Sonic Frontiers Leaks & Spoilers Thread - PLEASE READ OP

[light-gaia]

1 minute ago, Diogenes said:

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

We don't know the story yet, so who knows. But, I think if all the cyberspace levels were from Generations, the leakers would mention that. We had tones of leakers mentioning the cyberspace levels, and none of them mentioned they are the same old Generations levels.

One leaker mentioned the game having a Green Hill-style stage, but called "Spring Hill" and a chemical plant-style stage, too, but not exactly the same chemical plant, just a similar theming.

The only "leaker" who mentioned they are the same stages from Generations is not reliable.

6 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

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.

Sonic Forces has Green Hill and Chemical Plant, but they are clearly different assets compared to Generations.





The textures are different. Forces looks more cartoony and stylized.

 

[Shiny Gems]

8 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

We don't know the story yet, so who knows. But, I think if all the cyberspace levels were from Generations, the leakers would mention that. We had tones of leakers mentioning the cyberspace levels, and none of them mentioned they are the same old Generations levels.

One leaker mentioned the game having a Green Hill-style stage, but called "Spring Hill" and a chemical plant-style stage, too, but not exactly the same chemical plant, just a similar theming.

The only "leaker" who mentioned they are the same stages from Generations is not reliable.

Sonic Forces has Green Hill and Chemical Plant, but they are clearly different assets compared to Generations.





The textures are different. Forces looks more cartoony and stylized.

 

Yeah, and I do believe that kinda backs up my point some. Plus, if the textures are any different in Frontiers from Generations, it shows that they did not simply copy and paste from Generations, and there was more work that was done in Frontiers than some may think. There should be many aspects of Frontiers' levels that should be different from the Generations version. It is not really a simple reuse of things as one may think. Still a reuse if you want to call it that, but not a simple one by any means.

[light-gaia]

6 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

Yeah, and I do believe that kinda backs up my point some. Plus, if the textures are any different in Frontiers from Generations, it shows that they did not simply copy and paste from Generations, and there was more work that was done in Frontiers than some may think. There should be many aspects of Frontiers' levels that should be different from the Generations version. It is not really a simple reuse of things as one may think. Still a reuse if you want to call it that, but not a simple one by any means.

I'm not gonna lie, I miss when new Sonic games had original level theming.

Hmmm the Death Egg was present in Sonic Forces. Sega is trying to have more continuity between the games now. So, maybe the Death Egg in Sky Sanctuary isn't the past.

[Diogenes]

Forces' Death Egg was destroyed. They wouldn't be strengthening continuity by bringing it back.

[Shiny Gems]

5 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

I'm not gonna lie, I miss when new Sonic games had original level theming.

Hmmm the Death Egg was present in Sonic Forces. Sega is trying to have more continuity between the games now. So, maybe the Death Egg in Sky Sanctuary isn't the past.

Hmmmm, I still think there will be some original levels here and there.

Though I would like to see Ice Cap as a level in Sonic Frontiers, even if it means using the beta soundtrack and not the Michael Jackson one.

[Blue Blood]

41 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

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.

You might want to avoid making claims about things you don't understand. And nobody is expecting the level design to be the same as in Generations or Forces. That would be an all new level of lazy. 

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

You might want to avoid making claims about things you don't understand. And nobody is expecting the level design to be the same as in Generations or Forces. That would be an all new level of lazy. 

Oh, I am sure I know I understand. Maybe I did not go into as much detail as I should.

But trying to put down what I say as something I do not understand; seriously? I consider that an excuse for an all time low. Even if you did not intend to put me down, that was still a low. Besides, I am not saying it would be impossible to port them over, but a simple copy and paste is not really going to do it. I am just pointing out that it takes more work than what some here may think.

[light-gaia]

16 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

You might want to avoid making claims about things you don't understand. And nobody is expecting the level design to be the same as in Generations or Forces. That would be an all new level of lazy. 

According to your logic, no one here is able to say anything about the game because most of us aren't game developers or people who work with marketing.

[Blue Blood]

35 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

Oh, I am sure I know I understand. Maybe I did not go into as much detail as I should.

But trying to put down what I say as something I do not understand; seriously? I consider that an excuse for an all time low. Even if you did not intend to put me down, that was still a low. Besides, I am not saying it would be impossible to port them over, but a simple copy and paste is not really going to do it. I am just pointing out that it takes more work than what some here may think.

Reusing assets from one game in another is a very significant time and money saver, even if those assets are only partially reused. The fact that they're going from one engine to another won't make a huge different to the workload either. You're talking about them having to "redo the Sky Sanctuary and Green Hill assets from Generations to include them" which is almost certainly not the case. Much like Sonic's model and associated animations, its possible just to lift the assets from one game to the next with minimal adjustments. 

Green Hill in Forces reuses swathes of models and textures created for Generations verbatim, but also has several modified and entirely new ones purpose-built just for Forces. Most of the leg work, or at least the framework, for Green Hill was already done. Whilst not exactly a "copy and paste job", that's essentially the gist of it. They've already created most of the assets, so there's a lot less work to do. What I'm saying is, you're very much overstating the amount of work it takes. 

 

[Jango]

Ah, you know what. I just concluded that some people will buy what they want no matter what. Which is an universal truth of course, not just with products that have "Sonic" slapped on it. Maybe I am indeed expecting a game that will never exist. I don't see a point in keeping these conversations any longer. Cheers.

[Shiny Gems]

1 minute ago, Blue Blood said:

Reusing assets from one game in another is a very significant time and money saver, even if those assets are only partially reused. The fact that they're going from one engine to another won't make a huge different to the workload either. You're talking about them having to "redo the Sky Sanctuary and Green Hill assets from Generations to include them" which is almost certainly not the case. Much like Sonic's model and associated animations, its possible just to lift the assets from one game to the next with minimal adjustments.

Green Hill in Forces reuses swathes of models and textures created for Generations verbatim, but also has several modified and entirely new ones purpose-built just for Forces. Most of the leg work, or at least the framework, for Green Hill was already done. Whilst not exactly a "copy and paste job", that's essentially the gist of it. They've already created most of the assets, so there's a lot less work to do. 

Okay, first off, I was mainly saying "redo them" in terms of programming, not actual graphics. I should have clarified that, but regardless, I can still see that there would have to be some changes to the graphics to add them in, even if not completely. But I meant not the graphics or textures, and I wasn't taking in Forces into consideration, which they of course, could have had stuff ported from there to Frontiers easily. But using other things like Sky Sanctuary isn't simply an take and insert thing, and the physics and everything else of the levels would not be easy to redo as simple as copy and paste.

I mean, taking things from earlier consoles is not always easy. I mean, when Sakurai worked on Smash Bros 4, and tried to port characters like Mewtwo over from the Gamecube Melee era, he could not do it so easily, and had to make everything from scratch. While it is probably true that the Xbox-Playstation consoles may be a different beast from Nintendo consoles, I do think you can see my point.

Also, not to be mean and rude, but for everything else you said: Your point? I mean, I already knew about what else you said.

[Blue Blood]

Redo the programming? Redo the physics? What are you on about? 

We're talking games built on the same/iterative versions of the same engine and file formats. 

[light-gaia]

6 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

Redo the programming? Redo the physics? What do you mean by that?

We're talking games built on the same/iterative versions of the same engine and file formats. 

Being the same engine doesn't mean everything is compatible. A lot of engines and frameworks have breaking changes between versions or don't have backwards compatibility. And I'm 100% sure about that because I'm a software development student.

Edited June 18, 2022 by light-gaia
Grammar checking

[Diogenes]

We're talking about reusing textures and models, not porting code.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

What disappoints me about level reusage is the new islands in Frontiers has the potential to give Sonic brand new level tropes that fit to the new theme and nature they're going with in this game, so not taking full advantage of that to give us a new set of interesting locales is the big disappointment.

As the most recent example that comes to mind - Kirby and the Forgotten Land is literally a game that's similar to Frontiers - it plops Kirby into a completely and totally new and ruined world that has it shrouded in mystery about how it came to be this way, and the game takes full advantage of it by having Kirby explore level locales he couldn't really do in his regular outings. Stuff like destroyed cities, run-down malls, etc. There's a story reason and they take advantage of that story reason to give the series a really much needed change of pace, the same way Planet Robobot did back in 2016. 

It's just kind of lame that they're not taking advantage of it at all. They could really do something new here, have Sonic explore and discover the mystery of this new land, especially since it's so starkly different to what Sonic worlds usually entail, and we're just gonna go with a complete visual clash instead by caking very traditional old zones into a ruined, more grounded world. It doesn't really fit.

[light-gaia]

3 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

What disappoints me about level reusage is the new islands in Frontiers has the potential to give Sonic brand new level tropes that fit to the new theme and nature they're going with in this game, so not taking full advantage of that to give us a new set of interesting locales is the big disappointment.

As the most recent example that comes to mind - Kirby and the Forgotten Land is literally a game that's similar to Frontiers - it plops Kirby into a completely and totally new and ruined world that has it shrouded in mystery about how it came to be this way, and the game takes full advantage of it by having Kirby explore level locales he couldn't really do in his regular outings. Stuff like destroyed cities, run-down malls, etc. There's a story reason and they take advantage of that story reason to give the series a really much needed change of pace, the same way Planet Robobot did back in 2016. 

It's just kind of lame that they're not taking advantage of it at all. They could really do something new here, have Sonic explore and discover the mystery of this new land, especially since it's so starkly different to what Sonic worlds usually entail, and we're just gonna go with a complete visual clash instead by caking very traditional old zones into a ruined, more grounded world. It doesn't really fit.

One thing I'm worried about it's the open zone theming. Sonic Lost World was inspired by Mario, the level themes were all from New Super Mario Bros series. I'm worried that all open zones are inspired by Zelda Breath of the Wild biomes. A grass area, sand area, forest area, etc, etc. It would be really bland...

[Shiny Gems]

2 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

One thing I'm worried about it's the open zone theming. Sonic Lost World was inspired by Mario, the level themes were all from New Super Mario Bros series. I'm worried that all open zones are inspired by Zelda Breath of the Wild biomes. A grass area, sand area, forest area, etc, etc. It would be really bland...

I am not too worried. There has got to be something original in all islands. I kind of feel that. I don't think we'll necessarily get a repeat of the Breath of the Wild biomes.

[light-gaia]

Just now, MightyGems said:

I am not too worried. There has got to be something original in all islands. I kind of feel that. I don't think we'll necessarily get a repeat of the Breath of the Wild biomes.

I hope so, for a game that wants to be the future of the series, we need more fresh environments and settings.

[Shiny Gems]

Just now, light-gaia said:

I hope so, for a game that wants to be the future of the series, we need more fresh environments and settings.

Of course. I wouldn't mind Ice Cap from Sonic 3 though, or if now, an all new cool looking ice themed area for the game.

[pppp]

At this point It's pretty clear to me why the marketing is the way it is: They know we're not gonna like it when they show Sky Sanctuary and other returning levels. That's why they won't show them or allow SGF atendees to talk about them.

[Shaddy Zaphod]

People say things like that every time a new Sonic game is coming out and it never holds any water. When it was Forces, people were arguing that they literally only made two levels for the game. It's just silly. Heck, the best parts of that game were the Eggman Empire levels and they weren't shown off at all.

[Wraith]

20 minutes ago, pppp said:

At this point It's pretty clear to me why the marketing is the way it is: They know we're not gonna like it when they show Sky Sanctuary and other returning levels. That's why they won't show them or allow SGF atendees to talk about them.

That could easily go the other way. They'll think people will like seeing iconic scenery and are saving it to give the press cycle a shot in the arm as the release date draws closer.

And to be fair to them I don't think most people will give a shit either way, honestly.

[Ryannumber1gamer]

To be perfectly honest, I'm expecting them to be banking on the fact that it's not just Green Hill, Chemical Plant and the Death Egg redone for the fourth or fifth time yet again. In that sense, stages like Speed Highway, City Escape and Sky Sanctuary haven't seen any kind of use since Generations, so if this was a scenario where we were getting reuse since then, it probably wouldn't be quite as bad. Except we've had Mania and Forces inbetween.

Although to be fair, it still remains to be seen how this will actually play out. Mania has far more than it's fair share of stage reuses, but gets away with it with decent changes and original stuff mixed in. if the leaks are holding true that it's 28 stages, and assuming they aren't gonna do something like 3-4 stages a locale, there could still be original levels sprinkled into the reused ones, although that's still speculation. Hell, I wouldn't mind if we got some older levels completely remade like Pyramid Cave, Emerald Coast, or Grand Metropolis.

[Kuzu]

The stage reuse seems to be a combination of asset reuse and genuinely thinking that's what people want to see again. I cannot comment on how everyone else feels. If you're excited for this, go crazy. 

But personally speaking, it's such a tone-deaf move that I cannot even really fathom it. Its like they looked at Generations' success, and just learned every wrong lesson from it. And when they tried that again with Forces and saw the middling reception it got, their response is....to do it again? Like...where is the logic??? Does the game have to get 06 levels of critical reception for them to realize reusing ideas so blatantly is the exact opposite way to hype up your audience? What the fuck is wrong with them???

And what makes it so inexcusable to me is that they had five years to figure this shit out. half a decade, and the best they could come up with is "Let's just do Generations again" Are you fucking kidding me? That's the level of creativity and imagination we're dealing with now, riding off the coattails of a game from over ten years ago because you can't be fucking bothered to think outside the box??? 

 

Even if these are the best possible versions of these levels, it still doesn't change the fact they're levels from a game from two console generations ago. The levels of laziness and lack of creativity isn't even frustrating, it's genuinely fucking baffling how they come to some of their decisions. 

[Ryannumber1gamer]

20 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

The stage reuse seems to be a combination of asset reuse and genuinely thinking that's what people want to see again. I cannot comment on how everyone else feels. If you're excited for this, go crazy. 

But personally speaking, it's such a tone-deaf move that I cannot even really fathom it. Its like they looked at Generations' success, and just learned every wrong lesson from it. And when they tried that again with Forces and saw the middling reception it got, their response is....to do it again? Like...where is the logic??? Does the game have to get 06 levels of critical reception for them to realize reusing ideas so blatantly is the exact opposite way to hype up your audience? What the fuck is wrong with them???

And what makes it so inexcusable to me is that they had five years to figure this shit out. half a decade, and the best they could come up with is "Let's just do Generations again" Are you fucking kidding me? That's the level of creativity and imagination we're dealing with now, riding off the coattails of a game from over ten years ago because you can't be fucking bothered to think outside the box??? 

Even if these are the best possible versions of these levels, it still doesn't change the fact they're levels from a game from two console generations ago. The levels of laziness and lack of creativity isn't even frustrating, it's genuinely fucking baffling how they come to some of their decisions. 

Again, to be honest - if it was at least new levels getting the remake treatment, I honestly would be a bit more understanding, if only because there'd still be a new level of effort going into remaking those stages. It's the fact it's the same stages over and over again that really takes the cake on how ridiculous this is.