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

Originally they had something way more ambitious planned and had to scrap basically all of it and cobble together the game we got in a very short timespan, is what I've heard. I don't think they "just sit around" or "just half-ass" development cycles, even if the games are bad. I would say that almost no bad games are the product of workers simply not trying, the problems usually come from the top down.

 

Recall something about at first it was supposed to have only OC as playable character, chasing something like Dragon Ball Xenoverse and at some point they just scrapped and went to something more safe

Nothing official tho

 

In a bumblekast (don't know which), someone asked Flynn a forces related question which he couldn't get into because it was behind the scenes info, but he alluded that he had heard wild stories about that game's production

 

I vaguely recall Kishimoto saying he stepped in for the previous director in development. He and Iizuka seemed to be tied to the hip so he probably came in when the latter did. This tracks then.

Sonic Team spent 4 years trying to figure out what the fuck they want to do, and when they finally made a decision, they had a year or two to make that game. Explains a lot. Really am grateful the game came out the way it did.

Sonic had nightmare developments as early as Sonic 2. The common denominator is Sega. Sega is only JUST realizing that this kind of shit isn't working out, thankfully they realized that by the time Frontiers released, and it seems the lesson is sticking.

 

Not wanting to sound pessimistic, but it's better not hold a candle or throw fireworks yet.
Let things sink in and a new game come out. A lucky strike may not land twice in a row...

 

The story I heard is that Forces was originally strongly focused on the Avatar with Sonic as more of a supporting character than the protagonist. Apparently higher-ups were not happy when Sonic Team showcased their progress and they were forced to substantially alter it to be more Sonic-focused. That coupled with roughly half of the development cycle being focused on the creation of Hedgehog Engine 2 necessitated a lot of the simplifications that Forces is now infamous for.

 

I kinda wish that was the game we got. Would've been more focused and could've had some creative gameplay.

 

Frontiers is now on Amazon Luna for the 3 people that play on that.

 

Plus the whole "oh my god sonic is actually gone" plot could have had some real impact. In the final, Sonic disappears then within 5 stages he's back again

 

That was a wild 15 minutes the first time round

 

What the fuck is Amazon Luna?

 

Amazon's flavour of cloud gaming platform, another in the sea of them that popped up in 2020-2022.

 

I'm suspecting Amazon has some sort of exclusivity deal to where they're the only streaming platform Sonic games can be on because it's the only reason I can think they removed them from PS Now when it became a higher tier of ps+ and the only reason the Epic/Steam games aren't on GeForce Now (which pulls from your actual game libraries) and why Sonic games have just never been on Game Pass

Quite a bad move imo but what can you do about it

 

Iizuka has gone on record to say the following in the Sonic Forces OST notes, so yes:

 

Slightly off topic but addressing that excerpt… “comradery”?

The text actually says that instead of camaraderie in Shun’s section. How does that fly?

 

When you have a question about spelling and grammar, just Google it.

https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/comradery

 

As I was saying in the Superstars thread, I finally got time to play some games. Now I just finished Frontiers + Final Horizon DLC.
The way I define it is that this is the mediocre game that I like the most.

There is a lot of bad things about this game.
- The pop-in is egregious. And it's not only about aesthetics. Since the game is mostly a mix of platforming and puzzles, I often had trouble trying to figure out how to get some memory token simply because I couldn't see the objects. Many of them are floating in the sky, so there's no way to get closer to make the objects appear, unless I'm already there.
- Camera sometimes is a pain. It wants to stay fixed during the puzzles, which is fine, but sometimes you're just exploring the level and the camera suddenly shifts because you went closer to a puzzle, and that screws what you were trying to do. And during the Supreme + The End final boss, those fucking trees were constantly blocking my view.
- The islands are incredibly bland. It's just a terrain with a lot of rails, springs and other objects in it. The kind of stuff you would see in a create-your-own-level type of game.
- The cyberspace levels are lazy. Again Green Hill? Again Chemical Plant? Again Sky Sanctuary? At least there's a new City level that reminds me of City Escape but it's definitely not. The game explains that these levels are familiar because of Sonic's memories. I get it, it's better to have an explanation than none, but then what about the City level?
- The objects don't mesh well with the islands. In Superstars, for example, the rails in Speed Jungle are vines, so they feel like really part of the level. In Frontiers, regardless the location, the objects are always the same, literally objects that have nothing to do with the island itself. The game also explains that, saying that these are due to Sonic's integration with the cyberspace or whatever, and that in reality there is nothing there whatsoever. Again, it's better to have an explanation than none.
- I experienced some weird bugs. I could never play the "shoot 'em up" part of The End boss for some reason, and I tried it twice to check it. It appears it's going to change to the shoot 'em up mode but then it moves on, loading the next part of the boss (a cutscene, I think). And after the second credits of Supreme + The End boss, my game got stuck on a black screen and I had to forcedly close it. Does anyone know what happened here in both cases?
- The towers (in Rhea island and especially in Final Horizon) suck. You don't make a game about exploring islands to then make the player climb towers that you can't make a mistake or you'll fall and start over.
- The tower challenges and the cyberspace levels in Final Horizon are hard and annoying. The titan rush made me set the difficult down to easy so I can move on. The cyberspace levels I just gave up.
- Supreme + The End boss is very poorly explained. Why does the game allow me to hit his head if it wants me to hit the chain thing? Why does the game still allow me to hit his head if now it wants me to hit the gun? Why does a mandatory cutscene kill me if I have a fewer amount of rings? I had to Google it to understand what was I supposed to do to kill the bastard.

However, despite all that, I really enjoy the game. I collected everything (memory tokens, special koco, songs, etc.) and completed all the cyberspace levels (from the regular game, not Final Horizon) including S ranks, red rings, and minimum amount of rings. I got all the Egg memos. Music is nice. The titans were great. Playing with the other characters were fun. The only thing I didn't was those things with yellow orbs to get a gross amount of points to get an S rank. But the point is, I did a lot in this game, and I liked to do. IT'S ADDICTIVE. I can't explain why, but this game is so good to play.

Story is serviceable. Not bad by any means, but many interations between characters add nothing to the plot, it's just filler. And despite so much filler, I couldn't understand what is "the end" exactly. Was there something explaning it and I missed it? And if the Chaos Emeralds came from space, how does this go with the Gaia Temples and all that stuff? And okay, the Chaos Emeralds came from space, fine, but the Master Emerald was already here? I don't feel like all those things were well explained, but maybe that was just me.

But yeah, it's a very good flawed game. I get why the scores were not very high, but I also get why people thought they should be.

 

Well said, @raphael_fc.

 

Ancient Evil Awakens #8 or whatever

Boring antagonist

 

The final boss is skipped in easy mode. You need to switch to hard to play it. I'm not sure if it works in normal mode.