I personally think lost world gets it wrong for simplifying it too much rather than simply mimicking the genesis style. It also doesnt help that half the zones reuse the green hill themes such as checkerboards and grass, like sky road, frozen factory, and I believe some of the jungle. I do honestly think it got really close, though, and with a bit more charm and effort could have been a really great evolution of the genesis games styles into 3d.
Speaking personally, I like surrealism in my Sonic environments. It’s part of what made the genesis games visually distinct. Going forward, I want sonic team to stop reusing locations from past games and embrace the fact that Sonic’s lives in a surreal fantasy world with looped landmass's and floating bodies of land. There are small hints of this in Frontiers… but the majority of the game looks like it could be a million other open world titles. I honestly think there’s potential in a Sonic game that combines realistic level textures with unnatural surreal structures. In terms of the genesis games’ cartoony surrealism I think Dark Sonic is spot on: The original zones in Mania show there’s potential in embracing Sonic’s cartoony elements without reusing environments.
I think you perfectly en-capsuled what I personally want in an open zone sonic game. I would want something like Kingdom Valley that you could freely travel instead of being a linear stage. That style of unnatural but semi-realistic structures is something the sonic series has always had since what, Sonic 2? My favorite spot in frontiers is actually the underwater ruins of a village in Rhea because of this. I hope that they do more of that style going forward. Lost World's art style is just the plastic look that even the most "realistic" games at the time would do such as MGSV. Everything is too smooth and too shiny. I like the game a lot but even I'll admit the art style is very generic.
There are a near infinite number of ways to interpret any singular 2D artwork into 3D, it's just the nature of making such a transition. Personally I think Generations' handling of it with GHZ is my ideal, but I don't think the way Lost World did it is 'wrong', just not my thing. I think turning into 3D inherently does remove quite a bit of the surrealism, a non-Sonic example would be how 3D adaptations of Dr. Seuss' books never quite capture the feel of Seuss' original 2D artwork. It's up to the artist to compensate for that transition, which is why different 3D Green Hills can feel very different despite being fundamentally the same locale.
You're definitely not wrong. But I actually like how TSR looks. Though it is a bit too shiny for my preferences, just like Heroes! All I know is that the Movie Sonic mod I'm using fits in way better with Frontiers' aesthetic than the normal look (IMO). We're almost definitely getting this aesthetic again in the inevitable sequel, so I hope they officially let us use a Movie Sonic skin.
I certainly hope not! I'm personally hoping that with Frontiers + the sheer amount of DLC that they're gonna want to make something at least somewhat different for a sequel. lol
I would kill to see a Sonic game that has the kind of mix of realistic textures and surreal structures that the Adventure games and 06 did, but in an open world environment.
The post-credits scene was a cliffhanger so I'm fairly certain we're getting a Frontiers 2. Sure the DLC's third update could theoretically resolve it, but considering the cutscene before the cliffhanger is all of the main cast leaving the Starfall Islands I heavily doubt it's taking place postgame. I could be wrong, but I'm willing to bet that in 5-6 years, we'll be referring to this game as 'SF1'.
Sonic's next game will obviously follow up on some of the stuff in this one, but that doesn't literally mean it will be called Frontiers 2 and look the exact same.
Isn't that just basically Generations? It still had that semi-realistic texture to everything like in Unleashed, but with more surreal environments and it still looks pretty good to this day.
Art is such a subjective topic that there's no right way to interpret it. That being said, 3D Sonic had never really tried recreating the 2D Genesis environments and more or less just went off in its own direction, and while you can debate how it looks, I think most would agree that the semi-realistic environments of the 3D games are a lot more generic than the environments established in the 2D games. And Frontiers' artstyle being bland as hell is one of the most common complaints about it. Sure, it looks nice, but it's as bog standard of an environment as you can get for an open world game and nothing about it really tells you that it's a setting unique to Sonic and nothing else. Hence all of the "Sega hired this man" memes.
Frontiers' style is 100% made for this specific game and its tone, it's not a direction that Sonic Team will permanently take. Even taking feedback and criticism, they would still shake up the sequel and put it a more "Sonic-like" setting now that the concept took off.
So long as they grow more confident after Frontiers to stop throwing in Green Hill and Chemical Plant yet again, then I should be fine with whatever comes next. I was pleasantly surprised this time.
I would like to see something like Sonic GT's aesthethic with higher production value. When I played it for the (admittedly brief) time I did, I quickly concluded that this was the best level design of any 3D Sonic game, at least when it comes to visuals and aesthetic. Like the scale, natural feel, how you actually are going through the environment rather than a linear track isolated from it (This is the only noteworthy thing SA1's Sonic level design actually did correctly in my view)... ...and for lack of a better word, how "complete" the environments and their backgrounds feel, at least in comparison to some of the earlier 3D titles.
GT just felt like it was aping Heroes and doing it poorly...which I guess I can't blame it for, since Heroes is definitely the most "classic brought into 3D" any Sonic game ever looked. It's probably exactly what the series should be trying to look like?
You know I can't really agree with that assessment. I think Heroes levels look really bad purely on the merit that the level, really the linear tracks you play on, feels so seperated and isolated from the environment. Contributes to the environments feeling kind of incomplete, underdeveloped, and empty in my opinion. It has moments that are alright, I guess. Like the very beginning of Lost Jungle.
