News Sonic Frontiers Trailer

[Sapphirine Wind]

I mean, so far I'm looking forward to it. There hasn't been a Sonic game in a bit and this open world stuff looks like a good thing for Sonic to try out. It seems interesting enough. Now I just want to see more.

Hopefully we get more stuff soon and get more of a handle on how the game plays and feels.

[Dejimon11]

So Jeff Gerstmann of giant bomb has said that behind the scenes the game was super impressive. Take  it with a grain of salt 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I don't know enough about this guy or giant bomb to have any perspective on whether that's a good sign.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

26 minutes ago, Dejimon11 said:

So Jeff Gerstmann of giant bomb has said that behind the scenes the game was super impressive.

Is there much to suggest that he'd have gotten a look at the game in action?

[Alex2Beta]

Yeah this looked nice and I'm glad we're finally moving away from the Block Hills of SLW and Forces - but that's just aesthetics and I really wish we had a good look at Sonic's movement and interaction with the environment , because for the most part, this felt closer to a tech demo than gameplay footage.

Also happy Ian Flynn is writing for this, I have faith he'll bring something decent at least and I'm curious about the premise, cautious about the gameplay but hoping for something neat.

[phobs]

Jeff Gerstmann according to his Wikipedia and Twitter pages is experienced video journalist and apparently, he had experience of working with SEGA themselves in early 2000s. In the video he said that he HEARD impressive things about the game, BUT he haven't seen the actual game footage.

So take what he said with the grain of salt

[Alex2Beta]

Jeff's comments are interesting but I'll keep any judgement until some proper gameplay is shown.

I'm probably most concerned with are the controls, I just want something on the level of SA1 if not better, and I know it's Sonic Team ha ha ha but I can't imagine even them making something like this and not at least making sure the controls are fluid - yet, that still worries me.

[Kazhnuz]

I will also take Jeff comment with a grain of salt while we don't have information.

Re: controls, what I wonder the most is how they'll handle "fast vs slow" controls, and how will it "switch" from one to another (progressively, via a boost/run/dash capacity, etc). From what we can see from the environment there seems to be at least one moment where you have to take speed to launch yourself, but it might simply be something you can boost on (or with boost-pad :'D).

At least the first leak doesn't talk about Sonic controlling especially bad, so it's a first step, ahah ? :'D (Now maybe it would be fun to take all the leak and see if some have predicted some things, to see if we can gather more info ahah. A leak from someone who predicted the game being presented at TGA, said that it control "nicely", and predicted it having some PSO2-style and talked about "AI" talked about it controlling "nicely", but being the game being just "fine" and kinda "baby's first openworld". Now it would need to be examined to see how much it was easy to predict what he predicted. )

[JezMM]

11 hours ago, NoKaine said:

...wait, do people actually think the trailer is meant to get your money out now? It doesn't come out in a year.

You're probably not literal. But in case you are--they're not concerned about whether you want to it now. That's typically why marketing cycles continue until (and sometimes after) the game is out.

Regarding this point, it is worth remembering that Sonic Mania's first trailer convinced most people that they would be parting with their money come release day. Such a phenomena isn't necessarily to be expected but it is a shame that Frontiers failed to achieve the same.

Having said that, I wouldn't necessarily say it's a red flag that there's no gameplay in this first trailer. But it's definitely a weird decision. I want to say "with so many open world games on the market, don't you want to show off how yours will be unique?" but... maybe I'm underestimating the majority audience. It's entirely likely that it really is only the hardcore fans here who even think to say "but how will it play?" while everyone else is 100% content with "wow open world Sonic, cool!"

I guess, to be fair to SEGA, considering it's only the hardcore fanbase who are paying attention to the pre-trailer hype, it is easy to forget that when the trailer does hit, it's for everyone, not just us.

[FirePheonix]

Right now I am personally in the ''cautiously optimistic'' camp and no I don't think it's baseless, the fact that Ian Flynn is writing the story, SEGA are finally showing ambiotious with this franchise for the first time since Unleashed, the fact that they are taking this big of a risk with the game being open-world alone makes me more excited for this game than I ever was with Forces.

Could this turn out bad? Of course and it's not even that unlikely, but could it also turn great? Also yes.

Even with the track record of Sonic Team, I still think it's kinda dumb to just assume that this game will be bad, yes they haven't show us anything to make us confidently say that the game is going to be good, but the small things that we did see don't point out at it being bad either.

Until we see a gameplay and understand stuff like how Sonic is going to interact with the eviroment, what will the open world be filled with, how will Sonic control, and such, we shouldn't just be dead set about it being bad, AFTER we see all that stuff and if it indeed looks barebones then I will be the first to point it out and say that yes the game will probably be bad but only AFTER I see it.

[batson]

Soooo...

After reading through this thread since where I made the post stating that I now am automatically pessimistic about upcoming Sonic games from Sonic Team, I see that there has been this whole debate over whether that kind of attitude is fair. A lot of people have been saying that it's not fair to asume anything about the game since we've still seen virtually nothing of it. But here is the thing thing; we have seen Sonic Teams other recent Sonic games. We have seen them, we have played them, and many of us have come to the conclusion that several of them are not good games. Granted, it's been a long time since Sonic Team have put out absolute fucking garbage (like they did in the 00's), that much is true, however it's been within very recent memory that they've put out games that, while not garbage, are still far from good.

It's with that in mind that you need to approach Frontiers. It doesn't matter if we haven't seen any gameplay yet because because we know for a fact that it's being made by a certain group of people under certain circumstances have presented less than desirable results several times in the recent past. Honestly, the last truly good Sonic game created by Sonic Team was Generations, and that was a goddamn decade ago. Since then we've seen them screw up a new formula (Lost World) and, much more amazingly, screw up a formul they managed to make work before (Forces).

If Sonic Frontier had been the first game in a series created by a brand new company by people who we knew nothing about, it would definitely have been unfair to be pessimistic without seeing any gameplay. But this is not case.

Seriously, this is how life works; we learn from experience, when someone treats us a certain way over and over again we start to expect that kind of treatment from them. We don't meet the same person day after day and every single day we approach the situation with a "blank slate" state of mind where we are like "Oh sure this person insults me the majority of the times we meet, but it would be unfair to asume that he's going to insult me today. After all today is a new day, and I haven't seen him yet today, so I'm gonna go see him without expecting neither bad not good, I'm just gonna remain completely neutral untill further developments."

If Nintendo said that they were to release a new main series Mario game, I would expect it to be good even if they didn't provide a shread of information about it, because that's what experience has taught me to expect from them. Sonic Team (or honestly Sega in general when it comes to Sonic) however has taught me something very different.

[NoKaine]

35 minutes ago, batson said:

Honestly, the last truly good Sonic game created by Sonic Team was Generations, and that was a goddamn decade ago. Since then we've seen them screw up a new formula (Lost World) and, much more amazingly, screw up a formul they managed to make work before (Forces).

Those are literally the only games they have made, though. Three games in ten years. Forces will be half the age of Generations today when Frontiers releases.

It's not that consistent of a streak that this game is doomed to fail, when Frontiers is nothing like Generations or Lost World or Forces. Like, literally nothing. SEGA has done reconstructuring between 2017 to now so there is not even a guarantee that the same people from before are on this game, besides as we know the director and producer (and even then, it's a new role for the current producer). And we know that the writers have changed, so any of the staff in between could have changed. 

In other words, it's easily possible that this is a fundamentally new team. 

You used Mario as an example, let's talk about Paper Mario and how both Sticker Star and Color Splash were both poorly received and no one thought Origami King would be good, before it was. As soon as Origami King was revealed, fans complained and insisted it would suck. But what do you know, it was great! 

Even talking about main Mario games, I really didn't like Sunshine, and it was my first and only Mario game, I was a SEGA freak and didn't know dick about Nintendo, but imagine me talking up and down about how Galaxy would be doomed to fail way back then.

Personally, my optimism isn't linked to any concrete idea besides the leaks, me liking what was shown, and me accepting that literally anything can happen. I don't use Generations or Lost World or Forces to base my opinion because I recognize that this is fuck all like any of them. I recognize that Sonic Team has done well and also really badly. 

35 minutes ago, batson said:

Seriously, this is how life works; we learn from experience, when someone treats us a certain way over and over again we start to expect that kind of treatment from them. We don't meet the same person day after day and every single day we approach the situation with a "blank slate" state of mind where we are like "Oh sure this person insults me the majority of the times we meet, but it would be unfair to asume that he's going to insult me today. After all today is a new day, and I haven't seen him yet today, so I'm gonna go see him without expecting neither bad not good, I'm just gonna remain completely neutral untill further developments."

Yeah, I don't think "expecting Sonic Team to make a good game now is like expecting someone who is constantly harassing me to stop harassing me" is a valid analogy.

If it were, the solution is to stop interacting with them entirely, not "be pessimistic." If I thought that badly about Sonic Team / that guy, I would just separate entirely. Why would I deal with that negativity and how it affects me? I have better shit to do.

That is the aspect of this pessimism I don't get at all. It's one thing to say "it might not be good", it's another thing to say "by default, I refuse to believe it, or anything Sonic Team makes is good (but I'll hang around anyway, for some reason)."

The pessimism sounds less like a result or opinion on its own and more like people here choosing to define themselves, as Sonic fans, as being instantly pessimistic (which fits with comments like that one about "blind optimism").

Like I feel like that even if Frontiers looks good in promotion, gets good reviews, and is generally praised, a strong contingent here will still insist on being pessimistic. If not this game, then "the next game will suck, because blah blah blah." 

Other places like Twitter and Reddit are not nearly as pessimistic, easily recognizing that it could be bad but no guarantee. The only places more negative than here is ResetERA, and that's just people shitting on Sonic for the sake of it. 

But yeah.

[StaticMania]

When you share your opinion online, you run the risk of people talking about your opinion...

Eh, so...Sonic Frontiers is the name and the world is a thing, go and be happy about it while others see nothing of interest.

Also, pray for the music.

[Red Hot Jack]

Sonic fans being negative is nothing new though. They are the most passionate about Sonic so their expectations are high even though they act like they don't care.

We have to respect each other's opinions. They can be worried or negative and other people can be happy even at the risk of negativity killing the hype or being super annoying with too much happiness.

[Blue Blood]

I'm genuinely surprised that everyone's first thought about the voice calling out to Sonic is that it was Tails. I can't hear Tails at all in there. It definitely sounds like a feminine voice. And since it was said to be Amy in the Xbox trailer and the now-deleted tweet from Kanemaru, I can't unhear Amy's voice. Initially I thought it was an unknown character, specifically the so-called "ghost girl" from the leaks because I didn't hear any likeness to begin with. So it's either Amy or a new character. It just definitely isn't Tails. 

[NoKaine]

Oh no, I definitely thought the first voice was Tails. I think it's rather weird if it was Amy. Tails makes sense since he's Sonic's buddy. Unless Amy has a particular story importance, I'm betting it's Ghost Girl.

[Wraith]

It's Amy. You didn't recognize her because it's probably the new VA we heard she was getting a while ago. 

[Sega DogTagz]

The potential new VA takes out our ability to rule out Amy.

But I think its pretty clear the voice is feminine. The two best choices for that are either Amy or the Ghost Girl.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

After Sonic had many adventures in many crazy places across space, time and dimensions





A mysterious power Wisks Sonic away....
Sonic turns, and looks with awe, shock and amazement...








at rocks. And grass.

[Polkadi~☆]

18 minutes ago, Wraith said:

It's Amy. You didn't recognize her because it's probably the new VA we heard she was getting a while ago. 

I want to note that the Japanese version of the teaser was dubbed. While we don't know if Amy got a new voice in English or not, she has held the same voice in Japanese since SA1.

And the voice in the Japanese trailer sounds a lot like Amy.

[FirePheonix]

I am not hearing Tails at all, the first time I heard it I thought it was the Ghost Girl, but after seeing the japense trailer and the subtitles in the xbox one, the voice really does sound like Amy, I am not sure if it's her previous VA but it definitely sounds like a voice Amy would have.

[azoo]

I can't really get with the people miffed with the environments not being as stylized as past games. Maybe if you are some normie who hasn't played Sonic much and is going "uhh where's Green Hill??" but not a seasoned fan.

Sure, posting images of how crazy Sonic's worlds get is valid, and i DO prefer when Sonic is buckwild, but doing that as your case-in-point is selective and disingenuous at best; considering how it actively dodges posting images of 06, Unleashed, the Storybook games or even a spot or two in Generations or SA1/2. Seeing Sonic in a realistic or less "out there" location is nothing new.

To get to the matter of why it rubs everyone the wrong way (including myself), I'll say it til I'm blue in the face: it's because there are no slopes or other general Sonic staples. You wouldn't bat a bad eye at these worlds if you saw they had really cool ramps, curves, twists, loops, spirals or quarter/halfpipes in it. It'd look right at home. But that's the problem, isn't it? The footage shows basically none of that, bar one wall you might run on and a single ramp that's all but obscured from vision. And even for those, who knows if you're allowed to run on those without a move unlocked, or as part of the gateway to cyberspace or whatever?

It mostly just looks like any old map from any open world game coming out now. If you told me they were from the new Horizon Zero Dawn sequel, I'd probably believe you (until I realized it wasn't PS5 tier visuals, at least). If the game doesn't have level design most people want out of Sonic, then I feel like the game is already setting itself up for failure. If it does and they just decided not to show it, however, then that just feels like a really weird/bad move.

[Kuzu]

I just find it ironic that after a decade of fans complaining about nostalgia baiting, now we have another group of fans complaining about how this game doesn't look enough like the older ones. Yea yea, I know its way more nuanced than that, but its still funny to me.

 

I hope for all of our sake that the game is good. If the game is good, it gives the naysayers less of a leg to stand on.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

It's because Sonic Team always bounces from one extreme to the other.

You're drying out in the desert, begging for water, Sonic Team drops you to the ocean floor.
You're drowning, begging for air, Sonic Team makes you fall from 20.000 feet in the sky.

I agree, don't bother complaining. You might get you want. And you don't want Sonic Team giving what you want.
Don't like the art looking like an abstract baby drawing? Fine, have bleak realism.

Altough, the new world does look like previous Sonic locations.
That first shot of the world you see after Sonic stares with wonder, the one I screenshotted just now, looks exactly likethe tutorial level in Apotos from Unleashed.
Not that I'm saying it IS Apotos. Just the same general look.

[Wraith]

It just looks like the 2000s era games to me, and a lot of people have complained about those games's artstyle for years so the pushback....kinda makes sense. I think it's a little weird when someone who I know is a SA/Black Knight fan says it but maybe they changed their minds.

I have bigger problems with the artstyle than it just "not looking like a Sonic game" though. Sonic stuff looks like whatever it's gonna look like at this point. I just think it was a weird choice for their first multiplatform open world game to lean into photorealism. Making enough assets on that level to support a full map's worth of content can't be easy and the porting job is probably going to be a nightmare.

BOTW's artstyle was basically designed to mitigate any issues they'd run into going open world by keeping polygon counts low and textures simplistic. It made making a ton of actual interactive content easier. The expressive animation helped convey some mechanics better too. Not to play armchair producer here, but doesn't that feel like a better approach for this game? I'd definetly be more reassured about how it's going to perform, how much content it's actually going to have etc etc.