News Sonic Frontiers Trailer

[Kuzu]

2 minutes ago, Dreadknux said:

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.

Yea, every part of this fanbase is equally vocal.

I'm just glad they're bringing in more talent from the outside. After two decades of mostly ignoring that part, its a good sign to bring in some fresh blood.

[Diogenes]

9 minutes ago, AWild No.1 washed up gamer said:

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?

The drones/missiles/whatever hit the ground and explode, narrowly missing Sonic, who then accelerates away.

9 minutes ago, AWild No.1 washed up gamer said:

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?

If it's true that one of the voices was labeled as Amy in the Japanese trailer then it's probably just Sonic's friends calling out to him while being trapped in "cyberspace".

[Blue Blood]

52 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.

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.

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'm sorry, but hard disagree on so much of what you're saying here and in your previous post regarding stories.

Forces was the first time since Unleashed and Black Knight that Sonic Team actually put a story at the forefront. Lost World and Colours, yes they technically had stories flowing through the narrative but the stories was playing second fiddle to the gameplay focused structure of the games. Sonic Team absolutely did go out of their way to both remove story elements and change the branding to something more akin to children's cartoons where plots are less important than the jokes. Games like Heroes and Rush struck a much better balance at having stories without slipping into the dramatic and overblown territories. Unleashed did too, until the very end of the story.

Where Forces differed from other recent games is that it made the story a key part of the game. There was supposed to be a reason why Sonic and Co went to different places and did certain things, unlike Lost World and Colours that used their cutscenes just to set up jokes. The actual plot in both of those games was largely unimportant. But for Forces, the story was a driving, uh, force behind the entire game. The story was both bad and badly told though, and that's where its problems were. 

Generations and Mania did so well despite their lack of a focus on plot, and certainly not because of it. A bad plot or bad implementation of one acts against a a game. Colours is painful to get through because every few levels you have to watch cutscenes with really uninteresting choreography, where a solid majority of the dialogue is insipid jokes and the rest is characterless exposition. Generations may as well have no plot whatsoever, and frankly it suffers for it. Sonic is a series with a rich cast and has tried its hand at various plots in the past. So when a celebratory game like Generations comes along and handwaves all of that, it's a big disappointment. Mania tells a fine enough story through its minimalistic cutscenes and level progression. It accomplished all that it needed to do, but it doesn't scratch the itch for something more. With a story like that, you don't get to know the characters and learn anything as the story progresses. It only really provides a loose context. I've always wanted more than that from Sonic. 

Sonic's games definitely should not do away with stories in the traditional sense. There needs to be better story and gameplay integration, I agree. But I want cutscenes in Sonic, I want different characters with personalities and motives of their own, I want a bit of drama and I want some cheesiness too. When I look at games like SA1, SA2, Heroes, Riders, ZG, Battle, the storybooks, Rush, Rush Adventure and Unleashed, I see stories and worlds that enrich the series (with varying degrees of success). They aren't masterpieces, but they don't need to be. Mania and 3K styke simply does not go far enough. And when stuff goes particularly OTT, as in 06, Shadow, the climax of SA2 and others, it hurts. But a full story is integral to Sonic. It's this past decade of handwave plots and Forces plot that just says "fuck it" to continuity and production values that's helped me to realise just how important story is. 

To bring this back around to Frontiers, I'm glad that Flynn on board here. He has written the Sonic characters well before and knows how to write an interesting story. I'm looking forward to learning about the story to this game amongst everything else. 

@AWild No.1 washed up gamer

It's Amy's voice that we hear both times in the trailer. Turn captions on. 

 

[A super No.1 washedupgamer]

You can also see some blue trails on the towers and along the sides of the mountains that may or may not indicate areas where sonic can run on along. 

If that's true, then the parkour mechanic may return and there are two ways you can scale the towers.

Running vertical upwards on the blue path or using the spiral path. Interesting. 

[Diogenes]

I wouldn't doubt the game's "parkour" amounts to being able to run on specifically-labeled strips of wall and nowhere else. No other wall surfaces look like they're designed for Sonic to run on at any rate.

[batson]

This looks like a good game.

It looks like a good game.

But so did a lot of other Sonic games, and yet ended up not being very good.

You know, it's kinda sad. For probably the first time ever upon seeing the first trailer for a new Sonic game I sort of asume that the game isn't goig to be all that good even though there is nothing in the trailer to suggest that. I've finally reach the point of "Sonic games are probably mediocre or bad unless I see decisive proof otherwise". It's similar to how I've approcahed upcomg episodes of The Simpsons for over 20 years now (The Simspons and Sonic being my two favorite franchises... at one point in time).

Well, there is always hope though. Even when honest belief is lacking, there can always be a little bit of hope.

[Matt98]

The voice telling sonic things was Amy https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/12/that-mysterious-voice-in-the-sonic-frontiers-trailer-turns-out-its-a-familiar-friend

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, Matt98 said:

The voice telling sonic things was Amy https://www.nintendolife.com/news/2021/12/that-mysterious-voice-in-the-sonic-frontiers-trailer-turns-out-its-a-familiar-friend

If Sonic is trying to save his friends in this game, maybe he will hear their voices "in his head" many times during the game. Just saying.

[FirePheonix]

I don't want this to seem like I am blindly defending Sonic Team or anything, but some people are acting way too overdramatic over a 1 minute CGI traler, to me it's ridiculous that some people are alrady writing off this game, when the trailer didn't even show gameplay. 

-They probably hid the assets like rings and enemies because the point of this trailer was to showcase the world.

-Sonic's Forces design could very well be a placeholder.

-The footage we saw at TGA could be from an earlier build

-The fact that Morio is the director doesn't mean the game will automatically bad(see Colors)

Point is I am not going to judge this game before seeing substantial gameplay, I get that many are skeptic and they have every right to be considering Sonic Team's track record but just saying ''hurr durr Frontiers is doomed and it will be terrible'' without anything to back it up doen't make you look very good.

If it was up to me Frontiers wouldn't have even been revelaled until like Spring 2022 where immediately a gameplay can be show, but since Forces SEGA really has fucked up the marketing of the games, I hope that for the next game after Frontiers, we go back to revealing a game only when they feel like they have something worth showing, but alas it's not up to me or us.

I will personally wait for gamaplay to have a final judgment of the game, and after that I will admit that I was wrong for defending the game but right now it's pointless to just say the game is going to be bad.

[Matt98]

3 minutes ago, CrystalMaelStorm said:

If Sonic is trying to save his friends in this game, maybe he will hear their voices "in his head" many times during the game. Just saying.

Probably 

[Shiny Gems]

5 minutes ago, FirePheonix said:

I don't want this to seem like I am blindly defending Sonic Team or anything, but some people are acting way too overdramatic over a 1 minute CGI traler, to me it's ridiculous that some people are alrady writing off this game, when the trailer didn't even show gameplay. 

-They probably hid the assets like rings and enemies because the point of this trailer was to showcase the world.

-Sonic's Forces design could very well be a placeholder.

-The footage we saw at TGA could be from an earlier build

-The fact that Morio is the director doesn't mean the game will automatically bad(see Colors)

Point is I am not going to judge this game before seeing substantial gameplay, I get that many are skeptic and they have every right to be considering Sonic Team's track record but just saying ''hurr durr Frontiers is doomed and it will be terrible'' without anything to back it up doen't make you look very good.

If it was up to me Frontiers wouldn't have even been revelaled until like Spring 2022 where immediately a gameplay can be show, but since Forces SEGA really has fucked up the marketing of the games, I hope that for the next game after Frontiers, we go back to revealing a game only when they feel like they have something worth showing, but alas it's not up to me or us.

I will personally wait for gamaplay to have a final judgment of the game, and after that I will admit that I was wrong for defending the game but right now it's pointless to just say the game is going to be bad.

I know what you mean. I personally would defend the game trailer, at least very highly rather than moderately, but it is hard for me to do so without even seemingly looking blind.

But there is overreaction from what I see. Plus, another from I go to and the Youtube comments of the Frontiers video seem rather positive about this more than here. Not that it is bad for people to be pessimistic here, or at least cautious (it's understandable some), but you should get what I mean.

[Enesephus]

5 minutes ago, FirePheonix said:

-They probably hid the assets like rings and enemies because the point of this trailer was to showcase the world.

The leaks mentioned the world being populated with small enemies, big enemies, puzzles and platforming challenges, so I definitely believe that this is the case. I don't know if that was really what they should have done (judging from some of these reactions, it was probably not for the best, lol), but there is a lot more they're just not showing us yet.

8 minutes ago, FirePheonix said:

-Sonic's Forces design could very well be a placeholder.

Ehhh, it could be, I guess, but best to operate under the assumption it's not until otherwise is proven, if ever. 

10 minutes ago, FirePheonix said:

The fact that Morio is the director doesn't mean the game will automatically bad(see Colors)

I think people have a right to be skeptical about this guy. I do personally like Colors, but it's not exactly golden and these two games are clearly designed very differently, and the quality of his games seems to keep getting slightly worse, so... yeah.

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, Enesephus said:

I think people have a right to be skeptical about this guy. I do personally like Colors, but it's not exactly golden and these two games are clearly designed very differently, and the quality of his games seems to keep getting slightly worse, so... yeah.

Personally, I think the only truly bad Sonic game he has done is Forces. As for Lost World, it was different. It's nowhere near as good as Sonic Colors, but it was good enough; in my opinion; to stand on its own to a degree. When you don't pay attention to how different it is from other Sonic games, it is not as bad as Sonic Forces. That may be just me, but to me, at least the level design in that game, if flawed, was more open, even though it had nothing to do with the boost.

[Enesephus]

10 minutes ago, CrystalMaelStorm said:

Personally, I think the only truly bad Sonic game he has done is Forces. As for Lost World, it was different. It's nowhere near as good as Sonic Colors, but it was good enough; in my opinion; to stand on its own to a degree. When you don't pay attention to how different it is from other Sonic games, it is not as bad as Sonic Forces. That may be just me, but to me, at least the level design in that game, if flawed, was more open, even though it had nothing to do with the boost.

It's definitely not as bad as Forces. For me, I kind of like it, but it suffers from the issue I have with Colors in that it doesn't really feel like a Sonic game. However, while I still found Colors to be well designed just as a 2.5D platformer, Lost World is just kind of a mess. There are some parts I really like, and there are some that just baffle me or are not fun. 

[Shiny Gems]

3 minutes ago, Enesephus said:

It's definitely not as bad as Forces. For me, I kind of like it, but it suffers from the issue I have with Colors in that it doesn't really feel like a Sonic game. However, while I still found Colors to be well designed just as a 2.5D platformer, Lost World is just kind of a mess. There are some parts I really like, and there are some that just baffle me or are not fun. 

With that said, I personally feel there might still be some good capability in him.

Still, with this game being different, and his still existing track record, I still have my doubts on how he will be able to handle this game, let alone an open world Sonic game at all.

[Marcello]

Kishimoto directing is kinda worrying, but Frontiers is very different design wise compared to the games, so maybe he'll be better at it. 

 

Quality difference to Sonic aside, SS went from the most linear Zelda to the most open successfully with the same director. 

[Razule]

There are hills and ramp-like structures, but I wonder if some of the many objects that were hopefully just left out of the teaser were boost pads and stuff. Who needs physics to build speed and traverse the environment when we can have dash panels?

[Enesephus]

Just now, Razule said:

There are hills and ramp-like structures, but I wonder if some of the many objects that were hopefully just left out of the teaser were boost pads and stuff. Who needs physics to build speed and traverse the environment when we could have the boost and dash panel?

I'm really hoping we can finally leave those damn things in the past. The leaks didn't say anything about the world being automated in that way, so... fingers crossed? Of course, they could always add them in later...

[DiamondX]

Honestly I'd say I'm excited....

But barely any gameplay was shown. They didn't even show Sonic moving in the world.

Visually it's amazing but I want to see more before I make an opinion on this game. Glad to see we got Ian Flynn (I hope I got his name right) as the writer and this gives me hopes for a good story.

[GentlemanX]

Yeah, there's nothing that be gleaned from here in terms of gameplay, which of course is most important. The trailer is essentially a reveal of the open world design and a showcase of the graphics and the realistic art direction; both of which I'm fine with. I don't know, I find the environment visually captivating and am excited to run around in it like how I enjoy running around the adventure fields in SA1. No idea what that would be like on the Switch which is the console I'll in all likelihood get the game on but still. We're probably in for a decent wait for more substantial info given we're still a year out from release barring any delays, I'm sure I'll have more to comment on then.

[Red Hot Jack]

It's too early to say, so I'm definitely not panicking and I'll be reserving my judgement for later. When we have something else to judge other than the world, but so far so good, it does look beautiful.

About the Forces model: well, I mean, it is Kishimoto, I'm not surprised to be honest if there is some visual continuity from Forces, it's Hedgehog Engine 2 and Forces model, didn't we say it looked nothing like a Sonic game? My problems are: the world looks too realistic as you guys said and the Sonic model in the CGI looks different than the gameplay one in the landscape pose. They just don't line up. But I doubt it's placeholder, it's just the new Sonic model since Lost World and Runners.

[___]

For the record, I haven't formed an opinion on the game or written it off or anything like that. I could still see it going either way quality wise. Obviously we have no gameplay to pore over, and that's what bugs me more than anything. 

This is not a series that deserves the benefit of the doubt in my opinion. Which is why I was hoping they'd go out guns blazing and show some confidence in what they've been working on. But this drip-feed tactic makes me worried that this is the same old song and dance yet again. 

[NoKaine]

1 hour ago, Gloved Animal said:

For the record, I haven't formed an opinion on the game or written it off or anything like that. I could still see it going either way quality wise. Obviously we have no gameplay to pore over, and that's what bugs me more than anything. 

This is not a series that deserves the benefit of the doubt in my opinion. Which is why I was hoping they'd go out guns blazing and show some confidence in what they've been working on. But this drip-feed tactic makes me worried that this is the same old song and dance yet again. 

If they weren't confident, they wouldn't announce it at the Game Awards. The audience of millions is not exactly the place to show your ass. 

For some reason, people rationalize the trailer as a lack of confidence and not a deliberate marketing tactic. Every game, including the ones you like, were marketed like this. They want you interested to see more.

If they weren't confident in the game at all... they just wouldn't show it. This is the first main Sonic game in four - five years. They would've been quieter if they think they had to.

[Diogenes]

There's no "paranoia" in being skeptical about Sonic games.

[Scar]

9 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

There's no "paranoia" in being skeptical about Sonic games.

Its pretty much realistic expectation.

14 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

If they weren't confident, they wouldn't announce it at the Game Awards. The audience of millions is not exactly the place to show your ass. 

For some reason, people rationalize the trailer as a lack of confidence and not a deliberate marketing tactic. Every game, including the ones you like, were marketed like this. They want you interested to see more, not to show you everything because OoooOOOO people don't trust Sonic Team, we gotta placate their paranoia! No. 

If they weren't confident in the game at all... they just wouldn't show it. This is the first main Sonic game in four - five years. They would've been quieter if they think they had to.

Sonic Team were confident with Unleashed. Sonic Team were confident with Forces. Sonic Team have been confident before, and they've been confidently shit.

I expect nothing, and if they want anything more than my morbid curiosity, they're going to need to fucking work for it.