New Sonic Frontiers Footage Shows Old Moves in a New Context

1 hour ago, MightyGems said:

Hope you don't mind me making this, but I felt it should be its own topic, as the other topic I felt was about the teaser. So here is a separate thread to post impressions on when this comes out if that is okay.

Yeah, that's fine.

Good to know.

Anyway, there is less than one hour before the full video debuts on Youtube. Any of you guys ready for this?

7 minutes of a footage is definitely a good length for a mix of gameplay and some potential story beats.

4 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

7 minutes of a footage is definitely a good length for a mix of gameplay and some potential story beats.

Considering this is directly a gameplay video, I wouldn't hold your breath about story beats

Even if it's only gameplay, we should all hear at least a little character chatter from Sonic or someone talking to him. Talking about his current objective 

I'd like to see a small cutscene snippet if I'm being honest. I assume we'll get the main theme later in the month. 

Surprised they did not show off combat, but the game looks beautiful! It is very nice, and so is the music. I love the mysterious feeling from the tone of what we saw. Can't wait for more news here. What do you all think? I also like that you could run along hills.

I can't believe Sonic Team found a way to automate an open world by placing rails everywhere. Clearly, they are giving it their all.

Well. At least the formula will probably change by next game, right?

It looks…intriguing, and decent. It’s certainly very different compared to previous 3D Sonic games, which can be a good thing! It’s nice to see Sonic Team do something different for a change and maybe, just maybe, give Sonic his Breath of the Wild moment! 
 

After watching IGN’s gameplay footage I’m still not entirely convinced it will be amazing, maybe decent as mentioned before. Intriguing, decent, yeah. The environments and music are really nice! Gameplay seems…ok I guess? A bit janky though. Not sure I like the floaty grind rails in the sky very much either. 
 

Wish we could know more about the story but I reckon we’ll get a story trailer soon enough. I’m curious since it’s written by Ian Flynn this time, so should be really good! 

This was meh...

I'll start with positives:

• Music was great
• I am glad that it is not just traversing and there is some platforming
• Overall it is pretty

Negatives:

• Everything looks wooden/robotic. And those pop ins of platforms were awful
• It is definitely clear that Sonic's cartoon appearance looks off in hyper realistic environment. The environment needs to lean into more cartoon environment, they definitely need more color in it
• The world is too empty
• I don't know, perhaps it was the player's play style, but why is Sonic so slow? He is literally the fastest thing alive, it was awful to see him glide those rails so slowly
• Those puzzles look boring and awful. That tile puzzle

It feels like more tech demo than AAA game. I hope they will delay it by a bit

Kinda feels more like a tutorial than an actual... thing. You don't show off your newest game with no amazing trailer but a guy in an office casually doing bits and pieces. Just no.

The game looks fine so far, but there was nothing particularly gripping about this trailer.

It leaves room for optimism as much as it leaves room for pessimism.

Wish we could've gotten to see how more of the combat and higher speed ventures factor into the game and it still looks a bit rough around the edges.

On the other hand, it does seem to be making interesting use of the speed, and it seems that in some shape or form, the parkour system might be back, which is quite intriguing itself.

I imagine what we saw was just a small section of the whole world, na maybe with the skill treee we can unlock moves like the bounce bracelet and such, I am still leaning on the positive side of things, As of now I can say that I am cautiously optimistic.

This kind of got me interested again actually. I'm still very less than enthusiastic about the focus on combat from yesterday's video so dunno if I'm excited yet, but I can definitely see myself having a lot of fun running around the world with Sonic's Unleashed moveset, seeing how I can interact with the environment and finding small puzzles to solve. I still wish they attempted something resembling rolling momentum but this looks okay too.

1 minute ago, FirePheonix said:

I imagine what we saw was just a small section of the whole world, na maybe with the skill treee we can unlock moves like the bounce bracelet and such, I am still leaning on the positive side of things, As of now I can say that I am cautiously optimistic.

We shouldn't have to level up Sonic to level 69 before the game gets interesting.

Meh. Looks... aggressively fine. Graphics look good, platforming okay, puzzles look like a snoozefest. I sure hope this isn't it, as it's not helping my "Breath of the Wild: Walmart Edition" first impressions one bit. (Or "discount Shadow of the Colossus," if you so prefer.)

Gameplay it doesn't look that bad. Controls seem a little clunky and Forces/LW-esque but there's proper acceleration in Sonic's movement. Doing tricks, big leaps with jump dashes, and the slower run speed + nerfed boost seems pretty nice.

HORRIBLE optimization though. Holy fucking shit, the game is running like trash. Stuff spawning just yards ahead of you, LOD models loading in just feet from you, the framerate constantly dipping. If this is on PS5/SeriesX then the performance is enough to laugh out of the room. Wow. lmao

It was pretty alright in my opinion. It did feel like that the primary focus was showing off the world and exploration aspects, as opposed to any of the main action, and personally, I don't think that was the best call of action (Yesterday's teaser showed both and that was better).

That said, I also feel like this has potential. Taking the boost formula, adapting it for a new style, and trying new ideas for it is definitely a nice step in the right direction, compared to the usual scrap everything, and do everything from absolute scratch yet again. 

The puzzle elements were a nice thing to see, and I feel like Sonic's speed in particular fits well for an open world setting. 

It's also neat enough to see them working in not just boost elements, but Lost World aspects as well. You can clearly see that there was some inspiration taking from Sonic's different speeds in LW, along with the Parkour system seemingly having a place with the climbing mechanics (You can clearly see Sonic's wall running animation from LW for a few seconds). 

The music and world itself is pretty nice, and I can't wait to see some of the other environments as well. There is points where it did look kinda blah (The pop in really needs adjusting, especially for PS5, Series X, and PC). 

That said, the level of automation here was pretty concerning. I'm usually more tolerate of that in this series, compared to most, but even I was kinda scratching my head about what exactly sections needed to be on rails.

Why did Sonic need a boost pad to scale a wall? Why does he need empty rails to grind on? Why is there springs scattered everywhere? 

If it's just a tutorial thing, then sure - but I sincerely hope this doesn't carry over to the rest of the game. There's a lot of points where I wondered why can't the player start a boost to scale this wall? Or why doesn't the rails have any hazards to avoid?

To me, I feel like part of the problem would be helped by two additional aspects - the first being the Light Speed Dash. There was a ton of times where there were these big trails of rings and I thought "why do I have to rely on a spring instead of doing a light speed dash myself?" 

The dash would be such a small addition but make a world of difference, forcing you to be on your toes and reactive to your environment instead of a spring doing it. I actually thought it'd be used at one point until a random spring suddenly appeared.

I'd also say with the new combat focus, it's time to bite the bullet and add a grind rail attack. Like how in games like Ratchet & Clank, you need to attack to flip switches, deal with certain obstacles, etc - it'd add a new factor to rail grinds that forces you to pay attention. Hell, throw in broken rails too that force you to hop over them.

So yeah, mixed impressions. I'm still pretty intriqued though.

The tricks are also thing that annoys me, why is it there? All the flair and style that accompanied them have been sucked dry, no sound cues or excited sonic voice, you don’t seem to get extra height from it, it’s really weird if it just serves no purpose AND are way less cool.

i can’t believe they used 14 year old animations as a base and made them worse?

Looks alright. I'll probably want to play it to feel how Sonic controls and mess around with the open world, but this doesn't look like it'll be a favorite for me. Wall running looks neat, though. 

Sonic's natural running speed appears to be pretty slow when not Boosting.

The animations for tricking are pretty jank.

Why are there so many rails?

Sonic can do parkour.

It looks pretty boring and automated, how disappointing.

Spin dash, multiple playable characters and Chao Garden.

6 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

Sonic's natural running speed appears to be pretty slow when not Boosting.

I don't really see an issue with that, frankly - it's clearly meant to be a situation where you can have Sonic kept a lower speed for certain situations, and then choose to boost for higher speeds.

If you were constantly running at boost-speeds, or even the regular speeds Sonic could hit in Forces/Gens/Unleashed/whatever - it would be utterly infuriating trying to do any kind of combat sequence, or even bare basic platforming. Hell, I'd argue that anytime you needed some really particularly precise platforming in previous games was when Sonic's speed levels could drag to a screeching halt. Any kind of precision would just feel clunky.

Just seems to me to be smart implementation of the speed mechanics from Lost World - keep Sonic down to a simpler pace for the times you need to do some platforming or combat, allow him to boost up to regular speeds for wall-climbing, running around the overworld, speed-based platforming/sequences, etc. If this game wanted to use platforming as a regular event within the overworld, having Sonic constantly at his regular speed in past games would just be beyond frustrating. 

I will say - if they do go this route, I hope that they do take the LW route and have the boost rerouted to a shoulder button. I don't think it'd be particularly good if it was still like square or something on a controller.

It was just an observation, though since Sonic's speed isn't actually effected by the terrain...

It could stand to be a "bit" faster on level ground.