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

[Roger_van_der_weide]

10 hours ago, Razule said:

Everything we've heard about the game so far indicates its an uninhabited series of islands. There might be different kinds of environments, maybe even a city level in Cyber Space, but probably not a Station Square equivalent in the open zone. 

And the Lost Hex in Sonic Lost World was also supposed to be a hidden never discovered continent, yet had a random casino (And city in the 3ds version) And who knows who is running Carnival Night Zone on Angel Island.
Unless they're all random Eggman bases, Sonic Team doesn't seem to care much about world building and happily throws in complete random envirements in places where they don't make sense.

That said, I have to agree, everything about Sonic Frontiers looks like it won't have any inhabited cities in it at all, it looks too much "We're brainlessly copying Zelda/ Monster Hunter/ Shadow of the collosus" for that.
But I don't think it's because Sonic Team cares about world building, especially Post Generations Sonic Team cares spectacularly little about that.
 

Ah, don't worry about this new game being beaten in 2 hours, it's an open world game, it's easy to make them 20 hour+ time wasters.
Make needlssly big empty wastelands, make a bunch of missions to force the player to go from one corner of the map to the other and back over and over. The hours will fly away.
I'd be worried more if we're actually having fun in these 20 hours or not.

[BubbleButt TV]

From the general vibe Frontiers has, I think it's pretty obvious they are being more serious with their world-building this time.

They won't be stupid enough to shoehorn in a random station square-esque city when they are obviously trying to create a sense of mystery and intrigue about Starfall Island lol

if there is a city, it will be similar to the Echidna city from Sonic Adventure

[Wraith]

2 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

That said, I have to agree, everything about Sonic Frontiers looks like it won't have any inhabited cities in it at all, it looks too much "We're brainlessly copying Zelda/ Monster Hunter/ Shadow of the collosus" for that.
But I don't think it's because Sonic Team cares about world building, especially Post Generations Sonic Team cares spectacularly little about that.
 

 

I don't think it has anything to do with this, it's just much harder to create a believable city than it is to create a believable abandoned civilization. I guess it's kind of the same logic that lead those games to focus on abandoned structures? But I think there's legitimacy to it.

This game is probably going to have NPCs in it, but a ton of them in one area along with moving parts like cars, flashing lights, indoor areas, buildings and skyscrapers to climb etc sounds like a bit much with all the other new stuff they're trying.

I could be wrong and they might try it anyway though. This island is just one out of four after all.

[light-gaia]

11 hours ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

And the Lost Hex in Sonic Lost World was also supposed to be a hidden never discovered continent, yet had a random casino (And city in the 3ds version) And who knows who is running Carnival Night Zone on Angel Island.
Unless they're all random Eggman bases, Sonic Team doesn't seem to care much about world building and happily throws in complete random envirements in places where they don't make sense.

That said, I have to agree, everything about Sonic Frontiers looks like it won't have any inhabited cities in it at all, it looks too much "We're brainlessly copying Zelda/ Monster Hunter/ Shadow of the collosus" for that.
But I don't think it's because Sonic Team cares about world building, especially Post Generations Sonic Team cares spectacularly little about that.
 

Ah, don't worry about this new game being beaten in 2 hours, it's an open world game, it's easy to make them 20 hour+ time wasters.
Make needlssly big empty wastelands, make a bunch of missions to force the player to go from one corner of the map to the other and back over and over. The hours will fly away.
I'd be worried more if we're actually having fun in these 20 hours or not.

They usually care, this was a Sonic Lost World problem. Almost all the other games the environments are better contextualized

[phobs]

New screenshot of Sonic Frontiers was found on PlayStation's Korean blog.

Just not another model discourse for 2 weeks, please, I'm beginning you all.

 

[Razule]

Sonic should be furrier.

[KingMario05]

5 hours ago, phobs said:

New screenshot of Sonic Frontiers was found on PlayStation's Korean blog.

Just not another model discourse for 2 weeks, please, I'm beginning you all.

 

Tiny Sonic and the Cyber-Spectral Associates, coming soon to PS5 and PS4!

[Jango]

Just show us one ring.

[Blue Blood]

31 minutes ago, Jango said:

Just show us one ring.

How about some coins? 

I've genuinely no idea if this was already shown in this thread. Found by someone on Reddit. 

[Jango]

What the actual fuck.

[light-gaia]

11 hours ago, phobs said:

New screenshot of Sonic Frontiers was found on PlayStation's Korean blog.

Just not another model discourse for 2 weeks, please, I'm beginning you all.

 

It looks great, but it still doesn't show how the gameplay will be. At least we can see that it has hills, what could be an evidence of momentum-based physics.

[CertifiedNobody]

I could be wrong but the rough terrain doesn't seem designed for boost gameplay at all. this island is also a lot bigger than what we saw in the first trailer.

[light-gaia]

31 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

I could be wrong but the rough terrain doesn't seem designed for boost gameplay at all. this island is also a lot bigger than what we saw in the first trailer.

It looks like the map is very dense, what wouldn't fit boost gameplay either

[Wraith]

I'm not seeing anything the boost couldn't handle with a few minor tweaks. There's also a lot of empty terrain that will be boring to cross without a fast way to do it. Nothing I'm seeing implies it's not still a boost game.

[phobs]

Interestingly, this screenshot has been removed from PlayStation's Korean blog

 

[Diogenes]

Looks like they used the same screenshot in that instagram post a while back that also got taken down/replaced. Wonder what about that one shot bothers them; I can't see anything in it that we haven't seen elsewhere.

1 hour ago, light-gaia said:

At least we can see that it has hills, what could be an evidence of momentum-based physics.

It's not like the boost gameplay trips over itself and explodes if the ground is ever not perfectly level. Windmill Isle 1 starts off with similarly naturalistic hills and slopes but you still just boost through.

[light-gaia]

56 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Looks like they used the same screenshot in that instagram post a while back that also got taken down/replaced. Wonder what about that one shot bothers them; I can't see anything in it that we haven't seen elsewhere.

It's not like the boost gameplay trips over itself and explodes if the ground is ever not perfectly level. Windmill Isle 1 starts off with similarly naturalistic hills and slopes but you still just boost through.

It could be fun to boost through an open area

[phobs]

57 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Looks like they used the same screenshot in that instagram post a while back that also got taken down/replaced. Wonder what about that one shot bothers them; I can't see anything in it that we haven't seen elsewhere.

If you look at the picture, the grass is not loaded in some areas, and it might be the reason why the image was removed

 

[Diogenes]

That's just how games work; you don't waste resources rendering grass that's so far away you could barely see it. Considering they put out a trailer with pretty significant shadow pop-in I'd be surprised if they were being this picky about a lack of grass in the distance.

[Razule]

 They must really not want to show anything beyond what's in the trailer until they're ready to start promoting.

[Zoomzeta]

48 minutes ago, Razule said:

 They must really not want to show anything beyond what's in the trailer until they're ready to start promoting.

So...E3? Wait...

[CertifiedNobody]

10 hours ago, Wraith said:

I'm not seeing anything the boost couldn't handle with a few minor tweaks. There's also a lot of empty terrain that will be boring to cross without a fast way to do it. Nothing I'm seeing implies it's not still a boost game.

The forests don't work with the boost at all. And I'm not sure how well the boost would actually work outside of a controlled environment (linear levels). They'd have to also give sonic separate, much tighter controls for when he isn't boosting for combat and exploration to be good, which would be a jarring shift.

[Diogenes]

The real question isn't whether it's a good idea, it's whether the developers could convince themselves it's a good idea.

[ZinogreVolt]

I do prefer it when my open world games are left as surprising as possible, although a different biome or two wouldn't hurt to see.

[MetKey]

Stumbled across this Twitter post on a Discord server regarding the terrain in the pictures we've seen so far.

Quote

"Sonic Frontiers looks neat. BUT, the sceneries shown are pretty generic. If you take out Sonic, the environments could be from any open world game. There needs to be more identity elements, if not, the fan cannot finish connecting. I've made a mockup of what i'm trying to say"