Sega: Gamers just don't understand!

 "It's not a phase, Mom!"

To be a fly on the wall of the SEGA all-hands meeting once it became clear that the brand new open world game they were so excited to be showcasing is getting slammed and mocked for being a barren waste of a tech demo. I mean that's got to be a knock to the ol' confidence, right? To have something you believe so heavily in as a testament to your best talents be laughed off as a bad joke. I imagine there were a fair few heartbroken faces in that board room in the days following those gameplay snippet reveals. And I know that SEGA both meant their footage with the utmost sincerity and took the reaction to it personally, or as personally as a video game company that I've inexplicably personified can. It's all summed up in their official response to the mass fan reaction, which is something along the lines of "You just don't get the art of it, man! You're a stinkin' poser!"

I understand, and darkly respect, the desire to throw all responsibility to the wall, disregard all critique and proudly declare that everybody is the wrong one here. "The mirror lies, the whole world's wrong but me." It's certainly a lot easier than coming to terms with the fact that everyone thinks the hard work you've spent the better part of your last two professional years working on is an Internet joke. I mean that's got to be somewhat similar to the feeling that the team behind Morbius had the second they realised that the world wide praise they were receiving was hilariously tipped scorn for how utterly unapologetically awful their movie was. At least, that was the case until they jumped the shark and tried to profit off the meme by rereleasing that movie in theatres only to end up with perhaps the only movie in history that flopped twice during consecutive theatrical runs. I'm trying to think what the Sonic Frontiers equivalent of that would be, and I can only picture the exact situation that Anthem 2.0 ended up doing but with Sonic's furry gob stuck on the front of the news story next time. (God, that would be a disaster, wouldn't it?)

And to be absolutely fair to SEGA, there is a breed of apparently real gamers out there who look at Sonic Frontiers and think it looks like a real game. Indeed, I was very surprised too. Apparently Japanese gamers are, for the most part, receptive to SEGA's footage as it's shown on Twitter and apparently some Japanese players just want to pay money for tech demos. Which they absolutely can do to their hearts content if they want to, heck I'm pretty sure you can download some free Unreal engine demos and donate money to their company at the same time if you want to. As for the rest of us, we have slightly different standards when it comes to assessing the worth of our money; and I, for one, am in favour of the strange idea that games I pay full price for should somewhat resemble games. You know, with design elements and polish and a working executable. But that's just my two cents on the matter, everyone has their own tastes.

Am I laying into SEGA a little much? Maybe, but what else can I do when I'm confronted by a game company telling me, to my face, that I'm too much of a troglodyte to comprehend the moving pictures in front of my face. I'm a literal brainless child, clawing stupidly at my mobile believing myself to be a interstellar god sweeping away the stars. I mean I must be right, for mine and everybody else's sound and detailed criticism to be brushed away with; "You just don't understand." I wonder how far this will go? I wonder if we just won't understand if the game drops as a barely functioning pile of drivel. I wonder if we still won't understand if the game goes onto be a commercial flop. Will we still be lacking the basics if SEGA are forced to downsize Sonic Team for wasting their money on the industry's most dead open world? How about Sonic is the laughing stock of the next generation? Are we too simple minded for the genius over at SEGA? Heck, maybe they're ahead of their time!

Yes, if you're wondering; I am taking this seriously, because this has to be one of the most affrontingly defensive stances I've ever seen an established gaming icon take. To be clear, this comment comes from an interview where director Takashi Iizuka attempts to tell the world, with a straight face, that Sonic Frontiers is utterly incomparable with any other open world game in existence and thus is categorically beyond our reproach. In so many words. Now I wish that were true, I think Sonic could truly be the foundation of a truly unique 3D action game if only the right creative vision was helming the project; but you cannot show us your ridiculously derivative 'Breath of the Wild' with furries concept, complete with a reveal trailer that literally borrows beats from the BotW gameplay reveal, and tell me your being completely original. That is completely dishonest and I'm actually a little affronted that you would just lie to me like that.

Sonic Frontiers is a traditional 'climb this tower', 'solve this puzzle' and 'fight this boss' style open world, there is nothing unique about that basic formula. Which is why when we see what those games do and apply the obvious short comings of those systems in our analysis of Frontiers, that is the very definition of 'informed criticism'. And is our man about to turn around and tell us that Sonic Team's prevalent pop-in issue caused by the game's limited render capabilities is just a bold new direction in game design? How about the lack of transitory animations between walking speeds which makes Sonic look like he's gliding? Another supremely transformative artistic choice that our primitive monkey brains can't decode? Get the heck over yourself, man; be a director.

What gets me is that there is a totally non condescending way to tell people that you aren't going to listen to their feedback unless it's positive and are totally refusing the communities olive branch. Just do what every other company under the sun does and say 'This is an X months old build and all it's bugs or shortcomings are totally not indicative of the game right now'. But instead he went the high road, picked his hill and declared this was a battle to the death; all for a game that looks like a total snoozefest. I'm sorry your gameplay reveal sucks, I know that might have hurt your feelings, but if you go around surrounding yourself in abject denial the only people who are going to end up being hurt are the members of Sonic Team when their work falls apart in the eyes of critics.

Or maybe I'm wrong. Maybe we're all wrong. Maybe Sonic Frontiers is a secret ritual to summon from the dark depths a Cenobite from the labyrinth that will unlock a new sensation of excitement beyond the deepest layer of mediocrity; a key to the lock in our head that will make these objectively dull gameplay snippets into the most transformative, high octane, video game experience of our lives, if only we agree to be tortured by a sado-masochistic pin-headed demon for the rest of our natural lives. If all of that just happens to be true about Sonic Frontiers, I will readily concede my utter intellectual inferiority to Iizuka, the man who rewrote the very concept of dull and pastiche for us all to see. But if that doesn't happen, and I have my doubts, then I withhold full rights to, as I insist right now, say 'I told you so' if this game doesn't get delayed and turns out to be pile of garbage. Deal? Deal.