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

[Coz483]

1 hour ago, Razule said:

Part of it might be that we've had a long time to overanalyze stories even as simple as Sonic Heroes into being a grand, meaningful part of the Sonic mythos. There's some things you just had to be a kid at the time for, or you won't care about them in the same way.

I did look at these stories when I was a kid though. I think the thing is, I've played a lot of story based games the past few years particularly ones that go on over 20 hours so Sonic stories seem less interesting to me. But I still like stuff like some cartoons plots on an interesting level so I dunno.

[Iko]

@Cosmos Rogue I see that you criticized all the concepts in my post, though that's not the point of the discussion. Those concepts were just random ideas that I thought in like 10 minutes without going in-depth. The point of my post is that you can put the characters in those games and they at least can "logically" fit the tone and the story of those games (gameplay can be adapted too, with some effort).

Whatever:

16 hours ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

The Werehog and Knuckles have very different abilities. They are both good at punching, yes, but you would have to completely redesign the levels to accommodate Knuckles climbing and gliding abilities, and take out all of the parts where the Werehog swings itself around because Knuckles doesn't have the Werehog's stretchy arms. For better or worse, starting development with the idea of keeping Knuckles around as a playable character would have resulted in Unleashed being a very different game than what we got.

Knuckles can glide and climb though; when stretchy arms are required for reaching a long distance, you can just glide instead. When stretchy arms are required for reaching an higher platform, you can make the starting wall climbable and allow Knuckles to reach it, end of the problems (I don't think the Werehog's stretchy arms were used for more than that).

Redesigning the levels is only really necessary if you want to include the Tails parts that I mentioned (it can even just be a replacement for the QTE moments and you don't even have to redesign anything); else you can just nerf Knuckles so that he can only climb some special walls and not everything, and the glide is not an issue since Sonic can already cover a huge distance by boosting in air, gliding would be just the same thing but a bit slower.

16 hours ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

Here you have dramatically increased the scope of Colors. Not one playable character, but seven, each of whom has unique abilities that levels need to be designed around. This is in addition to the wisps, which already require levels to be designed around them. And thanks to the new character swapping mechanic, the developers can't even be certain what abilities the player will have at their disposal when they are designing levels. 

Not really? The idea behind colors was to put several abilities in the game, and let Sonic himself use them instead of having different characters around: the Wisps were always meant to be a replacement for characters, all I've done is just let each Wisp be connected to a character so they are not replaced. They all play the same except that some of them can fly or glide, and a couple (probably Amy and Vector) have a melee attack move that's not much different than sliding into enemies as Sonic, just more fancy and more easily controllable. The only complex thing here is the switching mechanic itself, and maybe the AI of the partner following you.... something that Sonic Mania did in Encore Mode by the way. For flying characters, just put some limitations like Kirby and the Forgotten Land did, Colors already makes heavy use of invisible walls.

16 hours ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

If Generations is all about celebrating Sonic, why not actually keep the focus on Sonic himself and not a new(ish) tag team mechanic?

Because Generations is also the celebration of Sonic's history, and in his history, he visited many locations and made a lot of friends. The final game is already about that, friends are in, tag team moves are already in the game but only limited to some specific missions (and there are a few characters who don't have one because they have a different type of mission such as race or minigame).

16 hours ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

What you're asking for, especially with Colors and Generations, is the games we got, except different and with more stuff. More stuff means more development time, and more development time means the game needs a bigger budget. If Sega had given Sonic Team larger budgets for those games they would have needed a reason to think they would make more money in return. About the only reason to think that adding more playable  characters to these games would have made Sega more money is if those characters are popular, in which case it stands to reason the best idea is to use the most popular characters over the less popular characters, in which case Tails, Knuckles, and Shadow would always be given priority to be added to the game over the Chaotix or Cream.

I already talked about this, offcourse it would have required a bit of additional development, but that's not my problem, that's Sega's problem. Sonic is their flagship franchise so they should have definitely put more effort (and money if needed) in their games; I'm not directly involved in their economy so I don't care about their money, I'm just the player and I got mediocre-to-disappointing experiences for more than 10 years.

Regarding the last sentence, by that logic Mania should have had Amy instead of Mighty and Ray, because she's more popular and would have brought more money to the company. On a side note, more serious characters like Shadow, Silver and Rouge don't really fit well in a game like Colors or Lost World, it would be bad design to shoehorn them in only because they are popular.

We should stop to think "as" the company and just be what we are: the players.

[ComeAsYouAre]

Sonic stories are a lot of people's first exposure to certain Narrative styles and tropes which I think led to a lot of people putting them on a Pedestal. 

 

 

[Zoomzeta]

16 minutes ago, ComeAsYouAre said:

Sonic stories are a lot of people's first exposure to certain Narrative styles and tropes which I think led to a lot of people putting them on a Pedestal. 

 

 

For better or worst. 

[Kuzu]

Sonic stories are generally pretty simple and unremarkable, and even when they attempt to be more complex, usually have dozens of issues involved in doing so.

But since Sonic was many people's first exposure to storytelling in video games, it tends to resonate with them more than if you were already familiar with other franchises with similar tropes in storytelling. 

It doesn't help that they've basically dropped any pretense of even telling a story, with Forces being the only real attempt at actually developing characters since....ever. So fans who have been longing for something more substantial have been left high and dry so to speak.

 

Sonic stories aren't really anything special but there's enough there for a child to latch onto and get some real exposure to storytelling in a video game medium.

[Zoomzeta]

3 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

Sonic stories are generally pretty simple and unremarkable, and even when they attempt to be more complex, usually have dozens of issues involved in doing so.

But since Sonic was many people's first exposure to storytelling in video games, it tends to resonate with them more than if you were already familiar with other franchises with similar tropes in storytelling. 

It doesn't help that they've basically dropped any pretense of even telling a story, with Forces being the only real attempt at actually developing characters since....ever. So fans who have been longing for something more substantial have been left high and dry so to speak.

 

Sonic stories aren't really anything special but there's enough there for a child to latch onto and get some real exposure to storytelling in a video game medium.

And where do you think Sonic storytelling is heading to in this game? 

[CrownSlayers Shadow]

30 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

And where do you think Sonic storytelling is heading to in this game? 

Ideally better than what they’ve been in the previous few games with Ian Flynn involved.

But skepticism looms when he’s leashed directly under the developers themselves. Having followed Ian’s writing since day one, this has been one of my greatest wishes and simultaneously one of my greatest fears, because I know the guy’s writing strengths and and weaknesses enough to know he’s among the better writers for Sonic that this game failing could be problematic to that perception.

[Scritch the Cat]

7 hours ago, Coz483 said:

I feel like I don't get the eternal love fans have towards these stories to the point they react so strongly to stuff. Like there are a few stories in the series where they felt pretty kept together and we'll made but other times they don't. Like there are a lot of characters that I feel like have had potential but barley done anything, but fans will say how deep and complex they are only to make 8 paragraphs repeating 4 scenes they were in where they didn't do much. I definitely don't think stories should be dumb like lost world, but get surprised how passionately people react to stories and characters with little depth and make it such a big deal. This isn't to say the stories have never been good or had depth, it's just highly exaggerated by fans to me. 

 

I think a big example of what I'm talking about is Shadows story from 06. People say it's so amazing and epic and has the best shadow, and while it does have good moments, as well as shadow having a pretty good character, it feels underwhelming compared to the hype people have made about it for me.

 

I think the only way Sonic stories could feel well developed is either if the games were really long or the game was a rpg.

 

 

6 hours ago, Razule said:

Part of it might be that we've had a long time to overanalyze stories even as simple as Sonic Heroes into being a grand, meaningful part of the Sonic mythos. There's some things you just had to be a kid at the time for, or you won't care about them in the same way.

 

5 hours ago, Coz483 said:

I did look at these stories when I was a kid though. I think the thing is, I've played a lot of story based games the past few years particularly ones that go on over 20 hours so Sonic stories seem less interesting to me. But I still like stuff like some cartoons plots on an interesting level so I dunno.

It's undoubtedly true that childhood nostalgia plays a part in making things highly esteemed, but, that's not the only factor involved here, and it can cut both ways. 

For one thing, while these games were indeed made primarily for children, they were made by adults, who went to classes taught by other adults on how to do things like animate and write, and maybe some of them half-assed their work on Sonic because it was for children, but it's not too surprising that some worked in nuance that not every child would notice.  I enjoy seeing videos about these games and their narratives because they do point out things, such as character design, body language and scene layouts, that I really didn't notice at the time.

Now that we're on the subject of things I didn't notice at the time, let's go to another big point: Nostalgia isn't going to increase your opinion of these games if you already hated playing them back then.  Sonic 06 isn't the worst game I've ever played, but it is almost certainly the worst game I've ever bought, and I bought it at full price before many reviews were out, so you can probably imagine how enraged that got me.  I was 21 in 2006 but there were plenty of minors then who still had more than enough experience with video game quality to know that Sonic 06 was garbage.  If they were anything like me,  at the time they were playing the game they couldn't appreciate its plot, or maybe even follow its plot.  Between the incessant and long loading screens, the padding of hub world missions, the excessive time spent beating every level far more due to glitches than intentional challenge, the choice to make the game about time travel that would likely be confusing in the best of times, and the lines remaining in the game about content that was cut, and the violent rage that all inspired, I could barely recall what last plot point was by the time I got to a new one.  I'm pretty sure the only plot point I appreciated back then was the moment where Shadow kicked Silver in the head, since Silver was so frustrating to both fight against and play as. 

Back then, of course, almost everyone who played that game already hated it, but it hadn't yet become the utter legend that inspired hundreds of videos scrutinizing its every last detail, and ironically it's only thanks to that excessive attention that I have been able to take in and appreciate more of that game's narrative qualities.  Well, that and how in retrospect some things of value have been lost.  At the time, Sonic 06 was merely the latest of the Adventure series; we'd seen most of what it did done better, and didn't ever expect to care about how it was still doing those things at all because we didn't realize then that soon after, SEGA would just stop doing them. 

Also, with Shadow's self-titled embarrassment of a game still relatively fresh in our memories, not many of us could appreciate anything involving him...except, again, him decking a character we hated even more.  What changed a lot of minds on this has mostly to do with how his character has gone in retrospect.  I'm not trying to make Shadow out to be a deeper character than he actually is, but at least he had more dignity when written by Shiro Maekawa, who to his credit did work to salvage the character after the lows of his spin-off game.  At the time, that was just too little too late.  Few people at the time wanted to like anything about Shadow or anything about Sonic 06, and in first few years after, it became obvious that everything associated therewith had been poisoned.  What I don't think anyone could've anticipated was the form that poison would take.  Most of us just expected them to just ignore eveything about that era, but instead, they would eventually start calling back to it but in a very warped way.  With the advent of the Meta Era, SEGA all-but stopped trying to appreciate anything in the brand you could take seriously; instead valuing things mostly based on whether they spawned amusing catch phrases, and for that reason what had been Shadow's lowest moments became his most validating moments.  A character who had been so ruined that many of us expected him to just leave the series was instead brought back in full force (except for playing as him, usually) and the fact that this cringey "emo gangster" version of Shadow is what's we've been rubbed in for years has made many long for the time when they tried to clean up that mess. 

It's not that Sonic 06 made Shadow into a deep character; people just appreciate that it made him into a respectable character instead of an intentionally cringe-worthy one.

[Zaysho]

6 minutes ago, CrownSlayer’s Shadow said:

Ideally better than what they’ve been in the previous few games with Ian Flynn involved.

But skepticism looms when he’s leashed directly under the developers themselves. Having followed Ian’s writing since day one, this has been one of my greatest wishes and simultaneously one of my greatest fears, because I know the guy’s writing strengths and and weaknesses enough to know he’s among the better writers for Sonic that this game failing could be problematic to that perception.

I think until Ian can blow the lid off how writing for a video game works versus comic books, I'm just going to assume we're getting better dialogue which is the bare minimum I'm settling for at this point. My hope is that he's been given way more control over the narrative (and it being self-contained kind of reins in his tendencies to drag) but with how much Sega ties his hands on IDW, I'm keeping my expectations low.

[Scritch the Cat]

2 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

I think until Ian can blow the lid off how writing for a video game works versus comic books, I'm just going to assume we're getting better dialogue which is the bare minimum I'm settling for at this point. My hope is that he's been given way more control over the narrative (and it being self-contained kind of reins in his tendencies to drag) but with how much Sega ties his hands on IDW, I'm keeping my expectations low.

What other games has he been involved in?

[Zaysho]

1 minute ago, Scritch the Cat said:

What other games has he been involved in?

He's actually worked on more than I thought he did, since I was only aware he did the game-adjacent stuff like the tie-in comics to various Sonic games. I'm not personally familiar with the other works, but I know some are pretty big projects like Indivisible. There's a listing here.

[Kuzu]

50 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

And where do you think Sonic storytelling is heading to in this game? 

Not much better than what we've been getting, but the dialogue will probably be worth a damn this time.

 

Think we're long past the days of those over the top Anime storyline. Sega have been pretty adamant at streamlining the brand into something simple and easy to understand and I have no reason to assume that's changing.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

3 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

There's a listing here.

Wow. Didn't know he was involved with Indivisible of all things.

[Coz483]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Sonic stories are generally pretty simple and unremarkable, and even when they attempt to be more complex, usually have dozens of issues involved in doing so.

But since Sonic was many people's first exposure to storytelling in video games, it tends to resonate with them more than if you were already familiar with other franchises with similar tropes in storytelling. 

It doesn't help that they've basically dropped any pretense of even telling a story, with Forces being the only real attempt at actually developing characters since....ever. So fans who have been longing for something more substantial have been left high and dry so to speak.

 

Sonic stories aren't really anything special but there's enough there for a child to latch onto and get some real exposure to storytelling in a video game medium.

Sonic was probably my first exposure then. Only other games I was playing before Sonic were Mario and licensed games.

Funnily enough 06 probably has my favorite version of Silver. Silver doesn't feel as interesting without all the development from 06. I thought Silver was pretty annoying in the Rivals games and now he just is in party games, unless they want him to get beat by infinite again.

[Shiny Gems]

Not to be pessimistic here, but is showing Sonic Frontiers at a big event like the Games Fest in June a really good idea? Not that other games shown there may not turn out bad as well, for they can, but with the new combat system we don't even know about yet, and chances that it could be bad, I am not sure if showing this to many people who will be watching at such a big event is a good idea. I don't know if you know what I mean here, but with Sonic's past performance, showing the latest game at such a big event (it is a big event, right?) in June, the Summer Games Fest, may not be the best of ideas.

Note that I am just concerned here. That is all.

[BubbleButt TV]

13 minutes ago, CrystalMaelStorm said:

Not to be pessimistic here, but is showing Sonic Frontiers at a big event like the Games Fest in June a really good idea? Not that other games shown there may not turn out bad as well, for they can, but with the new combat system we don't even know about yet, and chances that it could be bad, I am not sure if showing this to many people who will be watching at such a big event is a good idea. I don't know if you know what I mean here, but with Sonic's past performance, showing the latest game at such a big event (it is a big event, right?) in June, the Summer Games Fest, may not be the best of ideas.

Note that I am just concerned here. That is all.

are you worried that if the game looks bad then more people will make fun of it? that's fair I guess but ideally I would hope that the game is actually good enough to catch people's interest.

I hope showing it at this event is a sign of confidence in the overall quality of the game.

it's not long left anyways. In about 3 weeks from now we'll get our first real look at this game.

[Shiny Gems]

5 minutes ago, BubbleButt TV said:

are you worried that if the game looks bad then more people will make fun of it? that's fair I guess but ideally I would hope that the game is actually good enough to catch people's interest.

I hope showing it at this event is a sign of confidence in the overall quality of the game.

it's not long left anyways. In about 3 weeks from now we'll get our first real look at this game.

Basically, for the first two lines of your post, yes.

I will say though, I have to give Sega and Sonic Team credit here. I mean, by showing it off at something as big as the Summer Games Fest, they must have a lot of confidence in this game it seems.

[Scritch the Cat]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

Not much better than what we've been getting, but the dialogue will probably be worth a damn this time.

 

Think we're long past the days of those over the top Anime storyline. Sega have been pretty adamant at streamlining the brand into something simple and easy to understand and I have no reason to assume that's changing.

Chances are high people will think more highly of this game because its tone won't be as gag-oriented the series overall has been for over a decade.  Even Sonic Forces, which presented itself as serious, couldn't really break the mold of Sonic wisecracking at ineffectual villains.  The main reason I'm not concluding this game is another false alarm like that is that Ian Flynn is writing.  Yes, SEGA still has mandates that restrict what can be done but Iizuka has also said this is the start of a new era for Sonic, which presumably means they're pushing for a new vibe in many regards. 

For better or worse.

[Coz483]

2 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Chances are high people will think more highly of this game because its tone won't be as gag-oriented the series overall has been for over a decade.  Even Sonic Forces, which presented itself as serious, couldn't really break the mold of Sonic wisecracking at ineffectual villains.  The main reason I'm not concluding this game is another false alarm like that is that Ian Flynn is writing.  Yes, SEGA still has mandates that restrict what can be done but Iizuka has also said this is the start of a new era for Sonic, which presumably means they're pushing for a new vibe in many regards. 

For better or worse.

I also don't know how many of those mandates apply to the mainline games, since IDW has restrictions that other recent main games haven't had.

[The Deleter]

2 hours ago, Zaysho said:

I think until Ian can blow the lid off how writing for a video game works versus comic books, I'm just going to assume we're getting better dialogue which is the bare minimum I'm settling for at this point.

I can handle that, considering Forces was conceptually really cool from a setpiece-to-setpiece perspective.

If anything, I think the best case scenario is the creative heads and Ian working together in perfect sync to make new stories. Blend the ideas that Sonic Team usually comes up with alongside actual good story execution, and you have the perfect storm tbh

[Zaysho]

1 hour ago, CrystalMaelStorm said:

Not to be pessimistic here, but is showing Sonic Frontiers at a big event like the Games Fest in June a really good idea? Not that other games shown there may not turn out bad as well, for they can, but with the new combat system we don't even know about yet, and chances that it could be bad, I am not sure if showing this to many people who will be watching at such a big event is a good idea.

Why should any of this matter?

[Shiny Gems]

10 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

Why should any of this matter?

Just showing some concern. That is all. I just wanted to say given past Sonic games' performance, I think that showing a Sonic game like Frontiers is a gamble on Sonic Team and Sega's part, though it also must mean, as I have said before, I do think they seem that confident in the game. But yeah, just concerned.

[Zaysho]

If Square can recommend fucking Balan Wonderworld with confidence, Sonic Team can show off their stupid Zelda rip-off.

 

 

(yes, I know the context is they deflected from questions about the lawsuit, doesn't make it less funny)

[Indigo Rush]

4 minutes ago, Zaysho said:

If Square can recommend fucking Balan Wonderworld with confidence, Sonic Team can show off their stupid Zelda rip-off.

The one with the sword or the one where he turns into a werewolf?

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, Zaysho said:

If Square can recommend fucking Balan Wonderworld with confidence, Sonic Team can show off their stupid Zelda rip-off.

Yeah, I didn't say there was anything wrong with that, honestly. I just think that this is a gamble on Sega's part to show this a the Summer Games Fest. Not illegal to do so, but even if they have confidence in it, the past Sonic games' performance is what had me worried.

Or maybe I am wrong? Not that the game being shown at the event will be promising already, but maybe I am, or was a bit too worried, despite that myself, and others here do not know much about the game. Maybe many won't make fun of it? Guess we will just have to wait and see.

On top of that, I do think Square showing Balan Wonderland, which is one game compared to Sonic, which is a series of games, is a different story here, but eh. I mean, there may be some similarities, but that was not what I was talking about, honestly.