It's hard to know anything about an open-world game without knowing how that world is used. It probably seems safe to assume a huge chunk of the gameplay is spent exploring the islands, running around and fighting enemies (or else something REALLY changed since the leak), but it would also be the most "Chaos in Forces" thing since Chaos in Forces to make it a glorified hub area where the real meat of the experience is the cyberspace levels, which end up just amounting to a traditional boost game.
I have a hard time remembering that this is a Sonic Game when watching this footage. Some areas honestly remind me of like the Witcher or Horizon Zero Dawn. But this also reminded me in a way of Sonic CD's opening animation. And now I look forward to hopefully recreating that with the gameplay
Suddenly I'd remembered this: Despite Lost World's unsatisfying gameplay and controls, it was a fun level, and far more open-ended than any other level in the game, I think. It might give a decent, vague idea of what Frontiers' gameplay could be like, maybe?
I guess it all depends on who the lead game designers are and what their mentality is. As much as I dislike Kishimoto's direction I appreciate that he brought back the spindash in Lost World so he's at least open to new ideas (or re-visiting old ideas I guess)
I think it's better they try something near-entirely new after over a decade of nonstop indecision between whether they want to pander or try new things. Everyone paraphrases about how Sonic Team wants to make new things rather than just rehash Adventure again, but they kept taking one shaky, stumbling step forwards and then immediately hopped back two or three more, or even just.. hopped off the track altogether and lost their path. Do I have confidence in this? Heck no, not with that director and Sonic Team no longer having a single thing to instill confidence in me anymore besides maybe soundtracks, which was still on the weaker side for Forces with me. But until we honestly see more, as everyone else has said, it's hard to dictate or even consider what might happen beyond the general dread the community has for what's to come. Which is pretty sad but the harsh truth of it.
We're on the second day after the reveal, and I feel like this is a middle finger to the trend of shamelessly ripping off Zelda. BotW wasn't the first game to feature an open world, neither was it the first to feature cartoony textures. There's buried potential within this genre that's worth exploring (e.g., what if Shadow of the Colossus but with hundreds of colossi instead of just 16) and I believe that's just what this game will do. I'm seeing a little bit of everything in Sonic Frontiers.
When I said "PSO2: New genesis looks more like a Sonic game" or "NGS may be a good reference on how an open-world Sonic game would look like" I never expected the new teaser to totally look like "Sonic in PSO2:NGS". Seriously I even thought they were reusing the assets from that game before having a closer look. No more Mobius or Earth, Sonic's world is Halpha, and this game is set in Phantasy Starfall islands. Can't wait to enter those cyberspace towers and cocoons and see what DOLLS Eggman has created to fight Sonic. Beyond resemblances to a different Sega IP, I see what is shown here as ok for what it is, a longer teaser that should have been the first but, well, it came the second and it's better than the previous one. Without seeing the real game, there's no need to have expectations or make assumptions, just be patient and wait a bit more. I'm also so disconnected on how a recent game should look, feel or be advertised like, I haven't had a decent PC or console in about a decade, so everything has a great chance of looking nice to me on trailers and such, I don't feel a need to freak out about these kind of things either. For those getting RoL vibes from here, well, I found the general concept of that game to be interesting even if the real thing wouldn't live up to those expectations, so having Sonic Boom done right or well enough at least is not a con for me. Sonic fights could be really fun if done right; the really boring thing about the fights in heroes, for example, is that they were static as hell, when Sonic fights should be about non-stop movement and nice physics to learn performing quicker combos and take down enemies faster each time. Again talking about PSO2:NGS, half of the time (until my PPs run low, basically), I feel like I fight in that game as if I were Sonic, running from one enemy to the other and spinning through the air with my sword (I can play that game only under lowest graphic settings and with severe frame drops in a lot of cases, if you were wondering). I see no issue in this game looking like that other game, be it BoTW or any other. I'd take a good clone over a bad original game any day at this point; they can copy now and improve later if they wanna try to do that this time instead of running scared of failures. I'll pay attention to models and any other stuff when the core thing, the gameplay, works.
I do have to agree that calling it a rip-off of BoTW is kinda disingenuous. Just because Mario & Sonic are both platformers doesn't mean Sega ripped off Nintendo (much the opposite if I recall). Now BoTW popularized a lot of elements that we're seeing repeated in other Open-World games since, but that's just the growth of a genre. The "Ubisoft Towers" as people tend to call them are a natural outgrowth of this type of game as they both provide waypoints to travel to and allow the player to see to a far-off distance to make their next move. Under the same logic, BoTW ripped off various Ubisoft games that did it first when the reality is that it was a wise design decision that other developers have incorporated into other games and has resultingly codified it into the genre. Now is Sega chasing a trend here? Absolutely. I would argue though that this is nothing new and we could genuinely see some creative iteration on the genre in their own way. Sonic's trademark speed is naturally suited to an open-world field so there's at least potential in the idea. The main thing of concern shouldn't be if it's ripping off another game that, under the same logic, ripped off another game. Rather it should be if it's executed well. That's always the million-dollar question with Sonic & Sega games in general.
I've never heard of Defunct but it looks pretty fun! There's also Solar Ash, which is an open world game focused on high speed movement. I've not gotten a chance to play it but from what I've seen, the combat in this game looks pretty nice and fast paced.
https://twitter.com/itsdakiii/status/1469794252251090946?s=21 Anyone know the source of the image in this tweet? If it can be traced back to a date preceding the trailer, then we can take the information as legit, given that the image explicitly mentions the Starfall Islands by name.
Then if true, there was an online multi-player Sonic game considered where you could play as Tails and Knuckles again, but also 3 new characters named Bobo, Cosmos, and Spinner As much as I like the online concept... eh this is prob the better choice.
According to this translation (https://soahcity.com/2021/09/29/pre...-sonic-vr-30th-anniversary-and-sonics-future/) of an interview with Takashi Iizuka from September of this year he said something VERY interesting: “The development team has been thinking about and discussing various directions to take the series including open world, battle royale, online play, etc. Gameplay modes which can attract more players to play Sonic are in discussion. We are still discussing ideas like open-world and other things like including matchmaking and online gameplay.” This combined with the leaks basically confirms that sega has been seriously thinking about an online sonic game. Now the question is... has the online play been scrapped, are they saving the concept for a future game, or is frontier’s (potential) multiplayer unrelated to the “battle royale” genre. I don’t wanna jump the gun but I think it’s very possible that online play and other playable characters may be considered for DLC.
Seeing the "new old" leak -the oldest yet-, it seems Super Sonic is actually present in multiple boss fights across the game? this is new and cool actually, and also explains the first leak we heard about, that mentioned "fighting the final boss already" which was a bit weird, but now it makes perfect sense
It would be cool to collect the Chaos Emerald in a species of temple / ruins instead of Special Stages, something like Sonic Unleashed on the Gaia Temples, except it' not on a cutscene, you have to get by yourself.
Since this stuff appears to be real now, that image of Sonic which was pointed out to be fan made in the archived thread interests me. Perhaps Sonic Team was actually considering making a fur-textured Sonic model at the time. If that's the case, I honestly hope that's what happens by the time Frontiers comes out. I seriously doubt it will though, since high quality CG animations have already been shown to the public using the exact same model style we've seen for over a decade. I'm a bit tired of Sonic looking like an eel, besides my general problems with the modern model.
Well its been an eventful last few days. Personally, don't think I have that much to say as we didn't really get that much? I suppose we can confirm a lot of the leaks, but we were pretty much convinced of them already as is. I see where you are getting at, but I don't really think its the same. Classic Sonic wasn't really a "thing" when Sonic 4 came out. I think the backlash was more about how people wanted a new game instead of something rehashing more callbacks to the classic era moreso than anything of the sort. Sorry for the late reply btw Well yea. Zelda 1 did it in the 80s. :P
Sonic would need a pretty intensive re-design in order to make fur work with his design and the movies are proof of this. I'm just not a big fan of this idea haha, it's not worth the hassle. The fur was always implied and textured on his Marza model and that's honestly more than enough.
