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

[Indigo Rush]

SEGA really replaced Chao with rocks, I'm howling

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

24 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

SEGA really replaced Chao with rocks, I'm howling

More like K̶o̶r̶o̶c̶k̶s̶.

[Cosmos Rogue]

28 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

SEGA really replaced Chao with rocks, I'm howling

CONFIRMED: Sonic Frontiers has an ARG minigame, where you can raise your virtual pet in the real world, then transfer your progress back into the game.

Spoiler

 

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

39 minutes ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

CONFIRMED: Sonic Frontiers has an ARG minigame, where you can raise your virtual pet in the real world, then transfer your progress back into the game.

  Hide contents

It all makes sense!

[StaticMania]

Neither of the things are actually made of rocks...

They look like Wood Man.

[The Deleter]

Everybody's expecting different element versions of these, but personally I'd like to see a unique NPC species for every island, similar to other platformers. Might be a bit different for the sake of it after so many games sticking to just humans and regular animals, but at the very least these rock creatures fit Sonic's artstyles faaaar better than whatever SLW's creatures.

[MetKey]

Speaking about islands, are we ever going to get a first look at the rest of them rather than just the first one?. I'm getting kinda tired of seeing it all the time.

[Cosmos Rogue]

We believe that there are four islands, right? And seven cyberspace worlds? If so, they've already shown us over a quarter of the levels in the game.

[Ratcicle King]

6 minutes ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

We believe that there are four islands, right? And seven cyberspace worlds? If so, they've already shown us over a quarter of the levels in the game.

Pretty sure given how previews were able to play about 4-5 cyberspace worlds from the open zone in the demo, meaning that's all in the first island, it'll be about 5-7 cyberspace stages per island.

[Cosmos Rogue]

5 minutes ago, Ratcicle King said:

Pretty sure given how previews were able to play about 4-5 cyberspace worlds from the open zone in the demo, meaning that's all in the first island, it'll be about 5-7 cyberspace stages per island.

My understanding is that there are 4 cyberspace levels for each cyberspace world, i.e. we have four levels of Green Hill Zone to look forward to.

[Ratcicle King]

1 hour ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

My understanding is that there are 4 cyberspace levels for each cyberspace world, i.e. we have four levels of Green Hill Zone to look forward to.

I don't recall any of that? There are four missions in each cyberspace level, which are basically checkmarks for beating the stage under certain conditions (number of rings, time limit, collecting all red rings) and each mission gives you a key.

I wouldn't go as far as to say we'll have 7 stages per island as some are (basing it on having to recollect the chaos emeralds every island), one for each emerald because that'd total between 28-35 stages depending on the number of island, which is too much, but I feel given they're treating the open zone as a hub and still build stages for the boost gameplay, we'll see at least some good 4 or 5 stages per island.

[StellarBlur]

3 hours ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

My understanding is that there are 4 cyberspace levels for each cyberspace world, i.e. we have four levels of Green Hill Zone to look forward to.

We don't know how many times a level them will repeat itself. My guess is that we'll have 14 for a total of 28. With 9 of those returning from Generations or Forces.

 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

3 hours ago, Ratcicle King said:

I wouldn't go as far as to say we'll have 7 stages per island as some are (basing it on having to recollect the chaos emeralds every island), one for each emerald because that'd total between 28-35 stages depending on the number of island, which is too much, but I feel given they're treating the open zone as a hub and still build stages for the boost gameplay, we'll see at least some good 4 or 5 stages per island.

Why would it be too many? 28 total acts would be the lowest count in any modern Sonic game, and they don't seem to be too long (though maybe there's conflicting info on this?). Unleashed without DLC had something like 34, Colors had 37 (not counting Terminal velocity 2) plus an additional 21 game land stages, Lost World had 34 without DLC, Forces had 46 (I include Shadow because it was still release content), and while Generations had only 18 levels, it also required you to play 9 of 90 total missions, only 18 of which reuse the same level layouts.

I know a lot of work has gone into making the open areas a core part of the gameplay, but the fact that the cyber levels are required for progression and use completely different assets from that world means they're clearly just as much a part of the "core gameplay". The only suggestion to me that there could be fewer than 28 is the fact that they all have multiple objectives, meaning that whatever the player gets from beating them that is then used for chaos emeralds, they'll have way more than seven of them if they do even a couple bonus objectives, but that's already the case for the four levels we already know are in the game (it is possible the emerald gates will require more objectives to be complete later in the game, like Unwiished's missions).

[Sega DogTagz]

If your basing 7 per island on the idea of collecting emeralds, then your already skewing in the wrong direction because previews have spoken about at least 1 other way of getting your hands on an emerald.

[Duelistic Nature]

On 7/10/2022 at 5:06 AM, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Why would it be too many? 28 total acts would be the lowest count in any modern Sonic game, and they don't seem to be too long (though maybe there's conflicting info on this?). Unleashed without DLC had something like 34, Colors had 37 (not counting Terminal velocity 2) plus an additional 21 game land stages, Lost World had 34 without DLC, Forces had 46 (I include Shadow because it was still release content), and while Generations had only 18 levels, it also required you to play 9 of 90 total missions, only 18 of which reuse the same level layouts.

Well yes, but saying Forces has 46 acts that could be beaten in less than 46 minutes is kinda telling if there was quantity over quality. Sure it was made by 3 level designers, but those acts were shockingly short.

Unleashed and colors actually had run time in the stages. Origins is just a shame that we never got DLC packs for that, long live mods I guess... which I should really get a look into sometime.

All I hope for frontiers is that the cyberspace levels have at least 2 to 3 minutes of runtime. That's about the speed Metal Harbour had in SA2 and that practically felt like the shortest 'speed stage'.

Edited July 11, 2022 by Duelistic Nature

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Hmmm. That's interesting. It seems like they're giving players more choice over the playstyle of Sonic in this game.

[Celestia]

So I'm guessing this means the stages give you some sort of collectible that you need to progress but is something you can get just in the islands too, and that you don't need all of them either.

It's going to be funny if it's the friends' collectible memories or whatever though. Like you can bring Amy back but choose to leave some gaps in her mind, don't worry about it.

[ZinogreVolt]

The comparisons to Super Mario Bros. 3's map is becoming more and more apt by the day.  That game also let you ignore a vast amount of content/levels by playing the game in specific ways, so I'm curious about how much that will affect Frontiers' overall gameplay loop. Should be interesting for speedruns, if nothing else.

[Cosmos Rogue]

Quote

Iizuka says the biggest challenge was breaking free of the gameplay molds of past games and making sure the world is fun to explore at high speeds. "We’ve been building high-speed action on a path for more than 20 years, so it wasn’t easy to get rid of it," Iizuka says.

Maybe it would have helped had y'all not retained all the springs, dash panels, and rails that do nothing but shunt Sonic down a tightly defined, if not completely scripted, path. Just spitballing here.

[Shiny Gems]

21 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Hmmm. That's interesting. It seems like they're giving players more choice over the playstyle of Sonic in this game.

Interesting. I am now wondering how else you can get the Chaos Emeralds to fight bosses, IF you need them at all somehow.

[StellarBlur]

5 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

Interesting. I am now wondering how else you can get the Chaos Emeralds to fight bosses, IF you need them at all somehow.

The Game Informer impressions we got last week mentioned that Big sold Vault Keys in his shop. Vault Keys are used to unlock Chaos Emerald Vaults. So yep, you can get Vault Keys from completing Cyberspace levels challenges or you can fish with Big. He also mentioned that completing a series of side quests for Amy rewarded him with a Chaos Emerald. So that's also an option too.  Freedom in progression seems to really be the name of the game here. They've also previously said that if a player finds exploration more interesting, they can focus on that instead of combat. It sounds like if you don't like one part of the game, you can mostly ignore it and do what you like. It's as if in Sonic Adventure, you only had to finish Sonic's story mode to get the true ending and you could choose to ignore the other stories if you wished. Speedruns for this game will be interesting considering the critical path isn't so clear cut.

Overall, options really seems to be the name of the game here. Not just in how you progress throughout the game but also in how Sonic controls. We know that there are two controls schemes: action (for people not comfortable with Sonic's high speeds) and high speed (people with experience with past Sonic games). We also know that there is an option to automate combat combos for people.
 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

I'll admit, if they're essentially glorified special stages, then Cyber Zones could potentially be the most fun I've ever had going after Chaos Emeralds that aren't a part of the main playthrough campaign or whatnot.

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, StellarBlur said:

The Game Informer impressions we got last week mentioned that Big sold Vault Keys in his shop. Vault Keys are used to unlock Chaos Emerald Vaults. So yep, you can get Vault Keys from completing Cyberspace levels challenges or you can fish with Big. He also mentioned that completing a series of side quests for Amy rewarded him with a Chaos Emerald. So that's also an option too.  Freedom in progression seems to really be the name of the game here. They've also previously said that if a player finds exploration more interesting, they can focus on that instead of combat. It sounds like if you don't like one part of the game, you can mostly ignore it and do what you like. It's as if in Sonic Adventure, you only had to finish Sonic's story mode to get the true ending and you could choose to ignore the other stories if you wished. Speedruns for this game will be interesting considering the critical path isn't so clear cut.

Overall, options really seems to be the name of the game here. Not just in how you progress throughout the game but also in how Sonic controls. We know that there are two controls schemes: action (for people not comfortable with Sonic's high speeds) and high speed (people with experience with past Sonic games). We also know that there is an option to automate combat combos for people.
 

Interesting.

I guess I will still do the cyberspace levels, but in case I change my mind, I guess I'll go fish!

Or do side quests with Amy, either way.

Anyway, it is good they are giving players more options here.

[Wraith]

 

He's saying a lot of the right stuff here but I haven't seen it reflected much in the actual footage yet. The open zones aren't much more interactive than stages in the previous games. The grass, trees, rocks and water still feel like set dressing in comparison to springs, rails and speed boosters which are still stealing the show. I think the the closest thing to what they're talking about are all the ancient mechanisms populating the island but I'm not entirely convinced all that stuff is exclusive to island 1 yet.

I can't judge any improvements to how they approach linear level design until I actually see the linear stages. If they're serious about living up to recent Donkey Kong and Kirby titles I'd love to see how they're achieving that. Why are they being so skiddish about showing them?

They've also mostly avoided the subject of combat which is interesting. It's this game's big new element and, imo, by fair the clunkiest looking thing they showed. I'd love to hear the justification for including it.

 

 

[DaBigJ]

Finally. 

Optional Green Hill.