Knuckles Investigates a Precursor Civilization in Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence

This animation sent me shivers down my spine.i swear that for a moment I felt my 8 yo self playing Sonic Adventure for the very first time.

this is really well done and I can see how Sega is trying to “merge” all sonic media. I guess Knuckles TV show on Paramount plus will deal with Ancient Echidna’s lore and maybe even Chaos. 
 

the Nights reference is also pretty sweet and I hope this means something for the continuation of the franchise. 
 

what I’m hoping for now is a Frontiers DLC  with our echidna as a playble character.  they could easily find a way to tell a side story with him involved, maybe after he is rescued by Sonic he finds a way to regain his physical form and goes on a mission of sorts (maybe involving the master emeralds again?).

Going into this short, I kinda expected another Rise of the Wisps or TSR: Overdrive type of short. And I came out with my expectations shattered!

Like, it was done in sort of an anime style, way better than Sonic X's at that! Not just the action, but everything else too! And it felt like I took a step back to the early 2000's when I grew up watching Sonic X every Saturday. Even 2006 after getting introduced to that years later. 'Cause that was the Knuckles I grew up with & I'm glad to see him back in the mainline series (could count Forces, but I don't know if I should). Needless to say, lots of tears of joy were shed after watching it multiple times!

And even if I never got to play the Adventure games to understand the lore. I'm glad this short gives a brief summary of what happened, with the Perfect Chaos sound at the end. While teasing something else about the Emeralds' origins.

Still, I loved it! Hands-down the BEST Sonic promo animation! Hopefully it does get included in Frontiers just for convenience sake, and the comic too.

42 minutes ago, SonicWind said:

I pre-ordered Frontiers. Yeah, I know you shouldn't do that, but this short-- this short right here-- convinced me I made the right decision. Ian, Tyson, and everyone else involved did a damn good job here

100% Agreed!

I personally prefer the way  they were doing the animations before, with mute characters. I dont miss the adventure-esque voiceovers at all.

8 minutes ago, Ricochet said:

I personally prefer the way  they were doing the animations before, with mute characters. I dont miss the adventure-esque voiceovers at all.

This doesn't make sense...

4 minutes ago, StaticMania said:

This doesn't make sense...

My bad. I meant the characters's monologues.

Honestly, the artstyle is so grand, that I wouldn't mind game cutscenes done in this style if they can't do hi-def CGI ones. 

Tee has confirmed he did the music from 0:00 to 3:24

His music is always great.

Miguel Montanez was the storyboard artist on this cartoon

Guys, my heart did the sickest backflip when I realized we were getting a Tyson Hesse Knuckles action scene. 

You should have seen it. The judges gave it a 10.

That was actually a great prologue, there's world building, knuckles' voice actor improved a lot since TSR, Chao, seeing Knuckles fighting was awesome. As always the animated shorts are a great piece of additional content, and this one in particular delivered a good opening to the game.

That was a phenomenal prologue and wonderfully animated. 

The Callbacks and references to the other games (and franchises) was lovely, but I’ll echo the sentiment that I didn’t really expect to see any ties to other games or furthering the history on something like the emeralds or ancient races and so forth.

If they follow through with this… then what a mystery hook indeed. (Saying that the shadow mystery resolution was one I was excited about and that was largely mishandled). Hopefully they’ll find a nice balance story wise to not give too much but have it feel satisfying. 

I really hope this short is tucked away somewhere on the physical disk as well, as it would be a shame to survive only in the depths of online space.

Holy fuckles. 21 years. It's been 21 years since anything interesting with Knuckles has happened in a Sonic game. Sweet Chaos, I missed you Knuckles.

Dude... this... THIS!! This is what inspires me to get my feet into digital art and get into comic book artistry myself, like holy crap my jaw hit the floor, picked it up, re-set my jaw and dropped again. The lines, the details, the colors, the FLIPPIN' ENVIRONMENTS!!!

Though can someone help me out here, was Tyson responsible for the entire looks of the characters or also the backgrounds? I figured that character and back drop are 2 separate artists no?

As for the whole, great pacing and storytelling, it's like seeing a comic book short movie. Intriguing lore implications, Knuckles acting, and being a total badass and packing the punch to back it up too. This prologue does an amazing job to get me hyped to play the actual game. Yes, it will be different, but I feel like they nailed everything a prologue story should do to entice.

Finally, character depth, finally good writing, new lore connecting to the old lore. This is better than anything Sega did in terms of storytelling since Unleashed

I wish Sonic Prime was animated like that

Posted By: Greatsong1

Man what I would do for some kind of Sonic show in this animation, loved this!Knuckles!!!

Ken Pontac and Warren Graff are very very far away, congratulations!!...
This is the true return of "Shônen Sonic"!!...
The short is perfect... even if I can't wait to watch it with Knuckles' original Japanese voice that I love so much!!...

Posted By: Sk72o

This makes me want a Knuckles anime like solo film.

I also would love a 3D Sonic game which has these animated shorts as the cutscenes.

Posted By: Metal

Great short. Very cool to tie things to SA1 so directly and to show Knuckles being Knuckles on a day where no one else is there to bother him. Kind of funny to see all the Chao on Angel Island since even though logically that would be their natural habitat, I don’t think they’ve ever been depicted there.

However it gives me some pretty big reservations about where the game’s plot is going now. Even if it is handled well, I don’t really want an origin story for the Chaos Emeralds. In my opinion sometimes it’s better to just let things exist without giving them backstory. I respect Ian Flynn and expect the plot to be good based on that, but I worry that unraveling this thread (if indeed that’s where the plot goes) is going to be bad for the series as a whole even if it’s good in the moment. I hope very much that I’m wrong and just overly pessimistic about Frontiers as usual though.

Sonic is truly for teenage boys again...

That makes the series feel very mature.

I didn't care for Sonic Adventure 2's plot, and have always been averse to those that wanted a return to the supposedly "serious" stories. In my head that kind of thinking led to the awful plots of Shadow, '06 and Forces.

This though? I loved it. Serious but not try-hard. Built on old ideas. Let a character actually be a character rather than a prop. Fight scene was well done and actually brought a smile to my face. I got no complaints. Tyson Hesse has consistently knocked it out of the park with these shorts.

1 minute ago, Covskin said:

In my head that kind of thinking led to the awful plots of Shadow, '06 and Forces.

"Thinking?"

No, these were just terribly written stories.

Which, excluding Forces, were written in the midst of the series' then current trend that didn't end until 2009, they can't "recapture" a style of writing they were still doing.

This was bittersweet to watch.

On the one hand, I loved this.  I loved almost everything about it.  I loved seeing a take on Knuckles who wasn't just comedy fodder, I loved seeing him being tough without being a grouch, I loved seeing the Chao, I loved seeing Sky Sanctuary.  For a little over seven minutes, it was like I'd fallen back in time to that time before Sonic stories became obnoxiously tryhard and then obnoxiously nonchalant, or in essence, like the Adventure era had never ended.  And if looked at in a certain way, a lot about Sonic Frontiers is like that.

On the other hand, though, getting little tastes of what has been mostly lost is just upsetting if we don't get more.  I know that the point of this short was to get me excited to play Sonic Frontiers, and I guess I'm interested to see the origins of the Emeralds explored more, but far more than that this short made me wish Knuckles was playable in Sonic Frontiers and makes me resent that he's just going to be one of several people to rescue.

I know many would opine that I am beating a dead horse about the lack of other playable characters in the Sonic series, but to blunt, this is what SEGA deserves.  I'm not pretending they owe anyone anything but if they're going to keep bombarding us with reminders of the Adventure era then they should expect people who are into that to scrutinize them more and look for an in.  It's exactly the same situation with momentum physics; when they shove Classic Sonic, the character, and Green Hill Zone motifs into almost everything, they deserve the more refined glare of Classic Sonic fans who want to be given some substance to go with that style.

It does kind of suck to see Knuckles be cool, but not actually be able to use him.

This was an excellent short, and my favorite out of the ones they’ve released which is saying something because I really enjoyed the ones for Mania. I really like getting a properly voice acted one too, and I’m glad to see Knuckles being brought into this was accidental and not tied to another stealing the Master Emerald plot or just the Master Emerald being ignored entirely.

I still miss Travis Willingham in the role, but the new guy has definitely improved from TSR which just goes to show the better voice direction we’re getting now. I’m looking forward to seeing how the plot turns out in Frontiers. I have a lot of faith in Flynn to deliver the best Sonic story in quite some time.