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

[NoKaine]

Just now, Razule said:

It can be ambitious for Sonic without being particularly ambitious compared to other games.

This.

I mean, it's literally just copying Breath of the Wild, so it already capped its ambition hard.

But for Sonic, specifically, it's a large leap. 

1 minute ago, Zaysho said:

I like the focus on me making a crack against Sonic while also ignoring my post prior and the follow up after that explained that "playing it safe" was specifically in reference to characters.

We ignore that post because we don't care about that post. If people aren't disagreeing with you there, then it's likely they don't disagree with you at all.

Yeah, they're probably going to play it safe and stick with Sonic. Arguably, the ambition of Frontiers makes that even more likely. 

 

[Diogenes]

43 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

If it's a risk, it's ambitious because they could choose not to do anything new at all.

Then every Sonic game is ambitious because there's always something new. Even a game as lame as Forces introduced a character creator with a ton of visual customization options and multiple weapon types.

43 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

Compare this to Lost World, which took cues from Galaxy, but not anything that demands any more from the developers.

Creating a game based around variable gravity and tube-shaped worlds, with wholly new physics and a bunch of new abilities, isn't ambitious? But I have to assume Frontiers is ambitious because the map is big?

43 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

I don't see how it can be "smoke and mirrors." I can see how it can underwhelm, or be bad, or they miss the point, but it is still at the bare minimum going to have the larger, expansive worlds typical of open-world games, which is not what Sonic or Sonic Team usually deals with.

The "open world" could end up being little more than big hubs. If you trust the leaks we're still getting boost-style levels; they may well end up being the real meat of the game, while the open world is mostly busywork to unlock them.

It's awful easy to look back at old games, see them in their totality, warts and all, and in hindsight say "this wasn't ambitious". But I can guarantee there were people hyped for every one of them, expecting an adventure bigger and more exciting than they ended up being. And it wouldn't surprise me one bit if history repeats itself with Frontiers.

[Zoomzeta]

So can I change the subject and just bring up that most of the current cast is coming back for this game? 

[Razule]

54 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

The "open world" could end up being little more than big hubs. If you trust the leaks we're still getting boost-style levels; they may well end up being the real meat of the game, while the open world is mostly busywork to unlock them.

There's never been enemies, bosses, and puzzles in Sonic hubs before. The open-zone is the majority of what the leaks talk about, so it's looking like the bulk of the game. 

[Diogenes]

3 minutes ago, Razule said:

There's never been enemies, bosses, and puzzles in Sonic hubs before.

Enemies: various missions in SADX and '06, Unleashed's level hubs (the part with the actual level entrances, not with the npcs)

Bosses: '06 (Sonic vs Silver, Sonic's Egg Genesis)

Puzzles: opening certain levels in SA (the stone keys, the monkey destruction switch), missions in SADX and '06 again, arguably some parts of Unleashed's level hubs, Unleashed Wii/PS2's Gaia Gate side rooms

I do expect Frontiers to go beyond these simple examples, but none of this is completely alien to the series.

3 minutes ago, Razule said:

The open-zone is the majority of what the leaks talk about, so it's looking like the bulk of the game. 

The open world is the part most in need of testing and the most interesting part to leak, if the rest of the game is just more boost levels. The most interesting part to officially tease, as well. It's easily possible that it could get built up in people's heads into something bigger than it is in the actual game.

[CertifiedNobody]

7 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Enemies: various missions in SADX and '06, Unleashed's level hubs (the part with the actual level entrances, not with the npcs)

Those didn't naturally spawn and were miniscule compared to what's been shown and said.

8 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Bosses: '06 (Sonic vs Silver, Sonic's Egg Genesis)

Those weren't really "part" of the hubs. It's more like part of the hub is reused and adjusted to serve as an arena.

9 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Puzzles: opening certain levels in SA (the stone keys, the monkey destruction switch), missions in SADX and '06 again, arguably some parts of Unleashed's level hubs, Unleashed Wii/PS2's Gaia Gate side rooms

The "puzzles" you mention were mostly just locks to slow down game progression and make sure levels can't be accessed without the required upgrades and skill.

[Diogenes]

4 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Those didn't naturally spawn and were miniscule compared to what's been shown and said.

Nothing's been shown and little has been said about enemies in the overworld.

4 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Those weren't really "part" of the hubs. It's more like part of the hub is reused and adjusted to serve as an arena.

Makes little difference. They're bosses, in the hubs.

Also, many bosses in SA, somehow forgot those. I feel like walling you into the little clearing near Tails' workshop to fight the Egg Hornet pretty clearly counts as a boss fought in a hub.

4 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

The "puzzles" you mention were mostly just locks to slow down game progression and make sure levels can't be accessed without the required upgrades and skill.

And we know how much about the puzzles in Frontiers? That they're Korok-puzzle-like and grant either exp or "orbs" to enter the boost levels (different leaks disagree on the details), which isn't much to go on, but they don't sound very complex, could easily be more about slowing progression than being exciting and interesting in themselves.

[StaticMania]

10 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Also, many bosses in SA, somehow forgot those. I feel like walling you into the little clearing near Tails' workshop to fight the Egg Hornet pretty clearly counts as a boss fought in a hub.

Outside of Perfect Chaos and 2 other bosses, every boss is pretty much in a "sequenced" version of the hub world.

[Wraith]

If you think they're taking a risk you only need to see the massive sales spike BOTW and Mario Odyssey got for their respective series by embracing open ended design. It wasn't just a safe decision, you probably could have predicted that it would happen because this is what they always do. Another boost game with an open world attached seems like it comes from the same culture vulture that got us God Of War in the first boost game.

It's like a safe decision that seems risky because they handle it in a strange way. I do think Frontiers will implement it's gimmick better than Unleashed but I'm still not convinced its something sonic needs. We'll see.

[Zoomzeta]

6 hours ago, Zoomzeta said:

So can I change the subject and just bring up that most of the current cast is coming back for this game? 

Apparently not. 

On the subject of enemies and puzzles, I have to assume they are keeping those a secret for now and won't know how they'll work within the context of this new game for a while. What I can say, as far as the puzzles go, is they'll most likely be designed around Sonic combat and traversal capabilities in some way. 

[Red Hot Jack]

IMO it's only natural they upped the budget. Most Sonic releases were low on budget because Sega failed with Lost World and especially Boom where they lost tons of money. TSR, Forces (also during the restructuring at Sega), even Mania weren't big projects for that reason. 

The movie saw Sonic's new spike of success, which I can assume gave them the money for a bigger sequel and a game. I am actually surprised Colors Ult looks like an amateur project.

Whether or not Frontiers is good, it's up to the devs talent, or lack of, but it will definitely be bigger. I am expecting full price too.

[SonicBlastAwesome]

With Amy Rose might be large role for the game, maybe Sonic and Amy would be only playable characters for the game.

I wonder there will be SonAmy moments during the story.

[Empire88]

1 minute ago, SonicBlastAwesome said:

With Amy Rose might be large role for the game, maybe Sonic and Amy would be only playable characters for the game.

In the event that we get multiple playable characters, they wouldn't prioritize Amy over Tails,Shadow and likely Knuckles. 

Amy is great and all, but traditionally speaking Sonic Team go towards one of those first if they want to show off new playable characters as a feature. 

[GameMaster0097]

4 hours ago, Red Hot Jack said:

IMO it's only natural they upped the budget. Most Sonic releases were low on budget because Sega failed with Lost World and especially Boom where they lost tons of money. TSR, Forces (also during the restructuring at Sega), even Mania weren't big projects for that reason. 

The movie saw Sonic's new spike of success, which I can assume gave them the money for a bigger sequel and a game. I am actually surprised Colors Ult looks like an amateur project.

Whether or not Frontiers is good, it's up to the devs talent, or lack of, but it will definitely be bigger. I am expecting full price too.

I would argue that those games "budget" had nothing to do with Lost World and Boom. The restructuring also wouldn't have had any effect on TSR and Mania due to TSR being made by a completely different team than an in-house one at Sega, and with Mania literally being pitched as a bonus game. While It could have had an effect on Forces, I doubt that's the main reason for its quality since the staff list seems to indicate the game's development  had far greater difficulties.

TSR has quite the large staff list. Not on the same scale as All Stars Racing Transformed, but definitely not a low scale project. A lot of artists and programmers were assembled to make it with a development period of around 2 years, which is probably very similar to the previous racing games.
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_%26_All-Stars_Racing_Transformed/Staff
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Team_Sonic_Racing/Staff

Forces on the other hand seems to had quite the hazardous development. Looking at the staff, it has a lot of programmers, and artists working on it, but only 3 level designers. It's odd seeing a game which by all means does not have a small staff working on it (except level designers for some reason) but still end up with a game that seems quite cobbled up together with little thought or reason to it. This indicates a messy development. I doubt Force's development cycle had anything to do with Lost World and Boom, but most likely a lot of corporate nonsense behind the scenes. Where it gets really interesting tho is with the Hedgehog Engine 2, which shared development time with Forces. The engine was a massive improvement compared to the first Hedgehog Engine and had to have had a lot of time put into it, with Forces meant to be the grand game to show off everything it can do. It would be bizarre to have the engine's grand entrance be with a game as lackluster as Forces.
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_Forces/Staff

Mania was a small project because it was never supposed to be this big, epic game with tons of level designers and artists working on it. It's a very small scaled game with pixel art and animation you'd find on the Sega Saturn. You don't need a massive staff to create such a product. Even when the game was pitched to Iizuka, it was pitched as a small bonus game with 4-5 zones to be packaged in as a fun extra next to a collection of their Retro Engine Remasters, but instead it was decided to expand on the game's scope by adding in the remixed levels.

[ZinogreVolt]

I don't really think Forces was a particularly cheap affair, either. Most of the problems with that game were due to direction and design, but the overall process in making it was probably pretty costly too. Making a whole new engine and getting the stinkin' London Symphony Orchestra to do a bunch of music must've been a big investment.

It's hard to speculate on these things without hard data from Sega themselves, and I don't doubt that Frontiers is probably the more expensive game of the two. Hopefully the design is good, because while it *sounds* ambitious, we won't really know what that will lead to until later on when they show more of it.

[Red Hot Jack]

Okay, I agree in part. 

Forces being bad is obviously not a result of low budget. It's a result of a messy development and bad design decisions, of course, as you said.

I still believe Sega didn't give much money for the production of Forces, Team Sonic Racing and even Colors Ultimate. Even the fact that they were all at 40 dollars price says a lot. TSR literally lacks content. Colors Ultimate is probably unfinished to rush release window.

It's why Forces sounds really tame compared to this game, in scope.

[Slashy]

This is what we are heading towards if SEGA does not consistently make above average Sonic games.

[Diogenes]

We'll get that either way.

[Razule]

Hopefully kids of the 2030s will have better content to praise this decade.

[ZinogreVolt]

I wouldn't worry so much about the kiddos, honestly. I know a lot who love Forces and Team Sonic Racing. Not saying the games should not be improved for their sake, because they absolutely should, but kids oftentimes have very different priorities for what makes a game fun to them. It's not the kind of thing exclusive to just Sonic, either.

[Slashy]

55 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I wouldn't worry so much about the kiddos, honestly. I know a lot who love Forces and Team Sonic Racing. Not saying the games should not be improved for their sake, because they absolutely should, but kids oftentimes have very different priorities for what makes a game fun to them. It's not the kind of thing exclusive to just Sonic, either.

TSR was not bad mechanically. It is just devoid of content and the team mechanics are not fun with CPUs.

[StaticMania]

4 hours ago, Slashy said:

This is what we are heading towards if SEGA does not consistently make above average Sonic games.

I dislike this conceptually...

Because it was never a thing...

Spoiler

Sonic Lost World was great.

 

[mayday2592]

Does it really matter if some fans legitimately enjoy and post vids defending the recent games?

[Shiny Gems]

1 hour ago, mayday2592 said:

Does it really matter if some fans legitimately enjoy and post vids defending the recent games?

It, to me, is a good thing that there are people who defend those games. I have not seen any of them, but I must say I can understand why people like those here do not agree or even dislike them if the reasoning behind the defense the video makers say is…well, bad or nonsensical, or attack other fans in a bad way, what have you.

In the end, it is how the defense and reasoning behind it is handled, or what is done in the video such as what is said about others who dislike a given game. That kind of stuff. That is just my take, by the way.

[MH MD]

On 12/17/2021 at 9:31 PM, Red Hot Jack said:

IMO it's only natural they upped the budget. Most Sonic releases were low on budget because Sega failed with Lost World and especially Boom where they lost tons of money. TSR, Forces (also during the restructuring at Sega), even Mania weren't big projects for that reason. 

The movie saw Sonic's new spike of success, which I can assume gave them the money for a bigger sequel and a game. I am actually surprised Colors Ult looks like an amateur project.

The movie was released in 2020

Frontiers was being in development since 2018 at least, and with early testing being done as early as early 2020

You don't just increase the budget mid-development like that and turn in into open world suddenly or anything, they gotta plan the scope of the project right from the start

 

On 12/18/2021 at 3:32 AM, GameMaster0097 said:

The restructuring also wouldn't have had any effect on TSR and Mania due to TSR being made by a completely different team than an in-house one at Sega

Restructuring can actually affect outsourced projects, it actually happened to SEGA too in the past, Bayonetta 2 initially was being developed by Platinum games before being shelfed for a while cause SEGA stooped financing them cause of it's own restructuring , it took Nintendo footing the bill for them to continue developing