Megathread Sonic Frontiers (2022) | MT | General Discussion (DO NOT discuss leaks here please)

[Detective Kaito]

1 minute ago, CertifiedNobody said:

We have a tendency of putting the blame for these games on a single person, but it's rarely as simple as it seems. Lost World was a Nintendo exclusive that was on one of the least successful systems they've ever made, and Forces was a budget game after Boom bombed and forced Sega to completely restructure.

The games he directs or is a lead game designer of all have very similar problems, but Unleashed and Generations (the two games he was never involved with) never had those issues. I know it's not fair to put all the blame on him, but he seems like the only common link.

I don't know if it's a coincidence that Secret Rings, Black Knight, Colors (to an extent), Lost World, and Forces all have shitty controls and linear level design.

[azoo]

What all those games have in common are clumsy controls. SatSR/BK speak for themselves, Colors is notably floatier and more awkward to maneuver than Unleashed or Gens, LW and Forces both share the same stunted “gear-shift” feeling while going between a walk and a run.

I’m not sure if he has any direct part on how the games control, but it seems like an awfully big coincidence that no game he’s known for controls particularly well.

Now I would say we worry about the habits shared throughout his games’s level design work (straightaways with little to do in them besides holding forward), but going open world idk what to expect… unless it’s open fields with nothing to do. Which according to the leaks sounds likely. Oy…

[Kuzu]

Well apparently they've been playtesting this game and trying to get it to work properly. Additionally, this game is pretty much as far as away from what Kishimoto has done, being an open-world adventure as opposed to a linear one. 

I have no reason to assume that he can pull it off, but I'm open to being wrong. I'm not expecting perfection here, but if Sonic controls at least as well as he does in Generations, I'll be satisfied. 

[Red Hot Jack]

37 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

We have a tendency of putting the blame for these games on a single person, but it's rarely as simple as it seems. Lost World was a Nintendo exclusive that was on one of the least successful systems they've ever made, and Forces was a budget game after Boom bombed and forced Sega to completely restructure.

Lost World was trying to copy Mario and that's why it didn't work, plus yeah as you said it flopped due to the Wii U performance and that cursed deal with Nintendo. Boom was a spin-off disaster. Which planted the seeds for a death sentence for Forces, low budget, restructuring, different visions between SoA and SoJ. A fucking mess.

Now, they have the money made out of Mania, Forces and the success of the movie. At least they have budget and that shows now. They also have ambition. They did the restructuring. It's their one chance to see if they can make a good game.

[Shiny Gems]

Just wondering; how much of a budget, and maybe ambition, did Sonic Colors have compared to the likes of Lost World and Forces?

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I don't think anyone actually knows the budget of any Sonic game. It's just the same deal with anime, where people see something they don't like and conclude that the obvious problem is the parent company not throwing enough money at it.

[MH MD]

10 minutes ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I don't think anyone actually knows the budget of any Sonic game. It's just the same deal with anime, where people see something they don't like and conclude that the obvious problem is the parent company not throwing enough money at it.

This is from memory, so i don't have a direct prove right now, and it may be entirely wrong, but i recall that Boom budget was 20 Million - it may include the TV series tho, the whole boom project, this is the easiest to fine i think cause i do recall SEGA openly talking about the Boom budget and being the most expensive or something- , i also recall that Unleashed was something like 16 Million , that probably included the engine development.

 

Why did i feel the need to share probably wrong or misleading info? i dunno, but it could be a start point to help me find more information later

 

also regarding the control point of kishimoto games, one of the leaks -the dakii one i think- said that the controls in frontier is vastly improved from Forces and allow for a greater degree of freedom

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, MH MD said:

also regarding the control point of kishimoto games, one of the leaks -the dakii one i think- said that the controls in frontier is vastly improved from Forces and allow for a greater degree of freedom

I'd hate to sound pessimistic all of a sudden, if a bit hopeful, but let's hope this is true.

[Blue Blood]

1 hour ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I don't think anyone actually knows the budget of any Sonic game. It's just the same deal with anime, where people see something they don't like and conclude that the obvious problem is the parent company not throwing enough money at it.

I think we can make somewhat vague guesses, but it's never particularly simple and straightforward. Because Forces is always touted as a low budget game, let's just roll with that as an example.

Forces is small. Like really, really small. One of the smallest 3D Sonic games to date, with only 6 distinct zones and each act was super short. It doesn't take very long to beat. And unlike a lot of other 3D Sonic games, it reused a ton of assets from previous games. The models for both Classic and Modern Sonic were reused Generations and Lost World respectively, and the many of the assets for Chemical Plant, Green Hill and Mystic Jungle came directly from those games too. When you look at the credits for Generations, you'll see that it had seven game designers and a lead game designer. For Generations, I'm fairly sure that the title "game designer" is synonymous with "level designer" . Forces on the other hand had a lead game designer (also the director), a lead level designer and two regular level designers. Forces had a smaller development staff I think. On top of this, the game also has lots of its story and dialogue takes place in menus, meaning that they could fit the cost of cutscene development significantly. You could argue this was an entirely stylistic choice though. We can't prove that it was done to cut costs, although that's the impression that I get. Forces also retailed for a budget price. 

But then you have to consider how long SEGA spent on development of the Hedgehog Engine 2. That took a good few years and would have cost a lot. Even if they weren't working on Sonic Forces specifically for all of that time, the development of the engine probably fed straight into the development of the game, I guess. The costs of developing the engine may well have been considered part of the cost of developing the game. If you take them separately though, the cost of Forces could seem a lot lower. I dunno though. I'm just guessing, obviously. 

I'm pretty sure that Forces had a lower  budget game than something like Unleashed, because its production values were low (reused assets and minimal cutscenes), the game was very short and it was never sold at full RRP. But I don't know quite how to square Generations and Lost World with that same logic, other than the fact that both games are also quite small. Even Colours is a small game. Unleashed was the last time that we got a big Sonic game. Rise of Lyric was a huge project as part of the entire Boom brand launch, even though it stunk to high hell. And back to Forces again... Who's to day that it didn't simply have a smaller scope than other projects? Sonic Team and SEGA's plans from the start may well have been just too create a smaller title.

I have a feeling that Frontiers is going to be big. Open world games are typically not small affairs, with lots of time invested into making a world to be explored. They aren't cheap to make, but they offset that with lots of filler content, from mundane optional activities to bloated "RPG mechanics". Once the core game is built, sequels can be made with relative ease building off the same base. The ground work is done. I hope Frontiers doesn't fall into the trappings of typical open world bloat, but... yeah it ain't likely. 

36 minutes ago, MH MD said:

also regarding the control point of kishimoto games, one of the leaks -the dakii one i think- said that the controls in frontier is vastly improved from Forces and allow for a greater degree of freedom

He also said that it was a brand new Sonic model and not the one from Forces. Pretty sure he's dead wrong on that though. 

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, azoo said:

What all those games have in common are clumsy controls. SatSR/BK speak for themselves, Colors is notably floatier and more awkward to maneuver than Unleashed or Gens, LW and Forces both share the same stunted “gear-shift” feeling while going between a walk and a run.

I’m not sure if he has any direct part on how the games control, but it seems like an awfully big coincidence that no game he’s known for controls particularly well.

Black Knight was designed around motion controls. Colors was designed to work in 3D with a standard Wii remote.

25 minutes ago, CrystalMaelStorm said:

I'd hate to sound pessimistic all of a sudden, if a bit hopeful, but let's hope this is true.

Given that Frontiers has been in development 4 times as long as Forces, has a much higher budget, and the team has received feedback from focus testers, the only way it could be as bad as Forces was if they were actively trying to make it bad.

21 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

He also said that it was a brand new Sonic model and not the one from Forces. Pretty sure he's dead wrong on that though. 

That's likely a placeholder. The trailer may have been intended to come out much earlier and gotten delayed.

[azoo]

10 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Black Knight was designed around motion controls. Colors was designed to work in 3D with a standard Wii remote.

BK still didn’t have to be a wagglefest like it was, nor be on-rails. And nothing about Colors being on a Wii remote required it to be any floatier.

Anyways, this stuff is not on him as much as maybe the designers and people under him he gets to make these calls. So while that takes a load off him, it doesn’t take the whole load.

[Wraith]

Time and money isn't actually any indicator of quality at all. We don't know the specifics of how much Unleashed-Forces costs, but Mania has a much smaller budget and a shorter development time than any of the games being discussed and it's several leagues above them.

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, Wraith said:

Time and money isn't actually any indicator of quality at all. Mania has a much smaller budget and a shorter development time than any of the games being discussed and it's several leagues above them.

Yeah, but then again, it was a completely different game, which was based off old games that, while great still to this day, would be easier to make than a 3D game like Sonic Frontiers or even Forces. Just saying.

[Blue Blood]

13 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

That's likely a placeholder. The trailer may have been intended to come out much earlier and gotten delayed.

Whilst not entirely conclusive on when the footage was taken, the trailer's metadata confirms that it was compiled specifically for the Game Awards presentation and that it was done so only a day or so before the event. 

3 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Time and money isn't actually any indicator of quality at all. We don't know the specifics of how much Unleashed-Forces costs, but Mania has a much smaller budget and a shorter development time than any of the games being discussed and it's several leagues above them.

Time is perhaps one of the biggest indicators of money. But the scope of a 2D sidescroller in the style of a psuedo 16/32bit game from the 90s is very different to a contemporary 3D game with high end graphics. They're just not comparable. 

[CertifiedNobody]

2 minutes ago, azoo said:

BK still didn’t have to be a wagglefest like it was, nor be on-rails. And nothing about Colors being on a Wii remote required it to be any floatier.

Anyways, this stuff is not on him as much as maybe the designers and people under him he gets to make these calls. So while that takes a load off him, it doesn’t take the whole load.

The Wii's whole gimmick was motion controls, and casual audiences loved it, so that was an obvious choice. Colors and Black Knight both suffered from the Wii not being a great console for 3D games, especially fast ones that will need to be a lot bigger than slow ones like Galaxy. Black Knight avoided this issue by being on rails, Colors avoided it by having a lot of 2D platforming. Sonic's speed in the game made it hard to be precise, especially with a Wii Remote, so he was made floatier.

7 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Time and money isn't actually any indicator of quality at all. Mania has a much smaller budget and a shorter development time than any of the games being discussed and it's several leagues above them.

Retro 2d games are much easier and cheaper to make than modern 3d games, especially when they already had the engine from the mobile remakes to use.

[FirePheonix]

8 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Whilst not entirely conclusive on when the footage was taken, the trailer's metadata confirms that it was compiled specifically for the Game Awards presentation and that it was done so only a day or so before the event. 

 

That still doesn't mean that the in-game footage we saw was recent, it could be from an earlier build, all this means was that the trailer itself was done recently and that was majority CGI.

[Wraith]

12 minutes ago, CrystalMaelStorm said:

Yeah, but then again, it was a completely different game, which was based off old games that, while great still to this day, would be easier to make than a 3D game like Sonic Frontiers or even Forces. Just saying.

 

7 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

 

Retro 2d games are much easier and cheaper to make than modern 3d games, especially when they already had the engine from the mobile remakes to use.

Well, Forces was based off of Gens in the same way and I don't know anybody who would say it was just as good. There's also literal truckloads of 2D Sonic games, real and fanmade, that don't even scratch Mania, so it can't be as simple as you think. If it was easy, why didn't it exist before now? Why is there only one game? If it was so easy, surely Sega would have been able to make a Sonic Mania sequel after own after the team bounced.

Clearly there's some craftsmanship and play here and it isn't just down to Sonic Team's job being so hard.

I don't know how many resources each game had access to but it's almost entirely irrelevant to me because it's all about making the right decisions within the resources you have. They normally don't really do that, which is why a game like Unleashed and a game like Forces can have similar MC scores. All that supposed difference in budget and ambition and most people didn't see the difference as far as how good of a product it actually was.  Think about that.
 

 

[Kuzu]

2 minutes ago, Wraith said:

 

Well, Forces was based off of Gens in the same way and I don't know anybody who would say it was just as good. There's also literal truckloads of 2D Sonic games, real and fanmade, that don't even scratch Mania, so it can't be as simple as you think. If it was easy, why didn't it exist before now? Why is there only one game? If it was so easy, surely Sega would have been able to make a Sonic Mania sequel after own after the team bounced.

Clearly there's some craftsmanship and play here and it isn't just down to Sonic Team's job being so hard.

I don't know how many resources each game had access to but it's almost entirely irrelevant to me because it's all about making the right decisions within the resources you have. They normally don't really do that, which is why a game like Unleashed and a game like Forces can have similar MC scores.
 

 

I think the truth is somewhere in the middle because  I'm fairly certainly certain most of the time shit just goes wrong somewhere in development. Taxman and Co had YEARS of developing and reverse engineering that Sega probably just do not have the luxury for.  While its easy to just say they're incompetent and be done with it,  that's less due to actual knowledge and more expressing our frustration as consumers. 

Whether we like it or not, Sonic games have always very trouble developments for whatever reason. This has been true since the 90's and its been catching up with them ever since we went 3D. 

Sometimes shit works out and we get a good game, and other times it doesn't and we get games like Forces. 

[Blue Blood]

8 minutes ago, FirePheonix said:

That still doesn't mean that the in-game footage we saw was recent, it could be from an earlier build, all this means was that the trailer itself was done recently and that was majority CGI.

Thank you for repeating exactly what I said?

The trailer wasn't majority CGI though. Only the opening and ending of the trailer was CGI. It's reasonable to suggest that the rest of it was in-game. 

[NoKaine]

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Well, Forces was based off of Gens in the same way

Not really. For starters, apparently the gameplay engine is from Lost World. Can't imagine the production fuckery for that to have happened.

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

There's also literal truckloads of 2D Sonic games, real and fanmade, that don't even scratch Mania, so it can't be as simple as you think.

The Sonic Before / After the Sequel / Time Adventure fan games are more impressive than Mania and the original games in graphics and gameplay, so it is quite that simple.

I can name several 2D Sonic fan games that are actual games; I can't say the same for 3D fan games. They never progress past proof-of-concept. Why is that, if 3D games are so easy?

As great as Mania is, it is neither a budget-hound nor particularly innovative. Regardless of why, it's not controversial to say that making Mania was much easier to make than Forces. It's not an insult towards its quality or the developers, just an example of how budget =/= quality.

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Clearly there's some craftsmanship and play here and it isn't just down to Sonic Team's job being so hard.

Game development is incredibly difficult, especially if you are constantly shifting workers or being crunched like Sonic Team constantly are.

The skill of the developers doesn't negate the fact that making games like Mania is easier than making games like Forces.

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I don't know how many resources each game had access to but it's almost entirely irrelevant to me because it's all about making the right decisions within the resources you have

The "right decisions" you make depend on the resources you have. "Just make it better" is not always an option. Not an easy one, anyway.

14 minutes ago, Wraith said:

They normally don't really do that, which is why a game like Unleashed and a game like Forces can have similar MC scores. All that supposed difference in budget and ambition and most people didn't see the difference as far as how good of a product it actually was. 

I don't understand this point. Unleashed and Forces have similar MC scores, but for almost entirely different reasons. The "right decisions" to make Unleashed good are entirely different from the "right decisions" to make Forces good, which is only a testament to the difficulty of game development.

[Josh]

42 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

I'm pretty sure that Forces had a lower  budget game than something like Unleashed, because its production values were low (reused assets and minimal cutscenes), the game was very short and it was never sold at full RRP. But I don't know quite how to square Generations and Lost World with that same logic, other than the fact that both games are also quite small.

This is a minor point, but it seems pretty obscure so I'm gonna throw it out there anyway.

Aside from Colors, no other Sonic Team-developed game was sold at full retail price since Sonic 06.

The HD version of Unleashed, Generations, and Lost World all launched at $49.99. Forces (and now, Colors Ultimate) was always $39.99.

[Blue Blood]

Just now, Josh said:

This is a minor point, but it seems pretty obscure so I'm gonna throw it out there anyway.

Aside from Colors, no other Sonic Team-developed game was sold at full retail price since Sonic 06.

The HD version of Unleashed, Generations, and Lost World all launched at $49.99. Forces (and now, Colors Ultimate) was always $39.99.

FWIW, Forces was significantly lower than most other games in the same platforms. Unleashed, Generations and Lost World may not have cost as much as top-end AAA games of their time, but the price point of Forces was much lower. 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Actually, the reason Unleashed and Forces have similar metacritic scores is because they're similar levels of quality.

[FirePheonix]

1 minute ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Actually, the reason Unleashed and Forces have similar metacritic scores is because they're similar levels of quality.

Umm what? I am sorry but Unleashed and Forces can not be compared in the slightest, Just play a day time stage in Unleashed and then a level in Forces and tell me that they are similar, you would just be lying to yourself.

[NoKaine]

Unleashed has its score because its high highs are brought down by its low lows. Forces has its score because it's plain mediocre across the board. "Similar levels of quality" but for entirely different reasons. To make Unleashed better requires making entirely different decisions in development than what you need to make Forces better. For example, "make the levels long" works for Forces, but not for Unleashed.

Again, a testament to how difficult game development actually is. There is no one true solution to why or even how a game sucks or is good.