News Sonic Frontiers Trailer

[caitash]

The voices in the trailer are intriguing. The first echoey-voice sounds way more like Tails to me, the second voice sounds like it could feasibly be a new-Amy voice. I hope that whoever voices the girl-ghost they don’t sound too much like the other character voices though, especially if audio distortion is gonna be a thing. If we can’t see who’s talking then the voices need to be distinct from each other.
 

Anyway, I’m excited for Ian Flynn finally writing a game. I love his comic/Boom episode writing, and while I don’t know of his game-writing experience anything has to be better than Pontaff which was eye-bleeding by the end of their run.

 

The world looks….well, I hate to say it but it looks as empty as the Rise of Lyric world in the final game XD; but hopefully it could be assets removed for ‘panning scenery for the trailer’ reasons so while I’m not gonna just assume it will be filled up by the release date, I’m also withholding judgement for now. Not gonna get burned twice after Boom.

[Zoomzeta]

3 minutes ago, caitash said:

The voices in the trailer are intriguing. The first echoey-voice sounds way more like Tails to me, the second voice sounds like it could feasibly be a new-Amy voice. I hope that whoever voices the girl-ghost they don’t sound too much like the other character voices though, especially if audio distortion is gonna be a thing. If we can’t see who’s talking then the voices need to be distinct from each other.
 

Anyway, I’m excited for Ian Flynn finally writing a game. I love his comic/Boom episode writing, and while I don’t know of his game-writing experience anything has to be better than Pontaff which was eye-bleeding by the end of their run.

 

The world looks….well, I hate to say it but it looks as empty as the Rise of Lyric world in the final game XD; but hopefully it could be assets removed for ‘panning scenery for the trailer’ reasons so while I’m not gonna just assume it will be filled up by the release date, I’m also withholding judgement for now. Not gonna get burned twice after Boom.

It was most likely that they removed NPC's from the scenery. 

[Johnster4]

I'll just summarize of my thoughts:

• So far the open world looks nice for what they can to with the hedgehog engine but the game itself looks barren with no enemies and it leaves me question what is there to do in this game.
• Morio Kishimoto returning as the director doesn't inspire any confidence when it comes to gameplay but Iann Flynn writing the game give some assurance that the story won't be too much of an issue
• I still want to see how sonic controls before I can fully jump to conclusions on whether I will like the gameplay itself
• The fact that they showed this off at the game awards seems to suggest Sonic Team feel confident that the game will be good I just hope that is the case

[Blue Blood]

Let's talk about the model for a second...

Which does it look more like?

It looks like the Forces model in every way. 

The main "standing still" animation in Force/Lost World looks stiff and uncomfortable. It looks like the same animation here. And whilst Lost World gives him a ton of idle animations, Forces does not. He holds that barely animated, awkward pose infinitely. Its the almost the same model used in both games with very minor tweaks and they share the majority of their animations, so a bit of conflation is to be expected.

To be clear, because it appears that there's some confusion elsewhere, people are finding fault with Sonic's in-game model here. I've not seen anyone find fault with the CGI model, which is the same as ever from what I can tell. The in game model is very similar to Forces/Lost World, and appears to be using the same standing still animation. To me, personally, that's a big disappointment. Of the three distinct gameplay models that we've seen in the last decade (Unleashed/Colours/Generation/S4, Olympics/TSR/ASRT, Forces/Lost World) , it's easily my least favourite. I don't like Sonic's shorter spines, rounded shoes and general proportions. And whilst the animations are separate from the model, I also don't like the animation of Forces/Lost World at all.

The brief glimpse that we get at the in-game model doesn't look nice to me. It really, really clashes with the realistic world. That doesn't need to be the case though, because in the CGI parts of the trailer Sonic blends in just fine. And whilst I might be alone on this particular aspect, I think that he also looks fine against the background in '06 when there aren't any humans around. The fact that the model for Sonic stood out to so many people right away as being the same as (/very similar to) one they disliked is quite telling. 

Case in point though: people don't dislike the Forces model because its from Forces. I dislike it because it doesn't look good (or at least not as good as previous models) and because so far the model and textures don't match the artstyle of Frontiers. I'd much rather see them use the Olympics/Team Sonic Racing model - eyebrow ridge, longer spines and much better proportions. And failing that, the Unleashed/Generations model is a fine alternative. 

And just to make a totally different point... The world looks empty. But I think that might just be for the trailer. They're not showing gameplay, and instead are just showcasing that this is an open world with very different graphics to anything that we're used to seeing. Everything else was probably removed for cinematic effect and to keep the gameplay under wraps for more. This trailer was still a teaser, really.

[Wraith]

My first thought was that they were just keeng with the  design tweaks they made in LW/Forces. I didn't exprct those to just go away after one game.

Every new modern game used the last model as a base. They could freshen it up with any variety of new animations by the time we next see it. 

[PickleBrows]

Re: The model.

I personally think it fits in with the environment a lot more than it's being given credit for. The lighting is doing a lot of the heavy lifting but it looks better here than in Forces simply because the lighting isn't so flat. Granted a little bit of updating and maybe some new texturing to fit in with the more realistic environment would've really helped it out further. Using the Unleashed model wouldn't have made him blend in any more than the Forces one.

While things like the shorter quills don't quite work for me I think the big thing that'll make or break this are the animations. I totally agree that idle stance is a bit weak but I'm hoping more focus has been put into how Sonic moves visually as well as the controls. Given how many more situations one can get themselves into in an open world, I think this will be the case.

[Spooky Mulder]

I can't believe how much the game looks like the original Sonic 06 trailer

The art style in baffling to me. My preference has always been for geometric cartoonish and psychedelic Sonic environments, but I think Unleashed did a great job of balancing 'real' places with a cartoony style that suited Sonic. This looks like it's trending back the other way toward Sonic 06 realism.

[Dreadknux]

I missed all the hubbub as it happened (was asleep... they really need to make these events more UK-friendly! ) but have been catching up this morning. I was happy to see that Sonic Frontiers is a thing that is happening, in general, as a concept. More Sonic games is good (and we've been starving for them). As for the game itself, my feelings were pretty neutral. It looks interesting, but it didn't blow me away to be honest.

I would like to wait and see how the world is populated before being too judgemental, but at first glance I thought the overworld's art direction pulled a little too "realistic" for me. There's the obvious Breath of the Wild comparisons to make here (and even Phantasy Star Online 2 New Genesis was my first thought!), but the style of the environments remind me of Sonic 06... and besides the overall quality of that game, one of the things I didn't really enjoy about 06 was its awkward juxtaposition of a cartoon hedgehog bombing around a hyper-realistic forest setting. It just really doesn't make sense, in my head. As others have said, you can do 'realistic' while adding a little artistic flair to make it 'feel' like a Sonic world. Adventure did it (SA2 less so). Unleashed sort of did it (although I didn't really enjoy it being a bit too close to a Pixar-a-like either). I hope Frontiers can do it too.

Obviously on a gameplay level there's nothing to talk about here, so I'll wait to hear more about that... but I really hope the open world allows for some interesting and exciting platforming stages. Above all else, I'm really keen to see if Sonic Team will finally lean into some physics-based "speed as reward and not a cheat/boost button" play in this one. I want to see the open world being used as practically a playground for spindash and roll-around mechanics. I'm not confident this will happen, but I'm not going to be all pessimistic about this. Cautiously optimistic.

Ian Flynn being attached to the project is good news, but I wonder if Sonic Team are learning the right lessons here. They've spent the last decade or two trying to find ways to make Sonic more of a story-based, hard-hitting drama of some kind, when it's clear that these sorts of stories are best placed in the expanded universe stuff (comics, movies). Arguably the best and most critically acclaimed Sonic games of the last ten years - Generations,  Colours and Mania - had next to no complicated story or premise to work with (ignoring the cheesy Colours cutscenes). It's clear that this is the more successful approach, and as much as I love Ian Flynn and his work I hope that he can adapt for game story and make that work here.

Anyway, fingers crossed!

[Blue Blood]

1 minute ago, Wraith said:

My first thought was that they were just keeng with the  design tweaks they made in LW/Forces. I didn't exprct those to just go away after one game.

Every new modern game used the last model as a base. They could freshen it up with any variety of new animations by the time we next see it. 

The changes made between most of the games are minor tweaks, usually tied to performance and slight artistic changes. Unleashed, Colours, S4 and Generations are all basically the same model. It's not easy to tell them apart at a glance. The main difference between them all is the polycount and, for Generations specifically, changes to the way that his mouth is modelled and textured (he's got painted on lips in Generations, strangely). 

Lost World uses the Generations model as a base, but changes the model enough that it can reasonably be identified as something different, I think. They tweaked just about every aspect of the model and redid many of his animations. That held for two games and I don't like the results. I was hoping that they would freshen it all up again with Frontiers. 

[Willsy]

What are the chances the model is a placeholder? Like others have said, every game Sonic's model is tweaked slightly and, by that same token, it would be difficult to imagine that not being the case here. This is seemingly a larger-scale production after all, reusing the model from the lower budget Forces would seem a bit strange to me? I don't mind that model really but it's not a patch on the Unleashed one. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

3 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

Ian Flynn being attached to the project is good news, but I wonder if Sonic Team are learning the right lessons here. They've spent the last decade or two trying to find ways to make Sonic more of a story-based, hard-hitting drama of some kind, when it's clear that these sorts of stories are best placed in the expanded universe stuff (comics, movies). Arguably the best and most critically acclaimed Sonic games of the last ten years - Generations,  Colours and Mania - had next to no complicated story or premise to work with (ignoring the cheesy Colours cutscenes). It's clear that this is the more successful approach, and as much as I love Ian Flynn and his work I hope that he can adapt for game story and make that work here.

Colours, and Gens are also regularly mocked for both their lack of stories, and their awful sense of humour, with it being more glaring in a celebratory game in Gens. Mania is a decidedly different situation where it by design didn’t need much of a story due to focusing on the Mega Drive era, and even at that, they still opted in for the Sonic 3 & Knuckles method of having a minimalistic storyline that you can still infer between zones.

Colours, Gens and Mania were acclaimed because quite simply - they were decent games after a slew of middling and bad games. It’s not really much to do with plotlines beyond critics’ usual “lol sonic friends are bad” comments. Given that Unleashed tends to be a game people look back on fondly now due to both the ambition it tried to do, and both the world building and plot it tried to achieve, while Colours is getting more and more criticised in particular for its story, before even going near the gameplay and level design, I don’t think it’s fair to say story won’t really matter.

The story doesn’t need to be immensely overdramatic and hard-hitting to work, it just needs to be a story where the characters and plot is actually worth getting invested in. Given Ian has a good grip on the characters, their personalities, and their dynamics, I’d say that’s already a good step in the right direction. Ian also has a grip on the tone of the series and knows when too much is too much, so I don’t see him having too many problems adjusting here.

[Piko]

5 minutes ago, Wil348 said:

This is seemingly a larger-scale production after all, reusing the model from the lower budget Forces would seem a bit strange to me?

Game studios reuse assets from previous games all the time, regardless of budget. Why would Sonic Team pour time, money and staff into making a brand spanking new model for Sonic when there’s one right there?

[Wraith]

37 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

 

Ian Flynn being attached to the project is good news, but I wonder if Sonic Team are learning the right lessons here. They've spent the last decade or two trying to find ways to make Sonic more of a story-based, hard-hitting drama of some kind, when it's clear that these sorts of stories are best placed in the expanded universe stuff (comics, movies). Arguably the best and most critically acclaimed Sonic games of the last ten years - Generations,  Colours and Mania - had next to no complicated story or premise to work with (ignoring the cheesy Colours cutscenes). It's clear that this is the more successful approach, and as much as I love Ian Flynn and his work I hope that he can adapt for game story and make that work here.

Anyway, fingers crossed!

Ian Flynn can write good "Simple" Sonic stories too. I'd recommend checking out the Sonic X/Boom comics, Seasons of Chaos or Treasure Team Tango some time if you haven't already.

My point is that he's really flexible. It depends on what Sonic Team wants from him. I'm not picky in regards to tone, but my personal suggestion is that you're right and they should keep things simple and the structure loose. A good open world game should give the player a lot of freedom to explore on their own terms and decide where to go next for themselves, and heavy amounts of exposition and cutscenes can get in the way of that. A "classic" Sonic premise with a strong focal point like CD or Colors seems like the right move here, but who knows what they're planning.

[Marcello]

I think the environment needs some loops and Möbius Strips, to feel more like Sonic. Other than that, I'm loving it. I've wanted to get away from boost since 2008 and it only got worse since.

I do wish Sonic got a bit of a design update for it, though. Actual fur would be nice. The design could be something in between the movie and game version.

Really happy about Flynn writing. I've wanted this for years. He's great at writing the characters and putting them in serious and darker situations without taking it too far in either direction.

[Kuzu]

48 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

Ian Flynn being attached to the project is good news, but I wonder if Sonic Team are learning the right lessons here. They've spent the last decade or two trying to find ways to make Sonic more of a story-based, hard-hitting drama of some kind, when it's clear that these sorts of stories are best placed in the expanded universe stuff (comics, movies). Arguably the best and most critically acclaimed Sonic games of the last ten years - Generations,  Colours and Mania - had next to no complicated story or premise to work with (ignoring the cheesy Colours cutscenes). It's clear that this is the more successful approach, and as much as I love Ian Flynn and his work I hope that he can adapt for game story and make that work here.

Anyway, fingers crossed!

For better or worse, Sonic fans have been asking for a more dramatic story in the games for years, particularly after the last decade went out of its way of removing that stuff. Its definitely not everyone's cup of tea and I'm not as jazzed about it as I used to be, but I would be lying if I didn't think the last string of games have extremely boring narratives. I know story is probably the least relevant thing to many older Sonic fans, but I'm glad they brought someone aboard that at least understands what the younger audience wants. Ian Flynn isn't an amazing writer by any means and has some issues in his writing, but he's been writing Sonic comics for over ten years now, regularly interacts with the community, and has an extremely professional attitude when it comes to working around with this series. 

If nothing else, we'll get something entertaining that understands the characters and that's all most fans are asking for. 

[Willsy]

34 minutes ago, Piko said:

Game studios reuse assets from previous games all the time, regardless of budget. Why would Sonic Team pour time, money and staff into making a brand spanking new model for Sonic when there’s one right there?

Sure but they didn't reuse the Generations model for LW, nor did they reuse the LW model for Forces. Sonic's model changes slightly every game, I wouldn't be shocked if that were the case here in the final product. 

[Razule]

Can't say the gameplay model is something I care too much about. Idle animations are a bare minimum thing though. He should at least look like he's breathing and not frozen in place.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

1 hour ago, Wil348 said:

What are the chances the model is a placeholder? Like others have said, every game Sonic's model is tweaked slightly and, by that same token, it would be difficult to imagine that not being the case here. This is seemingly a larger-scale production after all, reusing the model from the lower budget Forces would seem a bit strange to me? I don't mind that model really but it's not a patch on the Unleashed one. 

Chances are pretty high, given that a lot of this trailer screams the usual teaser affair.

[Dreadknux]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

For better or worse, Sonic fans have been asking for a more dramatic story in the games for years, particularly after the last decade went out of its way of removing that stuff. Its definitely not everyone's cup of tea and I'm not as jazzed about it as I used to be, but I would be lying if I didn't think the last string of games have extremely boring narratives. I know story is probably the least relevant thing to many older Sonic fans, but I'm glad they brought someone aboard that at least understands what the younger audience wants. Ian Flynn isn't an amazing writer by any means and has some issues in his writing, but he's been writing Sonic comics for over ten years now, regularly interacts with the community, and has an extremely professional attitude when it comes to working around with this series. 

If nothing else, we'll get something entertaining that understands the characters and that's all most fans are asking for. 

I hope so. I’m certainly not knocking Ian’s ability here, I think his work is great. I am just not sure on a conceptual level that, after a series of games where Sonic Team has tried doing story work in a number of ways and failed, whether more story from someone else is the right call for the games. I feel like Sonic Team just keep kicking the can down the road in hopes that they’ll get a different result with a slightly different style or name.

I don’t agree that Sonic Team has gone out of its way to remove story elements though. I’d say the opposite. The last two mainline games were very much story-focused, in different ways. Forces tried to bring back that edgy apocalyptic feel from SA2/Shadow, and Lost World went full-on Saturday Morning Cartoon with the Deadly Six. Neither of which worked. Story hasn’t worked out at all for the Sonic games since Sonic Heroes, quite honestly.

I feel Sonic Colours had the right balance of including any semblance of story in the way Sonic Team wanted (in recent memory; Sonic Adventure did it best - I don’t think that Sonic Unleashed’s story is good at all)… ignoring the cutscenes. The actual premise/elevator pitch was the best the series had seen since SA1. But of course everybody focused on the cheesy cutscenes and ended up hating it lol.

My opinion is that Sonic games should really do away with any kind of story in the ‘traditional’ sense that they have been doing already (overly-long cutscenes, cheesy set-ups, kaiju bosses) and follow the style of Sonic Mania/3&K where story is told through gameplay and level design. That’s one thing that Sonic can still take a cue from the Super Mario mainline games; environmental storytelling, cute/awesome action set pieces (ideally that the player drives), and no cheesy one-liners (except maybe Eggman).

[VO.SUPER]

It's possible that the reason we didn't see the model even move was because Sonic Team are gonna replace it. It just feels so weird they couldn't even show Sonic moving around.

[Scar]

Why don't they just use the Unleashed model.

That model was hilarious overkill for PS360. Perfect for current gen. Its the single best 3D in-game character model ever used in any Sonic game ever. Why did they bin it?

[Dreadknux]

1 hour ago, Ryannumber1Santa said:

Colours, and Gens are also regularly mocked for both their lack of stories, and their awful sense of humour, with it being more glaring in a celebratory game in Gens. Mania is a decidedly different situation where it by design didn’t need much of a story due to focusing on the Mega Drive era, and even at that, they still opted in for the Sonic 3 & Knuckles method of having a minimalistic storyline that you can still infer between zones.

I’d argue that the lack of story in Generations actually works in its favour. Yeah, the story (or lack thereof) isn’t THE reason these games are critically acclaimed, but I feel like their absence or inoffensiveness doesn’t harm their critical acclaim. Consider that one of the first things that is criticised in reviews of the less-acclaimed games (Forces, Shadow, 06) is the story. A bad story can have a negative impact, and Sonic has had more bad stories than good in the 3D space.

Im definitely willing to give Flynn a shot at the story for this though, as I said I think he’s great so if anyone can pull it off it’s him. If not, I think Sonic Team just needs to cut their losses and take the hint that trying to do any kind of story beyond environmental storytelling is just never going to work out for them.

[Kuzu]

9 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

I hope so. I’m certainly not knocking Ian’s ability here, I think his work is great. I am just not sure, after a series of games where Sonic Team has tried doing story work in a number of ways and failed, whether more story from someone else is the right call for the games. I feel like Sonic Team just keep kicking the can down the road in hopes that they’ll get a different result with a slightly different style or name.

I don’t agree that Sonic Team has gone out of its way to remove story elements though. I’d say the opposite. The last two mainline games were very much story-focused, in different ways. Forces tried to bring back that edgy apocalyptic feel from SA2/Shadow, and Lost World went full-on Saturday Morning Cartoon with the Deadly Six. Neither of which worked. Story hasn’t worked out at all for the Sonic games since Sonic Heroes, quite honestly.

I feel Sonic Colours had the right balance of including any semblance of story in the way Sonic Team wanted (in recent memory; Sonic Adventure did it best - I don’t think that Sonic Unleashed’s story is good at all)… ignoring the cutscenes. The actual premise/elevator pitch was the best the series had seen since SA1. But of course everybody focused on the cheesy cutscenes and ended up hating it lol.

My opinion is that Sonic games should really do away with any kind of story in the ‘traditional’ sense that they have been doing already (overly-long cutscenes, cheesy set-ups, kaiju bosses) and follow the style of Sonic Mania/3&K where story is told through gameplay and level design. That’s one thing that Sonic can still take a cue from the Super Mario mainline games; environmental storytelling, cute/awesome action set pieces (ideally that the player drives), and no cheesy one-liners (except maybe Eggman).

I agree with this for the most part, the type of storytelling that most Sonic fans want I feel aren't really sustainable for a long running series, but that type of storytelling has been ingrained so much in the series' DNA that downplaying it would just make fans even more insecure than they already are. You already see how some people acting when Tails and Knuckles showed up in the movie trailer.

[Dreadknux]

4 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I agree with this for the most part, the type of storytelling that most Sonic fans want I feel aren't really sustainable for a long running series, but that type of storytelling has been ingrained so much in the series' DNA that downplaying it would just make fans even more insecure than they already are. You already see how some people acting when Tails and Knuckles showed up in the movie trailer.

Yeah. At the risk of sounding like an ass though, most fans don’t actually know what they want or what’s good for them (actually even outside of Sonic, most people don’t know what they want unless someone does/makes it for them. Who asked for the iPod or iPhone?). CG model redesign aside, if the collective fanbase had some input to the first Sonic movie it definitely would not have been as good as it ended up.

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

Some tholings i noticed about the trailer that no one seems to have pointed out yet. When the drones are chasing sonic, when that pink explosion happens, could that be sonic breaking some speed barrier or just the drones crashing in the ground?

There was another voice at the end of the trailer as well if you listen closely, right before the giant robot stomps the ground, saying: "Don't, it's too risky!" Another new character confirmed?