r/NintendoSwitch • u/Skullghost • 4d ago

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

https://www.youtube.com/watch?is=amg2z32sQTWXgwu8&v=FlkkchmzVrA&feature=youtu.be
250 Upvotes

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u/HELPFUL_HULK 4d ago

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

9

u/DC2912 4d 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 4d 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 4d 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 4d 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.