Sonic Frontiers Will Be A Good Game

[AbeeZz]

A lot of people in these discussions are being heavily negative on the game. My honest opinion on the game is its amazing. Running around in an open enviroment with an rpg element is all ive ever wanted as a child, so you can imagine my excitement for this game. Its an open world/open-zone game ofc it will have glitches and bugs but thats expected. Breath of the wild had a ton of issues when it first launched. overall sonic frontiers is going to smash it.

[NBOX21]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Problem is it's open world looks boring, empty, and uninspired. I don't get why it's a trend to take these classic mascot's from 30 years ago, and dump them into environments that look like real life. They did it with Mario, Kirby, and now Sonic. What's the point? Give us their actual fantasy worlds they came from to explore but that might require some effort, and creativity I suppose. Far easier to just use basic terrain out of Assassin's Creed I guess.

Inb4 anyone says "they already did that with Adventure":
Adventure 1 and 2 had plenty of fantasy-like settings that fit perfectly with Sonic. That's why we got stages like Twinkle Park, Windy Valley, Pumpkin Hill and Pyramid Cave. The visual direction was also much more cartoonish even in the more "realistic" settings, as were the humans themselves so Sonic and friends don't look out of place in the world itself.

[Duckilous]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Problem is it's open world looks boring, empty, and uninspired. I don't get why it's a trend to take these classic mascot's from 30 years ago, and dump them into environments that look like real life. They did it with Mario, Kirby, and now Sonic. What's the point? Give us their actual fantasy worlds they came from to explore but that might require some effort, and creativity I suppose. Far easier to just use basic terrain out of Assassin's Creed I guess.

Nah, I heavily disagree that the environments seen in Sonic Frontiers are comparable to the likes of Super Mario Odyssey and Kirby and the Forgotten Land where both games actually had art direction.
I mean really, how does Kirby's Forgotten Land look remotely realistic here?[cdn.wikirby.com]
Not even every kingdom in Super Mario Odyssey has a grounded setting or a realistic visual style either.

Sounds like to me you're fixated on the grassy / city themed locations with prejudice against anything that resembles realism but failed to carefully analyse parts of their art direction that still looks cartoony (NOT full-on realistic).

[Max]

Originally posted by Sifer2:

Problem is it's open world looks boring, empty, and uninspired. I don't get why it's a trend to take these classic mascot's from 30 years ago, and dump them into environments that look like real life. They did it with Mario, Kirby, and now Sonic. What's the point? Give us their actual fantasy worlds they came from to explore but that might require some effort, and creativity I suppose. Far easier to just use basic terrain out of Assassin's Creed I guess.

agree,
quality over the size.


also how many games with copy pasty side missions and you need to go back and forth to complete it.

[bud]

My problem with the visuals isnt so much the art direction of the open worlds, its the fact that a lot of the platforming amongst the world looks like its just made of a handful of generic objects like black/purple square platforms and grindrails. Theres almost no attempt to actually integrate the terrain into the level design most of the time, and it looks lazy as hell. Like sure they'll put a bounce pad on the edge of some stone ruins or something but thats the bare minimum. Makes it feel very video gamey and almost unfinished.
The worst thing is when they have loops, they're just made of more platform blocks arranged in a loop. They couldnt even make a generic loop to reuse, they had to reuse blocks for it.

I do agree a little on the generic UE4 fangame open world criticism. Too many games are using these generic modern PBR shader/material workflows and while I dont explicitly think it looks bad here, I think it the rendering could have been made more stylised to fit sonic, a blue cartoon hedgehog with a single large conjoined eye.