Sonic Frontiers - Review Roundup.

[Rabbitearsblog]

2 hours ago, Rocketjay8 said:

Wait, Sterling insulted people in his review?

I think I read that wrong, but there was some controversy about them saying that the team was led by "lazy hack fucks," but I guess too many people were reading into that and blew it out of proportion.

[Sonicka]

6 hours ago, Rabbitearsblog said:

I think I read that wrong, but there was some controversy about them saying that the team was led by "lazy hack fucks," but I guess too many people were reading into that and blew it out of proportion.

So, JSS's original words were:

Quote

 

"I’ll tell you exactly what these “Open Zones” resemble - they look like a bunch of premade Unreal Engine assets that had a handful of Sonic shit sloppily tossed into them.

I’m not saying Sonic Frontiers is anything like an asset flip. I’m saying it doesn’t matter because the effect is exactly the same - artistic incoherence in a world that feels randomly thrown together by lazy hack fucks"

 

After the sonic collective lost their preverbial shit, he clarified this statement by saying:

Quote

"The visual dissonance makes it look like an asset flip, which are games made by lazy hack fucks. I'm sure developers on Frontiers worked hard on it and that the studio is a cut or two above said hacks. This doesn't change how utterly hacky the map looks. Whether it's a lazy asset flip or not, that's what it looks like, and that's the point."

But I mean, however you want to sugarcoat dress it or backtrack,it doesn’t matter, they are still suggesting the same thing indirectly.

I'm saying it doesn’t matter how JSS words it because the effect of the sentence is exactly the same - they are comparing Frontiers world design and atmosphere to the integrity of an asset flip, and asset flips are made by these "lazy hack fucks". 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

Not a great defense though, huh?

"I'm not literally saying they are lazy hack fucks, their game just gives me every impression and reason to assume that they would be."

"Why are Sonic fans upset with me?"

(To be clear, I'm mostly ambivalent to this whole debate, Jim Sterling has had bad Sonic opinions for at least ten years at this point and I see no reason to expect them to improve, but the behavior on display here is just frankly a bit embarrassing for a person I tend to respect on unrelated matters)

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

1 hour ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

Not a great defense though, huh?

"I'm not literally saying they are lazy hack fucks, their game just gives me every impression and reason to assume that they would be."

"Why are Sonic fans upset with me?"

(To be clear, I'm mostly ambivalent to this whole debate, Jim Sterling has had bad Sonic opinions for at least ten years at this point and I see no reason to expect them to improve, but the behavior on display here is just frankly a bit embarrassing for a person I tend to respect on unrelated matters)

That's definitely part of why I don't care for them. The sheer abrasiveness and behavior gets over obnoxious,  far too much for me to stomach.

[Detective Kaito]

Considering the size of Frontiers' development team is about 60 people, combined with all the asset reuse and jank, it's no wonder that they appear lazy to some people. It's kind of a miracle that people ended up liking the game as much as they did.

[Zoomzeta]

1 hour ago, Detective Kaito said:

Considering the size of Frontiers' development team is about 60 people, combined with all the asset reuse and jank, it's no wonder that they appear lazy to some people. It's kind of a miracle that people ended up liking the game as much as they did.

There's laziness and then there's been cost effective and a need to cut corners to release a product on time. 

Edited November 15, 2022 by Zoomzeta

[Sonicka]

You know, in terms of the visual issues that there are random 'obstacles all over the place' - whilst it is not addressed directly in game (apart from when fast track rails that are unlocked), it's abundantly clear the obstacle system has been digitally created for Sonic specifically to be able to traverse the island - this is why a lot of it isn't tied thematically to the island. I really don't think this is how the Ancients got around after all, nor do I for a second believe this is how any of the open zones looked before he landed there except for the ruins. 

What would have alleviated the obstacle pop in issue is a digital/cyberspace looking fade in filter (not so dissimilar to how Nintendo handle their bigger games like Mario Odyssey when things fade into view) - it could be that the speeds sonic goes at made this impossible to achieve or it just looked bad in practise.  

But hey, the visual dissonence verdict is more one's artistic opinion I suppose. 

 

[ZinogreVolt]

3 hours ago, Detective Kaito said:

Considering the size of Frontiers' development team is about 60 people, combined with all the asset reuse and jank, it's no wonder that they appear lazy to some people. It's kind of a miracle that people ended up liking the game as much as they did.

Conversely, 60 people is a drop in the bucket for HD development of an open world game. Staff sizes for these kinds of projects are usually meant to be several times larger than that, but Sonic Team still managed to pull it off with relative, if noticeably still imperfect, success.

[Indigo Rush]

So, the large "indie" developer Sonic Team?

[Zoomzeta]

12 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

So, the large "indie" developer Sonic Team?

No, just Sonic Team. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

48 minutes ago, Indigo Rush said:

So, the large "indie" developer Sonic Team?

The bottomline is that SEGA need to beefen up Sonic Team in manpower for sure.

[ZinogreVolt]

If they're gonna keep pursuing the open zone format, then I think topping up on staff is a must. Given the vastly higher engagement Frontiers has received compared to every other Sonic game in a long time, I hope they consider it.

[Rabbitearsblog]

On 11/14/2022 at 1:28 PM, Slash said:

My only worry is that Sega somehow kowtows to people like this thinking they're the majority.

That's my concern too.  We saw what happened when SEGA was trying to please the detractors and it nearly send the franchise down a downward spiral.  I just hope that SEGA listen to the right people.

 

[Sega DogTagz]

We just stood here and watched Sonic Team take a game format that was unsustainable due to the sheer demand of setting out miles of boost track.... only to watch them choose to pursue the only format that might be even worse from a sustainability standpoint.

 

They do need to beef up the staff to compensate. When I beat other open world games, I feel like I sit through 20+ mins of credits. You may not need all that - but the skeleton crew leads to too many problems.

[Rabbitearsblog]

4 hours ago, ZinogreVolt said:

If they're gonna keep pursuing the open zone format, then I think topping up on staff is a must. Given the vastly higher engagement Frontiers has received compared to every other Sonic game in a long time, I hope they consider it.

I also agree that SEGA needs to hire more staff for Sonic Team.  Since Sonic Frontiers is the first time I've seen this much attention for a Sonic the Hedgehog game in a long time, SEGA really needs to start improving the games moving forward and to do that, they need to hire more experienced staff to Sonic Team to get the job done much more efficiently.

[Wraith]

I think instead of beefing up their staff they should consider a more economical concept. I'm not sure if frontiers would have lost anything if they went for a smaller map. 

[Zoomzeta]

21 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I think instead of beefing up their staff they should consider a more economical concept. I'm not sure if frontiers would have lost anything if they went for a smaller map. 

Ok, but I do think beefing up the staff will be necessary if they are continuing with what they built with this game. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

26 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I think instead of beefing up their staff they should consider a more economical concept. I'm not sure if frontiers would have lost anything if they went for a smaller map. 

I think it's combination of things. A tighter map would have helped given this current project, but to go on with this formula, it certainly wouldn't hurt to give them more manpower so as not to strain themselves as much in the future. Especially if they want to expand on this formula.

[azoo]

They're gonna have to get bigger staff for the next game, full stop. They can't excuse making only 3 maps and littering them in self-asset-flipping again. It could hardly be excused the first time, lol.

[Kuzu]

I'd argue the problem is less the manpower and more the Direction. A crew is only as good as its captain after all. 

Basically, even if Frontiers had as much budget and dev time as the average AAA game...its' still a Kishimoto game at the end of the day. It would just probably just be a lot less rough. 

[Blacklightning]

9 hours ago, Zoomzeta said:

There's laziness and then there's been cost effective and a need to cut corners to release a product on time. 

How fucking mismanaged does a game have to be to have a development time of five years and still find a dire, pressing need to cut corners? The hell have they been doing all this time besides slapping generic blocks and slabs all over what looks like an unreal engine test level? I can appreciate that there are areas that Frontiers has done better than most of the other schlock we've had to put up with in modern era, but you can all miss me with this idea that they didn't have the time to do any better, not when it's by a large margin the longest they've spent on any Sonic game in recent memory.

[Wraith]

That's why don't think 'throw more resources' at them is necessarily the answer. Sonic Team has a habit of overscoping regardless of what they're given. I think the producers and directors need to be held accountable first. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Just now, Wraith said:

That's why don't think 'throw more resources' at them is necessarily the answer. Sonic Team has a habit of overscoping regardless of what they're given. I think the producers and directors need to be held accountable first. 

Well, given how Frontiers turned out to be pretty good, in spite of the development issues, including COVID and SEGA trying to rush things, I do believe that they've earned the benefit of the doubt from SEGA. And the onus should be on SEGA to actually allow them to handle things with a better fit crew in terms of manpower.

Now, if they screw it up after SEGA were to grant them a much larger team, then yeah, that would be sign they might be beyond saving.

[azoo]

I think the problem with that angle is that not everyone agrees they did a good job in those five years. A lot of us would argue the hard opposite!

To be honest, I also think these problems could just as much be on Sonic Team's executives as it is on a staff size far too small for an open world game, and having to restart halfway through at that. Which you could argue "well maybe if you have only 60 people, don't green light an open world game" and "maybe if things go bad, just cancel it", which.. yeah, valid to both. But they didn't, so here we are. 

And being realistic I don't think we're ever going to be able to have any say on who produces Sonic Team's content, even if we know (or at least think we know) who's to blame. And whatever comes is probably going to be the same as Frontiers' team but with the bigger budget and staffing. 

All I can do is hope they learn something. Anything. For chrissakes. lol

[Kuzu]

4 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Well, given how Frontiers turned out to be pretty good, in spite of the development issues, including COVID and SEGA trying to rush things, I do believe that they've earned the benefit of the doubt from SEGA. And the onus should be on SEGA to actually allow them to handle things with a better fit crew in terms of manpower.

Now, if they screw it up after SEGA were to grant them a much larger team, then yeah, that would be sign they might be beyond saving.

Sonic the Hedgehog (2006)