New Story Details, Locations, and Release Date in Sonic Frontiers' Gamescom Trailer

Posted By: followmyrainbow

Looks pretty good but TBH I’m a little sick of remakes of previous levels, it’s just been done to death now.

Also excuse YOU @GX -The Spindash- but Chao >>>>> Koco

50 minutes ago, LegoFedora said:

Sonic needs to stop celebrating history and start making it again

That's what the goal of the open-zone is, to lay a new gameplay foundation for future titles.

9 hours ago, MightyGems said:

The real question I must ask is...

Why exactly are we not so thrilled about Frontiers using the same level designs form past games again? I can see it can be lazy, especially compared to Mania perhaps, but what does make Frontiers' case any worse?

Remember, I do not plan to defend the level design in Frontiers if this keeps up, and I am not really defending it now. I just want to get a clear understanding of things if that is okay.

Its one of the laziest design choices to have in a platformer. Especially in one that's claiming to be the next big thing in the franchise. Not that hard to get IMO. When I play a brand new game, I expect an original experience. Not rehashed content from over ten years ago. Only reason I can give Generations and Mania a pass is because they were games meant to celebrate the series past, but still managed to make the stages feel brand new. Yes some segments were reused, but the vast majority of the stage was original and introduced new stage elements to keep things fresh. Frontiers doesn't even do that so far.

I think it is extremely unlikely that stage layout reuse is going to be any kind of major issue in the game. Calling Sky Stanktuary there "Windmill Isle act 2" is already a bit of a stretch given how comparatively-similar the tutorial stage is. It's weird, sure, but the idea that it's a widespread thing across what will potentially be around fifty stages seems silly to me.

The theme of this game seems to be things making a worse first impression than they deserve, so I'm chalking it up to that.

On 8/25/2022 at 6:31 AM, followmyrainbow said:

Looks pretty good but TBH I’m a little sick of remakes of previous levels, it’s just been done to death now.

Also excuse YOU @GX -The Spindash- but Chao >>>>> Koco

NEVER! I will not submit to you philistines, you will respect my wonderful rock son.

5 hours ago, Shaddy Zaphod said:

The theme of this game seems to be things making a worse first impression than they deserve, so I'm chalking it up to that.

Pretty much. While some people who haven't played the game tend to stew on it, we've seen more and more of people who actually played the game enjoy.

It bears repeating, but the marketing for Frontiers as a whole has been bog standard and just befuddling from the very first video we ever saw.

And consequently, it hasn't shown off the game's best points as much as the actual demos seem to be.

17 hours ago, Razule said:

That's what the goal of the open-zone is, to lay a new gameplay foundation for future titles.

Then commit to it properly. Don't go half-in, half-out and continue to use the past as a crutch.

12 minutes ago, Scar said:

Then commit to it properly. Don't go half-in, half-out and continue to use the past as a crutch.

Seems to me like they are going far into it. It just sucks the most familiar part of the game looks so tacked on.

To summarize the following impressions of the game in a few words: It will probably be fun enough to play, but it's not really a Sonic game.

I've been seeing a lot of people speculate that SEGA is keeping the exciting things a secret for people to discover while playing, but this is a very bad marketing idea. You need a hook in your marketing material in order to get people to play and find those exciting parts. My understanding with marketing in general is that companies always show you the best they have to offer in marketing (sometimes better than the game can actually offer). If the marketing is underwhelming, I have little hope for the game. Our best bet is if we assume SEGA is terribly incompetent at marketing and Sonic Team good at making games, but there isn't a good track record for that.

My impression is that is may be a fun game gameplay-wise. It will decent as an Action JRPG, but not great as a Sonic game. The environments and even the combat gameplay are very unfitting for Sonic's identity and it looks like they're trying to imitate big budget games in hopes that it will sell to a bigger audience. I wish they could focus on giving Sonic a unique style to distinguish it from other games instead of blending in with the crowd of much better games in other genres.

The game looks very unpolished. The model popping even in the latest trailer gives me the impression that this game could benefit from another year of development. I personally don't mind graphical mistakes like that if the game is fun, but I feel like this lack of polish most likely extends to all other aspects of the game as well.

The cyberspace levels could make the game good, but the few seconds they've shown so far give me the impression that they're short, overly-simplified versions of real Sonic stage designs. I wish they would stop adding 2D sections to their 3D games, it's like they have no confidence that they can do proper 3D level design and the games often end up being short simple 3D tracks connecting long 2D platforming sections. My favorite 3D Sonic games were the ones without 2D sections.

Speaking of 3D level design, the open zone areas look pretty amateurish. Some people say that Sonic games have always had scattered bits of rails and platforms in the air but that's not really true. Things in the air were always cohesively connected to things or at least close enough to large grounded structures to make them not look out of place.

That's my impressions of Sonic Frontiers. I'll probably get it a few months or a year after it launches. I don't really want to reward bad behavior launch day sales.