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Kishimoto Hopes Sonic Frontiers Will Take Sonic Team to the Top of the Gaming Industry


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11 hours ago, Wraith said:

I disagree. I think a big part of the appeal of the Adventures was that they were actually technically impressive games at the time, both in terms of visuals and content. You can't replicate that on a low budget, and a high budget Modern Sonic game releasing right next to it would only cause friction. You either go big or go home. Sonic Adventure 3 would need to be a full commitment if it existed.

I'm sorry but when almost every Sonic Adventure-style fangame gets loads of people who say they like it better than what SEGA is making, you can't convince me there isn't money to be made by doing exactly that except with a pricetag.  I'm not saying that people who say that are the majority of customers or that it's enough money to sustain the brand, but when it potentially costs so little I don't think that matters much.  There actually are fans who would do that work up front for free, only stipulating in their contracts that they get a cut of the proceeds from the game's sales.  In fact, there are some who would do it just so their names became recognized.

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11 hours ago, Wraith said:

Drawing on ideas from past games from fine, but you need to be critical in which are actually worthwhile and which only ever serve to cause problems. You can't just go by what the fans want because every weird or bad take Sonic has had has fans. The designers have to make commitments to what type of game they want to make, and what ideas actually serve that goal.

Funny how little that seems to matter when trying out new ideas tends to screw over Sonic even worse.  This is the company that has already spent absurd amounts to launch a subseries of the Sonic franchise based on ideas that they pulled more or less out of their ass, and was willing to screw around with its flagship game, all-but assuring the subseries to be a failure.  In a world where the Sonic Boom subseries already exists as a cautionary tale about how dangerous experimentation can be, it seems utterly absurd to say a Classic Sonic subseries is anywhere close to as big a risk.  Nor is there any good reason not to expect SEGA to do that, given how heavily it has promoted Classic Sonic in almost every other way.  Regressing from something new and widely problematic into something that was better received does require a clear understanding of what made it work, but that understanding is not hard.  And again, I'm pretty sure a game like Sonic Mania is cheaper to make than a game like Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

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On 9/26/2022 at 11:20 AM, Wraith said:

Now I know you might be thinking that you already basically solved this by splitting the series into three, but once you commit to something like that you run into your own problems. Do you really think the actual goal for classic fans was just something like Mania? Were all those 3D Classic Sonic demos just for show? What will happen when there's demand for more progression 3 Mania sequels in? That inevitability is why Sonic Adventure even exists in the first place. Players were growing weary of classic Sonic by the time Sonic and Knuckles came around.

Eh, not exactly.  To be fair, I wasn't getting video games much at the time of Sonic and Knuckles so I can't really debate whether people were growing weary of Classic Sonic by then, but that is not the only reason Sonic Adventure exists and I'm pretty sure it isn't even the main one.

First, regardless of how weary people were or were not of 2D in general, game companies had other concerns back then, namely the arms race that the console war had become.  In rhetoric if not in reality, it was often reduced down to how powerful a console was, and in the latter half of the 1990s, the way to demonstrate that power was to make 3D games.  If a console couldn't do 3D, it was a failure, and the loudest way for first-party companies to demonstrate that their consoles could do 3D was to make 3D games of their best known franchises.  And soon after first-party-developers did it, so did second and third-party developers.  Donkey Kong Country did it, Final Fantasy did it, Rayman did it, Earthworm Jim did it, most infamously Bubsy did it.  And all of that was happening while SEGA had flaked due to lack of any conventional 3D Sonic games on their competing Saturn console.  At that point, it didn't matter if SEGA had any idea how to make a 3D Sonic game well.  SEGA had to make a 3D Sonic game because they were still a console maker at the time and their competitors' mascots had 3D games.

The above is the main reason Sonic Adventure is 3D, but as to the weird ideas that went into it, well, there are multiple different and not necessarily mutually exclusive narratives on that.  Some say the other characters, or at least some of them, were added to show off more of the things the Dreamcast could do, while others say that making levels that lasted Sonic a while to get through had to be so big that there simply wasn't time to make a full-length game on time with that workload, so they got the idea to have other characters reuse Sonic's level maps, with their own unique sorts of movement. 

So was fan weariness with what Sonic had been up until then really any part of this?  Maybe in the sense that SEGA thought they'd look too dated if they just did more of the same at the time.  But since then, the whole drive to reinvent old franchises in 3D has mostly died, as inevitably it would when 3D on its own stopped being impressive.  While AAA games are still expected to be 3D, not many people really expect or demand those games be from franchises established before the 3D era; many of such franchises have since either reverted to 2D, resurfaced now that 2D games have an audience again, or just gone extinct.  And in case people get any ideas, I'm not saying I personally would prefer that Sonic only be 2D, but 2D does give an advantage in that there's far more consensus on what a 2D Sonic should be than there is on what a 3D one should be.  It's not a sure thing that 2D Sonic games will always impress people, but it would be rather unlikely for a 2D Sonic game to experiment with ideas as hated as Big the Cat fishing.

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12 hours ago, Wraith said:

We don't just want these ideas to exist. [We want them to be iterated upon] The whole reason the future getting cut off of ball physics was disappointing was because it didn't get to evolve. I imagine that's true for fans of the Adventure series and modern games too, so safe, low budget sequels don't seem like the move.

Sorry for a double-dose of cliches, but

1) You have to walk before you can run.  When people see things like the abysmal attempts to recreate Classic Sonic mechanics in that GBA port and Sonic 4, the first thing a company needs to do is relearn how to do those things they did decades ago, or failing that, hire someone else who can.  No company that fails to do something that had been figured out decades ago deserves to be taken seriously; particularly not when it tries to distract from this deficiency by doing something new and noteworthy but untested .  For all the talk of "Lots of game companies/series do this", that bit is not the standard for most game companies.  Many of them are not usually trying to make the same sort of game they used to make but most of them don't fail that utterly when they do try.

2) They can cross that bridge when they come to it.  I'm convinced there is sufficient demand for one more Classic Sonic game with a conservative approach to gameplay, but with all new levels this time, which for what it's worth is what Sonic Mania was originally planned to be before Takeshi Iizuka insisted on it being mostly reused levels.  Is there sufficient demand for three?  Perhaps not.  But I'd far rather let poor sales determine that and then do something more innovative with Classic Sonic than just quit while they're still ahead.  Oh, and for what this is worth, I actually do have some ideas for evolving the Classic Sonic formula.

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On 9/26/2022 at 11:20 AM, Wraith said:

What happens when Sonic changes again? Do fans of Open World Sonic deserve their own subseries along with the three already running? Who gets chopped off so that the RPG-lite fans can have their own series? It just doesn't seem feasible to me. Especially since the hardcore Sonic fandom that cares about all of these things is in the minority anyway.

To me this is just more evidence you shouldn't be trying to change Sonic as much as SEGA tried to.  We're stuck with the legacy of the first several times they did it and if SEGA isn't looking to fix this the least they can do is not make it any worse.  Just because the fractured fanbase hasn't made Sonic an untenable franchise to make yet doesn't mean it's totally safe to keep fracturing it on the assumption that they'll attract more people than they repel. 

As I said above, Breath of the Wild is popular now, but what happens when that luster fades?  It would be one thing to retool the Sonic franchise to appeal mostly to people outside of its current fanbase if they were tapping into more eternal gaming sensibilities, but it seems a bit too optimistic to stake what is intended to be a wide-scale reinvention of the series for years to come on imitating primarily just one game that is popular at the moment.  Not to mention that other games have already imitated BOTW.  They might be able to endure a change to what Sonic's identity is, but if they're trading what makes Sonic unique for something that has already ceased to be unique, they're asking for trouble when this scene becomes even more saturated and then people tire of it and move on.

To be fair, though, I'm talking about games evocative of BOTW; not all open-world games.  I actually am all for Sonic being in an open-world and I think many of the fans are, too.  Because unlike things like the Boost or playable characters that play far differently from Sonic, nothing about an open-world in itself contradicts people's pet ideal of how Sonic himself is supposed to move.  What has rubbed many wrong, though, is how little the actual terrain of Frontiers' open-world seems to play into that movement, it instead being facilitated mostly by widgets like dash pads, grind rails, springs and homing attack chains.  But I think they could integrate a future open-world Sonic game's movement and terrain much better without sacrificing anything that new fans of Frontiers like about it.

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2 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I'm sorry but when almost every Sonic Adventure-style fangame gets loads of people who say they like it better than what SEGA is making, you can't convince me there isn't money to be made by doing exactly that except with a pricetag.  I'm not saying that people who say that are the majority of customers or that it's enough money to sustain the brand, but when it potentially costs so little I don't think that matters much.  There actually are fans who would do that work up front for free, only stipulating in their contracts that they get a cut of the proceeds from the game's sales.  In fact, there are some who would do it just so their names became recognized.

This is such a weird statement to make and it feels pretty diminishing to talk about their work in that way. You're talking about passion projects that small groups or individuals spend years toiling at on the side (sometimes just to get out a working tech demo and little else) that have zero expectations attached to them from the general public who are shoring up their skills and trying to entertain their own circles, versus a commercial project funded by one of the largest publishers asking $40, $60, $70 a pop for which brings higher expectations for quality and content. It's complete nonsense, and even to say there are people who would make these projects for a large publisher, and one whose social media has never been above taking fans' works and using them in advertising without permission or credit, for free is just ridiculous and doesn't reflect how reality actually works.

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I actually like the idea of putting all the elements of past games together and optimizing/balancing them in a way that works and does not feel unfocused/overdesigned. I actually prefer this approach over trying to cater to different niches of the fanbase with separated products... this is also why I prefer the advance formula over the classic one... because to me they are more or less the same thing, but the advance games don't limit themselves to classic elements only, they are a mix of classic and modern, with a bit of innovation each time.

IMO they are doing it right with Frontiers, my only issue is the execution. A lot of the problems the series had for decades, are still present in Frontiers. Excess of automation, not enough focus on rolling/ball physics, linear and brainless hallway levels, etc.

The formula they are trying out with Frontiers itself is not wrong, the problem is that they didn't fix any of those problems that are part of the series since when Sonic became modern at least. For example, why do you need to hold forward in order to roll into a loop? We're back at Sonic 4 like physics (which by the way were specifically designed for mobile motion controls and stopped making sense the moment they gave you the option to play with a gamepad - real or virtual).

Anyway, I feel like most of the problems in Frontiers are caused by the fact that they had absolutely no idea of what to do and the game took shape through a very long phase of trial and error; a sequel will definitely be more focused and better designed than this game is... though it's a bit depressing if I have to wait 5 more years before seeing the improvements.

Also I fully agree with @Scritch the Cat about the BOTW-inspired art direction in this and other games being depressing... I hope the gaming industry will get over that and move on soon because I've got enough of empty grasslands with rests of completely consumed buildings of an ancient civilization (which are so consumed that are now part of the natural landscape like mountains and rocks, and NOT fully explorable dungeons a la Lost World/Labyrinth). I bet part of this obsession with said artstyle is because it's cheaper/easier/safer to develop, especially in large scale environments such as the ones of open world games; but IMO it got very old already and became uninteresting/unimpressive.

EDIT: I know I used the word "depressing" twice and it sounds repetitive, though I don't want to change it becuse I think it's the word that fits this situation the most, in both sentences.

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This thread has gone on for 7 pages and I haven't read all of it, so I'm guessing this has probably already been said but: I feel like Kishimoto is trying to make it to the top of the game industry by copying what other successful games are doing instead of giving Sonic games their own identity. I'm expecting it to be a fun game but as it is, it isn't fulfilling my desire for a Sonic game.

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I dunno; I feel that Rush/Boost is distinct enough from the other 2D and 3D Sonic games on a fundamental level (as opposed to something like Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X) and has enough of a sizable audience that it can be spun off into its own line of Sonic gameplay. I've said it before and I'll say it again that it should had been retooled into Sonic's answer to something like F-Zero, Wipeout, or even Mario Kart a good while back; rather than Sega still trying to still push it as something to square off against the next Mario or Astro Bot, or --in Frontiers' case-- running against Zelda's Tears of the Kingdom. Drop the shoehorned platforming elements and rework the gameplay to go full on spectacle racer. The series has a bunch of mechanics and ideas from from past spinoffs (Drift, R, Riders, Rivals, even the ASR/TSR games if needed) and even the mainline games (such as the multiplayer aspect in certain games) that can be folded into further developing the Boost playstyle into more of its own thing.

Other than that--sure, I don't disagree in principle that Sonic gameplay doesn't need to be, and shouldn't be, split into different franchise/sub-series to cater to multiple audiences. It's just that the teams that were/are in charge of both 2D and 3D Sonic gameplay historically aren't interested in the gameplay philosophy and mechanics for the original games, not in any meaningful way--the few times they do remember, it's almost always incorporated through hamfisted lipservice. As long as that remains vacant, people will be left wanting and be receptive to any proposed solutions to fill in the gap, even the untenable ones.

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5 hours ago, Jake_LeOFFICIAL said:

I thought multi posting wasn't allowed anyways?

I had thought this forum auto-merged replies, which is why I didn’t bother putting them together manually.  Sorry.

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27 minutes ago, Scritch the Cat said:

I had thought this forum auto-merged replies, which is why I didn’t bother putting them together manually.  Sorry.

It's a short window (assuming it still exists on the current version, I actually don't know), so it's best to consider quoting what you need to ahead of time (highlighting will bring up a "quote selection" option—the post editor works better on desktop for this kind of thing though) or remembering to edit if you have more to add. I considered mentioning it last night but then went down a different rabbit hole responding to something specific instead before passing out lol

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To be honest... the more stuff I see about the game the more I'm getting Nier Automata vibes. There's some Breath of the Wild/Elden Ring in there too, but the overall tone to me feels more Nier than BOTW. (I have a big feeling that the reason they didn't go with any minimap is because of Elden Ring. I'm sure there was one before and they just ditched it.)

The theme music so far has honestly been the "heaviest" in the franchise. I'm Here has Doom 2016 style guitars and then there is Vandalize with it's lyrics. You can always tell what the mood of the overall game is going to be by listing to the main music. Why as soon as I heard Fist Bump I knew the whole "Forces is going to take it self seriously and tell a more intense story" was not going to happen.

Like Nier there's this constant sensation that something is wrong with the presentation that they are going for. 

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I can see a decent baseline for future Sonic games beginning here, with Frontiers. But that also means, yes, I think it as it's being shipped out seems very flawed.

Sonic's move set is interesting and maybe the most versatile in 3D yet, but as of right now it feels too.. all over the place? I do think bringing back rolling at all is good, and nerfing the boost to be a slower, stamina-based 'dash' that also works as a wall run is brilliant. Also not against the idea to set a Homing Attack to a dedicated button while boosting becomes a trigger function. It's ideas I can get behind. But on the flip-side, Drop Dash being the only way to roll is wacky. And despite rolling's return, sliding circa the boost games is still exactly as it was, leaving an air of redundance. Light Dashing is awkwardly slapped on a left stick press, Cylooping feels like it's kind of bare on ideas outside of first impressions, and for some reason they're so unconfident in deciding what's "right" for Sonic's movement that they're having you tweak it's specifics yourself (only doubled in how you can upgrade everything). Not even getting started on all the combat skill-tree shit, I have no comment on how to improve it besides politely asking for it's removal.

This game probably controls fine, if not fairly good, but it still feels like it's worth another pass in a sequel. There's a lot of streamlining to be done.

Same with the world design. I appreciate that there looks to be plenty to do across these maps, but I do think in a future game this would need to be polished up a lot. I can't see un-Sonicy environments with no colorful crazy design, loops, big slopes etc passing with the public in the next game. And no, I don't think they can rely on "Sonic goes to a new, different world" a second time. They're gonna have to learn how to marry those things better, as I don't think trying to wall them off into the cyberspace stages works as well as they'd hoped. Not only are they locking Sonic's specs there (going against their own wishes for the open zones), but the short stage length leaves a lot to be desired, and incredibly linear over-pits designs are proving to not work that well with the looser and more freeform controls they've introduced. All that and the blatant asset reuse that, if even accepted now by any extent, wouldn't at ALL in a title past this one.

They're in a situation where they're about to release a game that might be a success, and might be fairly enjoyable to most. But they're gonna have to learn how to streamline a lot of these ideas and do a better job next time. A lot of the decisions made in this one I don't think are gonna get a pass on a follow-up. They won't have the graces of it being their first open-world Sonic rodeo.

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17 minutes ago, azoo said:

They're in a situation where they're about to release a game that might be a success, and might be fairly enjoyable to most. But they're gonna have to learn how to streamline a lot of these ideas and do a better job with the next title. A lot of the decisions made in this one I don't think are gonna get a pass on a follow-up. They won't have the graces of it being their first open-world Sonic rodeo.

I 100% in agreement with this. For me this game feels like another Sonic Adventure situation. Sonic Adventure 2 is exactly what you are stating as its a streamlined version of SA1. Despite SA1 having its hardcore fans, SA2 is still considered to be the streamlined and more polished experience. 

We'll see what happens, but I do think all this is a good step in the right direction. Now all they need to do is stop themselves for Lost Worlding/ Sonic Booming and I think this may be fine. 

Screencap this so you guys can make fun of me for later... but I have a strannnnge feeling about this game. I think its going to be received very well. It has all the right "things" that a modern game would need to appease people outside of just the Sonic Fanbase. The Open world provides a comfy place to experiment with Sonic controls and get actually used to how a Sonic Game plays in relatively stress free environment (atleast for the first island). There no insta death and reset to the check point for falling off in the open world. You just go back to the spring that sent you there and try again. There a lot of good here and I think it going to pay off in a big way.

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For what the game is and all its doing at once, I think it's fairly impressive that it's actually managing almost everything at a competent, if not decent to fairly good level. That being said, I think it's one of those games where you look at it and think "yeah, the sequel to this is probably gonna be way better." Provided they take feedback seriously, which I believe they will, I think the next game will probably be quite special. What we have now looks like a pretty good time, but somewhat disjointed in some spots due to its originally rocky foundations. That said, it's the most excited I've been for a Sonic game since Colors/Generations, new ideas excite me, and new ideas that are executed well doubly so.

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This game feels like a transitional title like what Adventure 1 and Unleashed were for their respective styles of play.

So we'll see how good Sega are in sequels when they have build on this foundation. Hopefully its better than their attempts at innovating after the sequels.

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8 hours ago, Iko said:

Anyway, I feel like most of the problems in Frontiers are caused by the fact that they had absolutely no idea of what to do and the game took shape through a very long phase of trial and error; a sequel will definitely be more focused and better designed than this game is... though it's a bit depressing if I have to wait 5 more years before seeing the improvements.

You likely won't, for whatever that's worth.  As you said, there was a lot of trial and error and then revision to refine Sonic Frontiers from something that sounded like it could be fun to play on paper into something that actually is fun to play, and also the pandemic delayed them for at least a year.

5 hours ago, Milo said:

I dunno; I feel that Rush/Boost is distinct enough from the other 2D and 3D Sonic games on a fundamental level (as opposed to something like Mega Man Classic vs. Mega Man X) and has enough of a sizable audience that it can be spun off into its own line of Sonic gameplay. I've said it before and I'll say it again that it should had been retooled into Sonic's answer to something like F-Zero, Wipeout, or even Mario Kart a good while back; rather than Sega still trying to still push it as something to square off against the next Mario or Astro Bot, or --in Frontiers' case-- running against Zelda's Tears of the Kingdom. Drop the shoehorned platforming elements and rework the gameplay to go full on spectacle racer. The series has a bunch of mechanics and ideas from from past spinoffs (Drift, R, Riders, Rivals, even the ASR/TSR games if needed) and even the mainline games (such as the multiplayer aspect in certain games) that can be folded into further developing the Boost playstyle into more of its own thing.

For the record, I do not understand how anyone thinks that a 2D, more Classic-like subseries is untenable when Dimps used to do it and fans accepted the likelihood that Dimps would keep doing it.  In fact, Dimps could have kept doing it, except Sonic Team slapped them with the task of porting their main series games down to weaker consoles.  But back in the day, critics who were jaded by how erratic and unfaithful modern Sonic had become used to hail Dimps as a great return to their comfort zone.  I didn't necessarily agree with that praise, but the relevant point is that yes, a separate 2D subseries is totally possible and affordable to do.  Dimps may not be available to do it anymore, but plenty of other companies could.  Preferably Headcannon of course, but plenty of them could do it.

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4 hours ago, Zaysho said:

It's a short window (assuming it still exists on the current version, I actually don't know)

Seems it does.

Edit: Or it did.  So thanks for telling me about Quote Selection; I see it now and so this is my last double-post.

 

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19 hours ago, Scritch the Cat said:

You likely won't, for whatever that's worth.  As you said, there was a lot of trial and error and then revision to refine Sonic Frontiers from something that sounded like it could be fun to play on paper into something that actually is fun to play, and also the pandemic delayed them for at least a year.

There's also the matter that Iizuka himself kept SEGA from rushing Sonic Team, getting them the time they need to refine, really playtest,  and take into mind, the feedback.

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