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

And this is a completely normal thing to do for games too, it's just that Sonic Team over the past decade seems to have been kind of bad at it. You can get aways with a lot of asset reuse so long as you're smart in recontextualising those assets to *look* like they're new. Hell, Shadow Generations' Metal Overlord fight does this to a better extent than Frontiers did, with the textures on Forces' Chemical Plant assets recoloured to be evocative of Heroes' Egg Fleet. They could've and should've gone further by mixing it with newly created assets, but my point is Frontiers' cyber space levels really suffer for the artistic decision to recreate those previous aesthetics faithfully rather than mixing in stuff from other stage themes.

 

I can only speculate, but I'm pretty sure that Cyberspace being majority unoriginal in both assets and layouts is entirely down to cost-cutting measures and trying to squeeze out as much content as possible. They didn't have to spend time or money creating much new for the game, because everything was pretty much already tried and tested. It meant that they could focus on everything in the Open Zones instead, which were always the main thing concerning the game. Cyberspace feels like an obligation to make pad out content and provide and traditional level structure.

 

I mean what i remember was that the cyberspace levels were a late addition to the game, as previously they only developed open zones and were planning the whole game around it, so it had way less time in development compared to the rest of the game and thus they relied on old assets way too much

now with the open zone formula cemented, hopefully the next game is better in that regard

 

This information is based on leaks, so take it with a grain of salt. But if they're to be believed, Cyber Space wasn't even in the picture at first, at least not as a gameplay element. It was added later.

Spoiler: Rangers leaks

 

The leak that says you gain emeralds by defeating the bosses is pretty significant, but according to the developers, the stages were there before the "harsh feedback" of the first beta playtest.

Edit: I'll throw one more quote from the bigger write up in here:

Spoiler

https://news.denfaminicogamer.jp/interview/220917i

Iizuka:

"The stage called "Cyberspace", where you can enjoy the traditional Sonic-like time attack, was well received from the beginning. [...] However, when you return to the open zone, you wonder "What can I do here?" It was playtested into what it is today, so it was almost empty at first.

That's why, at first, there were a lot of people who said , "Cyberspace is fun, but Open Zone is boring .""

Frontiers' optional nature throws a wrench into things as well; it could be that defeating bosses at the time granted a chaos emerald, while the "more recent" leak describes beating the cyberspace stages fast enough grants a chaos emerald. The emerald vaults might not have been a thing at that stage, even though the later leak describes gaining orbs to enter cyberspace. The first one describes the fog from the forest that Giganto was originally supposed to be fought in the beta footage, so it's not like it would be inaccurate to the supposed earliest stages of the game and its design...

 

yeah the cyber space levels being added late would totally make sense, because the quotes in the wikipedia article for the game's development emphasize pretty hard that they felt that the linear boost design was both a design dead end and a source of criticism.

I wonder if they got complaints during play testing and feared that people fond of the current games wouldn't touch Frontiers without some familiar gameplay? (EDIT: lmao one of deleter's quotes implies this was the case)

 

.....

Spoiler: More from the full post

We heard about this idea in one of Iizuka's english interviews before, but the central premise that Kishimoto keeps citing as inspiration for the game's design was taking the stage-by-stage design of action games and Sonic games, (comparing it to SMB3 in the English interviews, and a Sugoroku board in the JP interviews) and expanding that map into a playable space, so that players could move freely stage-to-stage, enjoying the movement and exploration of their next point of interest.

https://blog.ja.playstation.com/2022/11/07/20221107-sonicfrontiers/

Kishimoto:

"In order for Sonic Team to rise to the world's ring, I thought that we had to bring the open world mechanism that AAA titles use as a matter of course to stage clear action. For that reason, we decided from the beginning to use elements that seemed like an open world.

So, I thought about how to incorporate the open world into the stage-clearing action. For example, in a game that uses a world map with squares like Sugoroku, there is a mechanism in which the player's piece advances on it, and when it stops at a specific square, it challenges that stage, right? I thought about making the world map itself 3D, making it an open world, allowing players to freely run around and play, and to freely choose the stages within it."

https://dengekionline.com/articles/150019/

Kishimoto:

"Classic stage-clearing action games have a world map where you can choose stages and challenge bosses like Sugoroku. What if you could turn that world map into a 3D space so that you could play freely, and now you could choose your stage? I started with this idea.

So, I didn't try to make an open world game with 'Sonic', but as an evolution of action games, I thought, 'This is what next-generation action games will be like.' Sonic Frontier is what I decided to do ahead of the rest."

There isn't a single instance of them saying they implemented Cyberspace into the game in response to playtest feedback. In comparison, 8 of those 15 quotes I cited in the full write up describe it as there from the beginning, and the most popular aspect of the game from the beginning. They even described how that initial popularity influenced their decision to not iterate/improve on it after they had improved the open world, combat, and puzzles in response to the feedback - "It's like, "Why was this so popular until recently?" When the reputation of an element with a low reputation increased, it often happened that the reputation of an element with a good reputation up to that point decreased in relative terms." - "[...] I think Kawamura was also worried, 'When is this going to end?'"


I'm so confused on how we're processing these interviews; can anyone explain why the consistent account I keep trying to point out is not enough as a response to the speculation here???

 

I am not sure where else I can post this but I am having crashing issues with the game, usually with one of the first boss fights, which has impeded me from carrying on with the game.

I run an AMD Ryzen 7 5700X3D with a nVidia RTX 3060 Ti so it is more than capable of running the game, is it likely an issue with settings as I don't believe I have changed any of them?

 

Are all other games running stable? You could try verifying the integrity of the game files on Steam, updating your drivers (graphics + chip set if you haven't already), and disabling background stuff like MSI Afterburner if you have that on to see if it helps.

 

Uh….

It never occured to me to ask this in a place like this.

But I found a cheap computer on Amazon and it is on its way next week. Does anyone who knows something about computers know if it should be able to run the game decently?

HP Elitedesk 800 G1 USFF Ultra-Slim High Performance Business Desktop Computer, Intel i7-4770s up to 3.9 GHz, 16GB RAM, 240GB SSD

I intended to buy a graphics card as well to slap in there at some point in the near future. GT 1030

 

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I think there's enough room for a 1030 in there.

 

Wait, are you saying that that is the computer? Do you own it as well or something?

And I just want to make sure you didn’t forget the “not” there or something. Because if there is no room, that would suck lol

 

I'm going off what Google gives me. This is another result.

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This shit is still tiny. This is the type of PCs I get people who need to use spreadsheets. You ain't gaming off this.

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Eh, whatever. At least I’ll be able to play SRB2 again.

I will say that is an i5, while I got an i7. Also I have 16gigs of ram not 8. And some other stuff as well but…


Eh, we’ll just have to wait and see.

 

Don't expect much outta the 7th gen intel integrated graphics. Unless that thing's got an Xe setup you're gonna have a hard time. Maybe a bit surprisingly, the tiny PCs with AMD chips tend to have good graphics performance and might be worth looking into in comparison.

 

Well, most of what you just said seemed to be English. No idea what an Xe is, though.

I might look into that. And yeah. I’ll keep the expectations low.

 

Xe is one of a few models of integrated graphics setups Intel has. Most Intel integrated graphics are designed for typical desktop display and some video codec stuff; Xe actually has some use for 3D

 

Yeah, you’re wasting your time trying to explain this stuff to me. I got pretty much none of that lol

 

Why bump a thread asking for help and then be completely dismissive when offered information bro?

 

Hm, the results I can find just list the graphics as "Intel Integrated" without giving any further detail so I don't have a good benchmark to compare it against. As Chimpo's image earlier suggested, you aren't going to fit an internal graphics card in there. I know external graphics cards exist, but all of the results are saying either that an external graphics card holder and GPU would be more expensive than the PC itself, or the few that tried mention that power draw starts to become a problem. That can be worked around by replacing the power supply, but at that point it's easier to build a PC instead of tweaking a small form factor PC into doing something it wasn't meant for.