News New Sonic Frontiers Artwork Revealed, Shows Desert Landscape

[NoKaine]

 

[FirePheonix]

DESERT ISLAND LET'S GOOOOOO

[DaBigJ]

I'm gonna be honest, while that shot looks absolutely gorgeous, my first thought upon seeing it was "Wow, Sonic looks kinda out of place."

And I can't really articulate why

[ZinogreVolt]

Looks very nice, the combination of desert wasteland with tattered metallic structures everywhere kind of reminds me of Xenoblade X's Oblivia region.

[Soniman]

Looks like a cool Halo multiplayer map, don’t know what Sonic is doing there, maybe it’s some cross promotional thing 

[DaBigJ]

16 minutes ago, Soniman said:

Looks like a cool Halo multiplayer map, don’t know what Sonic is doing there, maybe it’s some cross promotional thing 

Oh, so I'm not the only one who thinks he looks out of place

[Jay_Senju]

I know it's just a screenshot but that Desert area actually looks really cool lol.

[Iko]

So after the release of this picture

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FaiTiUQaIAATZec?format=jpg&name=medium

how does that rumor which mentioned that the game "had a desert environment that looked like the one in Sonic 06" stand after this?

In favor of the rumor:

-the game has a desert environment indeed... and it kinda looks like the one from 06...? I mean, it's possible... it depends on what you mean by "like the one from 06", it's a regular desert.

-the desert environment was the next to be shown after the forest. It means that maybe some insider could have had some screenshots of it since it was the next in line to be shown.

Against the rumor:

-That the game had a desert environment was the most obvious thing on the planet, it was just a matter of time. Ice and lava environments are also likely, and a bit less likely but still kinda possible, a jungle one too. Those aren't rumors, just some common sense.

-It does kinda look like the one from 06, but on the other hand, it does not really look like it... the architecture of those ruins is completely different. Offcourse it's a generic desert, so it has sand, some foggy/blurry/bloomy effects to give the player the impression of being in a very hot place with sandstorms and such, but this is very common for ay desert environment in any game... even freaking OoT looked similar in a way.

What gives it credibility:

-The rumor got right that a new Jet Set Radio is in development, that Sonic Origins has cutscenes made by Powerhouse and that Headcanon was involved with it, though the other claims about Origins are slightly inaccurate (Sonic, Tails and Knuckles on Angel Island in the intro, and the Headcanon logo in the game being the exact same one from Mania, both partially but not completely true statements, depending on how you look at them).

What makes it unreliable:

-everything else, including the fact that most of the things that it got right were very easy to guess.

 

Conclusion:

This rumor is so generic that managed to still remain meaningless and unconfirmed (both real or fake) despite all the informations we got in the past months (and the release of Origins). So in other words we can still conclude nothing from this rumor even with the new screenshot.

Reminder that the other features mentioned by this rumor were a possibly playable Shadow, and a system of gear equipment (shoes and gloves), plus some movie skins for the characters. And Sonic the Hedgehog 5 is a thing, apparently .

 

[Sega DogTagz]

I'm looking on my phone, so resolution isn't the best, but I'm pretty sure That's concept art not a screenshot.

 

No need to fuss over not being able to pin down Sonic fitting into that scene. It's gonna look different when you substitute in the renders. 

[Diogenes]

40 minutes ago, Iko said:

-That the game had a desert environment was the most obvious thing on the planet, it was just a matter of time.

I mean it's beyond obvious even, the website confirmed a desert ages ago, it's the one environment we already knew about beyond what we've seen of the first island.

And this new pic doesn't look any more like '06's desert stages than any desert-with-ruins video game setting. So I see no reason to take the rumor seriously.

[Iko]

On 8/19/2022 at 8:22 PM, Diogenes said:

I mean it's beyond obvious even, the website confirmed a desert ages ago, it's the one environment we already knew about beyond what we've seen of the first island.

And this new pic doesn't look any more like '06's desert stages than any desert-with-ruins video game setting. So I see no reason to take the rumor seriously.

I'm not really taking the rumor "seriously", I'm just trying to figure if there's some credibility in it or not, which I'm not sure because it got something right but also nothing that outright confirms or debunks it. Most other rumors have been debunked by the "no chao garden" statement made by Iizuka, and other proofs, this one instead is just so vague and still can't be completely dismissed. I know that it's probably fake, but we can't be sure until there's proof.

By the way, that comment was posted in the leak/speculation thread but was moved here by mods/admin in order to move the discussion about the desert environment in the dedicated thread; I wouldn't have normally talked about 4chan rumors outside of that thread (or status updates), because I know of how much unreliable they are.

----

Back in topic, I've seen a lot of people saying that the thing in the background of the picture could be a titan, though I think that it's just another of those ruins, like the "ubisoft towers", the pyramid and that weird structure shaped like a black diamond in the first island. I think that it's too much "rocky" and static looking for being an enemy, plus the SAGE spawns usually have a different, more minimalistic look.

Also I don't think this is a concept art, it's likely a render based on the real in-game models with post production/photo editing applied to it: they did a couple of them for the first island too.

[StellarBlur]

1 hour ago, Iko said:

Also I don't think this is a concept art, it's likely a render based on the real in-game models with post production/photo editing applied to it: they did a couple of them for the first island too.

I was actually thinking about this. It looks really uncanny that it's hard to tell whether it's in-game or concept art. I was leaning concept art but adding a filter and some photo editing and they could get an in-game shot looking like this. 

[Sega DogTagz]

5 hours ago, Iko said:

Also I don't think this is a concept art, it's likely a render based on the real in-game models with post production/photo editing applied to it: they did a couple of them for the first island too.

I severely doubt that.

I guess with the range of post production effects almost anything is possible, but if you download a high quality version you can clearly see the brush strokes that indicate this is a drawing and not a render. Its especially apparent on Sonic himself, whom if being slightly off-model isn't enough of an indication (his skew is off-kilter) is also very obviously a painting rather than a render.

 

Just zoom in on Sonic. Its pretty clear

 

That is 100% a Drawing

 

Its also very consistent with the concept art drawings they put out for the last game. Remember this?

 

same thing. The only thing in this one that isn't drawn is the Death Egg photoshopped into the sky

[Iko]

47 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

I severely doubt that.

I guess with the range of post production effects almost anything is possible, but if you download a high quality version you can clearly see the brush strokes that indicate this is a drawing and not a render. Its especially apparent on Sonic himself, whom if being slightly off-model isn't enough of an indication (his skew is off-kilter) is also very obviously a painting rather than a render.

Just zoom in on Sonic. Its pretty clear

That is 100% a Drawing

Its also very consistent with the concept art drawings they put out for the last game. Remember this?

same thing. The only thing in this one that isn't drawn is the Death Egg photoshopped into the sky

Oh I didn't notice that because I didn't download it at full quality, sorry.

Sonic is hand drawn for sure, but maybe the ruins are 3D models? Compared to the Forces artwork where you can clearly see that the pyramid and all the details surrounding it are simplified and less precise, the details in the Frontiers artwork seem to be way more precise and consistent, even with how blurry the picture is (especially if you compare Sonic and how sketchy and off-model he is, with the ruins).

So I don't know, it could be a concept art, but it can also be a mock-up using actual assets and just Sonic drawn over them to see how he would look into the setting.

Spoiler

This picture also has a blurry background and we know that's the actual model of the island for sure.

I mean, It's probably all just a painting, I'm just considering other possibilities.

 

[Sega DogTagz]

14 minutes ago, Iko said:

Sonic is hand drawn for sure, but maybe the ruins are 3D models? Compared to the Forces artwork where you can clearly see that the pyramid and all the details surrounding it are simplified and less precise, the details in the Frontiers artwork seem to be way more precise and consistent, even with how blurry the picture is (especially if you compare Sonic and how off-model he is, with the ruins).

So I don't know, it could be a concept art, but it can also be a mock-up using actual assets and just Sonic drawn over them to see how he would look into the setting.

 

A lot of the ruins in the background appear to be hand-drawn as well. If you look on the left side of the image, you can see a lot of the same brush stroke techniques used on Sonic himself on the coloration of the metallic ruins. The sandstorm dust filter obscures quite a bit, but the ruins in the middle of the picture also are very clearly hand-drawn.

 

The only hang-up here would be the giant... satellite dish on the right. Its meticulous detail for something so far away. That could be a model super imposed into the drawing. The base of it has more of the drawing hallmarks, so I could be convinced either way there.

 

If I had to leverage an educated guess, I would say both the ruins and the dish exist as 3D models, and were either heavily referenced or traced to make this image. That being said, anyone feeling antsy about Sonic looking out-op-place should really leverage their fears elsewhere, as this isn't quite representative of how it will look in-game.

[Iko]

I'm a bit late, maybe you already noticed it, but:

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FcC4gvracAAv-r9?format=jpg&name=large

The weird structure is indeed a tower, not a titan. Also, in the bottom left picture at night, it's possible to see the ruins from the concept art. It appears to be indeed a concept art, since the specific position of the elements doesn't fit very well with the in-game island (the weird tower is on top of a mountain and rotated differently), but the elements in the picture were actually based on the real models, regardless of being renders or traced over.

If not a concept art, it must have been a not-definitive layout that got changed later in the development.