Takashi Iizuka Reveals Hopes of Using Sonic Frontiers Work Towards Future Sonic Adventure Sequel

[azoo]

A Sonic Adventure 3 back then meant whatever the next Sonic game was, before it eventually became its own thing.

A Sonic Adventure 3 now likely means a return of multiple playable characters (and/or play styles) playing into a grander story starring a new character or two, Chao Gardens, an “adventure game” vibe (which is why he is connecting this thought to Frontiers), and the music like either game (like vocal themes, eclectic music genres, Crush 40, etc). 

it unfortunately likely doesn’t mean return of that gameplay style for Sonic (rolling/Spindashing) or an early ‘00s anime aesthetic, which are the two things I’d want the most, but I will gladly take the rest too if they want to revisit this. Yes, at this point I’m even saying I’ll take other play styles. Sue me.

[TSS Classic Comment Bot]

Posted By: Greatsong1

Much as I like a new Adventure game I don’t feel like I can trust Iizuka and ST to handle it properly.

They should atleast remake SA1 & 2 and then see what they can use from the remakes for a SA3.

[BubbleButt TV]

all I really want is Sonic's core Adventure playstyle back, but taken to a modern standard. This alone would be enough to sell a Sonic Adventure 3 for me.

I don't really care about other playabe characters and play styles, crush 40 buttrock music or a grim dark edgy story so I really don't care if the next game isn't Adventure 3 in that sense

just a bit sad that some people are getting more hyped for an imaginary game than the actual real game coming out. Ideally Frontiers should have been so groundbreaking that everyone would finally move on from wanting SA3 lol

[Remynaka]

He shot himself in the foot mentioning sonic Adventure 3 in an interview about Sonic F. Never should've mentioned it honestly, and een if he's being 100% serious, do we even want SA3 with this current team? Hot take, I want a sonic game on the looks and feels and care of Rift Apart. WE don't got that, not even close. My other hot take is this game needs to be delayed because if not frontiers is at best going to be mid and if that's mmid.. then SA3 will be mid also. 

 My point over all... Frontiers got shat on because of that comment.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

2 hours ago, Remynaka said:

He shot himself in the foot mentioning sonic Adventure 3 in an interview about Sonic F.

Not really. This assumes he just brought up Sonic Adventure 3 out of nowhere,  when such wasn't the case.

[Remynaka]

45 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Not really. This assumes he just brought up Sonic Adventure 3 out of nowhere,  when such wasn't the case.

 I didn't mean it like that, ... I dunno how to explain it. But now instead of talking about Frontiers alot of people are now talking about another game before Frontiers is even out. and some people online - somewhat big youtubers- are even going with the plot that it's a test game. I dunno about you but I wouldn't want the project I'm trying to sell be called a test game for something that might not get made.

 But maybe I'm reading it wrong, all in all it's just how I feel. No hate :c I just want Frontiers to be good. - last fav game was unleashed for context.-

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

2 minutes ago, Remynaka said:

 I didn't mean it like that, ... I dunno how to explain it. But now instead of talking about Frontiers alot of people are now talking about another game before Frontiers is even out. and some people online - somewhat big youtubers- are even going with the plot that it's a test game. I dunno about you but I wouldn't want the project I'm trying to sell be called a test game for something that might not get made.

 But maybe I'm reading it wrong, all in all it's just how I feel. No hate :c I just want Frontiers to be good. - last fav game was unleashed for context.-

The problem was more so how the interview was cut, which made it seem like Iizuka was focusing on Adventure 3 more than the frontiers.

The actual interview in full shows that the context wasn't such.

[expansivelovestories]

I do like the idea that, behind the scenes, they can use the open zones (and perhaps cyberspace ones too), to test versions of other characters for a new Adventure game, whether or not they would also one day appear in Frontiers!!

[True Blue]

Iizuka can try to make any kind of Sonic game he likes, but if he calls it Sonic Adventure 3 or 4 or anything along those lines, he will disappoint a lot of people with the finished product. Fans have been dreaming about that title for ages, and I'm afraid any game that comes out with that name may never meet the expectations that have been formed over the years. Better give that game a somewhat more neutral name, even similar to Sonic World Adventure. It doesn't hurt that it has "Adventure" in the name, it makes it sound cool but it takes away the pressure of having to be just as good or better than the Adventure titles.

I hope Iizuka is not saying he wants to make games that will appeal to both old and new fans at the same time. Every time I hear something like that, we end up with with a mediocre game and, arguably, with an identity crisis – inconsistent tone, inconsistent quality of content, etc.
Before Sonic Boom: Fire & Ice came out, SEGA, kept saying how that game would appeal to everyone, and you probably know the rest of the story.

[Scritch the Cat]

On 6/10/2022 at 4:20 PM, light-gaia said:

I think Sonic Adventure 3 or Sonic Adventure remakes are inevitable. The demand is too high to be ignored. It's probably going to be even higher after the next Sonic movie, with Shadow playing a major role. The chance of the next mainline Sonic games trying to appeal to Adventure fans is totally plausible.

It feels like spin-offs are already milking that era pretty hard.  LEGO Dimensions heavily referenced the Adventure era in many jokes, Team Sonic Racing also had a lot of callbacks, Big the Cat has become a widely celebrated meme character, we got a Chao-centric short, lots of Adventure era characters in the mobile games, and Sonic Speed Simulator plays more like an Adventure game and has Chao.  The door has always been open to make another Adventure game, though I’m not sure if they tried, they’d include the things most of the fans want.

[SIXTH-RATE SOMA]

On 6/10/2022 at 3:16 PM, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

So, uh, here's just a bit more context

So it wasn't just randomly brought up just because Iizuka wanted to...it was just because he was asked.

back to casual fandom i go

[Remynaka]

On 6/11/2022 at 12:52 PM, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

The problem was more so how the interview was cut, which made it seem like Iizuka was focusing on Adventure 3 more than the frontiers.

The actual interview in full shows that the context wasn't such.

Oh.. So I was just massively misinformed then. Ok that's a relief. Please forget me being a moron, Please don't hate me. :c

[Wraith]

I'm kind of glad that this doesn't seem to be happening any time soon. I don't think Sonic Adventure and Sonic Adventure 2 are some insurmountable peak that'd be impossible to top but I can't see modern Sonic Team doing right by either of those games with the way they approach game design now.

[DaBigJ]

A bit of an update on the topic. Not a surprise, but it's something to take note of.

[Cornelius Fudge]

This doesn't surprise me. It was to my understanding that Lizuka wanted to focus on Sonic Frontier and see how what works and what doesn't before considering what type of game they'll do next. Depending on how Sonic Frontiers is received and what potential a game like Frontiers has going forward might make Lizuka consider it appropriate to adapt these ideas for a new game which could be Sonic Adventure 3. But that doesn't mean that the next game will be Adventure 3. If Sonic Frontiers flops, then Lizuka definitely wouldn't want to make Sonic Adventure 3. Lizuka not guaranteeing an Adventure 3 isn't that shocking IMO.

[Indigo Rush]

5 hours ago, Cornelius Fudge said:

This doesn't surprise me. It was to my understanding that Lizuka wanted to focus on Sonic Frontier and see how what works and what doesn't before considering what type of game they'll do next. Depending on how Sonic Frontiers is received and what potential a game like Frontiers has going forward might make Lizuka consider it appropriate to adapt these ideas for a new game which could be Sonic Adventure 3. But that doesn't mean that the next game will be Adventure 3. If Sonic Frontiers flops, then Lizuka definitely wouldn't want to make Sonic Adventure 3. Lizuka not guaranteeing an Adventure 3 isn't that shocking IMO.

I need to know why people keep calling him Lizuka when his name is Iizuka, I will not rest or sleep until this is explained to me. It's nearly as bad when people kept saying "Arron Webber." 

Anyway:

On 6/14/2022 at 1:36 PM, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

A bit of an update on the topic. Not a surprise, but it's something to take note of.

Seems like a bit of a backtrack on his part. I do think he wants to make it, but he may  convinced it'll not work or sell well. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

17 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

Seems like a bit of a backtrack on his part. I do think he wants to make it, but he may  convinced it'll not work or sell well. 

It's actually more of a clarification on his part,  given how much of the fanbase ran wild with taking and shaping his words to the wrong context.

[azoo]

Still nonsensical that it's not one of their first priorities. He wants to make it, fans want it to be made, SA1/2 (especially 2) are still widely loved and appreciated by most of the mainstream even after all the discourse.. what's stopping them?

I mean if they're unconfident in being able to follow it up, then I mean, fair. But I think Iizuka and Sonic Team as a whole has this sort of itch to "innovate" the gameplay, and looking back to older titles may be seen as a regression unless packaged like a Sonic Mania or Origins affair. 

[KHCast]

Apparently there was an interview regarding the potential of SA remasters (not sure where this came from tho)

 

 

 

 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

2 hours ago, azoo said:

Still nonsensical that it's not one of their first priorities. He wants to make it, fans want it to be made, SA1/2 (especially 2) are still widely loved and appreciated by most of the mainstream even after all the discourse.. what's stopping them?

I mean if they're unconfident in being able to follow it up, then I mean, fair. But I think Iizuka and Sonic Team as a whole has this sort of itch to "innovate" the gameplay, and looking back to older titles may be seen as a regression unless packaged like a Sonic Mania or Origins affair. 

I think it seems more so, to be a bout of what the head honchos at SEGA want Sonic Team to do, given that they very well do seem to boast an interest in the Adventure formula. 

But if the boss vetoes it, then there's nothing they can do against such.

[GentlemanX]

2 hours ago, azoo said:

I mean if they're unconfident in being able to follow it up, then I mean, fair. But I think Iizuka and Sonic Team as a whole has this sort of itch to "innovate" the gameplay, and looking back to older titles may be seen as a regression unless packaged like a Sonic Mania or Origins affair. 

That's what Iizuka's said in the past, right? That he considers the Boost gameplay to be a natural evolution of the gameplay established in the Adventure titles? I was hoping by his wording in the IGN interview that he had reconsidered and felt the "Adventure series" as he put it were a distinct thing from what Modern Sonic has become, but the VGC interview has made me think that's incorrect and there hasn't been any real progress on distinguishing Adventure!Sonic from Boost!Sonic within Sonic Team.

Which is a shame. After Odyssey went out of its way to make a whole chart explaining the different approaches the Mario series has to 3D gameplay, I wish Sonic could have something similar. I'm not a big fan of the boost gameplay, but I don't want it going away completely for those who do enjoy it - I just want the games in this series I care the most about being treated as more than just Sonic's first steps in order to create the Boost formula.

Both the IGN interview and the VGC interview make it clear that Iizuka has made the distinction between 2D and 3D Sonic, and stated the two represent different audiences and trying to appeal to both at once doesn't work, so that's definite progress from the situation we had with Forces in 2017. The only thing to do I guess it to continue to ask for elements of the Adventure series that are unique to it to come back in stuff like surveys and comments from social media types. It can feel like talking to a wall that way, but it's at least something. Maybe I'm not giving Iizuka enough credit, since he specifically notes in the VGC interview about the Adventure series having a "format" and seems more concerned about the idea that he's confirming SA3 rather than shooting the idea down entirely. But it's hard not to get a negative impression when he makes comments in the same interview about wanting to go back and make changes to the Adventure games to the point he's not even really interested in doing a simple remaster for them.

[KHCast]

Gotta wonder if he means “how can we incorporate boost gameplay” when he says he wants to make it an experience for “modern audiences”. Cause at this point, that really wouldn’t shock me 

[Kuzu]

54 minutes ago, KHCast said:

Gotta wonder if he means “how can we incorporate boost gameplay” when he says he wants to make it an experience for “modern audiences”. Cause at this point, that really wouldn’t shock me 

What does your heart tell you the answer to this question is?

[moonarcana]

Topic is kinda dead at this point but I wanna say I really don't think there's much of a distinction to make between "Adventure" and boost the way Nintendo made a distinction between sandbox and course style 3D Mario. With 3D Mario the differences are night and day, but with 3D Sonic one's a linear obstacle course with 1-2 games that attempt to give the illusion of openness, the other's a linear obstacle course that rarely attempts to give the illusion of openness but way faster. Obviously mechanically there are differences but 3D Sonic games haven't bothered with trying to implement momentum physics in level design since 2001 (and even then SA1 still had some of that too) and automation is pretty much standard in all of them. 

 

Note I'm only comparing Sonic's (and SA2/ShTH!Shadow's) core play and ignoring everything else because honestly, pretty much all of that is padding.

 

As for the whole SA3 thing, I really don't see the purpose at this point. Adventure fans would probably consider it the 3D equivalent of Sonic 4 because of how they perceive "Adventure" vs how Sonic Team sees it. It would just be nostalgia bait in the same way Forces advertising Chaos and Shadow as villains was horrendously bad nostalgia bait.

[SonicBoom]

Yeah, I don't think Sonic Team makes any particular distinction between the core Sonic gameplay of the Adventure titles and the boost games, and rather sees the latter as a modern evolution of the former. While SA1 had some elements of the more automation-focused, speed-over-momentum design that would eventually define the gameplay differences between modern and classic Sonic, SA2 was when it really came into focus. This 2001 interview with Iizuka himself comes to mind, particularly his second paragraph:

It's always a little funny to see fans now talking about how SA2 was still focused on the same principles as the classics, because we sure didn't think of it that way at the time, and that was a huge part of why it was so divisive. It overhauled Sonic's whole syntax to refocus on things that the team felt were a better fit for 3D gameplay. And with a few odd exceptions like Lost World over the years, I think most 3D Sonic titles have continued to build (sometimes well, sometimes clumsily) on SA2's foundation. As the GHZ put it:
 

Quote

Sonic Adventure 2 marks a turning point in the series, arguably more significant even than Sonic's original leap to 3D in the preceding title. Game mechanics are retooled from the ground up: the field of play is narrowed, goals are stricter, and controls are tightened to reflect the shift away from exploration and toward precision. While the original Sonic Adventure felt like a natural (if clumsy) evolution of the 2D games, Sonic Adventure 2 is a coup that leaves little intact besides the characters and high speeds.

And I'd follow that up by reminding everyone that just because Iizuka says there are "currently no plans" for Adventure remakes or follow-ups or whatever doesn't mean plans can't change. In fact, this is the exact sort of language he used shortly after the release of Generations, when he said there were "no plans" to do anything else with Classic Sonic, and we were all equally salty about it. So it might just be his way of tempering expectations on things he WANTS to do, but he doesn't know if he can make it happen yet. Plans can change if there's enough incentive!