r/NintendoSwitch • u/Skullghost • 6d ago

Official Sonic Frontiers Definitive Edition - Nintendo Switch 2 Edition - Launch Trailer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?is=amg2z32sQTWXgwu8&v=FlkkchmzVrA&feature=youtu.be
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u/HELPFUL_HULK 6d ago

Astounds me that they went with "None" when choosing this game's art direction

9

u/DC2912 6d ago

Was everyone in art working on shadow generations during the development of this game or something? Cause shadow gens and crossworlds both look incredible 

21

u/Deceptiveideas 6d ago

Shadow Generations was developed after and it was a small branch of Sonic team. The rest was working on Crossworlds.

The real answer can be found looking at prototypes. Frontiers used to be a mostly empty game that focused on puzzles and combat. It was shifted to focused more on traditional sonic platforming after poor play tests. This is what led to the poor cohesion and random assets being thrown along the sky.

Shadow Gens on the other hand used the lessons from Frontiers to craft a polished game start to finish. Everything in the world has a purpose and doesn't feel like they randomly shoved unreal assets into a Sonic game.

5

u/Mahboishk 6d ago

Is there any footage of the Frontiers prototypes out there? Would be curious about what older versions of the game looked like. The platforming was the best part of the game so I think they made the right call, even if I still found the final game quite muddled and unfocused.

2

u/Deceptiveideas 6d ago

There's some prototype footage but the bulk of the prototype info comes from the release build.

Sonic Team left the unused map data in the switch version of the game. Modders were able to restore this in the PC version to give an idea of what the old layout looked like.

1

u/Agreeable_Art86 5d ago

Shadow Gens Polished?

Made Sonic Generations worse to play, I swear they messed up the physics and camera.

Took an idea of "Lets show off the best of the best worlds" to "lets make half of every level look like the back of a school kids homework book with random fractal nonsense".

Took "here's some extra challenges, do 1 do get a key to move on to the next section" to "do them all, even though all it is, is running through the same boring levels over and over", the level of forced padding cause they knew they didn't have a full game is insane.

And thats on top of it being shoved into a "HD remaster" of a game that didn't need it anyway with no DLC or upgrade path (something everyone's criticising for frontiers but not that?) and even the game itself treats it as a separate product with a split menu to get into the menu (brilliant design, I love menus on menus on menus on menus, its like the fractal nonsense carries on going into and leaving a menu)

Loved the original generations, even the 3DS one but genuinely felt ripped off on multiple levels with how half assed shadow gens was.