Sonic Frontiers Leaks & Spoilers Thread - PLEASE READ OP

[Cosmos Rogue]

As bad as there only being three different island themes is... it doesn't really change my (lukewarm at best) expectations for the game any. I hate how the game looks and have since it was first unveiled. There being a drab snow level or an uninspired industrial area or some other common video game level themed area was never going to improve my opinion of Frontiers.

[Sonicka]

But it is still technically 5 explorable open zones / landscapes correct? Even with 3 of them being grassy type plains. (I'm not defending the lack of open zone themes BTW, I'm trying to ascertain the facts before this is thrown out of context for the sake of ruthlessly complaining). 

Are the last 2 islands not actually explorable or something compared to the first three? What's the difference in this aspect? Genuinely curious. 

[DaBigJ]

According to this thread, the final boss

Spoiler

is a QTE sequence. What a joke

 

[StaticMania]

7 minutes ago, Cosmos Rogue said:

...some other common video game level themed area was never going to improve my opinion of Frontiers.

Those are already in the game.

There's no uncommon theme, it's just which theme is used per game and whether or not the style of a series makes it look unique.

[Zoomzeta]

1 hour ago, Diogenes said:

Name one thing that this game clears up or sorts out.

I would tell you, but the game has yet to come out. So I know as much as you do. 

[expansivelovestories]

12 hours ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

It’s kind of insane that with this story being how it is, they still don’t have a Chao garden or any equivalent to it. 

It seems like, if the second open zone Sonic is coming in an estimated five years from now, Chao and, perhaps using the Cyberspace itself, new old style and open style zones will arrive for the additional characters, maybe including Big too!   i thought that might be the postgame, but it makes sense to wait and let the base game speak for itself for a while!! 

of course we have to hope it isn't behind a paywall, I think that there could be some extras for Chao and Amy/Knuckles/Tails that might be paid DLC, but, there should hopefully eventually be a free patch that gives some amount of gameworld for each of them!! 

[The Deleter]

I've already stated my disappointment with the other island themes compared to Kronos, so I'm not too heartbroken that we're getting repeats of that instead of even draber islands, but yeah the lack of variety is insane. The more the scope of the game is revealed the less it fits in to the expectations of a 5 year wait; like others are saying, previous games already did so much with just one-to-two years of development comparatively.

If it is a budget thing, hopefully that's fixed, but we'll see

[azoo]

The amount of variety or creativity in Sonic’s worlds is one of the main things that sold this series for so many people. The characters are fun and exciting, but it’s not just that, it’s where their adventures lead them and what insane stuff they run into next. The sheer scale, excitement, appeal of rushing through these zones are maybe a greater contributor to the series’s personality than the characters themselves.

With that in mind, it now makes sense why the enemies are the focus of this game: there’s basically none of what I mentioned to speak of. For a gameplay style made to emphasize the sense of adventure, we have some of the least adventurous stuff I’ve ever seen from Sonic. Not only some of the least exciting and dull environments on offer, but only three; couldn’t even make enough biomes to match the game they’re ripping off. We were upset at the asset reuse and lack of variety in the cyberspace stages, but they couldn’t even keep those issues out of the main zones.

This is rough. As I mentioned before,  Sonic games with much shorter dev cycles made many more creative decisions, exciting locales and high production value than anything this game could construct in half a decade. That’s pathetic, guys. I’m willing to say the controls, gameplay loop and story focus are a nice start for future games to look toward refining, but I hope people don’t let it get in the way of these issues and pretend this is fine lol. Sonic Frontiers needs to get blasted for this.

[Ricochet]

34 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

You should play Sonic Adventure to get that info...

Whenever that game comes out.

What you actually get from SA is the entire clan wiped out thousands years ago. Where Knuckles came from then?

[celsowm2]

Have we already have a full list of cyberspace stages?

[StaticMania]

Hopefully whenever that game does come out, it provides an explanation like...

The only people who got wiped out were the male warriors, because it just wasn't obvious from the cutscene that those were the only people Chaos check mated before getting sealed away.

[Jango]

14 minutes ago, azoo said:

The amount of variety or creativity in Sonic’s worlds is one of the main things that sold this series for so many people. The characters are fun and exciting, but it’s not just that, it’s where their adventures lead them and what insane stuff they run into next. The sheer scale, excitement, appeal of rushing through these zones are maybe a greater contributor to the series’s personality than the characters themselves.

With that in mind, it now makes sense why the enemies are the focus of this game: there’s basically none of what I mentioned to speak of. For a gameplay style made to emphasize the sense of adventure, we have some of the least adventurous stuff I’ve ever seen from Sonic. Not only some of the least exciting and dull environments on offer, but only three; couldn’t even make enough biomes to match the game they’re ripping off. We were upset at the asset reuse and lack of variety in the cyberspace stages, but they couldn’t even keep those issues out of the main zones.

This is rough. As I mentioned before,  Sonic games with much shorter dev cycles made many more creative decisions, exciting locales and high production value than anything this game could construct in half a decade. That’s pathetic, guys. I’m willing to say the controls, gameplay loop and story focus are a nice start for future games to look toward refining, but I hope people don’t let it get in the way of these issues and pretend this is fine lol. Sonic Frontiers needs to get blasted for this.

I think what we need now is Ian writing for an actual good game /s

Or isn't it?

 

[DaBigJ]

Something funny I saw about the fishing minigame

Spoiler

You can fish up items like a signpost, a lamppost and a ring monitor

 

[ZinogreVolt]

Putting on my tin foil hat: I'm willing to bet that Islands 4 and 5 are probably byproducts of what the game was originally, back when it was a fully open world game. They probably split it into chunks when they decided on the island format to bring the game together, can't let those assets just go to waste... I guess.

Kinda deflating, I really like the game but that on top of the lack of visual variety in Cyberspace is extraordinarily lame.

[Kuzu]

The visuals are absolutely the worst about the game so far past Kronos.

I'm on Ares right now and its absolutely boring me how plain it looks. Kind of deflated the experience a bit.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

This has probably already been brought up, but here it goes anyway:

Anyone else suspect that the cyberspace zones were supposed to have one theme from each game, but they ran out of time or scrapped the idea? I mean, Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and what could be viewed as Speed Highway… I dunno. 
 

And onto another point… dare I even poke this hornet’s nest? I dare. If ever a game has been setting up for Sonic Adventure 3 (I know, I know), this would be it. Could lead to nothing, in fact that’s still how I’m leaning given that the Chaos-focused plot might simply be a result of the new writer, but this is probably the first time in 20 years that I *wouldn’t* be surprised if the next game turned out to be SA3. 

[ZinogreVolt]

I actually really enjoy getting swept up in the mood of each area, but I wish there was more interesting geometry and setpieces to gawk at. The floating upside-down pyramid thing hanging above that web-like flooring in Kronos is a good example of that and an area I think people will be able to remember, at least passively. Ares suffers massively from this since areas like that are more spread out, and the pop-in means that potential points of interest/progression are not readily standing out to you.

[Whatever the WhoCares]

The generic environments are going to be slammed by critics, and that’s a good thing. Future games probably won’t be this drab, because there will be near-unanimous complaints about something that Sonic Team has otherwise mostly avoided criticism for. They know how to do “vibrant”. To a fault, really, but that’s another can of worms. 
 

What I’m way more concerned about is the gameplay. It looks fun in its own way, but it’s definitely repetitive, and definitely janky. I’m watching Sonic getting caught on rocks, trees, and other structures in every video I see, and while it rarely looks like it impedes gameplay, it’s aesthetically just quite poor. There are things Sonic Team can do to improve upon this formula next time around, and my hope is that they don’t do the classic chicken-out that they’ve been known for when they’re on to something but haven’t yet nailed it. 

[Kuzu]

Ares Island and Chaos Island are boring as fuck, but that's only from the perspective of Sonic games usually having very visually distinct levels and visuals. From an average consumer, I can't see it mattering much and the environments do look good under that lens.

The game feels like what I expected it to be. Its a "good" game, but a lackluster Sonic the Hedgehog game. Which is extremely disappointing after half a decade, but after the interviews and the difficulties they explained having, I figured they'd have to compromise somewhere unfortunately.

This is by no means excusing them and fans have every right to call this game out for its lack of visual identity and variety. 

But this being the Sonic fanbase, we're gonna get some very extreme and polarizing opinions about this game.

 

 

I personally think the game is fine so far, but it is kind of disappointing as a Sonic outside of a few things.

[Zoomzeta]

2 hours ago, The Deleter said:

I've already stated my disappointment with the other island themes compared to Kronos, so I'm not too heartbroken that we're getting repeats of that instead of even draber islands, but yeah the lack of variety is insane. The more the scope of the game is revealed the less it fits in to the expectations of a 5 year wait; like others are saying, previous games already did so much with just one-to-two years of development comparatively.

If it is a budget thing, hopefully that's fixed, but we'll see

Actually it does if you consider the size of the dev team and the limited and resources they have compared to the hundreds of devs and contractors that develop open-world titles of increasingly larger scale almost every 5+ years.

1 hour ago, ZinogreVolt said:

I actually really enjoy getting swept up in the mood of each area, but I wish there was more interesting geometry and setpieces to gawk at. The floating upside-down pyramid thing hanging above that web-like flooring in Kronos is a good example of that and an area I think people will be able to remember, at least passively. Ares suffers massively from this since areas like that are more spread out, and the pop-in means that potential points of interest/progression are not readily standing out to you.

At least, depending on the game version you're playing through I'm assuming. 

2 hours ago, The Deleter said:

I've already stated my disappointment with the other island themes compared to Kronos, so I'm not too heartbroken that we're getting repeats of that instead of even draber islands, but yeah the lack of variety is insane. The more the scope of the game is revealed the less it fits in to the expectations of a 5 year wait; like others are saying, previous games already did so much with just one-to-two years of development comparatively.

If it is a budget thing, hopefully that's fixed, but we'll see

Maybe that's the issue. The scope of the game was far beyond what the dev team could handle on their own, so compromises had to be made in order to get the game out in a playable state. 

[Spooky Mulder]

I think Frontiers spent a lot of time in very early development as they tried to come up with a formula and mechanics that worked. We know playtesting was happening very, very early (hence the leaks). I suspect Kronos was basically a sandbox for playtesting mechanics and they just kept layering stuff in. The other islands were a bit of afterthought. There's a lot about Frontiers from its reuse of assets to the recycled cyberspace level design that suggests some hasty design decisions were made to get to final polished product. I think its basically a glorified demo for the future of Sonic.

I'm very excited to play it but I'm even more excited to see what the next 3D Sonic game looks like. It'll be interesting to take the lessons from Frontiers development and apply it to a blank slate instead of constantly building off a tech demo.

[Zoomzeta]

1 hour ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

This has probably already been brought up, but here it goes anyway:

Anyone else suspect that the cyberspace zones were supposed to have one theme from each game, but they ran out of time or scrapped the idea? I mean, Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary, and what could be viewed as Speed Highway… I dunno. 
 

And onto another point… dare I even poke this hornet’s nest? I dare. If ever a game has been setting up for Sonic Adventure 3 (I know, I know), this would be it. Could lead to nothing, in fact that’s still how I’m leaning given that the Chaos-focused plot might simply be a result of the new writer, but this is probably the first time in 20 years that I *wouldn’t* be surprised if the next game turned out to be SA3. 

His name is Ian Flynn. And though the he did wrote the script, he did not come up with the premise of the title. 

[The Deleter]

11 hours ago, light-gaia said:

Is there any actual evidencie that there are only there actual Islands or is this Just speculation? Because it doesn't make Sense tô me. They confirmed several times there are 5 "massive Islands" and there is litsrally a screen in the game showing the completion percentage of each of the 5 Islands.

I'm playing Frontiers, too, but I'm still in Ares Island and now I'm worried about that. Please someone Tell me this is just speculation

https://forums.sonicretro.org/index.php?posts/1025909/

Spoiler

First island map:

Fifth island map:

 

[ZinogreVolt]

I will say that I think the game is good, but you absolutely must approach it with an open mind and abandon whatever ideas of what you think Sonic 'should' be in order to enjoy yourself. I think most people will, because the format by itself is engaging, but it has some quirks and issues that might pile up and turn some people away.

[expansivelovestories]

As far as new generations' debut games, Sonic Adventure and Colors were very vibrant visually, and relatively diverse games, and Sonic 1 and , from what i know about Frontiers, are a bit more compact and somewhat muted visually (the best comparison would be between Sonic 1 and Sonic CD!). 

I can't say if it is literally a good sign or not, but it does feel good to notice the parallel!  It was difficult for the games that followed Adventure and Colors to really live up to them.  Whereas, Sonic 1 left a lot of space for that to happen and it did!!