Sonic Frontiers - Review Roundup.

[DaBigJ]

Isn't linear? Sonic's been linear since 2010  /joke

[Whatever the WhoCares]

Could Sonic Frontiers have been better without more resources added? Absolutely. But the game’s most glaring issues are obviously attributable to a lack of those resources. There is a hard limit on how good these games can be if Sega continues this drip-feed approach to delegation. I would never want to see another Adventure game produced under these circumstances, per se. 

[pppp]

8 minutes ago, Zoomzeta said:

They did give them AAA budget. The problem is that they gave them a budget likely  dwarfed by what other Triple-AAA company give out right now. 

That's what I mean though. Why can't Sonic get a budget on par with those like he did for Unleashed or heck even 06? Remember when Sonic games had CGI cutscenes by Marza and the ingame cutscenes didn't have that stiff animation we see in games post Unleashed?

This isn't 2015, SEGA are doing great financially right now as a company, they can afford to do that.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

9 minutes ago, Ryannumber1gamer said:

13 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Well, given how this is the first game in a while that they've apparently finally given Sonic Team the time to finish properly, and it's already leagues ahead of the previous installments, I dare say,  they're not just a faction to be written off as subpar developers.

Now, flawed? Maybe. But with Frontiers, they actually finally had the time to develop, playtest and refine things properly.

With a bigger budget, for starters, they probably wouldn't have to strain so much on resources.

Now, depending on how much one has liked Frontiers,  that can mean a variety of things, but I will hold that Frontiers is a potential sign of change for the better, most definitely. SEGA need to do their part in helping out their mascot franchise.

On top of that, not to draw out the usual excuse, but we do kind of have to acknowledge that COVID did uproot at least a year, if not two years of that development time in order to shift everything towards remote working, on top of the game already trying a heap of new things, and trying to experiment around with a lot of new ideas, for better or worse.

Absolutely. COVID was an unforeseen event that ravaged tons of projects, and is apparently even still heavily affecting Japan.

Working remotely definitely would've made game development something more of a chore, and I wouldn't be surprised of that was added into part of the confrontation that Iizuka had, holding the line against SEGA executives pushing for crunch time.

[Zoomzeta]

8 minutes ago, pppp said:

That's what I mean though. Why can't Sonic get a budget on par with those like he did for Unleashed or heck even 06? Remember when Sonic games had CGI cutscenes by Marza and the ingame cutscenes didn't have that stiff animation we see in games post Unleashed?

This isn't 2015, SEGA are doing great financially right now as a company, they can afford to do that.

They did. The problem is that so much of said resources were poured into the ooen-zone segment of this game. The budget given to Unleashed cannot be compared with that of Frontiers, seeing as costs for game development have only been increasing since them. It's not a fair comparison given the gap of time. 

[Johnster4]

Around 70s on metacritic it's what I expected for it to be decent, I'll have to wait for PC invasions review to see how it performs on PC.

[VO.SUPER]

21 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

Frontiers is the result of Sonic Team getting their shit together midway through development and scrambling to fix what was likely a pretty bad game foundationally. The cracks still show in the final product and despite all the feedback they've taken, they ultimately couldn't smooth its many rough edgess. It's not really a result of Sega getting in the way or not having enough time/budget, but because Frontiers sucked to start with, and they could only make it decent in the long run. 

That being said, the fact that the game is still a pretty good time despite noteworthy faults, and Sonic Team taking noteworthy feedback to improve considerably does leave me fairly hopeful for the next installment. This is assuming that they stick with the same style, of course. A bigger budget, bigger team, and more time would certainly help if they wanted to up the scale and variety even further.

I kinda feel the bad part of the original development wasn't the foundational control of Sonic. From what we heard of leaks and some interviews, it was just the layout of the world itself was terrible originally. And it does make sense that the world is where some of Frontiers more unpolished parts come to light. That and cyberspace.

[Kuzu]

29 minutes ago, VO.SUPER said:

They did make good on a lot of that time. For once they accepted Q&A testing, which is pretty uncommon for Japanese development. And they did focus on the most important part of a game, being the base control. A lot of what has fallen through for Frontiers has been a lot of smaller issues piling up into big annoyances, like the graphical presentation, and reuse of assets, a lot of which has probably been the result of scrapping development, and needing to fight for a delay. And I wouldn't doubt their hedgehog engine caused a lot of headaches when it came to things like the pop-in.

A bigger budget could allow for more staff on the team as well as continuation of flexible timeframes for development. Because if we go from this 5 year cycle back to when Sonic was coming out ever 2 or so years that will be a disaster in the waiting.                      

I'll just say there have been better games on much smaller budgets; its not about the amount of resources you lack, but what you do with the ones that you have at your disposal. 

From my perspective; unless Frontiers sells gang busters (Which it probably will tbh) then  I don't see an incentive for Sega to shell out more cash. 

[Whatever the WhoCares]

One thing that has me really encouraged is the marketing effort Sega has put into this game. It feels like this game has mainstream attention in a way no Sonic title has in the last 20 years. People are *talking* about this one, man. And now that it’s turned out to be more than decent, it’s gonna sell nicely too. I don’t know if Sega will put their money where their mouth is and delegate the proper resources for the next game, but we’re a step closer to that than we’ve been in a very long time. 

[VO.SUPER]

3 minutes ago, Kuzu said:

I'll just say there have been better games on much smaller budgets; its not about the amount of resources you lack, but what you do with the ones that you have at your disposal. 

From my perspective; unless Frontiers sells gang busters (Which it probably will tbh) then  I don't see an incentive for Sega to shell out more cash. 

You're right. Generations is a very tight experience with very little fluff to get in the way of what makes it great, and Frontiers looks like it really could have had... parts sawed out and put back into the existing design.

But then we get into that whole, $60 debate, and the trajectory Sonic had been going following Lost World, and every games slowly turning into a budgeting nightmare.

I remember when Gens first came out and folks scoffed at that $60 price tag for the content the game had. The business side of the industry sucks.

[pppp]

1 minute ago, Zoomzeta said:

They did. The problem is that so much of said resources were poured into the ooen-zone segment of this game. The budget given to Unleashed cannot be compared with that of Frontiers, seeing as costs for game development have only been increasing since them. It's not a fair comparison given the gap of time. 

All I have to say to SEGA about that if I could is tough shit, you're a billion dollar company, figure it out. Give them a budget akin to Ragnarok if needed, I'm tired of Marza being just the marketing studio and not actually doing anything for the games.

Either that or actually hire people that can make Sonic characters look as good as the characters in Rift Apart. I refuse to settle for less than this, Sonic used to always fire on all cylinders presentation wise, and to be honest I want that back.

[light-gaia]

26 minutes ago, ZinogreVolt said:

Frontiers is the result of Sonic Team getting their shit together midway through development and scrambling to fix what was likely a pretty bad game foundationally. The cracks still show in the final product and despite all the feedback they've taken, they ultimately couldn't smooth its many rough edgess. It's not really a result of Sega getting in the way or not having enough time/budget, but because Frontiers sucked to start with, and they could only make it decent in the long run. 

That being said, the fact that the game is still a pretty good time despite noteworthy faults, and Sonic Team taking noteworthy feedback to improve considerably does leave me fairly hopeful for the next installment. This is assuming that they stick with the same style, of course. A bigger budget, bigger team, and more time would certainly help if they wanted to up the scale and variety even further.

I think budget is a problem. Because when you develop something new, it's expected to have a lot of trial and error, scraping ideas, etc. If we think about Zelda, for example. They postponed the game several times, and they had help from Monolith Studio to be able to finish the game.

I don't think Sega is willing to do the same thing with Sonic games, even if they need to. They probably only postponed Frontiers one year because the game probably had bugs and glitches.

The first three islands are really good. If the other islands were like that and the cyberspace have unique aesthetics. This would be easily one of my favorite Sonic games of all time. And to do that, they would need more budget and more developers working on the game. So, budget matters...

It's not like throwing money at a project would make it good, but in the case of Frontiers, specially, I think the budget was one of the reasons the game is not the best it could've been.

[VO.SUPER]

2 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

I think budget is a problem. Because when you develop something new, it's expected to have a lot of trial and error, scraping ideas, etc. If we think about Zelda, for example. They postponed the game several times, and they had help from Monolith Studio to be able to finish the game.

Having a Monolith like back up team for ST could honestly have helped this game's presentation a lot.... or made things worse, but I guess I like to be optimistic.

[ZinogreVolt]

Just now, light-gaia said:

I think budget is a problem. Because when you develop something new, it's expected to have a lot of trial and error, scraping ideas, etc. If we think about Zelda, for example. They postponed the game several times, and they had help from Monolith Studio to be able to finish the game.

I don't think Sega is willing to do the same thing with Sonic games, even if they need to. They probably only postponed Frontiers one year because the game probably had bugs and glitches.

The first three islands are really good. If the other islands were like that and the cyberspace have unique aesthetics. This would be easily one of my favorite Sonic games of all time. And to do that, they would need more budget and more developers working on the game. So, budget matters...

It's not like throwing money at a project would make it good, but in the case of Frontiers, specially, I think the budget was one of the reasons the game is not the best it could've been.

I think this is a fair point. If they were going to experiment, ideally they should have been given the space, time, and budget necessary to ensure that the experiment was a success. For all intents, Frontiers is a reasonably successful experiment, but it's not the huge leap it could have been because of company logistics.

[Wraith]

I don't see how we can play money ball with budgets we don't have, or why we're making assumptions about what problems the developer may have ran into. The game already had a 5 year development time with delays to account for covid and QA issues. As far as what we actually know, they had plenty of time and resources.

 

[ZinogreVolt]

5 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I don't see how we can play money ball with budgets we don't have, or why we're making assumptions about what problems the developer may have ran into. The game already had a 5 year development time with delays to account for covid and QA issues. As far as what we actually know, they had plenty of time and resources.

 

Also true. It's not really worth discussing whether the game would have been better or worse with invisible budgets that we don't know the specifics of. What we got is what we got, really.

[light-gaia]

I don't think it is totally pointless to discuss what a game could've been. Specially when the game has just come out, and we are discussing its quality. Maybe it's not worth to discuss if the problems could be solved with more money and time. However, in my opinion, what Frontiers needed to be a better game was that the other 2 islands had the same level of quality of the first 3 and cyberspace levels had original level theming

[VO.SUPER]

3 minutes ago, Wraith said:

I don't see how we can play money ball with budgets we don't have, or why we're making assumptions about what problems the developer may have ran into. The game already had a 5 year development time with delays to account for covid and QA issues. As far as what we actually know, they had plenty of time and resources.

 

Because this is a forum, and speculation is just a thing to do. Taking ST as being just incompetent at face value also falls under the same ballpark because we don't know that for sure. Is Izuka or some leaker coming out to talk about how several devs couldn't work with the upper management and decided to twiddle their thumbs and make dicks out of geometry while the playtesters gab about how terrible the game is.

Nothing else to do but speculate and see how that works for the future. None of it is about the product we have, but the thoughts for the future.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

44 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

I don't think it is totally pointless to discuss what a game could've been.

Of course it isn't. The point of forums like this is to speculate and discuss on things.

There are countless cases where just assuming a game team is incompetent on face value turns out to be incredibly shortsighted in the wake of the truth. 

And there's honestly no harm done with it either,  to at least try and zero in on the real issues.

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, VO.SUPER said:

Because this is a forum, and speculation is just a thing to do. Taking ST as being just incompetent at face value also falls under the same ballpark because we don't know that for sure. Is Izuka or some leaker coming out to talk about how several devs couldn't work with the upper management and decided to twiddle their thumbs and make dicks out of geometry while the playtesters gab about how terrible the game is.

Nothing else to do but speculate and see how that works for the future. None of it is about the product we have, but the thoughts for the future.

Speculation is fine, but it needs to be based in something or else you're just spinning your wheels IE you guys can't decide if this game had a higher budget than Unleashed or not, whether Sega allowed them time to experiment or cut them off again etc.. I didn't imply Sonic Team was sitting in their chairs for 5 years in my post, so I don't know why that's what's being floated. 

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

9 minutes ago, Wraith said:

whether Sega allowed them time to experiment or cut them off again etc

Well, what we do know for certain is that Iizuka had to confront SEGA to give Sonic Team more time in the wake of a rather trying development period, since we have had and seen interviews from the man himself.

Naturally,  speculation can sprout from that, putting two and two together as well on some things.

[Razule]

15 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Well, what we do know for certain is that Iizuka had to confront SEGA to give Sonic Team more time in the wake of a rather trying development period, since we have had and seen interviews from the man himself.

Naturally,  speculation can sprout from that, putting two and two together as well on some things.

The fact that SEGA was willing to ship out another 5 - 7/10 worries me. Hopefully he won't need to ask next time.

[Starnik]

2 hours ago, Whatever the WhoCares said:

One thing that has me really encouraged is the marketing effort Sega has put into this game. It feels like this game has mainstream attention in a way no Sonic title has in the last 20 years. People are *talking* about this one, man. And now that it’s turned out to be more than decent, it’s gonna sell nicely too. I don’t know if Sega will put their money where their mouth is and delegate the proper resources for the next game, but we’re a step closer to that than we’ve been in a very long time. 

I imagine the budget is based on the amount of copies Sega believes the game will or could sell. So if the game does very well, that could led to higher budgets potentially.

[light-gaia]

52 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Speculation is fine, but it needs to be based in something or else you're just spinning your wheels IE you guys can't decide if this game had a higher budget than Unleashed or not, whether Sega allowed them time to experiment or cut them off again etc.. I didn't imply Sonic Team was sitting in their chairs for 5 years in my post, so I don't know why that's what's being floated. 

It doesn't matter if Frontiers had a higher budget than Unleashed or not. We are discussing if the game had a budget high enough for its scope and ambition, and that doesn't involve any other game.

[Zoomzeta]

6 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

It doesn't matter if Frontiers had a higher budget than Unleashed or not. We are discussing if the game had a budget high enough for its scope and ambition, and that doesn't involve any other game.

Agreed