Sonic Frontiers - Teaser Trailer

[Chika Takami]

1 hour ago, Kuzu said:

RIP to Cream fans though, y'all are starving. 

We really are  I've been coping by listening to Follow Me and buying Cream merch off Amazon.

[Multikaris]

2 hours ago, CertifiedNobody said:

But how is Metal Sonic being Neo Metal/Metal Overlord "breaking and simplifying the story"? And his transformation is absolutely consistent considering he did the same thing back in Knuckles' Chaotix. Besides, the classic games had numerous examples of Sonic-based robots evolving with each version.

The series isn't about Blaze. Sometimes she'll be the central focus and sometimes she won't. Besides, 06 isn't really a good example to use as to how the franchise typically is or how they treat their characters. And yeah, what a shock that they'd give a rival battle to the hedgehog rival that's more recognizable and would have a more interesting boss fight. If we're going to make that complaint, then why didn't they give Knuckles the classic rival battle instead of Metal Sonic? And tell me why Blaze would be fighting in a war in another universe that she isn't even aware of?

I'm not going to reiterate my point that it's hard to balance Knuckles' roles as Guardian and hero, but either way, they didn't "strip Knuckles of everything that made him interesting to justify keeping him around" that's a massive exaggeration of not talking about the Master Emerald for a game.

Considering how these are the best examples of how it's SEGA rather than Pontaff that are the issue, I'm not too worried about the franchise's future.

Silver and Knuckles’s reasons to fight are stated in the comics, but given zero resolution in the game. 

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, Chika Takami said:

We really are  I've been coping by listening to Follow Me and buying Cream merch off Amazon.

Just gotta stay strong until the Chao Races And Badnik Bases trade releases.

[Multikaris]

9 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

Just gotta stay strong until the Chao Races And Badnik Bases trade releases.

It’s weird how she’s not even mentioned in TSR, unlike the other Chaotix members. Nor is there an Easter egg reference to her. 

[CertifiedNobody]

12 minutes ago, Snowragnarok said:

It’s weird how she’s not even mentioned in TSR, unlike the other Chaotix members. Nor is there an Easter egg reference to her. 

Well, Vector is almost never seen without Espio and Vector, while Cream's friends are often seen without her, so it doesn't need explaining.

[Scritch the Cat]

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but is anyone else really, really concerned that this game, slated to release next year, has no info officially revealed about it this year?  I can only assume based on that, that this game is going to be underwhelming.  Maybe or maybe not bad, but underwhelming, and possibly so unimpressive that seeing it won't build sustainable hype.  Compare that to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which applies a similar design philosophy, and has given us plenty of media and details the year before its release.

[KingMario05]

10 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but is anyone else really, really concerned that this game, slated to release next year, has no info officially revealed about it this year?  I can only assume based on that, that this game is going to be underwhelming.  Maybe or maybe not bad, but underwhelming, and possibly so unimpressive that seeing it won't build sustainable hype.  Compare that to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which applies a similar design philosophy, and has given us plenty of media and details the year before its release.

No, I'm in the same boat as you. We should at LEAST get our first proper trailer and gameplay look before the year is out. Ideally, they wouldn't have bothered revealing it this year and done a quickie Fallout 4-style marketing blitz... but that didn't happen. Ergo, we need to keep the tap running... none of this "months of utter silence" bullshit that they've been doing.

[Multikaris]

2 minutes ago, KingMario05 said:

No, I'm in the same boat as you. We should at LEAST get our first proper trailer and gameplay look before the year is out. Ideally, they wouldn't have bothered revealing it this year and done a quickie Fallout 4-style marketing blitz... but that didn't happen. Ergo, we need to keep the tap running... none of this "months of utter silence" bullshit that they've been doing.

The fandom has really had enough of this silence. It happened with Forces and TSR so far, both of which were underwhelming at best. I remember when there were bigger pre-release campaigns as late as Lost World or even RoL of all games. Is having a prerelease campaign somehow a bad thing nowadays for the franchise? 

[KingMario05]

2 minutes ago, Snowragnarok said:

The fandom has really had enough of this silence. It happened with Forces and TSR so far, both of which were underwhelming at best. I remember when there were bigger pre-release campaigns as late as Lost World or even RoL of all games. Is having a prerelease campaign somehow a bad thing nowadays for the franchise? 

Apparently so, as it indicates that Sega has to spend more than $10 million and a few Tweets to deliver the Sonic game we deserve. L'horreur.

[CertifiedNobody]

31 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but is anyone else really, really concerned that this game, slated to release next year, has no info officially revealed about it this year?  I can only assume based on that, that this game is going to be underwhelming.  Maybe or maybe not bad, but underwhelming, and possibly so unimpressive that seeing it won't build sustainable hype.  Compare that to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which applies a similar design philosophy, and has given us plenty of media and details the year before its release.

No I don't really feel worried about the game. It feels pretty obvious that they're trying to divide up their focus so that it transitions from Colors Ultimate to Origins and then to Rangers, with a bit of time between to avoid the game sales cutting into each other. Rangers would easily overshadow the other two so they're holding off on it for a while.

[Scritch the Cat]

6 minutes ago, Snowragnarok said:

The fandom has really had enough of this silence. It happened with Forces and TSR so far, both of which were underwhelming at best. I remember when there were bigger pre-release campaigns as late as Lost World or even RoL of all games. Is having a prerelease campaign somehow a bad thing nowadays for the franchise? 

 

2 minutes ago, KingMario05 said:

Apparently so, as it indicates that Sega has to spend more than $10 million and a few Tweets to deliver the Sonic game we deserve. L'horreur.

Yeah, that's about the size of it.  Well to be fair, I don't know how much it costs to develop a good Sonic game--though good games of other sorts have been developed for well under $10 million--but it does seem like at this point SEGA is just ashamed of how half-assed Sonic games look, so they're hiding them as long as possible in hopes people won't notice.  In a depressingly cynical way, that makes sense.  The key thing they want to avoid is another debacle like Sonic 06 or Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric, which means they aren't developing things ambitious enough to fall that hard.  Sonic Forces and Team Sonic Racing were little, unimpressive and inconsequential, but they were functional and had too little presence for what problems they did have to make them into pop-culture punching bags.  Sonic haters probably won't even notice these games exist while Sonic fans won't get their hopes up so they also won't be let down.  Or at least that was how they planned, but for those of us who hardly stop paying attention and so see these plans for what they are, it really stinks.  What stinks worse is that they won't go the more positive route of making actually impressive games to salvage their rep.

SEGA has no reason to be as afraid as it is of ambitious Sonic games.  The only real reason most of their past failures happened is because the games weren't finished, and until SEGA fully confronts the fact that their unethical laziness is responsible for ambitious projects failing; not the ambition itself, they won't produce anything great.  They absolutely have the money to throw at this.

14 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

No I don't really feel worried about the game. It feels pretty obvious that they're trying to divide up their focus so that it transitions from Colors Ultimate to Origins and then to Rangers, with a bit of time between to avoid the game sales cutting into each other. Rangers would easily overshadow the other two so they're holding off on it for a while.

Are you sure about that?  Sales cutting into each other could be an issue if the games themselves are released around the same time, but I don't see how sharing some things about Sonic Rangers prevents anyone from buying another Sonic game that's already available.  Getting that info is free.  Consuming it takes a comparably minuscule amount of time out of schedules to the time it takes to play a game.  Moreover it's likely that being enthusiastic about Sonic in general will cause people to buy more Sonic stuff, even if it's not the stuff that made them enthusiastic.

Also, how much fanfare did Sonic Colors Ultimate really get?  If they wanted people to remember it existed instead of it getting lost in another game's shadow, they had me fooled.

[Diogenes]

It's a Sonic game, "concerned" is basically my default state.

I'm not really concerned about not having a proper trailer or anything though. There's no obligation that a game build a bunch of hype well in advance of release, and whether it does or doesn't has basically nothing to do with the game's quality.

[Wraith]

1 hour ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I know I'm beating a dead horse, but is anyone else really, really concerned that this game, slated to release next year, has no info officially revealed about it this year?  I can only assume based on that, that this game is going to be underwhelming.  Maybe or maybe not bad, but underwhelming, and possibly so unimpressive that seeing it won't build sustainable hype.  Compare that to Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which applies a similar design philosophy, and has given us plenty of media and details the year before its release.

Sonic 2022 is likely releasing in November. Pokemon Legends is releasing in January. They might as well be releasing a year apart.

You will start hearing stuff in March-May, like usual.

[CertifiedNobody]

37 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Are you sure about that?  Sales cutting into each other could be an issue if the games themselves are released around the same time, but I don't see how sharing some things about Sonic Rangers prevents anyone from buying another Sonic game that's already available.  Getting that info is free.  Consuming it takes a comparably minuscule amount of time out of schedules to the time it takes to play a game.  Moreover it's likely that being enthusiastic about Sonic in general will cause people to buy more Sonic stuff, even if it's not the stuff that made them enthusiastic.

Also, how much fanfare did Sonic Colors Ultimate really get?  If they wanted people to remember it existed instead of it getting lost in another game's shadow, they had me fooled.

Whether or not it actually does doesn't matter, if it could than SEGA's probably going to avoid making that risk, especially when they're releasing three different games on the same consoles in under a year. Major Sonic fans will obviously get all of them, but the average buyer is hearing about all three at once, they might just save their money for the one they want the most. 

I'd say Colors Ultimate had a great deal of fanfare, seeing as it had numerous gameplay spotlights and an animated miniseries. I saw more promotion for it online than Forces and TSR combined.

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Sonic 2022 is likely releasing in November. Pokemon Legends is releasing in January. They might as well be releasing a year apart.

You will start hearing stuff in March-May, like usual.

Just in time for the movie hype.

[Sega DogTagz]

45 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Are you sure about that?  Sales cutting into each other could be an issue if the games themselves are released around the same time, but I don't see how sharing some things about Sonic Rangers prevents anyone from buying another Sonic game that's already available. 

This is also based more on history than just speculation. Sega rarely overlaps games in terms of anything beyond title reveals. They just don't get in the habit of talking about future releases right before, or on the heels of fresh products out the door.

 

I don't expect much until Origins is out of the way. And the hype for the Sonic movie in April would provide the perfect synergy build for getting people pumped for Rangers info after that.

[Enesephus]

I'm not really concerned about the lack of information just because as far as I can tell, SEGA have pretty much always waited until a Sonic game was within a year of release, and usually only about 6 months away, to even reveal it, let alone start dishing out real information or game footage regarding it. At least, that's been the case since around Unleashed (I know '06 was revealed earlier, but I doubt there was much information on that until the following year, either).

I'm pretty sure the only reason they've started revealing their games sooner is because now production's taking so long they're missing anniversary years, and they feel the need to show us at least something regarding the upcoming game, even if that something's not really anything at all, just so we're not going too many years on end without even an update on the main series.

I'm just gonna wait to see the game and SEGA's marketing for it after its proper reveal before deciding whether I should be super worried about its quality. I definitely wish they'd give us more information sooner, but that's just not how SEGA rolls, apparently.

[Roger_van_der_weide]

And if Sonic Rangers has as much content as Sonic Forces and Team Sonic racing had, then a 2 minute trailer will spoil 95% of the entire game, so that'd be a bad idea.

[Zoomzeta]

Yeah, I'm not concerned about the silence at the moment. For my understanding, that teaser was just meant to tell us that a new game is coming, and it was only made because the game was not in a state to be shown. And I don't expect to hear anything until the Origins collection as well. So...give it the end of the year or the start of the new year.

[CertifiedNobody]

1 hour ago, Roger_van_der_weide said:

And if Sonic Rangers has as much content as Sonic Forces and Team Sonic racing had, then a 2 minute trailer will spoil 95% of the entire game, so that'd be a bad idea.

It's impossible for an open world game to be as short as Forces.

[Scritch the Cat]

19 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

It's impossible for an open world game to be as short as Forces.

Yeah, I reckon it won't be.  Although I do have to wonder how much of the game's length will consist of fetch quests and backtracking.  The thing is, if moving Sonic around is fun enough on its own, I don't think that would matter too much.  In fact, this game could be on the light side but if Sonic's mechanics worked I'd be fine with it taking over as the new mold for the series and future games could iterate on it.

However, that SEGA is throwing Sonic right into this mold after years of the series getting more railed and physically fudged than ever feels weird and worrisome.  In the Boost games, most of the environment you see isn't meant to be interacted with; if you don't hit invisible walls keeping you from going off the beaten path, you get punished for doing so by falling through terrain that has no collision detection.  When deciding instead to make an open-world game, the developers can't get away with that anymore.  They have to account for Sonic being able to go just about anywhere and collide with just about everything.  So while the game has had years to develop, SEGA's developers would have had more practice making such things if they came at if from the formula of the Adventure series.  Such not being the case, I'm more worried about its physics than its length.

[CertifiedNobody]

3 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

Yeah, I reckon it won't be.  Although I do have to wonder how much of the game's length will consist of fetch quests and backtracking.  The thing is, if moving Sonic around is fun enough on its own, I don't think that would matter too much.  In fact, this game could be on the light side but if Sonic's mechanics worked I'd be fine with it taking over as the new mold for the series and future games could iterate on it.

However, that SEGA is throwing Sonic right into this mold after years of the series getting more railed and physically fudged than ever feels weird and worrisome.  In the Boost games, most of the environment you see isn't meant to be interacted with; if you don't hit invisible walls keeping you from going off the beaten path, you get punished for doing so by falling through terrain that has no collision detection.  When deciding instead to make an open-world game, the developers can't get away with that anymore.  They have to account for Sonic being able to go just about anywhere and collide with just about everything.  So while the game has had years to develop, SEGA's developers would have had more practice making such things if they came at if from the formula of the Adventure series.  Such not being the case, I'm more worried about its physics than its length.

It's really impossible to tell if they'll get things right given how much has changed since Forces released

[___]

Of course, it's worth reiterating that the open world thing is still technically a rumor. A leak managed to call the name and one or two details, but a) it could have been a lucky guess based on modern gaming trends, or b) it could have been an earlier proof-of-concept demo that was scrapped or reworked a long while ago (like the "not boost or parkour" concept leaked in 2015 that never materialized). For all we know we're going to get another boost game slapped together in a year's time.

I don't want that to happen, but you have to be prepared.

As for the lack of news, I'm not surprised. Sega are the ones who revealed the Saturn before the 32X came out. They've learned to focus on the current product before going to the next one, even if the current products are tired ports.

Sega won't talk to Rangers until Origins is out.

[Scritch the Cat]

17 minutes ago, Gloved Animal said:

Of course, it's worth reiterating that the open world thing is still technically a rumor. A leak managed to call the name and one or two details, but a) it could have been a lucky guess based on modern gaming trends, or b) it could have been an earlier proof-of-concept demo that was scrapped or reworked a long while ago (like the "not boost or parkour" concept leaked in 2015 that never materialized). For all we know we're going to get another boost game slapped together in a year's time.

I don't want that to happen, but you have to be prepared.

As for the lack of news, I'm not surprised. Sega are the ones who revealed the Saturn before the 32X came out. They've learned to focus on the current product before going to the next one, even if the current products are tired ports.

Sega won't talk to Rangers until Origins is out.

I could be wrong, but it seems to me an open-world game is kind of too big a project to commit to making and then just abandon.  People might be tempted to bring up Sonic Xtreme as an example of SEGA aborting an ambitious Sonic project in the past, but that was back when 3D gaming was still quite new, what all was possible wasn't really well understood and nobody had much experience designing consoles that could do it well.  Some managed to, others crapped out, and it's hardly surprising that a character as fast as Sonic pushed such early hardware past its breaking point.  None of those things are true anymore; we have hardware and engines that are totally capable of doing Sonic-paced games in 3D, even if 3D Sonic hasn't been all that well explored from a design perspective.  The hard part is just filling out the environment, and so again, if SEGA was doing such a thing I have a hard time believing it would just waste that effort.

Also arguably boost Sonic has plateaued.  Sonic Forces was the first boost game that many gamers felt outright let down by, and though many still hold Sonic Generations in high esteem, somehow I doubt SEGA would just do that game again, when in many ways Sonic Forces was already that game again, except with both Sonics playing worse and also an OC.

[___]

5 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I could be wrong, but it seems to me an open-world game is kind of too big a project to commit to making and then just abandon.  People might be tempted to bring up Sonic Xtreme as an example of SEGA aborting an ambitious Sonic project in the past, but that was back when 3D gaming was still quite new, what all was possible wasn't really well understood and nobody had much experience designing consoles that could do it well.  Some managed to, others crapped out, and it's hardly surprising that a character as fast as Sonic pushed such early hardware past its breaking point.  None of those things are true anymore; we have hardware and engines that are totally capable of doing Sonic-paced games in 3D, even if 3D Sonic hasn't been all that well explored from a design perspective.  The hard part is just filling out the environment, and so again, if SEGA was doing such a thing I have a hard time believing it would just waste that effort.

Also arguably boost Sonic has plateaued.  Sonic Forces was the first boost game that many gamers felt outright let down by, and though many still hold Sonic Generations in high esteem, somehow I doubt SEGA would just do that game again, when in many ways Sonic Forces was already that game again, except with both Sonics playing worse and also an OC.

We don't know how big the game was in the leak. Given the early state it probably wasn't BotW sized or anything. I could see a small open world demo being made to test the concept, and if scrapped the assets could be flipped into linear levels.

And I'm certainly not disputing that the boost formula is played out. I was tired of it by Generations. But Sega did say that Forces sold well enough compared to how much they spent on it, so I could see them going back to the well again if they couldn't make anything else work.

 

 

[Enesephus]

Whatever the next game turns out to be (and I am fully prepared for the possibility that this game is actually not open world, I just think it's sounding pretty likely between the early leaks and Izuka's own comments about the game), I honestly do just hope that it's not another boost game, whether they've been working on it for one year or four.

Even setting Forces aside, I just got through replaying Unleashed and, though I do still like the game overall, I'm realizing just how over the boost formula I am. Unleashed's levels are pretty fun, but Sonic's controls are just so freaking bad (maybe they're better in Gens, but I can't really bring myself to play that one again), and the gameplay just feels shallow to me, all spectacle, not much substance. 

The most concerning thing about this game to me so far is, in fact, the mention of "Unleashed/Gens style-levels" from the first couple of leaks, because the thought of trying to control Boost-Sonic in this big open world, trying to engage in combat and puzzles and shit, just sounds like a nightmarish mess. And if the game IS just full on boost, well, I suppose it'd be less of a mess, and maybe even decent if they've been working on it for so long, but just uuuugghh, do not want.