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

I believe it was the isolation room conundrum in 2000-2001, in which they got sued for locking employees in empty rooms for entire days as a form of punishment. It crippled their image in Japan but mostly went under the radar worldwide because it happened around the same time they discontinued the Dreamcast.

Not trying to go off-topic but I think that's what you're thinking of, as I know it severely damaged their image in Japan.

 

I don't think comparing to a visual novel is really fair. That's just a harmless spin off at the end of the day that won't have any greater effect on the franchise.

And keep in mind that despite how well received it was, there's more than a few people who didn't exactly care for Mania and what it did and we all agree that game was amazing.


You are going to alienate some people when you decided to stick with one singular vision because like it or not, everyone has a different vision on what this franchise should be.

Like if I decided that the next game will no longer have Boost ever again, a mechanic that's been a stable for 15 years now, there's gonna be at least SOME pushback.

I just wanna recognize things for what they are is all; obviously I want Sonic to commit to something and preferably something that aligns with my specific preferences for the series, but I also recognize my views aren't exactly the popular opinion either.

 

Holy shit, I looked this up and it's real. I had never heard of this. That is fucking psychotic. Good god they need unions there, apparently more than the US side.

...I don't think that's a big part of why Sonic isn't successful in Japan, though. I think it's just that the niche he fills is occupied by other stuff in their cultural landscape and the western marketing strategy and promotional material had more staying power relative to who it was targeting. Also, America has more furries.

But WOW. That's so fucked. This is why I always blame management, people.

 

While I won't argue that the way Frontiers plays and presents itself isn't different from the norm for Sonic, isn't your description here showing that Frontiers does indeed have an 'identity'? It's an identity that doesn't click with you, but it is an identity. It's an identity that is in many respects derivative, but all art is, including and especially Sonic. It just seems that in this case what Sonic is being derivative of doesn't click with you the way that what Sonic used to be derivative of does: art deco J-pop Felix the Cat Mario billiard game vs. somber atmospheric prestige-chasing action game. I suppose you could also argue that in the former case, Sonic was at its best greater than the sum of its parts, while in the latter and present case it has wound up being less than the sum of its parts. Despite enjoying Frontiers overall, I would agree on that point.

As for Sega/Sonic Team wanting Sonic to be something it isn't, I've been complaining about that informing the 00's 3D games for almost a decade now, so while I feel you there, I also don't think that's anything new. So many of those games come from a place of "wanting to make the game appeal to people who wouldn't normally play a Sonic game", and that's a double-edged sword; you want more people getting into your game, that's just good business, but you're right that it effectively risks alienating the existing fan following to some extent. We want the IP to be profitable so that they see justification in giving future games good budgets and time and the like, but we also want the games to, well, be the games we're already here for. But I also think people are correct in pointing out that what makes Sonic "Sonic" is going to vary from person to person. Not to take away at all from what makes Sonic "Sonic" to you (you've described it well and I see where you're coming from), but for me Frontiers is (mechanically) the most "Sonic" 3D Sonic game has been since Adventure 2. And I think we're both right, because different aspects of the games have wound up being more salient to each of us.

In terms of music though? Yeah, wow, between this, Origins, and Superstars, it feels (to me) like we're in an uncharacteristic low point for new Sonic music; we are not eating right now. And in terms of visual presentation? Also yikes, we have drab and dreary photorealism on the one hand, and bright and colorful but flat and barren on the other hand (Superstars). Which way western man.

 

Regarding the artstytle. There is a particular look in Forces and Frontiers when its not using assets from Lost World and Generations.

Many would say : unsonicy, somber, dark. But I kinda dig it. Problem: they were never go all the way, I feel. So many more themes and could be made with that kind of look. Thats what Superstars did well. It had alot of level themes...and thats good. It feels like a full Sonic game und used its artstyle to the best it can.

 

I would somewhat agree. That's why I'm so adamant that the size of the levels is one of the things that most needs to change. In a vacuum, Frontiers has a decent amount of environmental variety and interesting design. It's just that it's spread very thin across a game that is mostly object platforms on flat planes. If it condensed a lot of that open space (and also made the platforming challenges a natural part of the terrain) it would fare a lot better. I'm thinking of the caves and pathways over Ares, how Chaos is ice, volcano and that spring area all in one, the random fall-colored plateau on Ouranos. These things are all interesting individually, but the game spaces them out so much between generic plains, sand dunes, forests and ruins that they don't stand out the way they would if there were a larger number of smaller open zones (and frankly, Ouranos should have been all fall all the time).

I have reasonable confidence that we're not going to have to worry about reused stages for a while, but part of me wonders if, because we know that the final game's platforming wasn't part of the original intention when the islands were first constructed, the next game will actually bother to model its levels with that design intact. If it does, I think a lot of the art style gripes will be way less pronounced.

 

I think Frontiers does need that empty space to not feel cramped. People don't really talk about the world design of the Final Horizon besides noticing the significant drop in automation, but I think that has the opposite problem of the rest of the game by being too cramped and too dense. I'm not just talking about the effect of the art design either.

The Final Horizon is more "interactive" than the base game, but it also lacks the freedom to just do cool tricks on the environment. A key part of the Frontiers' experience is just running around, linking tricks, running through the landscape. Due to the lack of space and the greater depth of "stuff", I was less compelled to just explore the new Ouranos Island until I beat the story.

It could have benefited much with emptier space between challenges, and also greater cohesion and indication of what a challenge is besides gaudy colored platforms to signify which character should play it.

Of course, the Final Horizon is just content on top of existing content so they coul;dn't reshape the island, and for the purposes of makin ga more rewarding DLC, going dense was probably a better choice.

But in a sequel, I'd like to see a mix of the base game's design of short platforming segments in between key landmarks and having those landmarks be denser and more interactive. Imagine exploring a city open zone where you can run on a highway, do ramp tricks, grind rails etc. on the way to a landmark that's a construction zone with more dedicated platforming--or something like that.

The open zones don't need to shrink, they need to use the space more meaningful. Making simply traveling as engaging as the dedicated spaces.

 

The biggest sticking point here is what Sega have been struggling with for decades; accommodating for a character who moves as fast Sonic. Make the areas too big and lifeless and you just have a bunch of unneeded space that only exists for Sonic to run past, make it too cramped and you don't really get that feeling of exploration either.

 

I agree that at the VERY least it's an identity that doesn't click with me, yeah. But I don't know if it works to call the former style just as derivative. Sure, everything comes from somewhere, but when you have so many influences that go into a pot and use them well, the result is usually just.. something new. I'm also not necessarily caught up on needing the games to look just like classic Sonic, either, so my wants for how Sonic games look is much more wide and with room for experimentation.

Frontiers just fails me here because it feels what it does is so non-descript and uninteresting compared to what this series has given us over the years. And the game is much more concerned with making itself out as serious and mysterious than being fun or exciting. It all comes back to that for me, I think.

That's my thing. I don't want to revisit the mid-00s of Sonic, haha. But I guess time is a flat circle at Sonic Team..

I wanna understand people who feel Frontiers scratched that 3D Sonic control itch. I'd give Frontiers it's flowers for trying to make a mechanical hand-shake between Adventure and Boost gameplay, but I think the combat constantly getting in the way of what I want to do + constant small physics problems (instant stop-start, glue shoes on most slopes, broken ass Spin Dash etc) just soured a lot of my goodwill. Maybe if I didn't have to boot up Frontiers with like seven or eight physics mods I'd feel a little warmer to what this game is trying, haha. But that's part of why I moved on from talking about gameplay in my post, since I don't really know what they'll fix/keep/drop from it next time.

 

"Cramped" is not the word I'd use to describe the final horizon, more along the lines of "the world geometry was absolutely not designed for any of this". It felt daunting to conquer, but that was more because of the restrictions on the challenges and collectibles by character, and the really tedious process of mapping the whole thing one Koco at a time.

Either way, I'm not saying the islands need to have no space between platforming challenges, just that they need to have the terrain itself be part of the shape of those challenges, and to not bloat the size of each open zone. If you cut Ares in half and make the side you cut off into a snow island or whatever, it's exactly as open and/or cramped as before, just smaller.

But also, no, you definitely don't need as much of the empty fields and dunes as Frontiers had. Even if you argue that the platforming design needs to be spaced out, there is a happy medium between that and blandness.

Also, a big part of this? Slow Sonic the fuck down. Remove the boost, have max speed from SA2 be the fastest he ever needs to go. Suddenly, you're getting a lot more out of the environments you've designed! Real shocker, right?

 

I feel like new Ouranos Island's design is more than just the limitations of the new characters, or rather, those limitations are a result of a conscious decision and a part of an experimentation with the gameplay loop; to deemphasize basic exploration in favor of dedicated and specific challenges. Even if the characters could do everything at the start, it would be as if not more daunting, and those limitations are themselves implemented to make exploration easier and simpler, but less free. Base Frontiers felt more free and less daunting because all of Sonic's moves are instantly available, but also, those challenges didn't actually require much out of you, and there were fewer challenges.

Playtesters criticizes the early builds of Frontiers because the basic exploration was very bare and boring, so Sonic Team designed the Memory Token challenges and platforming that serve to make getting to point A to B more interesting and requiring slightly more thought (IIRC, the puzzles and more integrated platforming (like the giant diamond in Kronos Island) were already implemented).

They're pretty basic and don't interact with the terrain, but I think that the idea is very sound and worth salvaging and if implemented very well can make the empty space more meaningful. More world-specific mechanics, like sliding down ice or allowing Sonic to skateboard or ski, and more innovative uses of Sonic's basic movement can make even empty space as involving as the platforming, and you wouldn't have to shrink the worlds or slow Sonic down.

Less focus should be on the volume of space and more using it economically. I'd like to see the maps designed where it's like "oh, all of the Knuckles climbing sections are over here" or "oh this is the big platforming section of the map here". I feel like cohesive art and terrain design is the first thing Sonic Team will try to fix in a sequel, but Frontiers still has a problem where, y'know, why is this platforming segment here and why is it next to this entirely different platforming, that wouldn't be addressed just with stronger art design.

Sonic's speed itself was never a problem in Frontiers. They already made him start off slow, and being able to choose to increase your speed is a nice trade-off.

EDIT: Ooooo, also, more collectibles like rings, where you can collect a lot of them and can influence you to interact with things but they have more value. Instead of having a platforming challenge that ends with a single time, have "pieces" of that item spread throughout the challenge. So it's not just that you have to get through it, but you are rewarded for doing it well.

 

When I say it's limited by character, I mean that the exploration is harmed by the fact that you need a specific character to get specific collectibles. Everything you're talking about in terms of experimentation would still be possible were it not limited to which character is allowed to solve a specific puzzle, and relied on the player to choose which one is best for the job.

And yes, the memory token challenges are what I was talking about. They're the part of the game that looks and feels so off, because the parts of the platforming that come naturally are the part the stages are actually built for. Same goes for the Final Horizon cyber levels. They've received a really mixed reception, and that's because even though they're all really intricate and more interesting than almost all the base game's stages, they're made out of cardboard boxes taped together, and this looks so off that it's hard to ignore.

Also, using the space more economically is what I'm saying. I mean, your world should have flow, but I am saying that the literal amount of time it takes to get between landmarks and gameplay challenges should be shorter, and making it such does not necessitate "cramped design". The game is already massively overcompensating.

And again, case in point: it wouldn't even need to compensate if Sonic wasn't so damn fast. The player's control over his speed is not a strong argument against the speed the game needs to necessarily be designed to support. If you lower that ceiling, you lower the time and resources it takes to craft your world while the player still traverses it in a similar amount of time.

Like, was anyone ever complaining that Sonic was too slow in SA2? Genuinely. I don't think I ever remember that. I've heard people say that the insane speeds you get in, say, Unleashed can be thrilling, but never that that makes it a better game than the Adventures or classics or what have you.

 

As someone who really liked the controls and feel of the movement, relatively speaking, it just felt to me like (with all of the movement sliders all the way to the right) platforming in 3D was much less clunky than it had been in the prior Boost games, while also not being slippery as hell like in Heroes and Shadow. That's why it was the best that 3D Sonic platforming has felt to me since SA2. I don't really know how else to explain it.

The fact that I was able to tell the combat "no" for the most part kept it from dampening the experience too much, but I can see how the game asking in the first place would sour the experience.

Now, the physics are no "classic physics in 3D" like a lot of fangames these days pull off, and even like the Adventure games did. But the ability to launch off of diagonal geometry managed to make traversal fun, especially on Area island. I could do big jumps to skip stuff, which facilitated at least a facsimile of the sort of emergent play and player creativity that keeps the classics (and even the Adventure games to an extent) so interesting to me still. The broken ass Spin Dash played into that for me. I love it. Flying into the sky with it is the closest thing in spirit to "Chemical Plant Act 2 rising water section skip" I've felt in 3D (officially) since SA2.

That's the how/why it scratched the 3D Sonic control itch for me. I do also wonder what they're gonna fix/keep/drop in the next game. I'd like the platforming pieces to be integrated into the terrain, and I'd like more natural physics, and all that, but most of all I'd like to see the combat gone. Sadly, that's the thing I most expect to return.

 

I played Unleashed again earlier this year, and I was shocked at how much I wished it controlled like Frontiers. I mean, not the horrible cyberspace turning, but you can look at any of the platforming in Final Horizon and see that it simply is not slippery the way any of the boost games were. Even as much as the air control sucks, you can actually turn way more than in Forces, for instance (Forces itself actually brought an improvement in the roll of Sonic's jump being instantaneous, without any windup, the lack of which kept messing with me and feeling sluggish in Unleashed).

The issue, of course, is how simple it feels like it would be to fix much of this. Modders already did a lot of it! Tighter jump turning, modifiable cyberspace physics, rolling and weight on slopes, it's all here. Sonic still can't really handle 360° motion right (and the way that every game since SA2 and I guess 06 has handled wall-running has been truly awful), but the nuanced differences are there. It's just frustrating because even though the controls usually work alright for the game they've built, the fact that they didn't catch and alter these simple things themselves makes you feel like they aren't paying attention to that nuance themselves, and are just winging it.

 

I wouldn't exactly say the game doesn't have an aesthetic, but the problem is that that aesthetic is only during certain, small parts of the game.

Namely, the Super Sonic boss fights.

Nearly all discussion or mention outside of this forum is about how amazing the bosses and music during them are. There isn't a whole lot about the open-roam and cyberspace sections in the minds of Ordinary Gamers it seems. I do wonder then that if Sonic Team was in the business of cultivating a specific identity, what else they could do to channel that "holy shit" vibe without making it tiresome. Or without making a game all bossfights. lol

 

This reminded me of an interesting interview snippet from the director of sonic unleashed. Doesn't really prove or disprove anything you said but it's definitely relevant to the discussion.

 

Frontier's main issue artistically is that the Starfall Islands just don't have any of that surreal flair that nearly every level in this entire series has. Even in, say, Unleashed, a game where the levels are all based directly on real locations, they are still surreal roller coasters filled with loops, conveniently platforming gauntlets, and SonicTM architecture. Skyscraper Scramble is a deranged mess of highways that loop around, twist, and bend in ways that only make sense if it's a Sonic level--which makes the fact that it's visually designed like New York contrast with the absurdity in a way I adore.

Frontiers places all the Sonic Stuff in the air disconnected from the environment and it comes off as borderline uncanny because this stuff was already incorporated into the natural environment in basically every Sonic game prior. They embraced the inherent surrealism of a perfect loop-de-loop in the middle of a city or rising from the ground and Frontiers seem to actively avoid doing that.

 

Hashimoto really gets it. What's he up to these days, we need a mind like this back on the series

 

NFTs

Every has been dev finds a way to it seems

 

My disappointment is immeasurable and my day is ruined.