Sonic Frontiers[lower-alpha 1] is an upcoming platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. As Sonic the Hedgehog, the player explores the mysterious Starfall Islands to collect the Chaos Emeralds after Sonic, Miles "Tails" Prower, and Amy Rose separate when falling through a wormhole. Frontiers integrates platforming and traditional Sonic elements—such as rings and grind rails—into the series' first open world, where the player solves puzzles to collect items and fights robot enemies.

Sonic Frontiers
Western cover art
Developer(s)	Sonic Team
Publisher(s)	Sega
Director(s)	Morio Kishimoto
Producer(s)	Takashi Iizuka Sachiko Kawamura
Writer(s)	Ian Flynn
Composer(s)	Tomoya Ohtani Jun Senoue
Series	Sonic the Hedgehog
Platform(s)	Nintendo Switch PlayStation 4 PlayStation 5 Windows Xbox One Xbox Series X/S
Release	November 8, 2022
Genre(s)	Platform, action-adventure
Mode(s)	Single-player

Development began after the release of Sonic Forces (2017). Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wanted Frontiers to set a new template for Sonic games to follow, similar to Sonic Adventure (1998). Sonic Team settled on an open-ended design and focused on adapting Sonic's abilities to an open world. Frontiers is scheduled for release on Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on November 8, 2022.

Gameplay

Sonic Frontiers is a 3D platformer and action-adventure game.[1][2] The player, as Sonic, explores the Starfall Islands, which comprise various biomes including flowery fields, forests, ancient ruins, and deserts.[1][3] The story begins when Sonic, Miles "Tails" Prower, Knuckles the Echidna, and Amy Rose are sucked through a wormhole and Sonic is lost on a mysterious island, separated from Tails, Amy, and Knuckles. An artificial intelligence guides the player as they seek to collect the Chaos Emeralds[4] and find Sonic's friends.[5]

Sonic retains his abilities from previous Sonic the Hedgehog games: he runs at high speeds, collects rings, grinds on rails,[6][7] and homes in on enemies to attack.[4] The player can double jump, sidestep using their gamepad's shoulder buttons, drop dash, and boost with the right trigger if they have enough energy.[5] New abilities include combat attacks, running alongside walls, and using the Cyloop to create a circle of light around objects and interact with them.[4][8] The Cyloop can perform different tasks by drawing certain shapes, for example, drawing an infinity symbol will allow Sonic to boost indefinitely for a short time. Sonic also has the ability to boost much faster upon collecting 400 rings, gaining a blue aura reminiscent of his counterpart from the Sonic the Hedgehog film series. The player can customize the controls and adjust Sonic's speed, turning, acceleration, and resistance, and can upgrade Sonic's speed, attacks, defense, and ring capacity as they progress.[5]

The Starfall Islands act as the series' first open world,[3] which writers compared to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017).[lower-alpha 2] The open world retains traditional Sonic elements, such as springs, boost pads, and grind rails.[13][14] The player explores the islands as they scale towers in platforming challenges to reveal parts of the map,[5][13] and solve puzzles, including orienting statues and speedrunning, to collect items.[4][15] Collectibles include Kocos, which upgrade Sonic's moveset, and Memory Tokens, which are used to rescue Sonic's friends.[5] The main quest takes 20–30 hours to finish, while finding all collectibles takes as much as 60 hours.[16]

The player battles robots throughout the islands;[17] Sonic can dodge and parry attacks and use the Cyloop to make enemies easier to strike. Defeating enemies grants the player experience points that allow them to purchase additional abilities. Alongside regular, small enemies, the player battles large bosses that they must scale to attack. Bosses provide the player with pieces of a portal that, when assembled, allow them to enter "Cyber Space"—short, linear levels similar to those from previous Sonic games.[18] The linear levels, which shift between third-person and side-scrolling perspectives,[19] contain multiple goals, including time attack and collecting red rings, and reward players with a key required to collect a Chaos Emerald.[4] Some feature unique challenges, such as a fishing minigame hosted by Big the Cat.[20] Collecting all the Chaos Emeralds allows the player to transform into Super Sonic, who is required to defeat certain bosses.[21]

Development

Conception

Following the release of Sonic Forces (2017), Sonic Team began exploring approaches for its next Sonic the Hedgehog game. In addition to celebrating the series' upcoming 30th anniversary, Sonic Team also sought to define what a modern Sonic game should be and solidify the series' direction for the next decade.[22][23] Forces received criticism for its short length and level design, so its director, Morio Kishimoto, concluded that Sonic Team's method of designing levels that originated in Sonic Unleashed (2008) would no longer satisfy fans.[20] Sonic Team ultimately determined that the series' traditional linear design contained "little room for evolution"[23] and felt it could not progress in this direction.[24] In particular, Sonic Team head and Sonic series producer Takashi Iizuka felt 3D Sonic games were not giving players enough freedom and constrained them to linear paths.[25]

Iizuka felt the series needed to take an innovative direction that would inform future games, similar to how Sonic the Hedgehog (1991) and Sonic Adventure (1998) set templates used by later games.[26][27] The idea to make an open-world Sonic game came from Kishimoto, who had enjoyed watching the evolution of the platform genre's world map concept since it was popularized by Super Mario Bros. 3 in 1988. Some Sonic games, such as Sonic Adventure, featured world maps, but Kishimoto felt his idea evolved the concept by combining it with the gameplay.[20][28] He thought it would allow for more freedom and diverse gameplay.[29][28]

Kishimoto returned to direct Frontiers,[12] while Sonic Unleashed (2008), Generations (2011), and Forces art director Sachiko Kawamura produced it.[2][7] Frontiers' development has lasted five years, much longer than previous Sonic games' development cycles. Iizuka attributed the length in part to Frontiers not building on previous Sonic gameplay. Determining the direction required trial-and-error refinement, and the development restarted from scratch at one point.[27] Sonic Team began regularly holding external playtesting during Frontiers' development.[30] The COVID-19 pandemic began halfway during production, necessitating Sonic Team to shift to remote work for the first time in its history. Iizuka noted that this made it difficult for individual developers to "get a sense of the big picture", but the benefit of digital communication "accelerated" other aspects of the development.[24]

Design

The designers focused on transitioning Sonic's speed and abilities to an open-world design while remaining true to previous games,[7] and opted for a mysterious tone to reflect Sonic exploring an unfamiliar landscape.[4][23] Iizuka felt Sonic's essence as a 3D action game separated Frontiers from adventure and role-playing games such as The Legend of Zelda series.[23] As such, he declined to call it an open-world game, preferring the term "open zone".[4] Sonic Team applied lessons learned from developing Sonic Adventure's hub worlds when designing Frontiers[23] and repeatedly tested how fast Sonic could race through the open world to determine how large it needed to be.[29] Iizuka said the largest challenge was ensuring that fast-paced exploration would be fun.[20] Sonic Team sought to address criticism that previous Sonic games were too short,[20] and chose not to raise the difficulty level as the game progresses since the open world would provide plenty of content.[28]

Sonic Team decided to prioritize combat to a greater extent,[31] but despite the shift to open-world design, Sonic Team determined that Frontiers did not feel like a Sonic game without platforming elements. This presented the challenge of balancing platforming with exploration; Sonic Team's solution was to have the world open up as a reward for completing challenges.[27] The developers wanted to ensure that players could choose between combat and platforming and would not be forced to fight enemies, so they included various methods to collect items outside platforming and combat, such as puzzles.[29] The 2020 Sonic the Hedgehog feature film influenced the development; Kishimoto requested that Sonic Team incorporate Easter eggs referencing it and based the combat on the film's depiction of Sonic.[31] With the Cyber Space levels, Kishimoto wanted Sonic to "once again... stand amongst the other 'stage-clear' action games" that he enjoyed, like the Sega Genesis-era Sonic games and the Super Mario, Donkey Kong, and Kirby series.[20]

Writing

Ian Flynn, who wrote Sonic the Hedgehog comics published by Archie Comics and IDW Publishing and episodes of the Sonic Boom TV series, wrote the script.[2][1] Iizuka decided to ask Flynn to write Frontiers after reading his work on the IDW comics. He felt Flynn understood the Sonic cast and would bring "a great improvement to the characters' emotions and dialogue."[25] Iizuka noted that the story differs from previous Sonic games in that it is less humorous and does not make the player's goal obvious, instead challenging them to figure out how to solve the problems themselves.[23][29]

Unlike prior Sonic media he had written, for which Flynn pitched stories himself, Sega dictated Frontiers's premise and which characters Flynn was allowed to use. Nonetheless, Flynn considered it "a dream come true" to write a major Sonic game,[32] and he still got to present ideas for using more characters in the story to Sonic Team. Kishimoto said this created a "cooperative back and forth" between Sonic Team and Flynn concerning which characters would appear.[33] Given the nonlinear approach, Flynn found pacing the story was "the biggest question" and "had to be massaged and revised as the game's structure took shape."[32] Kishimoto did the Japanese localization himself using Flynn's script as a base, making changes to suit the Japanese market.[33]

Music

Series composers Tomoya Ohtani and Jun Senoue contributed to the score.[34][35] In accordance with the tone, the Frontiers soundtrack is less upbeat and is "focused more on helping to create a mysterious feeling surrounding the islands."[23] The game's main theme, "I'm Here", was composed by Ohtani with vocals and lyrics by Merry Kirk-Holmes of the Australian metal band To Octavia.[36] Japanese rock band One Ok Rock wrote and performed the ending theme, "Vandalize", which also appears on their tenth studio album Luxury Disease.[37]

Release

Sega planned to release Sonic Frontiers in 2021 to coincide with the franchise's 30th anniversary, but delayed it for a year for quality control.[30] It is scheduled for release on November 8, 2022,[38] for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.[39][2]

The game will be offered in physical and digital versions, both offering in-game items as pre-order bonuses, as well as a Digital Deluxe edition which includes additional items and a digital soundtrack.[40] In Japan, the game will feature various DLC items in collaboration with Hololive Production-affiliated VTuber Inugami Korone, offered by pre-ordering the game at different stores. These include DLC that replaces the ring sound effects with Korone's voice, gives Sonic Korone's shoes and gloves, and replaces the game's Koco characters with "Koronesukis".[40] In English-speaking countries, signing up for the official newsletter will give players a DLC code to unlock Sonic's Soap shoes from Sonic Adventure 2.[41]

Marketing

Sega unveiled a teaser trailer, featuring Sonic running through a forest, at the end of a 30th anniversary livestream on May 27, 2021.[42] The title was not announced, but the trailer's metadata and a Sega press release were discovered to have titled the game Sonic Rangers.[39][43] Iizuka later said that he felt the game was teased prematurely, but believed it was necessary given that it was the 30th anniversary and Sonic Team had not announced a game since Forces' release.[44] Sega trademarked the name Sonic Frontiers in November 2021 and announced it the following month at The Game Awards 2021.[26][2] Sega collaborated with the video game news website IGN to promote Frontiers throughout June 2022.[45] A trailer was featured during the opening night of Gamescom on August 23, 2022.[38] A promotional animated short, Sonic Frontiers: Prologue, will premiere before the game's release.[46][47]

Nintendo Life characterized early Frontiers gameplay footage as divisive.[48] Kotaku felt the game looked fine but derivative and bland, lacking the series' unique identity,[15] and Polygon and Nintendo Life found the open world desolate.[8][49] Some Sonic fans demanded that the game be delayed, and the hashtag #DelaySonicFrontiers briefly trended on Twitter.[50] Iizuka said that Sonic Team expected early reactions to be polarized, as he felt the early footage was simple and thus would not give fans a good idea of what to expect.[27][24]

Reception

IGN, after playing an early build for four hours, was left with positive impressions: while opining that certain elements, such as boss fights and bugs, required additional work, it wrote the series' gameplay translated well to open-world design and felt distinct from other open-world games.[4] TheGamer favorably compared Frontiers to Pokémon Legends: Arceus (2022), feeling that "both games are first attempts to reimagine a stagnating series in a modern way, and while there's some questionable design decisions and plenty of frustrations to be found, they're both a huge step in the right direction."[5]

Writing for Fanbyte, journalist Imran Khan gave mixed impressions after playing through a preview demo and remarked "I was hoping the inspiration that game series like Sonic took from Breath of the Wild would be that reinventing your long-running franchise requires fundamentally thinking and rethinking everything about it. Sonic Frontiers, at least from this preview demo, instead feels like a Frankensteinian reassembly of things the developers believe work well individually."[51]

Notes

References

External links

• Official website
• Official website (in Japanese)

На других языках

[ru] Sonic Frontiers