Sonic Frontiers Leaks & Spoilers Thread - PLEASE READ OP

[NoKaine]

11 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

You're giving the benefit of the doubt to the team that made Forces lol.

Iizuka said there are 60 developers working on the game. Forces had 20 or so. It's not the same team. It's almost never the same team. Trying to guess the quality or design by "team" is pointless. Even Kishimoto's games as director are varied.

 

11 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

but at the same time even the broken-up-linear-stuff they showed in the open world is not that far removed from Forces design

(I misread this early, sorry)

That's because they're literally meant to be like 20 second challenges. They're like Forces because Forces is designed like tiny little sections of bigger levels (because they literally are taken from bigger levels). 

We have the open world, which have tiny little segments and playground areas, and we have the dedicated linear levels. 

10 minutes ago, Diogenes said:

Within the first few seconds of LRZ Act 1 you've got the plesiosaurus badniks from Hill Top and the big stompy machine from Metallic Madness, and Act 2 throws in Quartz Quadrant's conveyor belts with directional switches. There isn't a single returning zone in Mania that doesn't add multiple things that are either entirely new or remixed from entirely different zones.

I genuinely do not remember those elements. You're right, but those slipped my mind entirely. 

I can remember every other level's unique gimmick but Lava Reef felt 100% like the original. 

5 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

I don't believe all cyberspace levels are from Sonic Generations, because the leaks would mention that. Several leaks mentioned the cyberspace levels, but only Zippo recently mentioned they are the same levels from Sonic Generations.

Maybe it's like Team Sonic Racing, they reused some old tracks, but most of them are new. It's a weird choice anyway, but makes more sense to me.

As I recall, many leaks did mention the levels did look explicitly like Green Hill and Chemical Plant. Only like two leaks have ever mentioned anything past the first island, though, and none of them mentioned things like sidequests or fishing, which we know are in the game. It's possible that being old levels is... the theme... of the first island.

I don't believe it will be ALL Generations levels, though.

Zippo probably just had someone at SGF tell him about the levels. I do not believe he actually got insider information. Remember that Zippo said this wouldn't be a boost game.

Edited June 17, 2022 by NoKaine

[Salamander]

Another clever little thing I'd point out about Mania's Lava Reef Zone is that it took that one random giant drilling robot which appeared in the original Lava Reef for about five seconds before destroying itself, and turned it into a miniboss.  I always wondered what the point of that thing was, but Mania gave it a purpose!

Also @Razuleis clearly doing a bit and not being serious?  Or are we all just playing along?

[Sonikko]

6 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

Iizuka said there are 60 developers working on the game. Forces had 20 or so. It's not the same team. It's almost never the same team. Trying to guess the quality or design by "team" is pointless. Even Kishimoto's games as director are varied.

Forces is also a very linear and short game, Frontiers is an open world, or open zone as they so much insist on calling it.

To put things into perspective, Gamefreak has 140 developers give or take, and they were severely understaffed for Arceus and they still are for Scarlet and Violet, as the ever so glaring technical issues with the games show.

60 devs for a game with this scope is still not even close to being enough.

6 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

I can't believe Generations is just Forces 0.5. I can't believe Generations and Forces have the same team.

I literally said there's not enough footage to judge the stages but we shouldn't really cut them too much of a slack because there's a pattern in the level design we do have seen, especially in the open world, and that's not really far from what was "playable" in the 3d stages in Forces, that being fancy grindrails. The bulk of gameplay in the open world seems to come from combat, not exploration or platforming, since that's literally the same reheated soup they've been serving since 2010.

Generations is not an immaculate game, there's plenty of issues with it, linearity and automation being among them.

Is it the best boost game? Yeah absolutely. 

Is it perfect? No, not even close.

The bar was low, it still is low and it keeps going down.

[NoKaine]

4 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Forces is also a very linear and short game, Frontiers is an open world, or open zone as they so much insist on calling it.

To put things into perspective, Gamefreak has 140 developers give or take, and they were severely understaffed for Arceus and they still are for Scarlet and Violet, as the ever so glaring technical issues with the games show.

60 devs for a game with this scope is still not even close to being enough.

I literally said there's not enough footage to judge the stages but we shouldn't really cut them too much of a slack because there's a pattern in the level design we do have seen.

Generations is not an immaculate game, there's plenty of issues with it, linearity and automation being among them.

Is it the best boost game? Yeah absolutely. 

Is it perfect? No, not even close.

The bar was low, it still is low and it keeps going down.

Frontiers is non-linear in its open world and the director said the game will be 20-30 hours just playing it normally, so uh, yeah, already pretty different from Forces.

If 60 devs got Sonic Team where they are now (and even further), it's actually super impressive. A lot of Game Freak's technical issues are down to the specific techniques they use, like their use of duplicating objects (if I recall correctly). A lot of Frontiers' issues are down to it being an incomplete game. 

There's also no doubt that they've gotten assistance from other developers, namely the ones from Phantasy Star Online 2 considering how similar the games are.

And that has nothing at all to do with the claim that it's the "same team" as Forces. There is no basis for that, besides the one director.

The open world segments are "like Forces" because Forces' level design itself is designed to be tiny parts of a bigger level--literally. Trying to use the open world platforming segments as proof of what the linear levels would be is pointless and almost as reaching as trying to use the shitty cam footage. 

 

[light-gaia]

Just now, Sonikko said:

Forces is also a very linear and short game, Frontiers is an open world, or open zone as they so much insist on calling it.

To put things into perspective, Gamefreak has 140 developers give or take, and they were severely understaffed for Arceus and they still are for Scarlet and Violet, as the ever so glaring technical issues with the games show.

60 devs for a game with this scope is still not even close to being enough.

I literally said there's not enough footage to judge the stages but we shouldn't really cut them too much of a slack because there's a pattern in the level design we do have seen.

Generations is not an immaculate game, there's plenty of issues with it, linearity and automation being among them.

Is it the best boost game? Yeah absolutely. 

Is it perfect? No, not even close.

The bar was low, it still is low and it keeps going down.

Pokémon games have a different release schedule. They release new Pokémon games every year. When it comes to Frontiers, it's been under development since 2017.

3 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Generations is not an immaculate game, there's plenty of issues with it, linearity and automation being among them.

Is it the best boost game? Yeah absolutely. 

Is it perfect? No, not even close.

The bar was low, it still is low and it keeps going down.

Those are not issues, are design aspects

[Sean]

Stop talking about Zippo

[Sonikko]

Just now, light-gaia said:

Pokémon games have a different release schedule. They release new Pokémon games every year. When it comes to Frontiers, it's been under development since 2017.

To be fair, the game production started in 2017, they scrapped a couple builds, most of sonic team was busy with Sakura Wars and other projects until late 2019/early 2020 (All of the animators that worked on Forces were busy on SW, Mario & Sonic, some of the artists were busy on Puyo, all of the programmers were busy on these 3 projects combined).

2020 probably has seen the project halted for most of the year while they moved into remote work. This game, as it currently exists has 3 years TOPS of dev time, that's being very generous, probably closer to two years and a half, which is the same dev time Arceus had lol. We're not comparing apples to oranges here.

 

[light-gaia]

1 minute ago, Sonikko said:

To be fair, the game production started in 2017, they scrapped a couple builds, most of sonic team was busy with Sakura Wars and other projects until late 2019/early 2020 (All of the animators that worked on Forces were busy on SW, Mario & Sonic, some of the artists were busy on Puyo, all of the programmers were busy on these 3 projects combined).

2020 probably has seen the project halted for most of the year while they moved into remote work. This game, as it currently exists has 3 years TOPS of dev time, that's being very generous, probably closer to two years and a half, which is the same dev time Arceus had lol. We're not comparing apples to oranges here.

Sakura Wars was not developed by Sonic Team

[NoKaine]

There is no indication of significant development issues for Frontiers.

We know that the game as is has been pretty much the same in concept since at least 2019.

As light-gaia stated, Sonic Team did not work on Sakura Wars. Sakura Wars just used the Hedgehog Engine 2. 

And Iizuka currently stated that they are in the debugging phase of the game, which means the main game is already done. 

Nevermind that they have been VERY open about development details, which they almost never are.

[Sonikko]

3 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Sakura Wars was not developed by Sonic Team

Sonic Team was absorbed into Sega CS2 dev team, check the credits for Forces and Sakura Wars, which was developed by CS2, and you'll see many devs have worked on both projects. This was part of the post 2017 restructuring. Articles about it were even posted on Sonic fansites, people were scared Sonic Team wasn't gonna be a thing anymore because of it.

 

https://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation-4/sonic-forces/credits

https://www.mobygames.com/game/playstation-4/sakura-wars/credits

Check for yourself if you don't believe my words, the data is right there for you.

[NoKaine]

Only a handful of developers are shared between Forces and Sakura Wars and its largely people who are credited under Hedgehog Engine Programmers in the former, and we know that the latter game uses Hedgehog Engine 2. The shared programmers are also credited under "SEGA Games Co., Ltd.", which as far as I can tell is... just SEGA. 

Not exactly "Sonic Team was absorbed into CS2 and made it questionable whether they actually exist as a company anymore." Seems that they just pulled employees from different parts of SEGA to help make the game. I even doubt it was significant enough to impact Frontiers' development.

We also don't know if any of them are on Frontiers to begin with.

[light-gaia]

5 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Sonic Team was absorbed into Sega CS2 dev team, check the credits for Forces and Sakura Wars, which was developed by CS2, and you'll see many devs have worked on both projects. This was part of the post 2017 restructuring. Articles about it were even posted on Sonic fansites, people were scared Sonic Team wasn't gonna be a thing anymore because of it.

Toshihiro Nagoshi who used to work on the Yakuza series is also credited in several Sonic games, even though he mainly worked at the Ryu Ga Gotoku Studio. It is the same company anyway. It doesn't mean Sonic Frontiers and Sakura Wars were developed by the same team, just because some devs worked on both projects. It's confirmed that Frontiers started development in late 2017.

In my opinion, 60 people should be enough to develop a good Sonic game. Zelda Breath of the Wild had 300 people, but it's a game with many more mechanics and with way higher scope than a 3D platformer. It's also the Nintendo game with the biggest budget in history. Super Mario Odyssey had a similar amount of devs (compared to Frontiers) if we exclude the special thanks and the teams in charge of localization.

[Sonikko]

Idk what to say man, even if they worked on this, full production, for 5 years, and it still looks this janky, then that says a lot about the team anyway lol.

No matter how you spin it, this ain't a good look.

 

Everyone who played it firsthand noted that the game was unpolished and janky, which is something people usually do not mention during hand-ons and previews, because you expect some amount of jank at this point of dev.

If they feel the need to point it out, it means it's jankier than any other game this close to release.

[light-gaia]

1 minute ago, Sonikko said:

Idk what to say man, even if they worked on this, full production, for 5 years, and it still looks this janky, then that says a lot about the team anyway lol.

No matter how you spin it, this ain't a good look.

Takashi Iizuka said they are having a lot of positive feedback from play testers, and we know this game is having external play testing for a long time. That was even the reason the game got leaked a year ago. He said the game is almost done, and they are in the debug stage. It doesn't seem like Sonic Team is rushing the game or having to crunch.

It's also possible that this is just a marketing issue. Xplay said that the build they played on SGF was a "different game" compared to the IGN footage. The developers are not the same people in charge of the marketing.

Even the new gameplay has differences compared to the screenshots, some textures still look different. That ball cluster robot has a metallic texture in the screenshots, but in the footage it looks like plastic.

Who knows... Maybe the game is indeed janky, but I think they would be having development hell or crunch to meet the deadline, and it doesn't seem to be the case. It's possible that we haven't seen the updated build yet.

[Sonikko]

1 minute ago, light-gaia said:

Who knows... Maybe the game is indeed janky, but I think they would be having development hell or crunch to meet the deadline, and it doesn't seem to be the case. It's possible that we haven't seen the updated build yet.

Iizuka literally stated in the latest interview they're working long nights in Tokyo to ship the game, that's crunch lol.

[light-gaia]

5 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Iizuka literally stated in the latest interview they're working long nights in Tokyo to ship the game, that's crunch lol.

Doing overtime work is pretty common in game development. Even Nintendo does that. It doesn't mean the team has been through development hell. He said they are working "long nights", but also said the team is happy with the game, and they are debugging.

Even if Sonic Frontiers end up not being a good game, it would definitely not be a matter of development issues.

[Zoomzeta]

5 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Doing overtime work is pretty common in game development. Even Nintendo does that. It doesn't mean the team has been through development hell. He said they are working "long nights", but also said the team is happy with the game, and they are debugging.

Even if Sonic Frontiers end up not being a good game, it would definitely not be a matter of development issues.

That we know of yet  

[Sega DogTagz]

19 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Iizuka literally stated in the latest interview they're working long nights in Tokyo to ship the game, that's crunch lol.

That's not crunch. Stop throwing buzzwords around. 

Unless your accusing Sonic Team of slave driving and not paying their employees you don't have a leg to stand on with verbage like that. 

 

And furthermore, we have on record that Sonic Team staff has been working remotely to this day, which means ST is on the books for doing more for their employees health and well being than most companies on the planet. 

But no, let's just lump them into the crunch bandwagon. C'mon bro. 

 

[Razule]

Deja-vu

[Sonikko]

21 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Doing overtime work is pretty common in game development. Even Nintendo does that. It doesn't mean the team has been through development hell. He said they are working "long nights", but also said the team is happy with the game, and they are debugging.

Even if Sonic Frontiers end up not being a good game, it would definitely not be a matter of development issues.

 

7 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

That's not crunch. Stop throwing buzzwords around. 

Unless your accusing Sonic Team of slave driving and not paying their employees you don't have a leg to stand on with verbage like that. 

And furthermore, we have on record that Sonic Team staff has been working remotely to this day, which means ST is on the books for doing more for their employees health and well being than most companies on the planet. 

But no, let's just lump them into the crunch bandwagon. C'mon bro. 

Crunch consists of pushing the team into working long days and nights in order to get the product out in time. There's no mandate from above, no explicit ones at least.

It's not *requested* officially, you're peer pressured into it, and it's such a common practice in the media industry (movies suffer from this as well, especially vfx artists), that it's kind of delusional to think Sonic Team is esempt of it, especially considering Iizuka himself had it rough back in the 2000s, the story about him getting sick because of the last few months of the Sonic Heroes develpoment comes to mind.

Devs aren't always unhappy with the stuff they've worked during crunch. It's not always a Cyberpunk 2077-kind-of-trainwreck. Most of the time, actually, execs exploit the passion the devs have on the projects themselves, to make them work overtime.

Also, work from home is mandatory in (some parts of it, at least, afaik) Japan where possible at the moment, their regulations on Covid are much more strict than what we see in Europe, let alone the US.

I'm not throwing buzzwords around.

[ZinogreVolt]

I'm not even reacting that negatively to this news because the past 10 years have implicitly made me accept that old stages returning is just status quo for this series. The ONLY main game since Generations not to feature any old levels was Lost World, but that had arguably the most uninspired level theming in the series (which might be worse depending on who you ask). I can only hope that they shake the levels up enough for me to not be that bitter about this like with Mania, but it sucks that the "next big step" for Sonic still errs on relying on the old and dusty.

[Sega DogTagz]

Just now, Sonikko said:

 

I'm not throwing buzzwords around.

You are if your applying that word (which has criminal consequences mind you) onto a situation because they are working hard to meet a deadline. 

Crunch also entails not paying your employees the compensation they deserve for that mandatory overtime.

Crunch also entails the threat of loosing your job for not complying with the peer pressure. 

 

You don't know if either of things are happening yet you are quick to label it. You might as well say they killed somebody before a body turns up. 

[Dummy Bear]

4 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I'm not even reacting that negatively to this news because the past 10 years have implicitly made me accept that old stages returning is just status quo for this series. The ONLY main game since Generations not to feature any old levels was Lost World, but that had arguably the most uninspired level theming in the series (which might be worse depending on who you ask). I can only hope that they shake the levels up enough for me to not be that bitter about this like with Mania, but it sucks that the "next big step" for Sonic still errs on relying on the old and dusty.

Seeing how most fans' "fix" for Frontiers usually consists of just turning the environment into friggin Green Hill Zone, is it any wonder?

[PSI Wind]

1 hour ago, light-gaia said:

If this leak of old stages for Sonic to recover his memory is true, maybe that stage that looks like Green Hill is actually Palmtree Panic from Sonic CD. The game Amy was first introduced
 

You know, I think you're onto something. It actually does look more like Palmtree Panic from an artstyle perspective 

[light-gaia]

6 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I'm not even reacting that negatively to this news because the past 10 years have implicitly made me accept that old stages returning is just status quo for this series. The ONLY main game since Generations not to feature any old levels was Lost World, but that had arguably the most uninspired level theming in the series (which might be worse depending on who you ask). I can only hope that they shake the levels up enough for me to not be that bitter about this like with Mania, but it sucks that the "next big step" for Sonic still errs on relying on the old and dusty.

To be fair, we only have two Sonic Team games after Generations. Lost World and Forces.

9 minutes ago, Sonikko said:

Crunch consists of pushing the team into working long days and nights in order to get the product out in time. There's no mandate from above, no explicit ones at least.

It's not *requested* officially, you're peer pressured into it, and it's such a common practice in the media industry (movies suffer from this as well, especially vfx artists), that it's kind of delusional to think Sonic Team is esempt of it, especially considering Iizuka himself had it rough back in the 2000s, the story about him getting sick because of the last few months of the Sonic Heroes develpoment comes to mind.

Devs aren't always unhappy with the stuff they've worked during crunch. It's not always a Cyberpunk 2077-kind-of-trainwreck. Most of the time, actually, execs exploit the passion the devs have on the projects themselves, to make them work overtime.

Also, work from home is mandatory in (some parts of it, at least, afaik) Japan where possible at the moment, their regulations on Covid are much more strict than what we see in Europe, let alone the US.

I'm not throwing buzzwords around.

Yeah, but I don't understand the relevance of this subject to the thread. If crunch is so common, how could it be a sign of a bad game coming? Bad and good games have been through crunch.

Just now, PSI Wind said:

You know, I think you're onto something. It actually does look more like Palmtree Panic from an artstyle perspective 

It's definitely different compared to Generatons' Green Hill. Generations' doesn't have this yellow areas.