Megathread Sonic Frontiers (2022) | MT | General Discussion (DO NOT discuss leaks here please)

[CertifiedNobody]

1 minute ago, MH MD said:

The movie was released in 2020

Frontiers was being in development since 2018 at least, and with early testing being done as early as early 2020

You don't just increase the budget mid-development like that and turn in into open world suddenly or anything, they gotta plan the scope of the project right from the start

That's true, but they probably had the then-upcoming movie in mind when planning the budget and scope. Even if they weren't confident in it, they still probably expected an decently big increase in sales for merch and games.

[MH MD]

2 minutes ago, CertifiedNobody said:

That's true, but they probably had the then-upcoming movie in mind when planning the budget and scope. Even if they weren't confident in it, they still probably expected an decently big increase in sales for merch and games.

The movie was actually announced since 2013

It entered quite the development hell, but it was known to be in development since back then, that should have reflected on Forces then, but clearly not

[CertifiedNobody]

3 minutes ago, MH MD said:

The movie was actually announced since 2013

It entered quite the development hell, but it was known to be in development since back then, that should have reflected on Forces then, but clearly not

That's a good point. Although I don't think it should be ruled out since we don't know if Sega knew the film wasn't going anywhere then. In 2018 they were actually filming the movie so they knew it was happening.

[MH MD]

1 minute ago, CertifiedNobody said:

That's a good point. Although I don't think it should be ruled out since we don't know if Sega knew the film wasn't going anywhere then. In 2018 they were actually filming the movie so they knew it was happening.

I recall it it being filmed late 2018 actually, and at any case,  you can't predict when the movie would be released by then, or if it would actually be successful in the first place, no one expected the movie to be as successful as it did 

[FirePheonix]

This area here make me think that the light speed dash is back, because that's how you would probably reach the portal thing.

[King Conne]

Is it a portal or the throne of an ancient giant king?!...

[CertifiedNobody]

7 minutes ago, King Conne said:

Is it a portal or the throne of an ancient giant king?!...

Maybe both.

  

 

[phobs]

I haven't seen anyone posting it here yet, but SamProcrastinates noticed some sort of collectible in Sonic Frontiers video from Sonic Channel

 

[ZinogreVolt]

2 hours ago, phobs said:

I haven't seen anyone posting it here yet, but SamProcrastinates noticed some sort of collectible in Sonic Frontiers video from Sonic Channel

 

An open world Sonic game would be a *fantastic* format for collectibles akin to Notes in Banjo-Kazooie or purple coins in Mario Odyssey. Very curious about how this may develop.

[light-gaia]

In my opinion, Sonic Frontiers' budget is higher, but not because of the movie, but because of Sonic Forces, TSR and Mania. I think those games had lower budgets because Sonic Lost World sold poorly (on the Wii U, 3DS and PC), and the Sonic Boom trilogy also sold very poorly. If I remember correctly, Sonic Boom Rise of Lyric was the biggest Sonic flop ever, selling about 400k copies worldwide. So, it's possible that Sega had lost a lot of money during this period, and they didn't want to risk losing more again.

Sonic Forces and TSR were received poorly, but they did well commercially (according to Sega themselves in their financial reports). When it comes to Sonic Mania, probably it has sold even better than these two. Sega might have realized that the franchise is still strong, and they should put a little more effort into future projects.

I think the Sonic Movie success might've affected Sonic Frontiers development as well. They could have a higher marketing budget. It's clear that Frontiers is going to have a bigger marketing campaign compared to games like Lost World and Forces because they announce the game on The Game Awards.

Quote

I would argue that those games "budget" had nothing to do with Lost World and Boom. The restructuring also wouldn't have had any effect on TSR and Mania due to TSR being made by a completely different team than an in-house one at Sega, and with Mania literally being pitched as a bonus game. While It could have had an effect on Forces, I doubt that's the main reason for its quality since the staff list seems to indicate the game's development  had far greater difficulties.

TSR has quite the large staff list. Not on the same scale as All Stars Racing Transformed, but definitely not a low scale project. A lot of artists and programmers were assembled to make it with a development period of around 2 years, which is probably very similar to the previous racing games.
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Sonic_%26_All-Stars_Racing_Transformed/Staff
https://sonic.fandom.com/wiki/Team_Sonic_Racing/Staff

Team Sonic Racing was developed by Sumo Digital, but it was Sega that provided the budget, and it was clearly smaller than ASR Transformed not only because of the lack of content and post launch support, but also because Takashi Iizuka said the game was developed by less experienced developers. It's probably cheaper to develop a game with less experienced staff.

[MH MD]

51 minutes ago, light-gaia said:

Team Sonic Racing was developed by Sumo Digital, but it was Sega that provided the budget, and it was clearly smaller than ASR Transformed not only because of the lack of content and post launch support, but also because Takashi Iizuka said the game was developed by less experienced developers. It's probably cheaper to develop a game with less experienced staff.

Don't think it's a case of experienced staff available but SEGA said "nah...use the less experienced staff instead"

 

But it's more that Sumo Digital staff is different now, it's been a long while since they developed Transformed,since then, they developed their own games like Snake Pass, they develops Sony games like LBP3 -and later Sackboy- , it's just possible that the staff who developed Transformed back in the day either aren't even available at the studio anymore, or just working on their own "bigger" stuff with Sony or other publishers.

 

not that i think TSR is bad anyway, it has the superior tracks actually and best items and it was great, but that's another topic entirely 

[Shaddy Zaphod]

6 hours ago, phobs said:

I haven't seen anyone posting it here yet, but SamProcrastinates noticed some sort of collectible in Sonic Frontiers video from Sonic Channel

 

That kind of blows the whole thing wide open, doesn't it. We may not know exactly how this thing is going to control, but it sure as hell is not like the last couple of games.

[phobs]

Since there is still confusion on the topic of the voice in trailer, Katie kindly addressed it on Twitter. Hopefully, it is going to settle the matter for foreseeable future:

• Amy is the one who speaks lines in the trailer. IT IS NOT NEW CHARACTER
• YES, even the voice in the first half of the trailer belong to Amy. IT WAS NOT TAILS'S VOICE

 

 

[VO.SUPER]

7 hours ago, phobs said:

I haven't seen anyone posting it here yet, but SamProcrastinates noticed some sort of collectible in Sonic Frontiers video from Sonic Channel

 

I'd be very game for open world Sonic to also be a bit of a collect-a-thon. But then again. I'm one of those madmen who loved Yooka-Laylee for it's collect-a-thon BS. Hah. So don't let me influence anything.

[herefor1reason]

Some things I can already guess just looking at where those coins...coins? We'll say coins, are. Sonic is capable of some precise movement. Assuming even basic competency, Sonic's movement has to have some precision and control to it for the player to be able to grab those coins with any ease, as they're arranged on some relatively small steps/platforms in close proximity to each other. Big assumption, I know, but as underwhelming as it was (huge understatement), Forces still functioned as a game, that's what I mean by basic competency, the bare minimum to make a game work. Given that they're unseen from below, it can be assumed that the player either has to jump down to them, or access them in the process of climbing the tower, possibly meaning aerial control. The other idea I had  was that the challenge of running up each tower was in running up it uninterrupted. I could be mistaken but next to the strip of differing textured material going up the tower nearest the coins on screen, there's a platform. A strip of it leads up from the platform but the rest of the structure blocks our sight in the left and I think it might be that the material wraps around the tower and Sonic sticks to it. So you'd start on the ground, contact the path, run up and around the tower's protruding structures until you  reached a safe platform on the other side higher up. From there, you could jump higher up the tower, to the coins, or maybe the path leads directly to them. I think that's what those loops sticking out the sides might be for, you run through them on your way up or you get knocked off and have to try again. Or they could just be aesthetic.

Cannot tell you how glad I am to see something new to think about here. This is a lead, and it could tell us a great deal about what to expect from this game, though I should stress that this is educated guesses that lean on the side of guess more than educated.

[Wraith]

They're probably just planning to steal BOTW's "scale anything" mechanic and put some kind of Sonic spin on it.

[Waveshocker Sigma]

Or it could be Lost World's parkour system actually brought back and refined since he was scaling things in that game long before BOTW had climbing. Hell, that didn't even come from BOTW specifically since Skyward Sword was the actual first Zelda to do it. Not to mention there were open world games that did it before BOTW. Just saying.

Though, if it's like BOTW's but without having to worry about stamina, then I'm super down with that. I hate stamina mechanics in any game. Too restrictive on my freedom of movement. It's a damn video game, I should be able to do whatever movements I want for as long as I want and have fun. Sonic doesn't "get tired".

[CertifiedNobody]

Even though I've doubted the parkour system would ever come back, it does make sense and would fit with the footage we've seen.

[VO.SUPER]

11 hours ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Or it could be Lost World's parkour system actually brought back and refined since he was scaling things in that game long before BOTW had climbing. Hell, that didn't even come from BOTW specifically since Skyward Sword was the actual first Zelda to do it. Not to mention there were open world games that did it before BOTW. Just saying.

Though, if it's like BOTW's but without having to worry about stamina, then I'm super down with that. I hate stamina mechanics in any game. Too restrictive on my freedom of movement. It's a damn video game, I should be able to do whatever movements I want for as long as I want and have fun. Sonic doesn't "get tired".

It doesn't work for everything, but it is meant to keep you from trivializing the challenge at least without putting some hell of effort into the mix.

[Wraith]

11 hours ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Or it could be Lost World's parkour system actually brought back and refined since he was scaling things in that game long before BOTW had climbing. Hell, that didn't even come from BOTW specifically since Skyward Sword was the actual first Zelda to do it. Not to mention there were open world games that did it before BOTW. Just saying.

 

I wasn't referring to the literal act of climbing on walls, but walls being free for the player to use as leverage instead of constantly being used to box them in. Both Skyward Sword and Sonic Lost World are pretty limited in their implementation of wall climbing, so I wouldn't really give them credit for the idea.

Ironically you could probably shout Knuckles's stages in the 3D games out for doing it first though. Or some kind of Spider-Man game I guess. My point wasn't about who did it first, but where they're likely to be borrowing the idea from and how they're going to implement it.

[light-gaia]

I think Sonic Frontiers might be more similar to Mario Odyssey structure than Zelda Breath of the Wild. Maybe the open zones would be like the worlds of Mario Odyssey, big sandboxes that we have to complete platforming challenges, puzzles and other objectives to unlock the next world. I think we will have a different open zone per island, and perhaps the one that was shown on the trailer is the first one. But, because Sonic moves much faster, the worlds should be bigger. It's like comparing the size of a classic 2D Mario level to one from Sonic 3&K. Considering what we have heard from the rumors, it seems the Unleashed/Generations stages are going to be like the special stages.

12 hours ago, Waveshocker Sigma said:

Or it could be Lost World's parkour system actually brought back and refined since he was scaling things in that game long before BOTW had climbing. Hell, that didn't even come from BOTW specifically since Skyward Sword was the actual first Zelda to do it. Not to mention there were open world games that did it before BOTW. Just saying.

Though, if it's like BOTW's but without having to worry about stamina, then I'm super down with that. I hate stamina mechanics in any game. Too restrictive on my freedom of movement. It's a damn video game, I should be able to do whatever movements I want for as long as I want and have fun. Sonic doesn't "get tired".

Zelda Skyward Sword climbing mechanic is the same as the one in Zelda Ocarina of Time

Edited December 25, 2021 by light-gaia
Grammar

[ZinogreVolt]

There was simply no way that Frontiers was ever going to control like the past games to begin with. Besides the fact that not even Sonic Team is that dumb in my opinion, the Boost titles and Lost World all relied on a lot of scripting to help smooth over less desirable aspects of its controls. Scripting becomes fundamentally much less feasible in an open world setting, so your game would need decent base controls in order to even stand a chance of working half-decently. And if the game is aping Breath of the Wild as much as some like to think, a game practically famous for almost never taking away control from the player, then I would think it's control scheme would be built to follow suit. 
 

We aren't quite out of the woods yet, but between that and the near-complete lack of any boost panels or bounce pads in sight, I think things are looking up.

[FirePheonix]

Found another leak from november 2020 and it doesn't inspire confidence at all, no spindash only boost in the open-world, the world not being sonic-y(I wonder if they just meant how the world looks or maybe that it doesn't play like Sonic who knows)

[Wraith]

He's talking about visuals when he says the world isn't Sonic enough. Wonder why they seemingly did nothing to address tbat complaint. 

[azoo]

After the stories we publicly know of past Sonic Team QA (06, the time between S4E1 & 2, any others I'm prob forgetting rn), it wouldn't surprise me one bit if they just ignored it all. ST does what they want.