Sonic Frontiers Leaks & Spoilers Thread - PLEASE READ OP

[light-gaia]

26 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

SEGA's Sonic output is diminishing significantly in general--pretty much every spin-off is dead. DIMPS doesn't make handheld games or even handheld versions of mainline games. And Sonic Team isn't forced to make like three spin-offs on top of the big 3D game.

In Frontiers' case, they started working on a game as soon as Forces released, scrapped their first idea in progress, properly started making Frontiers as is in 2019 (per the playtest leaks), and faced hurdles due to COVID which may have influenced its year-long internal delay.

SEGA is getting a lot of money (presumably) from Atlus and RGG so perhaps they are not as reliant on Sonic as much. In exchange for games, though, we got a lot more multimedia projects. 

Takashi Iizuka said the pandemic didn't affect the development. They only had a bit of trouble in the beginning when they were shipping the hardware to the employees. After that, everything was fine.

Where is the source that they scrapped their initial idea?

[NoKaine]

An early interview talked about how they went through ideas for open world Sonic before coming to the current one, I believe.

There's no way that COVID didn't affect development, even if they were surprisingly able to handle it in the end. Even Iizuka admitted that it became more difficult for the core team to keep together the "big picture" when they're unable to be in the same room. No development team is immune to the difficulties of COVID-based work.

[Blue Blood]

I'm just finding it almost hard to believe that SEGA is rehashing Generations again. Look, Generations was cool because it tied together 20 years of the series' history, giving new and old players some common ground to fawn over. It was a love-letter to the franchise and it worked. 

But then Mania happened, which was a purely Classic-themed nostalgia trip. And then Forces, which aped Generations in the most unimaginative way possible. And we also got a plethora of other games that nostalgia-baited in various other ways, but most notably by reusing levels (/virtually identical copies) from past games. Generations always felt like a one-time special event, but I think most people were willing to give future copycats a free-pass if they were significantly different like Mania was, and provided that they didn't become the new status-quo. 

But even after Forces got so much flack for its recycled and lazily rehashed content, they're doing the same thing with Frontiers? There's really no justification for this. Thematically this is the most disappointing thing imaginable. The very least that they could do would be to recreate different levels, and even that was too much. Sky Sanctuary is confirmed, Green Hill is looking pretty likely too. This is beyond uninspired. This is such a huge misstep for a new game like Frontiers. It's being held back by an incredibly tonedeaf creative decision. The Open Zone gameplay so far doesn't look incredible, so the traditional linear levels are where the game should be shine, but immediately they're lacking any sort of unique identity. 

I can't really comment very much on the level design right now. We've got barely 30 seconds of blurry shakey-cam. But based off what can be seen, everything we know about Sonic's movesets and of course games like Forces... Nah, my expectations aren't high. Straight Line Zone Act 7536.

[light-gaia]

14 minutes ago, NoKaine said:

An early interview talked about how they went through ideas for open world Sonic before coming to the current one, I believe.

There's no way that COVID didn't affect development, even if they were surprisingly able to handle it in the end. Even Iizuka admitted that it became more difficult for the core team to keep together the "big picture" when they're unable to be in the same room. No development team is immune to the difficulties of COVID-based work.

He never said they scrapped a game and restarted development in 2019. Brainstorming is part of a game early development. Furthermore, he didn't say the whole team is not able to see the "big picture", he said some devs who are in charge of more specific things aren't.

[NoKaine]

Just now, light-gaia said:

He never said they scrapped a game and restarted development in 2019. Brainstorming is part of a game early development. Furthermore, he didn't say the whole team is not able to see the "big picture", he said some devs who are in charge of more specific things aren't.

I didn't say he scrapped a game either, just earlier concepts. 

[Shiny Gems]

The linear levels look fun so far, but I can say it is not how straight the levels look (as some people say) that affects them. Rather, it is how they are made and what challenges are in them that matters. A level can be apparently (in this case) a straight line and still be good. I also believe these levels in Sonic Frontiers can be fun if done right, and not be like Sonic Forces. I also believe these levels will be longer as well. Can't say they will add more stuff to them or change the level layout before the game releases, which is inaccurate, but I do think there is a lack of enough footage to determine how the levels will be like.

Now, take Crash Bandicoot's early games for example; they had levels that were mostly straight lines and yet many found them fun. Now, before you say "Crash Bandicoot is not Sonic", I am not talking about Crash playing like Sonic or vice versa, but the content and design of the levels and what was in them overall, which can be applicable to every game. Now, the levels so far in Frontiers are not like those in Crash's games, but chances are, there could be more to them rather than just being a straight line if future footage may be something to go by. But anyway, it is possible to make straight line levels and make them fun. That is my point. Not to mention, based on what I saw in the footage, there is still potential room for some alternate routes the player in those videos has not taken.

I wonder how the combat will be in the linear levels, by the way?

[Spooky Mulder]

If they're reusing assets from Generations that's disappointing but understandable for the sake of lengthening the game. It's a disappointing trade off but could have positive results.

If they've made new assets and are just cribbing GHZ, SS, and presumably Chemical Plant and others then that's both disappointing and baffling.

[light-gaia]

Most Sonic Adventure 2 levels are straight lines, and they are fun. Linearity isn't the same thing as being bad.

[PSI Wind]

Most Boost games in general are mostly straight lines. I don't really get the argument. It feels a lot of you haven't played Unleashed or Generations lately. They were just longer but stages like Rooftop Run in Unleashed was a mostly straight line in 3D with a few drift sections

[Diogenes]

Yes they're all bad. This isn't a new complaint limited to Frontiers or Forces, it's been a problem with all the boost games, and, to some extent, all 3D Sonic games.

[Blue Blood]

1 hour ago, Spooky Mulder said:

If they're reusing assets from Generations that's disappointing but understandable for the sake of lengthening the game. It's a disappointing trade off but could have positive results.

Can we stop making this excuse?

Every game would be easier and cheaper to make if they were made up in large part of recycled assets. And games do strategically recycle and revamp existing assets all the time. But reusing environments between games is not a good excuse for making a longer game. Frontiers has been in development since 2017 at least. If they can't make a fully original game in that time, they need to re-think what they're actually making. 

And also, can we stop assuming that reusing levels is just to save resources? We don't know that as a fact. And I think it's pretty short-sighted to discount the possibility that they're using these locations as the series' recurrent iconography. A game with a 4-5 year development cycle does not need to cut corners like this to costs. It's almost certainly a conscious decision that was made at the start. 

[Jango]

22 minutes ago, PSI Wind said:

Most Boost games in general are mostly straight lines. I don't really get the argument. It feels a lot of you haven't played Unleashed or Generations lately. They were just longer but stages like Rooftop Run in Unleashed was a mostly straight line in 3D with a few drift sections.

Too much spectable, too little substance. I won't argue that Unleashed day time stages aren't fun and exhilarating, but they all play pretty much the same. You're not in control of a character, you just memorized a route, the fastest way on a highway. Generations took that, and gave it more substance, it actually added more platforming segments and more diverse branching paths. It found a good balance at one point. But... They threw it away, just when even the people who didn't enjoyed the boost all that much thought that maybe, maybe Sonic Team was slowly refining that formula to get closer to how Adventure played. Hell, you can finish Generations without boosting, Sonic controls and jumps tighter than before. It felt like they were evolving.

But now we're back in here.

[Tornado]

22 minutes ago, PSI Wind said:

Most Boost games in general are mostly straight lines. I don't really get the argument. It feels a lot of you haven't played Unleashed or Generations lately. They were just longer but stages like Rooftop Run in Unleashed was a mostly straight line in 3D with a few drift sections

Yes, it was kinda shit 14 years ago, too.

[StellarBlur]

2 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

I'm just finding it almost hard to believe that SEGA is rehashing Generations again. Look, Generations was cool because it tied together 20 years of the series' history, giving new and old players some common ground to fawn over. It was a love-letter to the franchise and it worked. 

But then Mania happened, which was a purely Classic-themed nostalgia trip. And then Forces, which aped Generations in the most unimaginative way possible. And we also got a plethora of other games that nostalgia-baited in various other ways, but most notably by reusing levels (/virtually identical copies) from past games. Generations always felt like a one-time special event, but I think most people were willing to give future copycats a free-pass if they were significantly different like Mania was, and provided that they didn't become the new status-quo. 

But even after Forces got so much flack for its recycled and lazily rehashed content, they're doing the same thing with Frontiers? There's really no justification for this. Thematically this is the most disappointing thing imaginable. The very least that they could do would be to recreate different levels, and even that was too much. Sky Sanctuary is confirmed, Green Hill is looking pretty likely too. This is beyond uninspired. This is such a huge misstep for a new game like Frontiers. It's being held back by an incredibly tonedeaf creative decision. The Open Zone gameplay so far doesn't look incredible, so the traditional linear levels are where the game should be shine, but immediately they're lacking any sort of unique identity. 

I can't really comment very much on the level design right now. We've got barely 30 seconds of blurry shakey-cam. But based off what can be seen, everything we know about Sonic's movesets and of course games like Forces... Nah, my expectations aren't high. Straight Line Zone Act 7536.

It's obviously a budget issue. I very much doubt that they wanted this.

[light-gaia]

12 minutes ago, Jango said:

Too much spectable, too little substance. I won't argue that Unleashed day time stages aren't fun and exhilarating, but they all play pretty much the same. You're not in control of a character, you just memorized a route, the fastest way on a highway. Generations took that, and gave it more substance, it actually added more platforming segments and more diverse branching paths. It found a good balance at one point. But... They threw it away, just when even the people who didn't enjoyed the boost all that much thought that maybe, maybe Sonic Team was slowly refining that formula to get closer to how Adventure played. Hell, you can finish Generations without boosting, Sonic controls and jumps tighter than before. It felt like they were evolving.

But now we're back in here.

This doesn't have anything to do with "substance", it's a different kind of game. It's not trying to be the same experience as the classic or Adventure Sonic games. Linearity isn't the same thing as bad game design.

[Shiny Gems]

6 minutes ago, Jango said:

Too much spectable, too little substance. I won't argue that Unleashed day time stages aren't fun and exhilarating, but they all play pretty much the same. You're not in control of a character, you just memorized a route, the fastest way on a highway. Generations took that, and gave it more substance, it actually added more platforming segments and more diverse branching paths. It found a good balance at one point. But... They threw it away, just when even the people who didn't enjoyed the boost all that much thought that maybe, maybe Sonic Team was slowly refining that formula to get closer to how Adventure played. Hell, you can finish Generations without boosting, Sonic controls and jumps tighter than before. It felt like they were evolving.

But now we're back in here.

No offense, but that sounds more like what you want from a Sonic game yourself rather than what needs to be done to appeal to as many as possible.

There is no need to please everyone, even if how a level’s design is done is not everyone’s cup of tea. Even then, it is still possible to enjoy it nonetheless. I think while great, the Generations style is not necessary for fans and people to enjoy. I doubt everyone is going to care for the little details a Sonic fan wants to happen in order to enjoy the game. Plus, even with branching, diverse paths, Those stages were still straight lines in Sonic Generations. Most paths I recall did go back to the main route, to the same goal point at the end of the level.

[D.H]

I mean, it IS worth noting that most of the impressions for Frontiers were pretty positive over the cyberspace levels, so I imagine there's definitely more to it than what we're seeing. And given how many are likely in the game, it would be.... something if we just got reused Generations stages stretched across all the regular Boost levels in the game.

 

Either way, we don't have a real grasp of what the cyberspace levels have to offer & we can only gather so much from 30 second barely watchable footage of one stage, so I'm withholding my concerns until we get something more substantial.

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, D.H said:

I mean, it IS worth noting that most of the impressions for Frontiers were pretty positive over the cyberspace levels, so I imagine there's definitely more to it than what we're seeing. And given how many are likely in the game, it would be.... something if we just got reused Generations stages stretched across all the regular Boost levels in the game.

Either way, we don't have a real grasp of what the cyberspace levels have to offer & we can only gather so much from 30 second barely watchable footage of one stage, so I'm withholding my concerns until we get something more substantial.

I'd have to agree and say we all should wait as well. People are already making assumptions based on 30 seconds of footage that is not even close to being enough to accurately judge such levels. This is not one of those "if you have seen some of it, you have seen it all" kind of thing. The footage for the cyberspace levels will come eventually, and even then, the levels do not have to be like in Sonic Generations to be good or pleasing to many.

[McGroose]

If the leak about there being 28 cyberspace stages is correct, I'm really wondering what they're all going to look like.

If somehow all 28 cyberspace stages are a unique level theme and not just picking 7 of the 9 levels from Generations and giving them each 4 acts to make up 28 boost levels, than I'd be cool with 9 of the 28 levels being the Generations levels. But I'm like 99% sure that's not going to happen. That would make the game's assets and file size absurdly large and the game is already looking pretty big as it is. 

I wouldn't even mind if they just mixed up assets from Generations in their levels, like making wacky hybrids between Green Hill and City Escape, or Crisis City with Seaside Hill. With the levels being a simulation, "glitches" in the matrix like that would be a cool idea.

But again, that seems really unlikely. I'm guessing we'll have a majority of levels reused from Generations and a few new ones with no cool twist on the old ones.

[LegoFedora]

A lot of people are getting caught on the reuse of generations levels which is completely fair, but keep in mind generations may not be the only game being taken from. We've already seen Sonic Team willing to reuse assets from Forces in the games, so we may see some Forces stages return, think stuff like casino forest or metropolis.

It's still not original stages, but at least Frontiers may be able to do those stages more justice than Forces did. I wonder what the odds are of getting a null space extended to the length of an entire stage this time could be.

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, Blue Blood said:

And also, can we stop assuming that reusing levels is just to save resources? We don't know that as a fact. And I think it's pretty short-sighted to discount the possibility that they're using these locations as the series' recurrent iconography. A game with a 4-5 year development cycle does not need to cut corners like this to costs. It's almost certainly a conscious decision that was made at the start. 

It's not a fact, but it certainly does make sense. It's pretty obvious this game is cutting corners with animations, mechanics and level design wherever it can.

Regardless though it's pretty fucking obvious reusing the levels from past games is a terrible idea. Like, I know most of us are on the same page there but it needs to be repeated for emphasis. Reusing assets is one thing, but 10+ year old levels from gens on your two console generations removed new title? The one that's, up until now, been emphasizing feeling fresh through a new story, enemies and setting? It's like if Breath of the Wild came out swinging with Twilight Princess assets. Would anyone still be as excited about the game after all that time if they pulled that? People are already giving the second game shit because it's reusing chunks of map from the original. Not getting a completely new experience is always a bit of a letdown. They shouldn't need to cut corners after all this time.

And I already see the narrative justification for it: A core part of the story seems to be regaining Sonic's lost memories, so these zones will be their way of jogging his mind. The problem with that is that amnesia is a boring story hook if it's not used thoughtfully. With Breath of the Wild it works because we're dropped in a completely new world, so Link's lost memories actually puts him in lockstep with the player's unfamiliarity. In Sonic's case, we already know who Tails, Knuckles and Amy are and we already know exactly what Sky Sanctuary is and what went down there. There's nothing new for us to discover as players.

I have faith in flynn to find some kind of interesting angle to take all of this from but that isn't enough for me to find another round of 'remember this?' justifiable. New games need to feel new. The Starfall Islands needed to feel like a new place with it's own identity. Not yet another 'new' lore concept that just exists to prop up previous entries of the series again.

[Ratcicle King]

47 minutes ago, LegoFedora said:

A lot of people are getting caught on the reuse of generations levels which is completely fair, but keep in mind generations may not be the only game being taken from. We've already seen Sonic Team willing to reuse assets from Forces in the games, so we may see some Forces stages return, think stuff like casino forest or metropolis.

 

Can't wait for the game to have both Generations Green Hill and Forces Green Hill as different levels.

[light-gaia]

Sky Sanctuary level design seems different from Generations' SS. So, I don't think they are reusing the same old stages. Maybe they are reusing the same locations, what is still lazy as hell if they are all from Generations, but not as bad as reusings both the settings and level designs.

It's still possible that SS is in the game for story purposes (Angel Island might be in the game because of the prologue teaser). And Green Hill could be the "Spring Hill" the leaks mentioned before.

The only leak that mentioned all the stages being from Generations is from Zippo, and he is not a reliable source.

Edited June 18, 2022 by light-gaia
Grammar checking

[Diogenes]

4 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

It's still possible that SS is in the game for story purposes (Angel Island might be in the game because of the prologue teaser).

This isn't some present-day Sky Sanctuary. The Death Egg is there.

[Shiny Gems]

Well, reusing assets is not as simple as a copy and paste as some may think. Keep in mind, Sonic Generations used the original Hedgehog Engine, and was on the Xbox 360 and PS3. Frontiers is on new systems such as the Xbox Series X and PS5, not to mention the Switch, and the PC. Generations is back then and Frontiers is now. They would likely have had to redo the Sky Sanctuary and Green Hill assets from Generations to include them, and if they had different level design from Generations, programming those stages makes it more different from what was in Generations. And that is not counting Sonic Forces, which did not even have Sky Sanctuary.

I believe some of you may know this, but just wanted to say.