What happened to the 6th island?

[Zenny]

I've been re-reading some old "Rangers" beta testers leaks from 2019 to 2021 and I noticed many of these alleged testers talk about Frontiers having 6 islands to explore. The final game has 5 islands, and we know nowdays that Rhea and Ouranos are part of Kronos that was cut in three because beta testers complained about too much green.

Some of these islands also appear to have been merged during development. They also stated each island had one of Sonic's friend to rescue. Here's what they described:

-A cove area: most likely describing the beginning portions of Kronos, but Rhea and Ouranos also fit in the description.

-A mountain area: Chaos Island's frozen mountains?

-An inferno area: another described it as a tropical island with a volcano. Could it be Chaos Island, which also has a small hot springs section.

-A desert: Ares Island;

-A wooded area: Possibly the (unused) forest from Rhea Island, where we can find scraps of Caterpillar robots and many interesting ancient ruins. In the leaked 2021 build video we see Sonic fighting a Caterpillar in this forest area;

-A space area (final area of the game): possibly the part that was cut from the final game. Peharps Super Sonic was meant to leave the planet after defeating Supreme and there would be an Open Zone in the scape? Inside the game's files there are unused voice lines for Sage regarding her guiding Sonic through the Ancient's spaceship: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tk4aTVMpLas

Maybe Sonic Team will rework this scrapped concept for the revamped final in the third update? Kishimot said they wanted to make the final boss better, and the game interestingly performs the last autosave right before Sonic gets the 6th Chaos Emerald in Ouranos Island.

[Edward H.B]

I remember a leak from someone who was, possibly, on the final island, where everything had a dead and mechanized tone (as if Eggman had done his thing in that area) and that the only objective of said island was to disable 6-7 " fans" or "machines" that ejected toxic smoke that caused Sonic to lose rings over time (sort of like the Ghost Guardian), and that you had to fight hordes of enemies in each "fan" before deactivating it.

I'm sure it's fake, but at this point I don't know as it turned out that most of the leaks were real.
and it might not surprise me if this was an early concept, where Eggman was the main antagonist and not THE END, and it was reused for the towers in Rhea.


yes, this game, unlike other sonic games, was in a trial and error process, and was tested every 3 months if I remember correctly (which I read from an interview)... They were working on Giganto for about 5 years. , the titan combat went through so many changes...

lack of time make Sonic team cut corners.

[Fili]

5 years is a hell of a long time. If they were in an experimenting phase for most of those 5 years, I have to wonder what they were thinking. Don't get me wrong, i'm glad Frontiers came a good game instead of the couple dumpster fires of the last 15 years.

I mentioned this in another post but Sonic Generations didn't have even half the Dev time and came out a much more focused game if a bit short. Again, I still liked Frontiers so i'm glad it exists, so yeah.

[Duckilous]

I thought the game was originally supposed to have 3 islands, with Rhea and Ouranos being part of Kronos. Even one of Eggman's Memos mentioned only 3 islands instead of 5 or 6.

Originally posted by Zenny:

we know nowdays that Rhea and Ouranos are part of Kronos that was cut in three because beta testers complained about too much green.

Really? Too much green? If that's an actual complaint from the beta testers and not because of something actually reasonable, then Sonic Team didn't really do much to mitigate this problem since we still have three islands of the same biome when it all could've been one.

[Zenny]

Originally posted by Edward H.B:

I remember a leak from someone who was, possibly, on the final island, where everything had a dead and mechanized tone (as if Eggman had done his thing in that area) and that the only objective of said island was to disable 6-7 " fans" or "machines" that ejected toxic smoke that caused Sonic to lose rings over time (sort of like the Ghost Guardian), and that you had to fight hordes of enemies in each "fan" before deactivating it.

I'm sure it's fake, but at this point I don't know as it turned out that most of the leaks were real.
and it might not surprise me if this was an early concept, where Eggman was the main antagonist and not THE END, and it was reused for the towers in Rhea.


yes, this game, unlike other sonic games, was in a trial and error process, and was tested every 3 months if I remember correctly (which I read from an interview)... They were working on Giganto for about 5 years. , the titan combat went through so many changes...

lack of time make Sonic team cut corners.

By Chaos Island there several Egg Tech machinery near the volcano, Sonic even comments Eggman was harnessing geothermal energy. Given how the last 2 islands are just pieces of Kronos, makes me think Eggman was supposed to be more of a threat larer the game.

[Zenny]

Originally posted by Fili:

5 years is a hell of a long time. If they were in an experimenting phase for most of those 5 years, I have to wonder what they were thinking. Don't get me wrong, i'm glad Frontiers came a good game instead of the couple dumpster fires of the last 15 years.

I mentioned this in another post but Sonic Generations didn't have even half the Dev time and came out a much more focused game if a bit short. Again, I still liked Frontiers so i'm glad it exists, so yeah.

Credit Sonic Generations is a banger of a game, however I think it had things going on for it to come out good:

-They already had a winning formula and working engine thanks to Unleashed and Colors. All they had to do was remove gimmicks people disliked, like the Werehog and wisps;

-Being an anniversary title they most likely knew what they wanted to do from start. Just get the most popular Sonic level tropes and make new boost stages with them.

-Sonic Team didn't had to worry about anything else besides the 360 and PS3, because Dimps took care of the 3DS and PSP (cancelled) versions, and the PC port was out sourced to another studio. Less pressure on ST dev's.

The main pitch for Frontiers was precisely to scrap everything and try something new. The boost gameplay is amazing, but it alone cannot carry a 60 usd 10+ hours game. This is why every boost game has a side gimmick. Frontiers' Open Zone format is to be the ground work for Sonic's gameplay in the future.