Sonic Frontiers... is inevitable...

 This... is... dull looking!

Sonic Frontiers is ever lumbering after us ready to rock our unprepared arses for the crime of looking at the game frankly for the 'meh' it's shaping up as. That original reveal of gameplay has to be one of the most powerful releases of hype ever recorded in marketing, only that release was an exhale of bated breath as most level-headed people went "Wow, this looks rough as heck." Just close your eyes for a minute and try to remember that mess for me. Try to remember the floating railings, the unmatched movement and animation timing, (In a game about movement) the emptiness of the world, the lack of any visual identity... did you remember it all? I hope so because I wanted to do an update on what it is Frontiers has prepared for us now it's so close we can smell it's rot on the very near horizon. Maybe we'll see that the Internet has undersold this game and the believers are the one's who are being vindicated.

A lot of new footage has debuted in the recent months and weeks and of it all I can say this much; I like the new designs of the robots more than then I have in recent Sonic games. Although bare in mind I'm thinking about Forces and their laughably generic enemy robots that weren't worth a iota of brain space to create. These new robots have this cool sleek-metal design that specialises in round shapes instead of sharp edges to create this very monolithic, alien vibe to them. Their grey-black colouring works wonders in catching the light of Sonic Frontier's new engine and emphasising either their size or their shape in a way which feels distinct from other Sonic enemies. The really big creatures even have a vague sense of that 'Shadow of the Colossus' scaling going on, where they sell the disparity between the player and the enemy dynamically and vividly through clever use of a automatically adjusting camera matched with the actual enemy asset itself. 

And unfortunately that remains the only indisputable praise I can throw this game's way because everything else remains fundamentally boring! The world that they've insisted on showing off repeatedly as this point, Kronos Island, is impressively barren looking with it's dull green stretch of nothingness off-set by haphazardly placed grind rails and springs literally floating in the air. Still the game looks like this team just grabbed a generic world map and tried to build their Sonic game ontop of it all without removing that generic beginning asset and replacing it with something that has an identity and soul in the later stages of development. Ah, but now we have a new area in Ares  Island which is... just a bunch of generic brown badlands with grind rails and springs stuck everywhere... it is impressive how this game squanders it's chances at establishing a visual identity, truly.

But some part of Sonic Team must have realised how bland everything felt in their open world and so sought to maintain some sort of balance between old and new, via the brand new Cyberspace sections that are essentially little challenge levels where the old 3D Sonic design philosophy can take over for a brief gameplay section. Unfortunately, when I say 'old' I mean 'new old'. Which is to say, these Cyberspace sections are literally just Sonic Forces style 'run in a straight line and jump a few times, style gameplay levels that are wrapped up in a manner of less than two minutes. Yes, we get to see worlds that look more interesting and evocative of an identity in the Cyberspace worlds, but when they're just back-drops for a lifeless sprint-n-jump; what's even the point? And why hasn't the developers learned anything from people looking at Forces level design and going "Wow, this barely constitutes as a level at all!"

I don't mean to do the 'in my day' kind of rhetoric, but Frontiers just really invites the comparison with it's very rustic approach creating an 'open world'. I heard the affirmation recently that 'open worlds' are just linear games with more space to explore, and I think of that as a gross oversimplification designed as a weak gotcha... except when we're talking about games like Sonic Frontiers. Open World games have to be designed to maintain that sense of immersion and personality both in the heat of the main narrative and the chill of the areas in-between. It has to strike a balance of identify and gameplay across a space that can be explored from any angle and from any direction because the player is not on rails. (At least not to their express knowledge. Clever open worlds know how to subtly guide the path of even the open player with their sheer design.) And to understand the problem with Sonic Team and how they got this wrong, let's look at those Cyberspace levels.

Sonic Adventure 1 and 2 were the very first 3d Sonic games and in many peoples eyes, the best of their kind. Now Sonic Adventure missions bought a few of the main mechanisms that inform modern Sonic design, such as sections designed to make you feel fast and easy kill enemies that you can launch off of; but do you know what else those missions had? They had challenges. Platforming, spike pits, bottomless drops; situations where you couldn't just blindly sprint forward else you would end up losing a life. Now the 2d Sonic games focused a lot on sections that could be sped through with sufficient enough knowledge of the map layout, but there was some peril and sections that changed up the speed of the gameplay here and there. Basic variety is the key is level design on a core level and that is something that modern Sonic has been steadily losing sight of.

Sonic Forces was the worst for it, where you could literally speed through a level without really bothering with any of the mechanics and finish every mission in sub two minutes. There was no sense of peril or variety until the boss missions, and none of them were particularly inspired either. I've only seen two Cyberspace levels so far, and I'm sure there's a great stretch of variety through them (at least visually) but of the two entire levels we've seen neither had anything to them but sprint, bounce and lock-on jump. These are linear slices of gameplay levels, there's no reason they can't be grand and challenging and last more than 1 minute thirty! And just seeing that this is the standard the team are reaching has me worrying about what Forces believes a good gameplay loop is; which isn't something I'd worry about with any other game developer in the world, but this isn't any other developer- Sonic Team have proven that they need the scrutiny!

Frontiers looks visually decent. I like the character models, I like the lighting, I like the style of Super Sonic; but artistically and practically the game has yet to impress me still. I want to like Sonic and I want to play the heck out of his games but without the special spark of purpose to his game design I can't see a future where Sonic fits in with the major modern pantheon of games. And the thing is; I know what you'd have to do to make a good 3d open-world Sonic game, I can see the gameplay loop in my head, but Sonic Team are so staunchly stuck in their ways I don't know if they're ever going to match and certainly not exceed what seems like such a simple vision. We need newer and fresher developers with newer and inspired ideas to breath life into Sonic. And if Frontiers does well enough, maybe that's what we'll get! There's something to look forward to I guess...