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

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

  1. Antheraea

    Antheraea

    Bug Hunter Member
    I actually shut off notifications, and past the first island there are basically no tutorial cutscenes at all at that point....

    Haven't made much progress lately, due to the new Pokemon* (this is the year of jank-but-very-fun open world games it seems) and then Thanksgiving week, where I was away from my proper gaming rig. Given that my laptop barely manages to get FFXIV, a ten year old game, running at 60 FPS, I did not want to see what attempting to run Frontiers on it would look like lmaooooo

    Distance has managed to make the game even better for me honestly. I've still been collecting each and every memory token on the map and am almost done with Chaos Island. Sonic telling Tails that he's proud of him made me so happy ahahahah ;w; Will continue hammering away at the game every night but I'm already 20+ hours in so god knows how long that will take! :V




    * A quick aside because this is bothering me a lot, I saw someone bring up "reused animations from Sun & Moon" like animation and model reuse isn't one of the biggest bread and butter of any game development, even original games. Ratchet and Clank absolutely reused stuff from Spyro for instance. And before you go "buh buh buh game freak said--", they're native JP speakers like how Kishimoto, who was mistranslated fairly recently, is, and also they straight up had a presentation at CEDEC this year about the various issues their huge amounts of models and animations were giving them in game development and how they solved it for future development. I will trust the people who actually know how to make games over people quoting something they half-remembered translated in Japanese by some rando.
     
  2. Antheraea

    Antheraea

    Bug Hunter Member
    related to the aside above, but going back to Frontiers, I think it's pretty fascinating how completely disparate dev teams manage to come up with the same solutions to a common problem: "how the hell do you collect stuff while walking around in a 3D space without making it completely tedious?"

    Insomniac's solution to this in the Spyro games was to have Sparx the Dragonfly follow you around and get those gems to home in on you, while also ingeniously being a visible display of your health - and if he goes away, not only are you one hit away from death, but...collecting things gets much harder! Thus almost explicitly incentivizing keeping your health up so that the act of collecting in a collectathon wasn't a massive pain.

    They then did this in Ratchet & Clank as well, but that being more of an implicit conceit - bolts will always home in on Ratchet (because of Clank being magnetic IIRC) in basically the exact same way and style as how gem collecting works in Spyro.

    So of course, in Frontiers the rings are now homing as well, solving the problem of "how the hell do I get these things while running fast". The same kind of concept but made independently.
     
  3. Snub-n0zeMunkey

    Snub-n0zeMunkey

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    this image from the Mario movie is what Frontiers' world design looks like to me lol
    upload_2022-11-29_23-44-55.jpeg
     
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  4. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    Yea, fair, but it felt fun so I didn’t mind too much.

    Now seeing this in a movie though is kinda jarring. Like I’m gaining a little more respect for what the Sonic movie did in comparison
     
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  5. charcoal

    charcoal

    Be Cool, Be Wild, and Be Groovy Member
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    Something that's been bugging me about this game for a while now is..
    https://info.sonicretro.org/images/3/34/Sonic_Frontiers_Key_Visual.jpg
    Wtf is up with this key art's map layout? It's obviously some version of Kronos, landmarks like the waterfall with the bridge above it make that obvious enough, but upon closer inspection it's almost completely different. The layout doesn't match anything from Kronos, Rhea, or Ouranos. Is it an early version of the map that we don't have? Was it made just for this art or something? If so, why the hell would they do that? So many questions, so little answers.
     
  6. Londinium

    Londinium

    People actually read these? Member
    Looks like the artists just put a bunch of assets together.

    I'm more focused on those cool birds on the top right.
     
  7. VenomTH

    VenomTH

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    The art team probably just grabbed some key locations from Kronos Island and did the modeling to convey the message of the game. I wish the North American and European covers used this art and not just the Japanese cover.
     
  8. JaxTH

    JaxTH

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    Jack shit.
    Except for that one part of Chaos Island of course.

    EDIT: In fact rings are the only things that do.
     
  9. Linkabel

    Linkabel

    Member
    The development staff is taking questions for a youtube stream.

    Might be a good venue to ask stuff about the game, even if you have to use DeepL or get someone to help you translate a question to Japanese.
     
  10. RikohZX

    RikohZX

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    Don't forget that there was a time where the game was genuinely going to be open world before that got scrapped and downsized. Maybe the CGI/art design team based things around that. After all, the CGI trailers promote full forests, when there's basically next to none of those that aren't really tiny thickets in the final product or one very specific plot place.
     
  11. Sonic Warrior TJ

    Sonic Warrior TJ

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    Yeah and the only really woodsy area is on Ouranos, which you have to go around since it's blocked off. That was the weirdest thing to me about that map. Maybe the camera bugged out too much in the midst of the all the trees and rather than take some of them out, they decided "screw it, just put up an invisible wall." When I first encountered that, I thought, "Oh, I must have to come back here later for something after a story event," but nope.
     
  12. Starduster

    Starduster

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  13. Laura

    Laura

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    I said this in the spoiler thread, but having Knuckles, Tails, and Amy playable would be a very positive step for the franchise moving forwards. This move should be praised by everyone.
     
  14. Starduster

    Starduster

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    Hopefully this isn't just listed content. I very much hope that the developers will be tuning the game in response to fan feedback. Of course, there's only so much that can be done within the framework of an already shipped game and I don't expect major reworks that address the core criticisms of the open zones, but, chiefly, my desire is for better movement and reduced pop-in.

    Hm...looks like Sage is part of the playable characters too...I wonder if these updates may also bring with them an epilogue to the story.
     
  15. Turbohog

    Turbohog

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    Interesting. It would be nice if they could also do a non-shit cyberspace controls update.
     
  16. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    WOAH. A 3D Sonic hasn’t had such robust dlc since Unleashed. And playable characters? No fucking way.

    Well I don’t see how this won’t be my favorite 3D Sonic by the end of all this.

    Nicely done Sonic Team. And maybe Super Knuckles will return, it was referenced anyways so it’s canon again
     
  17. My bad Sonic Team, I wasnt familiar with your game.

    I'm really eating good next year, XC3 story dlc, new fire emblem, and now playable Tails, Knuckles and Amy in a mainline 3D entry for the first time in 16 years? And here I was thinking 2022 was a fantastic year entertainment-wise for me...
     
  18. Starduster

    Starduster

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  19. Dark Sonic

    Dark Sonic

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    ^ omg the promo art Santa Sonic outfit we finally get to play it in game.
    Technically 14, Black knight let you play as Blaze, Shadow, and Knuckles, but still. Wow that’s a long time damn
     
  20. Snub-n0zeMunkey

    Snub-n0zeMunkey

    yo what up Member
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    the New Story sounds interesting, I wonder if there will be a "true" final boss battle

    We probably won't get Update 3 until Q3/4 of 2023 so it's gonna be a loooong wait. We already waited 16 years for this though, maybe we can hold on for 1 more :P