Sonic Frontiers Leaks & Spoilers Thread - PLEASE READ OP

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

2 hours ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

The only plot excuse I can imagine is for the stages to gradually become more warped as Sonic's memory is affected somehow, which would be a neat bit of gameplay/story integration and let them change the design up.

Admittedly, when one thinks about it, we have seen cases of them being jumbled and warped, with some of the glitching aspects.

Sky Sanctuary's level design has very much well been proven by hands-on impressions and in-depth comparisons, to be different in layout from its Generstions counterpart. And, much as people may groan at it, but the tutorial Green Hill stage having the same layout as that Apatos stage from Unleashed is a bout of mixing things together.

Now, this is not necessarily solid or bulletproof evidence yet at the stage things, but they've more or less all supported the idea that cyber levels do play a factor with Sonic's memories and possibly mixing them up.

[Shiny Gems]

I think this is the right place to post this, but I am not sure. I read somewhere that filming is apparently now banned for Sonic Frontiers at gamescom. Can anyone confirm this?

[Sega DogTagz]

56 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

 

Sky Sanctuary's level design has very much well been proven by hands-on impressions and in-depth comparisons, to be different in layout from its Generstions 

Unfortunately while it's not a mix mash of gens sky sanctuary, it is a mix mash of an unleashed level. It wouldn't surprise me if Gens SS pops up later in the game to take it's place alongside gens GHZ and Gens CPZ which we have already seen. 

For all the levels we've seen in depth so far

- unnamed highway level

-GHZ 1

- GHZ 2 

- Sky sanctuary

- chemical plant zone 

 

Only the highway levels features a layout that appears to be unique and not heavily based on another game... And that may only be due to its status as a 2D level making it harder to recognize at first blush. 

15 minutes ago, MightyGems said:

I think this is the right place to post this, but I am not sure. I read somewhere that filming is apparently now banned for Sonic Frontiers at gamescom. Can anyone confirm this?

 

Due to some players manipulating the save system between demo runs, a few people started getting farther in the game than should be reasonably possible. Apparently, the staff at the booth eventually caught wind of it, fixed the problem then told people yesterday that they could no longer record. Well see if that continues today. 

 

 

[Shade Vortex]

2 hours ago, Jango said:

Why can't gameplay/design and story ride together this once? I guess no one here expected Mobius: Become Hedgehog from this franchise, but what's wrong with giving the story more importance than usually? Would I rather not have reused levels? Yes, pretty sure most people would actually. But if they can explain that in a really engaging and interesting way, it could work in Frontiers' favor. But IF these zones are just there for a shallow reason, or no reason at all, just making volume, then I agree there's no excuse really. I want to believe the former, but... It's still Sonic Team...

My entire argument is based on how games are actually designed, and no game is designed with story and gameplay in tandem from the outset except games like the ones I mentioned. No matter how you coat it or explain it, the reality of game development comes from a much more grounded place that began with a project document, and logistics like time/people to do things and budget to do things. I will give them no free passes on how they explain the asset/level design reuse.

You can think it's cool how much it makes sense from a story standpoint all you want though, be my guest. I'm not here to change your viewpoint on the game, only to express my own, albeit with reasoning and perspective enough to hopefully have people understand the reason that I am so harsh on this.

[ZinogreVolt]

I am kinda interested in what the Rooftop Run stage will look like, that has two whole versions to pull stuff from.

[Blue Blood]

The term "lazy" has been turned into by a target lately when used against games, to the point that people are kind of ignoring why it even gets used. It's a discussion for another thread really, but "lazy" is an apt descriptor in certain situations and Frontiers' cyberspace levels are one of them. With all the talk of reused layouts, I remembered some Hedgehog Engine development pictures from Unleashed. It gives you an idea of how Sonic Team go about making levels for their games. 

Here's the plain collision for an area in Unleashed with no textures, materials, lighting, etc applied:

And here's the same area with all of those missing elements included:

There are members on this board and in the wider community who have experience and knowledge of game design as hobbyists and professionals, and as such you'll all be far more qualified than I am to talk about the nitty gritty. I'm going to make an educated guess and say that it's not exactly as simple as doing a quick copy and paste to make the cyberspace levels we've seen so far in Frontiers. But to some extent that is what they're able to do. 

I just wanted to make a point to show how little work, relatively speaking, is involved in creating the Frontiers cyberspace levels when so much of the groundwork is already done. We know that both visual assets and functional level design are being pulled from existing games. I'm not calling any member of Frontiers development team lazy, I'm not calling the team as a whole lazy. But the result is a product that feels lazy, at least in part. That's a problem. Whatever the reason is, the result is the same: a product that feels lazy, uninspired and pretty disappointing to the player.

I find it highly unlikely that the people at Sonic Team sat down and said "cba with this anymore, let's just import some old levels that people liked before and hope that nobody notices". That just wouldn't make any sense. I'm 100% certain that nothing like that is the case. Somehow they came to this decision in the end. I think it was probably a mixture of both creative reasoning and so that the project could be finished on time and on budget. Just my guess though. Again, it's not lazy in a literal sense, but it feels as though it is. And it's the feeling that ultimately matters the most. 

Does that make sense? Sonic Team and SEGA aren't my friends and I'm not going to fight their corner when they're trying to sell me a product that is sub-par. I'm the consumer, so it doesn't matter to me why the product is the way that it is. I just want it to be better. End of. 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

I think it's the optics of the term, really. In discussions of art, 99% of opinion is presentation. People see the word "lazy" and interpret it as an accusation. Because, I mean, it kind of is, but also because laziness is a quality that people possess or don't possess depending on your philosophy in a way that games alone don't. To say a work is bad or drab or boring is descriptive rather than prescriptive, the only thing you're accusing the creator of is the self-evident trait you describe their creation with.

Is this entirely rational? Not really. You can argue that a game can be "lazy" without its developers being such, but I think we can pretty effectively communicate the problems we find with this stuff without needing to describe it in a way that sets people off. I dunno if that comes across as tone-policing on my part, but I really want to see the discourse shift in a more mutual-understanding direction, at least for dedicated communities. This game has a lot of good stuff, and seemingly a lot of very poor decisions, and it becomes easy to get lost in the weeds with communication of which of those are which and why when we're struggling with both the implications of a term and the elaboration into what that term could've already conveyed to others...see? I'm doing this same shit right now.

I-in any case, the idea of the player experience being most important is a good one. This is why I brought up the fact that the cyber levels are allegedly all optional. I think if the game has enough regular stages in its ranks that the reused stages are simply padding for, then that's a shame, but a player who skips them is not necessarily going to have a demonstrably poor experience. In a way, I suppose that's kind of an admission of defeat, but I'm sure I'll still have some amount of fun playing them.

[Sega DogTagz]

 

There isn't anyone in that building who is so delusional that they could think no one would notice rearranged reskins. Doubly so in the case of CPZ and GHZ where there is no reskin and the level is just a direct retread of it's gens counterpart with no attempt at a smokescreen. 

 

They are not trying to hide it or be sneaky. The choice to reuse level layouts had to be intentional. 

Even if there was a story reason as to why we are seeing the same layouts, there is a better way to handle that kind of narrative. Generations was able to recreate rooftop run and planet wisp and still provide a fresh new take on the same area. You still platformed around the clock tower, you still blasted through alien nature into the industrial complex, but not once did they need to lift stage scripting out en masse. It was always a new level in an old place. A brand new creation with the same set of Legos. 

Speed highway gens used the iconic downhill running segment. That's a homage. You can do that. But what It didn't do was run though the SA1 stage and steal the entire layout.

 

You can create a narrative of jumbled memories or retreading old ground without flat out coping a previous layout. They've done it before with generations for crying out loud.

 

Director Kishimoto took some of the workload off his plate by sticking to tried and true level design. Took the ball out of his own court so to speak, as the biggest question mark with his previous work is how he handles Sonic in a 3D space during boost levels. Dude just walked out there on first down and punted. 

 

[KingMario05]

I have a question regarding everything: where the fuck is Tails? We know he's part of the party that got stranded, just as we know that Knux and Amy were there too. But while both have been found in the demos... Tails hasn't.

Anyone else find that odd? Like, he's clearly gonna be in it and clearly needs to be saved... but, if that were true, then wouldn't we have seen his model by now? Could this be something deeper?

Spoiler

Like, is he dead? The hero that saves the World after the Ghost Girl drives Sonic mad with cyberpower? Or is he - and I don't want this last one to be true - the TRUE villain of the final game? Finally snapping due to either loneliness, Sonic's leniency or a personal connection to the people of Starfall?

You may read all that, and think I'm insane. That I've finally gone nuts, seeing a grand conspiracy where no such thing exists. But before you do... take a look at this:

 

Spoiler

Look at the Tails section.

Do... do HEROES do that?

 

[DaBigJ]

15 minutes ago, KingMario05 said:

I have a question regarding everything: where the fuck is Tails? We know he's part of the party that got stranded, just as we know that Knux and Amy were there too. But while both have been found in the demos... Tails hasn't.

Anyone else find that odd? Like, he's clearly gonna be in it and clearly needs to be saved... but, if that were true, then wouldn't we have seen his model by now? Could this be something deeper?

  Reveal hidden contents

Like, is he dead? The hero that saves the World after the Ghost Girl drives Sonic mad with cyberpower? Or is he - and I don't want this last one to be true - the TRUE villain of the final game? Finally snapping due to either loneliness, Sonic's leniency or a personal connection to the people of Starfall?

You may read all that, and think I'm insane. That I've finally gone nuts, seeing a grand conspiracy where no such thing exists. But before you do... take a look at this:

  Reveal hidden contents

Look at the Tails section.

Do... do HEROES do that?

I looked at it.

You're still nuts and looney if you think SEGA's gonna kill off any of the main heroes.

[azoo]

Theres no way that would happen. But if it did, it would be the funniest shit I’ve ever seen. And it would make sense out Ian bragging about what he got away with lmao.

[Razule]

Notice that Amy is still transparent looking after she's saved. The twist is that everyone but Sonic, Eggman, and Big were killed in whatever brought them to the Starfall Islands, and all collecting the memory tokens does is stabilize the A.I. copies of them. Sonic can't save his friends because they're already gone.

[DaBigJ]

Trust me, as much as I want Tails to die, it's never gonna happen, and if your excuse is "B-But they didn't show him-" then you might as well just stop.

Of fucking course they didn't show him yet it's a damn demo not the full game. Stop expecting everything to be shown off at once.

[Blue Blood]

23 minutes ago, KingMario05 said:

I have a question regarding everything: where the fuck is Tails? We know he's part of the party that got stranded, just as we know that Knux and Amy were there too. But while both have been found in the demos... Tails hasn't.

Anyone else find that odd? Like, he's clearly gonna be in it and clearly needs to be saved... but, if that were true, then wouldn't we have seen his model by now? Could this be something deeper?

  Hide contents

Like, is he dead? The hero that saves the World after the Ghost Girl drives Sonic mad with cyberpower? Or is he - and I don't want this last one to be true - the TRUE villain of the final game? Finally snapping due to either loneliness, Sonic's leniency or a personal connection to the people of Starfall?

You may read all that, and think I'm insane. That I've finally gone nuts, seeing a grand conspiracy where no such thing exists. But before you do... take a look at this:

  Hide contents

Look at the Tails section.

Do... do HEROES do that?

Why are you taking a Twitter shitpost seriously? 

[___-_]

Watch Tails just be Sage that’s  currently going through 80% - 90% of the AI conversion process that was converted from the other AI that’s seemingly misleading Sonic or some shit lol

[Wraith]

The reason you haven't seen Tails yet is because he doesn't get rescued until later, and the reason he doesn't get rescued until later is because your mystery would kind of fall apart if the character who has the tech knowhow to explain what's going on was there from the start. Finding him will probably be paired with a greater understanding of what situation the characters are in.

 

 

[Zaysho]

Tails fans think they're losing when he's in literally every game and nothing permanently bad ever happens to him because he doesn't do anything like the rest of the cast.

[John43]

Because a lot of us still play Generations on a regular basis. We can play these memories with all the soul, art, music and energy that made the original memorable. I see this footage of recycled GHZ, CPZ level designs in a soul-less empty void (yes, the lighting is beautiful and the glitch effects are a nice touch) and my confidence plummets. It IS lazy. And while the writers can pat themselves on the back for justifying it through story, it still is lazy game design. We don't know the extent of the problem yet, but not gonna lie, this is not helping. Some of us already feel like this is filler to make up for empty and boring open zones with simple puzzles. I want to be proven wrong so badly. I must make this clear.

I would like to make an edit since the word lazy seems to be causing division. I just mean it as plain English. I am do not mean any ill will towards the devs. They are probably doing the best with what they have been given

[Sonikko]

2 hours ago, Blue Blood said:

The term "lazy" has been turned into by a target lately when used against games, to the point that people are kind of ignoring why it even gets used. It's a discussion for another thread really, but "lazy" is an apt descriptor in certain situations and Frontiers' cyberspace levels are one of them. With all the talk of reused layouts, I remembered some Hedgehog Engine development pictures from Unleashed. It gives you an idea of how Sonic Team go about making levels for their games. 

Here's the plain collision for an area in Unleashed with no textures, materials, lighting, etc applied:

And here's the same area with all of those missing elements included:

There are members on this board and in the wider community who have experience and knowledge of game design as hobbyists and professionals, and as such you'll all be far more qualified than I am to talk about the nitty gritty. I'm going to make an educated guess and say that it's not exactly as simple as doing a quick copy and paste to make the cyberspace levels we've seen so far in Frontiers. But to some extent that is what they're able to do. 

I just wanted to make a point to show how little work, relatively speaking, is involved in creating the Frontiers cyberspace levels when so much of the groundwork is already done. We know that both visual assets and functional level design are being pulled from existing games. I'm not calling any member of Frontiers development team lazy, I'm not calling the team as a whole lazy. But the result is a product that feels lazy, at least in part. That's a problem. Whatever the reason is, the result is the same: a product that feels lazy, uninspired and pretty disappointing to the player.

I find it highly unlikely that the people at Sonic Team sat down and said "cba with this anymore, let's just import some old levels that people liked before and hope that nobody notices". That just wouldn't make any sense. I'm 100% certain that nothing like that is the case. Somehow they came to this decision in the end. I think it was probably a mixture of both creative reasoning and so that the project could be finished on time and on budget. Just my guess though. Again, it's not lazy in a literal sense, but it feels as though it is. And it's the feeling that ultimately matters the most. 

Does that make sense? Sonic Team and SEGA aren't my friends and I'm not going to fight their corner when they're trying to sell me a product that is sub-par. I'm the consumer, so it doesn't matter to me why the product is the way that it is. I just want it to be better. End of. 

Their dev pipeline changed with HE2, we had new info on it from an interview in 2020.

The part that concerns level design is in this part of the document:

They basically use shape tools now, that's why everything is so simple looking. Which makes recreating pre existing layouts pretty quick and dirty, especially given there's no background detail.

Full interview here: https://tailschannel.com/sonic-the-hedgehog/studio/sonic-forces-development-details-uncovered/

[Wraith]

2 hours ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

I think it's the optics of the term, really. In discussions of art, 99% of opinion is presentation. People see the word "lazy" and interpret it as an accusation. Because, I mean, it kind of is, but also because laziness is a quality that people possess or don't possess depending on your philosophy in a way that games alone don't. To say a work is bad or drab or boring is descriptive rather than prescriptive, the only thing you're accusing the creator of is the self-evident trait you describe their creation with.

I guess I don't see much of a difference between implying someone is a bad artist and implying someone is a lazy one, so I don't see the point in fretting over it. I mainly avoid using the term 'lazy' because it spins into arguments like this where I may or may not be implying something personal about the developer and that's bad or whatever. That would apply to every criticism I could throw at a game though so it feels like a slippery slope to me. One I've already seen other communities slide down where you're not allowed to criticize anything less the feelings of the people involved get hurt. It's the type of argument that seems empathetic at first but leads down the road to the death of any real discussion in reality. It's also a convenient shield for people who just don't want to hear criticism at all.

Granted, yeah, I don't know them personally, I won't know what lead them to the decisions they made for quite some time, if ever. But that's the thing..neither do you.  It may have very well been laziness that got us here. I don't know for sure, but I think it's fair to say it if that's how it comes off. There have been cases where I think that the game clearly required a lot of work to bring together and I'd argue against using it then even if I didn't like the game in question(Sonic Lost World), but in cases like this I think it's fair to express it since...that's kind of how it comes off. Maybe it really does seem lazy compared to what the other developers that you're competing for my money with were capable of doing. Sometimes that assertion isn't fair, but it's the reality of a competitive industry.

For now I'm going to continue to avoid using the term since it always splits the discussion, but it's something I'm thinking about. The best criticism I've seen doesn't beat around the bush, but I try to tow a line between that and using the most impersonal wording possible to keep the discussion focused. It's the only way to actually get to discuss the games and not fall into another boring meta-discussion about Sonic fan opinions or gossip about the situation behind the scenes.

[KingMario05]

27 minutes ago, Razule said:

Notice that Amy is still transparent looking after she's saved. The twist is that everyone but Sonic, Eggman, and Big were killed in whatever brought them to the Starfall Islands, and all collecting the memory tokens does is stabilize the A.I. copies of them. Sonic can't save his friends because they're already gone.

...fuuuck, that makes too much sense. Really, really that isn't what they're going with... I happen to LIKE "Sonic's shitty friends."

[Blue Blood]

@Wraith and @Shaddy Zaphod Wraith's post perfectly sums up my thoughts on the matter. It's arguing semantics and tone policing, which gets in the way of all discussion. I'm not going to avoid using the word, personally. I don't see a problem with it. Discussion for another thread though. Maybe one wrorth starting?

@Sonikko I've not seen that before. It's very interesting, and holy shit should that have been obvious already in Forces. They're still using the layouts and collision of previous games here in Frontiers. I can't tell if they're recreating them entirely with their new tools or if they're just pulling the old collision files and then decorating them, but either way it's pretty plain just how streamlined the process is now. Is this what "white boxing" is? It might be cm efficient process, but it's not yielding good results. 

[Bobnik]

Since the talk about reused layouts is going on, Dreed posted another small clip of a new cyberspace level, this time 1-7

Spoiler

 

I wonder if anyone here can figure out this level layout, cuz I did and it...certainly changes some things.

 

[Ratcicle King]

4 minutes ago, KingMario05 said:

...fuuuck, that makes too much sense. Really, really that isn't what they're going with... I happen to LIKE "Sonic's shitty friends."

They're just joking you know.

Tails hasn't been shown because officially speaking, the only one the marketing wants us to see beyond Sonic and Sage is Amy, going so far as the teaser trailer having her voice, probably because she's the one you find the earliest. They didn't ''reveal'' Big, Eggman or Knuckles, someone pretty much forced their way into portions not meant for them to go yet. @Wraith put it best, Tails would probably solve the mystery too early and kill the biggest plotline the game has going for it.

And honestly from the get go, if you're expecting Tails to be a star player who's only second to Sonic when it comes to being involved in the plot, then I'm sorry to say but you're probably going into this game with the wrong mindset. He's gonna be involved but they said as clear as they could that the plot revolves around Sonic, Eggman, the new characters and the mystery of the island, Sonic's friends are just the incentive for him to stay in these Islands instead of just bailing as soon as things go wrong.

[Sonikko]

10 minutes ago, Blue Blood said:

@Sonikko I've not seen that before. It's very interesting, and holy shit should that have been obvious already in Forces. They're still using the layouts and collision of previous games here in Frontiers. I can't tell if they're recreating them entirely with their new tools or if they're just pulling the old collision files and then decorating them, but either way it's pretty plain just how streamlined the process is now. Is this what "white boxing" is? It might be cm efficient process, but it's not yielding good results. 

To be honest, I don't think they're reusing anything from Generations and Unleashed except for the background assets for GHZ and Sky Sanctuary.

The terrain has been redone with the new terrain block tool, and because of how simple the shapes are, they can probably just use mesh collisions, which means they don't have to make a separate collision fine, since the geometry itself is used as collisions.

This is a wild assumption, but also, we do have clues that they've been using mesh collision in the open zone area, so, it would make sense.

If you pay close attention there's no rocks, grass or small detail on the cyberspace stage geometry, because Sonic would collide with it if the collisions were set to mesh.

The geometry is 100% new because it looks much simpler than whatever was in Unleashed and Generations.

Even if it isn't mesh collision, the geometry is so simple that it can pretty much be used as a base for em anyway.