Sonic Frontiers Story Dicussion (Full Spoilers)

[StaticMania]

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I don't know if the character models in Frontiers are brand new or not but they all just look a bit dated and at times ugly, especially Amy's in my opinion.

They aren't new...they're just being animated decently for once.

3 hours ago, Silvereyes said:

I certainly don't think it canonizes Sonic Boom into the game's continuity.

It's a simple retcon to have Amy refer to Sticks in a way that tells us they already know each other.

[KHCast]

I know a few people were talking about how the Sticks reference might canonize the Mario & Sonic olympic series and thus Mario/the mushroom kingdom to sonics world, buuuut

 

1. Wouldn’t that mean real world earth is canon to sonic, and since we know this is all one world now, wouldn’t that make the Unleashed locales redundant?

and 2. Considering the Mobile Olympic game is a thing and that removes the Mario stuff, if they WERE going to infer canon, it would probably be in reference to that one and not the main games 

[Zaysho]

I don't think one really has anything to do with the other. It just means she (unfortunately) exists in some fashion in the game canon that we haven't seen yet. And that was already looking to be the case because Sonic Channel has used her in small things like the comic strips.

[Darkvizardberrytan]

5 hours ago, Silvereyes said:

I was thinking of Persona 3's final boss when fighting The End, considering in that game the final boss is the Moon.

I don't have that much to say. I enjoyed the story, I liked the character dynamics. I think what really excites me is what feels like seeds for the future Ian Flynn is sowing, assuming Sonic Team lets him reap them in the future. The idea of Sonic's friends growing as people seems interesting to me. I must admit as well but I really think Sonic and co could always use a redesign, even if just a subtle face lift. I don't know if the character models in Frontiers are brand new or not but they all just look a bit dated and at times ugly, especially Amy's in my opinion.

The implications for the canon really interest me. I think the Sticks reference is simply a nice way of trying to keep her away, rather than basically being achored to the Sonic Boom continuity. And considering Sticks' personality, I don't really see adding her requires much retconning. You could basically say she just hides away in her hole somewhere most of the time, occasionally coming out to spend time with Amy or other people. I certainly don't think it canonises Sonic Boom into the game's continuity.

Tangle is the big one really. I mean, a comic exclusive character getting mentioned in a mainline Sonic game? I mean I guess that mobile game with Tangle and Whisper is what broke the ice, and yes, Ian Flynn is writing, but presumably all of Flynn's writing had to get approved by Sonic Team themselves? Honestly, I think this is a pretty big deal. Whether it amounts to anything in the future, I guess we'll have to wait and see. If Tangle was included as even just an NPC, they'd have to model her, animate her, choose a VA for her etc, which is obviously a lot more work than just referencing her. Still, does make questions about the game continuity. I think it is obvious that the IDW books aren't canon, and I doubt Sonic team would make them canon, especially when I imagine they aren't easy to come by in Japan. Still though, the possibilities... and hopefully it means my girl Whisper isn't far behind. Can't have one without the other if you ask me.

Honestly, this whole thing makes me hope Frontiers 2 or whatever the next game is is a bit like Adventure 1, set somewhere with actual NPCs to talk to, a setting that lets Sonic's friends make cameos in some capacity and lets Ian do stuff with them. I'm excited for the future.

If anything while not all the comics may be canon name dropping like that for the sake of it at least seems the characters from idw are canon at least to the universe and could open the door to them being in future games in someway though at first most likely npcs

[Fyrwudz]

I just finished the game today, I'll post more general thoughts in one of the other threads but discussion of the Story warrants its own attention. I have... mixed feelings about the story. I think I would generally have one comment: I appreciate the ambition, but not necessarily the execution.

I have wanted Sonic games to return to the Adventure-era levels of storytelling since that was essentially killed off Post-06. I know that some of the Adventure-era complexity has a danger of falling flat, or being too cheesy, but I appreciate it far far more compared to the past decade's offerings. So it's great to see the ambition back, and I really hope story continues to be a focus as much as it has been in Frontiers.

But, let's get down to the specific things that did bother me. First and foremost, we now have an additional (extinct) alien race, who are never even named, sort of surgically grafted onto the backstory of Adventure 1. I... don't know if I like this. The resemblance of the aliens to Chaos is clear, as confirmed in the Egg Logs, but I'm not sure then what this does to the story of Adventure 1 (which I love far more). Chaos is supposed to be a mutated chao, right? What happened to that? I also don't like the idea of the Chaos Emeralds being from Space and the Master Emerald being native to Mobius. It feels like quite a significant perturbation to the series' lore, but it isn't even executed all that well.

For the magnitude of the things revealed (or hinted at) in the story, there is too little explicit confirmation or exploration for my liking. It's vaguely hinted that the surviving aliens took the Chaos Emeralds to the Master Emerald, but it is never explained if Chaos is one of these aliens. Is Chaos a God of Destruction mutated chao, or one of the remnants of this civilisation (which also implies the other aliens would have been able to absorb the power of the emeralds)? We're never really shown the connection and it feels... unsatisfying. If we're going to have to accept that the Chaos Emeralds are from Space and that the main antagonist of Sonic Adventure is now an alien, then I would have appreciated a lot more in terms of cutscenes and actual detail, as opposed to things vaguely hinted at.

As for the ancients themselves, I thought the story did a good job at detailing their collapse and gradually unveiling that they were wiped out. However, I don't think having all of this exposition revealed on Rhea Island was a great move from a gameplay perspective. Wouldn't it have been better to parcel out those bits of story? Also, weren't we told that the "zap" symbol had a specific meaning in the game and we'd find out what it is? Correct me if I'm wrong, but... we didn't?

I am pretty unhappy about "The End". We spend a whole game being told that the ancients were wiped out, but we never get to find out what this being actually is. The lack of explanation in regards to this was really disappointing. After 4 fantastic boss fights, I was expecting a really cool reveal of what the Big Bad actually was and instead we get... a big purple moon. We are never told what it's intentions are, we never see the "face" of the villain, and it's never explained why it was at war with the ancients in the first place. Hell, even having the Black Arms at war with the ancients of the Emeralds would have been more satisfying than this.

The father/daughter dynamic between Eggman and Sage. I'm leaning towards not being a fan of this. I don't need Eggman to be a "father" to be a fleshed-out character. It just feels a bit... much for me. Also just generally not a fan of Sage, I don't think she's all that interesting.

All in all though, I think there is still a good amount of detail here, particularly in the interactions between Sonic and his friends. Tonally, it's very good, and perhaps even too melancholic at times. I really appreciate that the story attempted some darker aspects, and don't get me wrong there is a good amount of detailed storytelling in the game, but IMO just not enough of it to pull off some of the wilder revelations. I'm not sure I appreciate a new backstory for Chaos and the Emeralds, especially one as anemically-told as in Frontiers, but I am heartened that the series no longer considers the Adventure-era as persona non grata when it comes to storytelling. There is a good story in here, but it's needing more meat on the bones of it. Some of the reaches it makes don't gel with me, but at least they're trying. Overall, a decent first attempt at rebooting a more story-driven franchise.

EDIT: Didn't realise until after posting that there is more to The End in Hard mode (a bit disappointing as I wouldn't have known if I hadn't searched for this) - think they should have transplanted most of this into Normal Mode as it's a shame many people will unwittingly miss out on The End's monologue, which is probably the best insight we get into this entity.

 

[StaticMania]

47 minutes ago, Fyrwudz said:

Chaos is supposed to be a mutated chao, right? What happened to that?

Nothing.

[juiceDpunk983]

Anyone seen this video? I knew that originally you fight Giganto there. There was an old leak ages ago saying you fight the first Titan in a Forrest. I had a feeling the last island was also originally on the first island. So now I really do wonder what the final boss would've been like.

[Kuzu]

So Windii finally got around to translating the cutscenes from the Japanese script. 

 

 

[StaticMania]

First Sage & Eggman cutscene:

Eggman: Keep an eye on that Sonic guy.

Sage: Ok.

Eggman: I hate that Sonic guy.

Sage: Ok.

Eggman: I'm counting on you.

Sage: Ok.

---

Amazing.

[ZinogreVolt]

2 hours ago, Kuzu said:

So Windii finally got around to translating the cutscenes from the Japanese script. 

It got completely butchered. Having Kishimoto do only the main story while someone else translated the side story/Egg Memo content more faithfully means there's a ton of inconsistencies to be found. Never mind the fact that dialogue has almost no sense of character or flow compared to the older Japanese script. I know his heart was probably in the right place, but Kishimoto really shouldn't have done what he did to Flynn's writing. 

The only bit that got a chuckle out of me was this exchange:

Sonic: "Yeah! Each of us is different. I'm better than you in some ways, less than you in others..."

Tails: "And I'm faster underwater."

Sonic: "Haha...true."

It was also one of the only times in the whole thing that the Japanese dialogue actually matched the body language.

 

[Diogenes]

I wouldn't say it's butchered (though I also wouldn't say there's all that much to be butchered...), but it definitely makes some odd choices. A lot of it is a pretty close match for the English script, or even almost verbatim. Some scenes are changed in kind of arbitrary ways; not necessarily worse, but it's not always clear why they chose to change it like this. And then there's a few where they just completely changed the whole meaning? Like the conclusion to Knuckles' arc just has him rededicating himself to his duties and understanding the history of his people, which is like the complete opposite of the English script's "get out of the house and play with your friends sometimes" angle, and really doesn't feel like it matches the animation at all. And the Sage and Eggman stuff has a whole different vibe, more focus on Sage growing from a thing into a person and learning to believe you can beat the odds, without as much of the familial stuff. That only really comes in explicitly, IIRC, with her "dying" words and post-credits revival. I don't think that's an inherently wrong way of handling the story, hitting you with the depth of it in the last moment, but there's definitely some awkward writing around it in earlier scenes. Like the one where she saves him from some helicopters and he praises her, he just babbles some irrelevant nonsense about how he's starting to enjoy being plugged into the internet instead. Even if they didn't want him to start going full dad yet, they could've at least said something relevant? Like have him still praise her, but spin it as him praising his own genius, while still having it act as a catalyst for her wanting that father/daughter relationship? It's not like they cut that dynamic, it gets there in the end, so a little setup wouldn't hurt.

I feel like Amy comes off a bit better, though. It's not trying to pound this vague, unfocused "love" idea into your head in every scene. It actually stretches out the reveal that the koco she's trying to reunite were lovers rather than that being explicit from the start, which makes it feel more like she stumbles into something that has her questioning her feelings and relationship with Sonic, rather than her just sticking her nose into a Love issue because she is the character who cares about Love. And it ends more like she's starting a journey of self improvement and self discovery for the sake of love rather than the vague "sharing love with the world" or whatever.

It also says that the Ancients only sealed part of The End and the part that talks to Sonic (and the others while he's bluescreened) is trying to reunite with its missing half which, I think works a little better? Makes it feel more like an undefeatable force, and like, if you're in cyberjail why are you out here talking.

[Kuzu]

Its just weird overall, especially since the English script is the original this time around.

But I have read that the English script was a bit too complicated to translate, and Kishimoto isn't an official translator, so the result is this weird ass dialogue that doesn't at all match what the English script is doing. And lot of is extremely and very literal. 

[StaticMania]

I agree with the Amy stuff for the most part, but a lot of it is very basic overall...

I don't think I really tackled Amy's development in the character thread, but since she's also kind of restarting...it make sense that seeing some kind of tragic love story is the catalyst for her gaining some emotional maturity.

It still doesn't work with the scenes, I feel like this kind of thing could've been worked out a bit more so there wasn't a disconnect.

[Sega DogTagz]

4 hours ago, Kuzu said:

But I have read that the English script was a bit too complicated to translate

 

Being complicated isn't the issue here.

Is it really that hard to find someone well verse'd in both languages and both cultures? I feel like I could take a field trip to Seattle and find more than a handful of guys that I could pay to sign an NDA and translate a script for me. Shoot, Sonic Team has offices in San Fran. Your telling me no one in that complex has enough of a grasp of both sides that you can't get a 1-to-1 translation done? That makes no sense. Its statistically impossible.

 

This wasn't a translation issue. This was someone, somewhere re-making the wheel into something they thought would hit better for the JPN market.

 

The funny thing is, as we all sit there looking sideways at the end result, kids in Japan have probably been doing the same thing to the English cuts the last dozen years lol.

[Kuzu]

4 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Being complicated isn't the issue here.

Is it really that hard to find someone well verse'd in both languages and both cultures? 

Yes. There's a certain level of qualifications and fact checking that needs to be accounted for.

There's also fact that because there's not always equivalent phrases between two languages that directly correlate with each other.

[Sega DogTagz]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

Yes. There's a certain level of qualifications and fact checking that needs to be accounted for.

There's also fact that because there's not always equivalent phrases between two languages that directly correlate with each other.

 

I get that, but complexity and difficulty in translation is a shoddy excuse when you can take a 5 min field trip to ANY west coast military base and find more than a few dudes who's parents were stationed back and forth between the two countries for his entire childhood and would be happy to take on a side hustle for a few weeks. There are kids that go to school for language arts. You can't pick up a post-grad somewhere?

There may not be an exact equivalent between some phrases, but not so much so that the entire intent should be lost in translation. They change the conversation entirely in some of those cut-scenes. Thats intentional.

[ZinogreVolt]

Regardless of translation difficulty, they could at least keep things as a consistent read that matches the body movements. It doesn't need to be 1-to-1, but it needs to be a lot better than whatever's going on here. 

[Wraith]

The game's bodily movements don't even always match the cutscenes in the english version. Sonic and Knuckles constantly make faces at eachother and smirk like there's supposed to be some kind of banter going on when they're having a normal, exposition heavy conversation.

[Speedi]

3 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

I get that, but complexity and difficulty in translation is a shoddy excuse when you can take a 5 min field trip to ANY west coast military base and find more than a few dudes who's parents were stationed back and forth between the two countries for his entire childhood and would be happy to take on a side hustle for a few weeks. There are kids that go to school for language arts. You can't pick up a post-grad somewhere?

There may not be an exact equivalent between some phrases, but not so much so that the entire intent should be lost in translation. They change the conversation entirely in some of those cut-scenes. Thats intentional.

Yeah, he pretty much admitted from before release that things were going to be this way. It wasn't really a language barrier issue as far as I can tell. But I don't blame anyone that forgot about this lol I did too. I'm definitely not a fan of these kinds of translations, though.

[StaticMania]

1 hour ago, Wraith said:

The game's bodily movements don't even always match the cutscenes in the english version. Sonic and Knuckles constantly make faces at eachother and smirk like there's supposed to be some kind of banter going on when they're having a normal, exposition heavy conversation.

Yes, but it matches even less.

It at least fits the vibe of the conversations in English, it's just awkward.

[Razule]

Seems like less of a translation issue, and more that Kishimoto did it himself instead of a professional writer.

[Wraith]

2 hours ago, StaticMania said:

Yes, but it matches even less.

It at least fits the vibe of the conversations in English, it's just awkward.

It doesn't, though. If the vibe of the conversation is straightfoward it doesn't make sense for them to be making faces at eachother.

[StaticMania]

It's weird, because there's not usually a dynamic established when Sonic characters are interacting.

It's very anime, but not in a way that makes sense.

Sonic giving a snide/sarcastic look when poking fun at Knuckles always finding trouble is fine, the look they do at the end of the cutscene just comes out of nowhere because despite their "friendly rivalry" they weren't really cutting jibs.

[LegoFedora]

On 12/3/2022 at 7:36 PM, Kuzu said:

So Windii finally got around to translating the cutscenes from the Japanese script. 

These are so weird to watch. Some of these sound really unfitting and awkward, but some of these flow so much better than what we got in the West imo (mainly, the very first cutscene with Sonic waking up on Starfall and speaking with Sage.)

Hopefully the next game gets a better japanese translation, or they go back to writing the script and Ian stays to translate it.

[Ultimate Victory 64]

Knuckles wanting to know about his tribes history kinda doesn't work for me cause it goes against his SA1 ending where its best for him to not learn about it