sonic at times (really was a issue for me in some sections of Unleased ) That all seems fixed and I feel, very like with Halo Infinite, it's going to be glorious, just running around the open world.

    It was nice to see Sonic Team trying something different and the people who found issues with the Openworld style, were no doubt the very ones who said ST need to get away from the boost and on rails sections, in the last few Sonic 3D games and try something different, for added irony. Very much like with 343, Sonic Team can't win and whatever they do, they'll get hate.

    I don't think the final game will be half bad. I just worry that like Halo Infinite it will just all take place in very samey looking environments, that's my biggest worry at the moment.
    By all means take the piss out of me, if I'm hopeless wrong come Christmas
     
  18. Deep Dive Devin

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    Okay but...other people think differently? You still seem to be coming at this from a place of "people are choosing not to like this thing" when nobody really gets to just decide whether something appeals to them or not. The reason those opinions changed is because they were shown something different later. I'd say that anyone who hated these games and never had any possible chance of giving them the benefit of the doubt wouldn't have had a different opinion in the first place, but that's the foundation of your argument here.

    Okay well first off I'm not sure it's accurate to call ER's visuals either undetailed or "last-gen", but either way, it's not a double standard because the standards themselves are different. Fromsoft RPGs always have cameras pulled back out of the action, and the NPCs are usually made with the in-game character creator so there can be a lot of them, whereas a game like Halo puts a first-person camera pretty close to the action, which is why people could see how jank that one guy looked at all.

    You seem to simply not understand the criticisms leveled at Frontiers. Do you think that people who find the open-world directionless are asking for a return to boost hallways? Because I'm pretty sure what they're asking for is more-focused design, a thing that does not necessarily depend on aggressive linearity. Heck, most of the biggest complaints about this game are that at it's core it still is a boost game, with too many rails and springs directing Sonic's movement.

    I feel like your first sentence kinda gives away the gambit here. While I certainly believe people can overreact, you're calling a widespread response to a game "trolling", while describing what look to me like fairly legitimate critiques. You don't have to invalidate something just because it isn't a problem to you personally. Look at me, I like Sonic Forces! But I don't pretend that people's complaints about it aren't based in any kind of reality, even if I think the difference between it and the other boost games is exaggerated (I still cannot stand Unleashed HD). It just seems to me like there aren't a lot of more fundamental criticisms someone could make about the games that you would accept as legitimate, and I think that isn't a great way to navigate discourse here.

    And I should be clear, I'm saying this as someone who thinks Frontiers will be pretty good, even great if the cyberspace levels are numerous and their design a cut above Forces, but that doesn't mean I can't understand the complaints or have any of my own. I still don't want an open-world Sonic, and learning there were linear action stages at all was the moment I actually was able to like the game without a big asterisk. Sonic having marble physics or levels being built like blown-apart pinball tables isn't a big deal to me, but I recognize that it is for other people and still hope for it for their sake (to some degree). You should find a way to be excited for the game that doesn't involve looking at skeptics and finding reasons to treat them like they're being unreasonable.
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2022
  19. Vertette

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    Huh, that's a good point and something I hadn't really thought about before. What's weird is that there is some mystical elements and ancient lore still in the game, they're just very understated. It's implied that Gerald at least had knowledge of Angel Island cause of the Artificial Chaos, the Emerald Altar and Shadow resembling the HPZ mural, which are details that could connect to an interesting story but they don't really do anything with it. There's the pyramid with all the murals depicting humans and echidnas together and a bunch of echidna statues, but I'm pretty sure that's it as far as ancient civilizations go in SA2. At least it's there, but it's still a pretty big shift in focus.

    I'm at least happy that Frontiers is seemingly bringing that aspect of the franchise back. I never really noticed how it disappeared pretty much completely after Colors, but now that I see it, I realize just how important it was for the old games' worldbuilding. Funny how that works.
     
  20. Deep Dive Devin

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    The difference is that SA1 answered a question that arose with Sonic 3, namely "what's the deal with Angel Island", while SA2 is more along the lines of "here's some new questions and answers, and also there's some echidna stuff"