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

God this art style is cool. Love the first one with sonic, captures all of the fluidity and style i love about the SA1 Uekawa artwork.

 

Really hoping the game cover will be style-ish as this.

 

In that case, maybe Metal Sonic as well? I could see SEGA selling DLC missions for the Sonic-like characters.

 

So have we been bugging sega for characters other than sonic to be playable lately or is that a yet to happen thing?

 

Pretty sure people have been asking for that since Unleashed. At this point the ball is in SEGA's court. It's up to them to serve the damn thing.

 

Yea, the fanbase has been screaming about more characters since Unleashed.

 

Does it really matter if its some or most? That wasn't even the point.

 

I used to be a hardline “just Sonic” person back in the day but have softened considerably lately.

Outside of the 2D games where the implementation has always been pretty much perfect (my only niggle is that there aren’t enough character-specific routes), I think 06’s approach of changing to different characters in different sections worked well in theory. I think the popularity of P-06 has really begun to shift the discourse around that game by showing how the experience would be if the actual game feel isn’t crap.

I also feel that Heroes’ had a cool concept, but I think I’d prefer something more integrated than the formation switching.

In any case, talking about introducing more characters at this point is putting the cart before the horse. Sonic Team has struggled to make satisfying gameplay experiences for just Sonic for the past 10 years, so let’s have them focus on that first.

 

I'm at a point where I don't care anywhere near as much about more characters than other people, but that's less because I don't want them and more on Sega for not really pushing Sonic's gameplay much, if at all, in the last ten years. More playable characters doesn't really mean shit to me if the base game just isn't interesting to play.

But I feel like fans are so desperate for more characters at this point that it's kind of clouded people's perceptions of how they were implemented before. There's a lot of Rose-Tinted Glasses when it comes to older 3D games and many fans assuming they were better than they actually were I feel. Not that they were implemented badly, mind you but I think most fans can agree they were pretty half baked in even the best examples in things like the Sonic Adventure games.

The 2D games are still the best when it comes to their implementation, but 3D is a whole different beast to work with so I can understand why they haven't really tried experimenting with it recently. For Frontiers however, given how they seem to be taking their time to iron out the kinks and all that, I highly doubt we're going to get more playable characters here either. It took until Sonic Forces for them to just make a Shadow skin, and this is a new game from the ground up it seems.

Doing that plus trying to implement more characters just seems like it's asking for trouble. That said, there's a chance for DLC down the line.

 

I don’t need more playable characters, I just really want Sonic’s extended cast to be given more to do in the story. Take Adventure 2. Sure, Amy wasn’t playable, but she tagged along with the group and had some pivotal influences from the plot (freeing Sonic from Prison Island and being the lynchpin in Shadow realising the error of his ways). Compare that to Lost World where her only real role was to give Sonic the state of play back on the ground.

And hey, just because they won’t be playable doesn’t mean they can’t show up in gameplay. Maybe pull an Advance 3 and let players choose their partner, with each one providing a different utility. Knuckles’ Amy’s and Tails’ abilities would all lend themselves well to the kind of game Frontiers seems like it’s going to be - focused around combat and exploration.

 

The extended cast were only really able to do so much in the story before because they were playable tho. Sure, they COULD still make an influence on the plot despite that, but being playable opens up way more possibilities. Amy had way more to do in SA1 for instance compared to SA2 outside of those two moments you mentioned. Hell, her entire running gag in the game is that Sonic & Tails don't really give a shit about her.

 

My point being that Amy is an example of a non-playable character being usable. Amy was playable in SA1 so of course she had way more to do because there was far more room to expand on the journey she was going on. I'm not saying SA2 is the pinnacle of what could be done, but even that running joke of Sonic and Tails ditching her was *something* and felt like an actual dynamic between them.

 

In that sense, I agree. The primary problem I can see with that it just limits the scope of the story to anyone in Sonic's immediate vicinity. Tails and Amy are fine given they're mainly sidekicks to Sonic anyway.

But everyone else is just kind of hung out to dry. Knuckles and Shadow you can probably get away with, but every other character doesn't have much, if any dynamic with Sonic whatsoever. So they'd just kind of be taking up space.

 

I'm personally an advocate of everyone playing in an identical fashion to Sonic outside of a few gimmicks and extra routes, like in the 2D games. It might not be enough to satisfy the more hardcore Adventure fans, but it's a fairly economical solution that'd let them focus on Sonic's core gameplay while still giving everyone else a chance to shine for the first time in 16 years.

Whether or not you care for Sonic's Shitty Friends™, they've been a staple of the series since 1992. And that includes playing as them.

 

It's all in the execution to be honest. Everyone generally agrees that playable characters have always been implemented better in the 2D games, so there's no real argument about that But that doesn't completely translate 1:1 to 3D as we have seen for many, many, many years.

Tails and Knuckles' iconic abilities are just...extremely difficult to work around in a 3D plane. In the 2D games, the level design is constrained enough where its not too much of an issue, but the more open ended nature of a 3D game is another story entirely. In SA1, Tails goes through sections of Sonic's levels and he just completely destroys them. It makes me understand why they stuck him in a Mech in SA2, and why Knuckles had to have his own levels in that game as well.

Frontiers being an open-world game is probably their best chance at being playable though as their abilities are far better suited towards an open-world game than the usual linear nature of 3D Sonic games.

 

I don't think those people are calling for each character to have their own play style. From my experience it's generally agreed upon that the alternate play styles were the weakest part of the Dreamcast games, even by their fans.

You can say that Knuckles' dialogue was generic and unfitting (which it was). But for as infamous as his line about war being no good was, that view made more sense for him to have than any other Sonic character I can think of, considering his ancestors' history. Their warmongering ways led to a lot of bloodshed and their eventual downfall. And the anniversary comic had established that he disapproves of their methods.

(Sorry about the belated reply. Wanted to post that comic for reference but couldn't find it )

 

Yes it will. No one is clamoring for more emerald hunting stages or mech stages or fishing stages or for Shadow to use guns and vehicles. A classic-Sonic style approach of the same basic moveset with unique special moves for every character and unique routes in stages would absolutely be appreciated.

SRB2 clearly shows it can be done, by a group of hobbyist game devs modifying a 90's FPS engine at that. I'd like to believe an actual development team with millions backing them can at least match that.