While it's in Japanese, some fans on Twitter summarized some interesting tidbits for us. Some of those are pretty spoilery so make sure you've finished the game first.
I would love to read all about Sonic Frontiers development, specially the early "trial & error" stages of development, Iizukas relationship with Sega's upper managment, info about early play testing and so on.
Yeah, apparently Izuka even had to fight upper management for the team to get more time. What they managed to achieve in a little over 2 years of development with not that great of a budget is incredible though. The team should be very proud.
The trial and error stuff actually makes me more hopeful for the next game because it means they're probably mostly past that stage now. They've got a really strong foundation already.
Its probably why we're getting some DLC too. Probably some of that stuff was intended for the game and they couldnt work it into the day 1 version of the game with the deadlines they had.
I would suspect its a combination of trying to minimize player error and mitigate players being straight up being able to bypass entire levels. But to me, it just doesnt feel good beacuse our brains expect momentum to carry after certain actions and it makes things less intuitive.
Momentum would be nice but with all the crazy skips you can already do that game is already at levels of freedom and openness that we've not really seen since adventure 1 so I could take it or leave it honestly.
Pretty sure this means that they continued to work on the first boss for the entire five years the game was in development. Not that they spent five years exclusively on the boss and then made the rest of the game in like a week. lol
I can definitely feel what they mean about Ares island. It's so much fun going off the beaten path, getting "lost" for an hour, and then continuing onward to the main story. I feel this way for all of the islands, honestly, outside of the 4th for obvious reasons.
This makes a lot of sense. I remember hearing about early play tests they were doing from people as well years ago. I think it's pretty clear they went through a lot of iterations before finally deciding on what they went with.
I can definitely feel what they mean about Ares island. It's so much fun going off the beaten path, getting "lost" for an hour, and then continuing onward to the main story. I feel this way for all of the islands, honestly, outside of the 4th for obvious reasons.
I felt the third island was a little frustrating, the shifts to 2D don't work as well in an open world as they do in a linear boost level. But all the other islands were great.
Hopefully the success of this game with the foundation being solidified will lead to an even better sequel with more budget. And yeah, maybe they should lean further into momentum next time around. It's kinda there with stuff like the Drop Dash, but putting more momentum behind the jumps & the Light Speed Dashes would help a lot.
Having not played Frontiers, this is an absolutely insane thing to read about a Sonic game:
According to Kishimoto, the true/physical appearance of the final boss hasn't been revealed because it depends on how each one perceives what death would look like.
This is probably the most open they've been on development since Unleashed. We still don't entirely know what the fuck happened with Forces.
I hope they continue to experiment, but they don't have to start from 0 next time. Start from... 60? What they have is "fine", but could be amazing with a few tweaks
I would love to read all about Sonic Frontiers development, specially the early "trial & error" stages of development, Iizukas relationship with Sega's upper managment, info about early play testing and so on.
I kinda don't want to, would make me all depressed about Sonic Team's current dev capabilities...
They spent all this time creating a very untypical un-Sonic world, needing to playtest with a group of 60 people, only to figure out, that indeed creating just an empty space for Sonic to run around is boring and added the "automated dash panel home attack obstacle courses" as a bare minimum for stuff to do and also added dmc-lite combat for additional measure.
It's a decent game at the end of the day, but yeah
I think the game has decently balanced being able to instantly stop (which I think is actually a good thing here since you get crazy fast), being able to preserve your momentum in certain situations (boosting off objects like rails, platforms, parts of the geometry, etc), and keeping the player from simply flying off every hill. It's really fun to find some sloped scenery and realize you can get some insane air. I've also never been so happy to see flat, floating platforms in a Sonic game lmao: you just do a grounded boost off the edges of them and go flying away.
Also, just wanted to mention something that people might overlook: if you don't want to lose as much speed when you're jumping after boosting, keep the boost held down in midair as you jump. That might sound self-explanatory, but it's something that I often found myself not doing for awhile (I would instinctively let go of the boost while jumping). If you keep it held down you keep a lot more momentum in midair, which feels a lot better and is great for platforming.
And yeah, it was pretty clear that the end of the game had to be quickly cobbled together which is a shame, but I do also feel like they did try within their framework to do something interesting with the final boss. They really need to sort out how these games are getting made next time though... you're kind of doing a disservice to all that time spent tuning the fundamentals if the content-creation phase has to get abruptly cut short, and at what appeared to be a critical time for the game.
Having no momentum outside of rails, sliding, and rolling feels weird and unnatural, but I can see momentum messing up some of the level design, causing you to slip off platforms or overshoot platforms etc. I think they should have at the very least not have the light dash stop you in the cyberspace stages.
I kinda don't want to, would make me all depressed about Sonic Team's current dev capabilities...
They spent all this time creating a very untypical un-Sonic world, needing to playtest with a group of 60 people, only to figure out, that indeed creating just an empty space for Sonic to run around is boring and added the "automated dash panel home attack obstacle courses" as a bare minimum for stuff to do and also added dmc-lite combat for additional measure.
It's a decent game at the end of the day, but yeah
Yeah that's not how I feel about the game. I think it's mostly good even great but even If it's wasn't the case, still I'd found interesting to know about that early dev stage
In the context of Sonic facts this is very interesting stuff and confirms/debunks a ton of leaks with the "ghost girl" of the island boss being just Amy. Also explains why the game feels rushed at the end.
Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm. Giganto was in development since the very start, they mention several times in interviews that most of the iteration was how to make the overworld and combat more Sonic-like, and how that meant implementing "athletic action" paths in the case of the former. That's not exclusive to the first island - it applied to every island. Iizuka said that the trial and error testing didn't begin until halfway into development, which presumably would have been after the "beta" playtest they keep referring to after the project is nearing a more complete form.*
The game was built over the entire span of 5 years. It had a massive amount of trial and error in the back half, but that's it; They still used those 5 years to build the game in its entirety, whether they finished the finale at the end of development or not.
I would love to read all about Sonic Frontiers development, specially the early "trial & error" stages of development, Iizukas relationship with Sega's upper managment, info about early play testing and so on.
There's actually a lot out there in the japanese interviews; it's all broken into bits and pieces depending on what they talk about, but they're pretty candid in regards to what was added at points in the game, and kept from the initial concept.
I won't lie though, it mirrors Dooble's fears to a T, so it's pretty obvious when looking at the game imo
Edit: except for combat being added on. That was part of the initial game build.
In the context of Sonic facts this is very interesting stuff and confirms/debunks a ton of leaks with the "ghost girl" of the island boss being just Amy. Also explains why the game feels rushed at the end.
In terms of "time constraints" though... eeeeeeeh
Mmmmmm. Mmmmmm. Giganto was in development since the very start, they mention several times in interviews that most of the iteration was how to make the overworld and combat more Sonic-like, and how that meant implementing "athletic action" paths in the case of the former. That's not exclusive to the first island - it applied to every island. Iizuka said that the trial and error testing didn't begin until halfway into development, which presumably would have been after the "beta" playtest they keep referring to after the project is nearing a more complete form.*
The game was built over the entire span of 5 years. It had a massive amount of trial and error in the back half, but that's it; They still used those 5 years to build the game in its entirety, whether they finished the finale at the end of development or not.
There's actually a lot out there in the japanese interviews; it's all broken into bits and pieces depending on what they talk about, but they're pretty candid in regards to what was added at points in the game, and kept from the initial concept.
I won't lie though, it mirrors Dooble's fears to a T, so it's pretty obvious when looking at the game imo
Edit: except for combat being added on. That was part of the initial game build.
I think they initially built Kronos and ended up adding platforms over it. I get the feeling Ares came at the perfect time during development when they had figured out what they wanted because it integrates its challenges the most naturally with the environment.
Something I thought was funny is that at the start of the interview, all the Sonic Team member state what their favorite Sonic game was and then say that Frontiers has replaced it. Something that was a bit less funny is that the lead level designer said Secret Rings was his favorite Sonic game haha.
I think they initially built Kronos and ended up adding platforms over it. I get the feeling Ares came at the perfect time during development when they had figured out what they wanted because it integrates its challenges the most naturally with the environment.
If that was the case then that would mean that Chaos island was made earlier and received the worst of the stapled-on paths, which would be odd. If Ares is as strong as it is for being built during the last years of development, that's good for Ares but mindboggling for the context of the rest of the game.
I'm still staying far away from Ares and Oranous footage due to people hyping them up as the best, but isn't it due to the fact that the canyon terrain lends itself well to paths and platforming to begin with? I'm not able to search the interviews at the moment but I do remember either Iizuka or Kishimoto mentioning how the original world design was mostly empty, but had at least some traditional Sonic elements; the action lines were with regards to how boring the worlds were when they were too open with nothing to do.
Something I thought was funny is that at the start of the interview, all the Sonic Team member state what their favorite Sonic game was and then say that Frontiers has replaced it. Something that was a bit less funny is that the lead level designer said Secret Rings was his favorite Sonic game haha.
If that was the case then that would mean that Chaos island was made earlier and received the worst of the stapled-on paths, which would be odd. If Ares is as strong as it is for being built during the last years of development, that's good for Ares but mindboggling for the context of the rest of the game.
I'm still staying far away from Ares and Oranous footage due to people hyping them up as the best, but isn't it due to the fact that the canyon terrain lends itself well to paths and platforming to begin with? I'm not able to search the interviews at the moment but I do remember either Iizuka or Kishimoto mentioning how the original world design was mostly empty, but had at least some traditional Sonic elements; the action lines were with regards to how boring the worlds were when they were too open with nothing to do.
It's weird but Ares really does come together well. It has the most amount of naturally integrated platforming sections on the way to the chaos emeralds. The canyons, as you suggested, lend themselves well for natural to path and platforming but they also have a couple of surprises taking advantage of the environment in ways you wouldn't expect. It also looks really nice and its Titan has the best integration win the open zone than any of the others. It's clear to me it was the most complete island by far.
While Ouranos clearly suffers from being made early in development as evidenced by having little organic Sonic elements integrated. It makes up for that by having some pretty cool parkour sections, the best micro challenges added on top of the map and the best guardians in the game imo. It's also the one island where the somber tone really came together to create a very nice atmosphere along with very nice visuals.
I don't know what happened with Chaos Island. Kronos and Rhea have the excuse of being early and being split off fairly late in development from the original big Kronos. My guess is that they made Kronos first and added challenges on top. Afterwards, they made Ares based on what they learned from Kronos and got to spend the right amount of time to flesh it out. Chaos came next and was gonna be built with integrated Sonic elements (it has the most naturally integrated platforming with the environment after Ares) but they started to run out of time so they had to rush it with 2d segments.
Edit: With that said, Ares has the worst set of cyberspace levels in the game unfortunately. On the other hand, Ouranos has the best set of levels with nearly all of them being original. 33% of the game's cyberspace levels are original and they're nearly all on Ouranos. It makes it clear to me they didn't want to reuse level design initially since Ouranos was meant to be earlier in the game.
Actually this might be based, Secret Rings does have some banger environmental paths to its levels
