Sonic Frontiers biggest non game design flaws, and are they due to incompetence?

[Forgeafrontier]

Playing frontiers and comparing it to past sonic games but all the other AAA platformer and non platformer games of the past 3-4 years really makes this feel like its 10 years behind. Most of these games problems aren't even game design related but polish related, so many of what you would call "minor issues" that pile up and create a very uneven experience that takes a lot away from the game. I should preface by saying I like this game, its around a 7.5/10 for me but sonic games still do not feel like they are reaching their full potential. If these issues weren't in the game, frontiers would have a much higher critical score on metacritic and would maybe even be a 9.5/10 for me. Pop-in, this has been talked about to death everywhere that this game has worse pop in than some PS2 games, the sad part about this is the mods that fix the draw distance with <5 frame drops on week PC hardware, this is inexcusable in every single way, and should have been top priority for the devs, I am surprised this even got past quality assurance. Most of the negative reviews complain mainly about the issues mentioned here.

A complete lack of art direction/visual fidelity. This game doing basic photorealism which is much easier to do than people realize, this is something that people are taught to do in introductory game art design courses, this is the bare, bare minimum. Something that would have helped this game standout from every single other open world game and tech demos would have been to go for an art style reminscent of the classic games, sonic heroes or even generations, all the prefabs just floating in the sky either need to be directly integrated to the environment or given unique art direction so they stand out less (moss on springs and rails in kronos for example). A game doesn't need to have cutting edge graphics in order to look good, Nier automata, Botw, and elden ring are great examples, none of those games have good texture quality but they all have art direction that is so pleasing to look at you forget about the low res graphics. Basically Idk why sonic team would go for a photorealistic art style when graphically they are still so far behind other games today. These are horrible textures for a triple a game.

The final issue I have with the game is the animation polish. This is a problem for 2 reasons, sonic is the only playable character here and his animations range from unfinished to almost non existent for a few combat moves, and yes animation absolutely can affect gameplay experience. and this game is a story/character driven game and they deliberately try things like cinematography in quite a few scenes showing they are trying to focus on presentation for this game yet despite that the animation is still lacking. These cutscenes (not even talking about the bog standard side mission ones which are very common in other RPGs) are  far behind other games, the quality is so inconsistent, they don't use the characters eye brows much so the very best cutscenes are still a 7.5/10 but those don't come oftenly. The best cutscenes are the giganto encounter, the mini argument scene with amy and the "spinning sign" scene with sage. The worst ones and these are unfortunately more common is the entire intro sequence and the corruption revival scene  (that scene looked gmod tier). There are scenes where the animation doesn't even match the voice delivery. This is a huge problem because it once again shows sonic is over 15 years behind in the animation department, even platformer games released in the 2000s still have far better animation than this, considering sonic is the only playable character and how grand they were presenting this game as, I was expecting him to look like like a dreamworks or pixar character in gameplay and for cutscenes to finally catch up to what modern platformers are doing.

This could all be due to a variety of things but I am starting to lean more towards incompetence due to how far behind this game is compared to almost every other AAA game this year and how these polish issues are things that have been figured out years ago and the fact sonic team isn't exactly a reputable studio. I know this game had a 60-person team but I don't think that is uncommon in japan, plus a lot of things were outsoruced.

 

 

[Sega DogTagz]

1 hour ago, Forgeafrontier said:

Playing frontiers and comparing it to past sonic games but all the other AAA platformer and non platformer games of the past 3-4 years really makes this feel like its 10 years behind. 

 

Well to be fair, while we want to hold Sonic to that lofty standard, Frontiers isnt a AAA game, platformer or otherwise. You can't go into this expecting the same kind of polish as Ragnarok or the same attn to detail as something like Persona. 

Sonic has been a budget title for the last few cycles for crying out loud. 

 

 

 

That being said there are plenty on non game irks that pop up during Frontiers that are worth pointing out. Not all of them are due to incompetence, but they are things that probably should have been cleaned up in the QC phase. Others are clear indicators of a developer stepping into a new genre. Something every developer has to tame when jumping into a project outside of their norm.

 

An easy on to point out would be the quick travel system. It seems like common sense, but having never designed a menu for one in the past, they didnt incorporate the travel system into the icons themselves but into a sub menu, which is stupid and unnecessary.

 

Another would be the elder coco. Leveling up their stats one at a time is crazy bad programming decision.

[GX -The Spindash-]

Frontiers is definitely, definitely a bummer for me. When I play an open world game (and regardless of what Kishimoto calls it, Frontiers has aspirations of being an open world game), I expect there to feel like there are a hundred interesting ideas and mechanics and nuances. I'd say Frontiers has maybe a dozen stretched across 30 hours.

I'm prefacing with that to kind of push back, I don't see this as incompetence. I have the nagging suspicion that this was a troubled development cycle and the consequences of ambition.

PURE SPECULATION ZONE AHEAD.

 

---

 

While Kishimoto has been out there saying that this is defining the next major stage of the series and that it's going to bolster Sonic Team's reputation, I get the impression that the reality is a bit more complex. The actual level elements of the islands aren't built into the world. Rather, they're constructed from aesthetically standardized level components across all five islands and often sort of floating in the sky. The fourth island appears to take place on an otherwise unreachable portion of the first island, and the fifth island is built with much of the same aesthetics as the first island. The impression I get from that is that something severed world design from level design, and that the island assets (especially the the ones past Kronos) existed before they actually began designing the game as a legitimate platformer.

Open world games take time. If you... say, lead a significantly smaller staff than the average Ubisoft project AND have to significantly redesign part-way through, everything else would suffer to make sure you actually release a product that works on every platform from 2013 onward. Things like Cyberspace level motifs, overall island design, progression mechanics, and even basic stuff like UX (hope you like getting exactly one upgrade at a time).

Then we get to the aftermath, Kishimoto responding surprisingly openly to public feedback, including his initial interests in Sonic Frontiers not having the boost mechanic. While I might be reading too much into it, that doesn't inherently feel like the behavior of someone who is completely satisfied with a final product, or has a clear vision for the future of the franchise. I don't say that to besmirch him, there could be a number of hypothetical factors as to why (or I could be wildly off base in my initial assertion), but something just doesn't quite feel right about it, especially considering that he's been directing mainline games since 2010.

My overall impression from Sonic Frontiers is that it felt like a proof of concept that stretched itself a little too thin in trying to prioritize game length. It accomplished being 30 hours, longer than most other prior Sonic games, but the cost seems to be limited and reused assets, maps disconnected from level design, and very simple progression. We might never know what happened to make it the way it is, but for years it has felt like Sonic games have been resource constrained in such a way that polish, level design, and even the basic feel suffer. I really only see this game's issues as symptomatic of the same problem.

 

---

 

 

END OF SPECULATION ZONE.

In spite of all that, I'm at least a little optimistic. The degree to which Sonic Frontiers is a financial success would in ideal circumstances justify Sonic Team getting access to more resources while also pushing them to refine this (financially) successful formula. I could easily see this game's better ideas fleshed out and transplanted into more engaging world design. It's just that question of if they can capitalize on that and deliver.

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[Forgeafrontier]

17 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

That being said there are plenty on non game irks that pop up during Frontiers that are worth pointing out. Not all of them are due to incompetence, but they are things that probably should have been cleaned up in the QC phase. Others are clear indicators of a developer stepping into a new genre. Something every developer has to tame when jumping into a project outside of their norm.

 

Frontiers lacks basic coding polish and basic animation polish on top of outragerous pop in that no game has in this day and age. This is a 60 dollar title and that technically makes it a triple A game, these polish issues become all the more inexcusable and I don't think its unfair for me to say frontiers was handled by some incompetent people in some areas. You can literally download a mod fixing the  draw distance on relatively weak hardware with a sub 5 frame drop, how is that not incompetence?

[charcoal]

I'd imagine most of them are due to time constraints, nothing more nothing less. The game's infamous pop-in for example was clearly a compromise made around the Switch. They must've simply not had enough time to make custom draw distance values for the higher-end machines and thus people using them got the short end of the stick.

Something like the game's lacking rolling physics are also likely due to the same thing, time constraints. I imagine the programmers just got it to a level where it was 'good enough' because they didn't have time to focus on specific things. 

Don't get me wrong from this post, I loved Frontiers, but it's clear to anyone that the game could've used a little more time in the oven. I don't think incompetency was to blame here.

I'm just hoping the content updates will address some of these issues, Kishimoto straight up stated that an on-demand roll is going to be added so hopefully that means better rolling physics to go along with that. We can only speculate, however.

[Wraith]

3 hours ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Well to be fair, while we want to hold Sonic to that lofty standard, Frontiers isnt a AAA game, platformer or otherwise. You can't go into this expecting the same kind of polish as Ragnarok or the same attn to detail as something like Persona. 

Sonic has been a budget title for the last few cycles for crying out loud. 

 

Why wouldn't you? It's priced like a AAA game, marketed next to other AAA games and Sonic Team admitted that they wanted this title to put them back at the top of the industry. Keeping it real with them and comparing them to the titles that they're competing with is healthy.

Hell, I'd be willing to bet this game had a higher budget than Persona 5. That game was designed around the idea of style and detail on a low budget.

[ZinogreVolt]

I enjoy the game but in terms of polish and visuals, it feels like a cross-gen PS3/4 game. About the only things I like about it visually are the character modeling, lighting, and some fx work like the algorithm used for making footprint trails on Ares Island. It falls short in just about every other way, though.

[Sega DogTagz]

3 hours ago, Forgeafrontier said:

This is a 60 dollar title and that technically makes it a triple A game

 

10 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Why wouldn't you? It's priced like a AAA game, marketed next to other AAA games and Sonic Team admitted that they wanted this title to put them back at the top of the industry. Keeping it real with them and comparing them to the titles that they're competing with is healthy.

 

Well for starters, its absolutely not priced like a AAA game.  GOW and other games like it launch at 69, not 59, so even by your own metrics that conclusion is bunk. Via a heads up comparison, Frontiers is still a budget title next to other obvious AAA games like say Zelda.

 

Secondly, just because its full priced (which it isn't) doesn't make it a AAA game. Starting price was never a metric to determining where a game ranks on the scale of A to AAA.  I can pull up GameStops website and throw a dart in its general direction and find a a 59.99 game that no one would ever describe as AAA.

 

Truck Driver Premium?

Atlus Fallen?

Atlelier Ryza 3?

 

Those are the kind of games launching in Frontiers ballpark. Not Zelda. Not GOW. Not any self respecting AAA.

 

 I agree that it is absolutely a healthy to compare Frontiers to the big fish it wants to hang out with, but one look at Fronters credit reel vs a game like Horizon Zero Dawn and you should have a somber dose of reality in terms of how much manpower it takes to build those high end games. Frontiers is going to fall short of that every time. Its an unfair benchmark that we thrust onto it because we want to still treat Sonic like a first party mega IP when he is not.

 

AAA status is reserved only for the games with blockbuster ambitions and blockbuster budgets to back it up. It shouldn't be thrown around casually, no matter how much we want it to be the case.

 

29 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Hell, I'd be willing to bet this game had a higher budget than Persona 5. That game was designed around the idea of style and detail on a low budget.

Atlus has a track record of squeezing out maximum efficiency and reuses more assets than even Sonic does. Wouldn't surprise me if the budget stayed low.

 

That being said, nobody dared rush that game and it got all the time and space it needed to be everything it wanted to be. Very few dev's are given that kind of leash.

[Wraith]

12 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Atlus has a track record of squeezing out maximum efficiency and reuses more assets than even Sonic does. Wouldn't surprise me if the budget stayed low.

That being said, nobody dared rush that game and it got all the time and space it needed to be everything it wanted to be. Very few dev's are given that kind of leash.

They both had 5 year dev cycles.

[Sega DogTagz]

1 minute ago, Wraith said:

They both had 5 year dev cycles.

 

but only one of those games needed the director to litterally fight off corporate to give the game more dev time. Only one of those games seemed to have deadlines that needed to be met. Only one of those game shipped out the door when a little more time in the oven could have made a tangible difference in the final product.

 

Feel free to guess which game that was. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Persona.

 

(also, you can trace parts of Persona 5 dev back to 2008, which would be something like 8 years)

[Wraith]

8 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

but only one of those games needed the director to litterally fight off corporate to give the game more dev time. Only one of those games seemed to have deadlines that needed to be met. Only one of those game shipped out the door when a little more time in the oven could have made a tangible difference in the final product.

Feel free to guess which game that was. I'll give you a hint, it wasn't Persona.

(also, you can trace parts of Persona 5 dev back to 2008, which would be something like 8 years)

Persona 5 was also delayed multiple times and missed deadlines and release windows. No company wants to delay anything, so I doubt it went down as easy as you say. It also shipped with issues that wouldn't be rectified until the game got rereleased years later IE they got more time to tweak things.

This idea that Sonic Team is facing unique problems as a developer doesn't really have a basis in reality. This was their Persona 5 moment by all accounts.

[Sega DogTagz]

2 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Persona 5 was also delayed multiple times and missed deadlines and release windows. No company wants to delay anything, so I doubt it went down as easy as you say. It also shipped with issues that wouldn't be rectified until the game got rereleased years later IE they got more time to tweak things.

This idea that Sonic Team is facing unique problems as a developer doesn't really have a basis in reality.

 

My point was Atlus was able to make those decisions with minimal pushback - wereas Sonic Team had to claw for them.

The the condition of Persona 5 at launch isn't even comparable to where Frontiers was... or still is for that matter.

 

I'm just pointing out that one game got 8 years in the oven - without a peep of corporate meddling. The other got 5, we already know the heads of Sonic Team had to beg for those 5, and that the first few years were glorified playtesting anyway, which probably shaves the overall dev time to 3.

 

One of these things is not like the other.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

Yeah, SEGA have made their relatively hands off approach in regards to Atlus, quite apparent.

 

 

[Wraith]

7 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

My point was Atlus was able to make those decisions with minimal pushback - wereas Sonic Team had to claw for them.

 

How do you know?

All you're doing is making excuses for them while presenting the idea Atlus had it easy.

 

5 minutes ago, Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon said:

Yeah, SEGA have made their relatively hands off approach in regards to Atlus, quite apparent.

SEGA didn't own Atlus when Persona 5 was being made.

[charcoal]

Listen I'm not trying to 'make excuses for Sonic Team' or anything but how do Persona 5 and Frontiers even correlate in the first place?

They're completely different kinds of games, I don't see how this comparison is very productive.

[Sega DogTagz]

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

How do you know?

All you're doing is making excuses for them while presenting the idea Atlus had it easy.

 

 

I'm not making excuses. Sega has said in multiple financial reports that they were explicitly not going to mess with Atlus production cycle and that they would be given all the time an resources they required. They in fact, envied them and wanted to incorporate them into other departments.

 

I'm not filling in the blank to fit my narrative. This is known fact.

 

6 minutes ago, Wraith said:

SEGA didn't own Atlus when Persona 5 was being made.

 

Sega brought Atlus in 2013.  3 years before Persona 5 shipped.

 

That's plenty of time to get your fingerprints on something. If they wanted to rush that game out the door, there would have been opportunities to do so.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

10 minutes ago, Wraith said:

SEGA didn't own Atlus when Persona 5 was being made.

SEGA got them in 2013, and Persona 5 came out in 2016. Unless Persona 5 just stopped development for three years before releasing, I'd say that's plenty of time to see how they managed under SEGA.

Like, again, SEGA have literally gone out of their way to make it clear they're handling Atlus with a hands-off approach. And the evidence seems to very much corroborate that they don't meddle with Atlus like they do with Sonic Team's efforts here and there.

[Wraith]

6 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

I'm not making excuses. Sega has said in multiple financial reports that they were explicitly not going to mess with Atlus production cycle and that they would be given all the time an resources they required. They in fact, envied them and wanted to incorporate them into other departments.

I'm not filling in the blank to fit my narrative. This is known fact.

Sega brought Atlus in 2013.  3 years before Persona 5 shipped.

That's plenty of time to get your fingerprints on something. If they wanted to rush that game out the door, there would have been opportunities to do so.

Okay, but did you miss the part where Sega said they explicitly weren't rushing the next few Sonic Team games for quality control reasons, and that Forces and Frontiers had longer development cycles than previous games? Sure, Sega pushed back when the game needed to be delayed, but after 5 years something has to give.

If they were being overseen by the same company then that just puts Sonic Team in a worse light. Why are they the only team under the sega umbrella that struggles to break the 70s barrier on Metacritic?

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

4 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Okay, but did you miss the part where Sega said they explicitly weren't rushing the next few Sonic Team games for quality control reasons, and that Forces and Frontiers had longer development cycles than previous games? Sure, Sega pushed back when the game needed to be delayed, but after 5 years something has to give.

I mean, this is also ignoring blatant factors like COVID, or the stuff actually holding Sonic Team back.

It's not like they were just faffing around really. Now, if those 5 years actually went undeterred the whole period, you'd have a better point, but this ain't it.

[Sega DogTagz]

1 minute ago, Wraith said:

Okay, but did you miss the part where Sega said they explicitly weren't rushing the next few Sonic Team games for quality control reasons, and that Forces and Frontiers had longer development cycles than previous games? Sure, Sega pushed back when the game needed to be delayed, but after 5 years something has to give.

 

Did you miss the part where they have been saying that since before 06 ?  Actions speak louder than words. Quality Control is still an issue.

 

I'm not saying Sega corporate is wrong for making lines in the sands - I'm just pointing out that some dev teams have enough clout to casually stroll over those lines while others watch them like they are a guillotine seconds away from dropping.  AAA games don't get treated like that.

 

You think the dev's working on Metroid Prime 4 are worried about deadlines? You think Nintendo's gonna push that one through before its ready?

 

[Wraith]

9 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

Did you miss the part where they have been saying that since before 06 ?  Actions speak louder than words. Quality Control is still an issue.

I'm not saying Sega corporate is wrong for making lines in the sands - I'm just pointing out that some dev teams have enough clout to casually stroll over those lines while others watch them like they are a guillotine seconds away from dropping.  AAA games don't get treated like that.

You think the dev's working on Metroid Prime 4 are worried about deadlines? You think Nintendo's gonna push that one through before its ready?

Do you seriously think they aren't? Lmao. You don't think Nintendo wants shit done in a timely matter? No matter how successful the company they have deadlines they want things completed by and budgets they keep sharp control over. Just because Nintendo is willing to take an L and delay something when it needs it doesn't mean there's no pressure or heads don't roll in the background when these things happen. C'mon.

[Sega DogTagz]

9 minutes ago, Wraith said:

Do you seriously think they aren't? Lmao. You don't think Nintendo wants shit done in a timely matter? No matter how successful the company they have deadlines they want things completed by and budgets they keep sharp control over. Just because Nintendo is willing to take an L and delay something when it needs it doesn't mean there's no pressure or heads don't roll in the background when these things happen. C'mon.

 

Deadlines are a thing, but you have to admit that some entities just have more freedom to work around those. Nobody has a blank check to take as long as the want 100% of the time, but it is VERY clear that Sonic Team lacks the kind of flexibility other developers enjoy.

 

Sonic isn't the only IP that gets the raw end of this deal, but you can't pretend like its on equal footing with games that have the full backing of their corporate to do what needs to be done.

 

I honestly believe Nintendo will not let Metroid Prime 4 out the door until it is an 11/10 game. I can't say that about any Sonic Title.

 

****************

EDIT : And for the Record, the Metroid Team just scrapped 4 and full on started over like a year and a half ago. That doesn't sound like a squad who fear for their heads and work in an expedient manner.

[Wraith]

36 minutes ago, Sega DogTagz said:

EDIT : And for the Record, the Metroid Team just scrapped 4 and full on started over like a year and a half ago. That doesn't sound like a squad who fear for their heads and work in an expedient manner.

For the record, that ENTIRE TEAM was taken off the project and replaced with Retro Studios. There are consequences to these mistakes no matter where you work.

[Jovahexeon Jax Joranvexeon]

I'm not really getting this insistence that Sonic Team really had all the circumstance set in their favor only for them to tank them. At this point, it's common knowledge that they had unfavorable circumstances that held them back.

If you don't care for them, that's fine, but don't let personal feelings cloud judgement in such a manner.

[Sega DogTagz]

22 minutes ago, Wraith said:

For the record, that ENTIRE TEAM was taken off the project and replaced with Retro Studios. There are consequences to these mistakes no matter where you work.

 

and in the same breath as announcing that shift in developers, Takahashi also stated that going forward dev time would be "Extensive". Even when starting over - that game is still getting its full time in the oven.

There is no timetable on getting it right.