News 'Sonic Frontiers' Trademarked by SEGA

[Zoomzeta]

10 minutes ago, QZX343 said:

I'm kind of curious how the game will handle story progression and cutscenes if its going to be open world. Will it be similar to BOTW where they just place you into the world and you just do whatever and learn the plot if you want to or will it be similar to other open world games where you go from main mission to main mission.

That's certainly a good question to make.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

1 hour ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I honestly like the name "Sonic Frontiers" better than "Sonic Rangers." It sounds like it fits the theme of the game much better.

They both sound in tune with the ideals of the wild west. Consider me intrigued for the time being.

[Zoomzeta]

One thing I am personally curious is the kind of NPC's that will populate this game's current location.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

15 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

One thing I am personally curious is the kind of NPC's that will populate this game's current location.

Could be something that ends up varying from region to region.

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

Going to BotW styled gameplay would essentially place it back into similar formate of SA1, but without the characters.

If they could pull it off, you’d be complaining about Sonic Solo at worst. Not that I’m expecting that, but it would be fun to imagine.

[BadBehavior]

Frontiers implies exploration, new locales and vistas to wow us.

Gonna be interesting seeing how they do that considering they leaned on the crutch of Green Hill Zone for the entirety of the past decade. Do Sonic Team still have an artistic bone in their body?

[CertifiedNobody]

18 minutes ago, BadBehavior said:

Frontiers implies exploration, new locales and vistas to wow us.

Gonna be interesting seeing how they do that considering they leaned on the crutch of Green Hill Zone for the entirety of the past decade. Do Sonic Team still have an artistic bone in their body?

Green Hill Zone wasn't the only zone they used. Sunset Heights, Luminous Forest, and Metropolis were all new and pretty interesting (Yeah technically Metropolis is old but it's completely different, and even the reused zones were given a new spin.

[KHCast]

21 hours ago, Diogenes said:

A mobile game is exactly where you'd expect a bunch of playable characters. Simple gameplay, minimal differences between characters, an irrelevant story so anyone can appear without consequence, a need for a lot of unlockables to keep people playing and paying...a big budget 3d platformer is about as far from that as it gets, even adding just one or two more is a major increase in scope.

Tbf this more or less describes the current landscape of many “big budget” AAA games nowadays lol.

 

Tho the platform genre has luckily avoided this trend for the time being, so your point stands. 

[Dr. Detective]

I can't speak towards Forces' budget despite how cheap that game feels but it did manage three different characters to play as and a number of wispon gameplay implimentations so I can't imagine the inclusion of just Tails and Knuckles would break the bank too much in comparison depending on how they played. It'd take hard work to get right if you're someone who wasn't okay with just skins. 

 

I totally am okay with skins and voice lines at this point though. I say this a lot but I'm not asking for much. I'd even be okay with Sonic as the only playable character if they could make the other characters feel relevant to the story. 

 

But realistically it just makes sense to expect more of what most of the last couple of mainline games have been doing. I'm expecting an only Sonic game where Tails follows him and does mostly nothing and if the others are around they'll have interchageable dialogue that means very little. If it is that, I'll be properly braced for it. If it isn't that, I'll be pleasantly surprised. A win-win (sort of).

[Piros]

21 hours ago, Zoomzeta said:

One thing I am personally curious is the kind of NPC's that will populate this game's current location.

Agreed. I'd love to see an open field of Rhinobots booking it towards the player at full speed. I think that would be NEAT

[Milo]

On 11/9/2021 at 5:22 AM, BadBehavior said:

Calling it right now: switch version is gonna be 900p 30fps. Other consoles don't even get a graphical upgrade. Gotta have that Nintendo version, weaker specs be damned.

For that to happen, the Switch version would have to be set as the baseline with a low (for the hardware) target performance, and then be ported to the other systems with no changes at all. Despite the pretty mid-to-awful track record for Sonic games on Switch (Mania being the lone exception), I think that would even be beyond the pale.

Although really, I don't know what to think for how a Switch version of Frontiers would turn out, considering the conditions of the port for other Sonic games for Switch have been all over the place. I think the more likely chance is that it's going to be a port that's not as downgraded, rushed, and/or unstable like Forces and Colors Ultimate were, but still definitely inferior to the other releases in graphics and performance. Something on the same level as the TSR port. Personally I would be satisfied with something like the Crash 4 port--a great, customized release for Switch that was released a while later after the baseline PS/Xbox/PC versions.

An even better route would be the game being made natively for Switch so it actually developed to the best of the hardware's capabilities to achieve good performance (which would for me, be 1080p/60 fps docked and 720p/60 fps undocked), and then ported to other consoles with the enthusiast performance upgrades to compensate (like getting 1440p/2K/4K/etc. resolutions, and having added textures/effects/graphical features that weren't feasible for Switch hardware). Although I can't imagine that would be feasible if the plan is for all of the versions/SKUs to be released at the same time. Maybe if both the "standard" version and the Switch version were being natively produced at the same time, though I doubt that will be the case.

21 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Green Hill Zone wasn't the only zone they used. Sunset Heights, Luminous Forest, and Metropolis were all new and pretty interesting (Yeah technically Metropolis is old but it's completely different, and even the reused zones were given a new spin.

Sunset Heights and Luminous Forests are significantly built from existing assets used from other zones/older games though, right down to even reusing certain mechanics. Wouldn't exactly call those "all new" myself.

On the flipside, I'd call Metropolis a completely new stage despite using an old name. That, Egg Empire Fortress, and all of the "base/interior" locations (spread across multiple zones) I would describe as original to Forces.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

Sigh, I miss when they didn't try to port every game to every system and they'd just make a seperate Secret Rings/ Sonic Rush stand alone spin off for weaker systems. Or at least just a different version from the ground up tailored to each system, like with Wii Unleashed and 3ds Sonic Generations.

That'd be my preference instead of making a weak XBone/Ps4 game and then cram it into the Switch.

[Kuzu]

1 minute ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

Sigh, I miss when they didn't try to port every game to every system and they'd just make a seperate Secret Rings/ Sonic Rush stand alone spin off for weaker systems. Or at least just a different version from the ground up tailored to each system, like with Wii Unleashed and 3ds Sonic Generations.

That'd be my preference instead of making a weak XBone/Ps4 game and then cram it into the Switch.

It just comes down to money. Its more cost effective to port a game than to make an entirely new one from the ground up.

[Zoomzeta]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

It just comes down to money. Its more cost effective to port a game than to make an entirely new one from the ground up.

Really? Then why did they do just that with ds and 3ds versions of Colors, Generations, and Losy World?

[Razule]

35 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

Really? Then why did they do just that with ds and 3ds versions of Colors, Generations, and Losy World?

They wanted the games to be available on more platforms, and the console versions would never, ever work on those systems. I assume it costs less to make handheld games than lower-powered console games.

[Kuzu]

1 hour ago, Zoomzeta said:

Really? Then why did they do just that with ds and 3ds versions of Colors, Generations, and Losy World?

Because the DS and 3DS are significantly less powerful than the HD consoles they were on?

[Zaysho]

They did it with Unleashed but the Wii version is just a neutered version of the HD version with missing content and different, simpler level designs. That was also farmed out to another development studio as far as I know (Dimps, I think?) but that's probably not as feasible as an option and I don't think it's something anyone actively wants (I remember people wondering if Forces was going to be like this). I don't know how Forces or TSR performed on Switch, but hopefully after 4+ years they've managed to fine tune or at least involve another team with more experience porting to the hardware.

[CertifiedNobody]

I don't care if this is a trustworthy source, just wanted to say I fully support sexy ghost waifu.

[VO.SUPER]

It's possible that instead of a weak Switch release that Frontiers could get a cloud version. It feels like a lot of Japanese AAA studios have been trying for it lately.

[D.K.]

39 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I don't care if this is a trustworthy source, just wanted to say I fully support sexy ghost waifu.

maybe it's just because my aromantic ass couldn't care less about Hot Babes or whatever but the idea of sonic's big open world 8th-gen return to gaming being preceded by a ghost girl with a dump truck ass is just funny to me more than anything.

like. yeah. we've made him a werewolf, we've given him a sword, we've had him fight the government, what've we got to lose.

[CertifiedNobody]

4 minutes ago, Vertical Snoop [D.K.] said:

maybe it's just because my aromantic ass couldn't care less about Hot Babes or whatever but the idea of sonic's big open world 8th-gen return to gaming being preceded by a ghost girl with a dump truck ass is just funny to me more than anything.

like. yeah. we've made him a werewolf, we've given him a sword, we've had him fight the government, what've we got to lose.

At this point I'm ready for Sega to go back to more experimental and creative ideas. It's not consistently good but it's preferable to them playing it safe for a decade.

[KingMario05]

2 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

At this point I'm ready for Sega to go back to more experimental and creative ideas. It's not consistently good but it's preferable to them playing it safe for a decade.

Sure. But I'd prefer experimental ideas that actually impact gameplay, such as other playable characters or attempting to add in a crafting system to the proceedings. The sexy ghost girl will be great for my... special collection of artwork, but I'm having a hard understanding how she'll benefit gameplay in any way. Her spin cycle sounds far worse than a homing attack, and I thought we already got burned by this shit before.

13 minutes ago, Vertical Snoop [D.K.] said:

maybe it's just because my aromantic ass couldn't care less about Hot Babes or whatever but the idea of sonic's big open world 8th-gen return to gaming being preceded by a ghost girl with a dump truck ass is just funny to me more than anything.

It's not just you. The idea is so inherently stupid, that only Sega could have come up with it. I understand that Cortana (probably one of their main inspirations) is hot as fuck, but Halo players fell in love with her for other reasons than Jen Taylor being hot. They fell for her because of her wit, advanced technical skills, and because she helped the Chief open up at a time when he needed it most. If Ghost Girl does none of that and is just good because she's hot, then prepare to see the "ew Elise" jokes come back in a big, big way.

[CertifiedNobody]

5 minutes ago, KingMario05 said:

Sure. But I'd prefer experimental ideas that actually impact gameplay, such as other playable characters or attempting to add in a crafting system to the proceedings. The sexy ghost girl will be great for my... special collection of artwork, but I'm having a hard understanding how she'll benefit gameplay in any way. Her spin cycle sounds far worse than a homing attack, and I thought we already got burned by this shit before.

It's not just you. The idea is so inherently stupid, that only Sega could have come up with it. I understand that Cortana (probably one of their main inspirations) is hot as fuck, but Halo players fell in love with her for other reasons than Jen Taylor being hot. They fell for her because of her wit, advanced technical skills, and because she helped the Chief open up at a time when he needed it most. If Ghost Girl does none of that and is just good because she's hot, then prepare to see the "ew Elise" jokes come back in a big, big way.

To be fair, replace "ghost" with "bat" and we've already had a similar concept since 2001. Sonic having a ghost companion that's romantically interested in him could make for an interesting dynamic. I wouldn't expect her to be sexy and nothing else.

Regardless, we don't know how trustworthy this info is. The article also mentions Super Emeralds being relevant again (which backs up the leak from the Tails Channel guy that Sonic will have a new Super form.

https://nichegamer.com/sonic-frontiers-trademark/

[KingMario05]

3 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

To be fair, replace "ghost" with "bat" and we've already had a similar concept since 2001. Sonic having a ghost companion that's romantically interested in him could make for an interesting dynamic. I wouldn't expect her to be sexy and nothing else.

True, true. I just hope she's more like Cortana (or, for any PlayStation folks on here, Rivet and/or Aloy) than Elise, if that makes any sense.

[CertifiedNobody]

1 minute ago, KingMario05 said:

True, true. I just hope she's more like Cortana (or, for any PlayStation folks on here, Rivet and/or Aloy) than Elise, if that makes any sense.

I'm expecting something akin to Tikal, Merlina, or Shahra but with the power ups of the Champions from BOTW.