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Sonic General Discussion Zone Act 1: New Frontiers

Dalesean027 said:
Just how decisive is this story and it's impact is it like like that fr? And that's not rhetorical either since it's not spoilers to say how big the implications of story are someone give me a general scope is it it like really big or is there just some stuff that may have potential for later
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A lot of it doesn't have particularly big implications but does recontextualize previous lore or add onto it in pretty cool ways, but some stuff in there can lead to some big shit in the future (Especially stuff to do with the Chaos Emeralds, first time we get any major lore for since, I think SA1)
 
Dust_Collector said:
A lot of it doesn't have particularly big implications but does recontextualize previous lore or add onto it in pretty cool ways, but some stuff in there can lead to some big shit in the future (Especially stuff to do with the Chaos Emeralds, first time we get any major lore for since, I think SA1)
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Gotcha and thanks that still sounds cool asf so I'm looking forward to it
 
I mean I exclusively play SA1 and 2 with the Japanese translation in mind due to PC mods since they sound a lot better IMO, so I'm sure the Frontiers Japanese script will net some interesting statements
 
The_Unknown_Warrior1 said:
I mean I exclusively play SA1 and 2 with the Japanese translation in mind due to PC mods since they sound a lot better IMO, so I'm sure the Frontiers Japanese script will net some interesting statements
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I'm sure they will since Nakamura particularly stated that it was changed to meet the manga and anime culture of Japan (At least some keywords are much more flowered on the Japanese version considering the translation that was already available). I wonder if in matter of feats they'll also increase the scale, I remember that for Sonic Lost World the English script state that the danger of the explosion of the life energy reactor was of "hundred of miles", while the Japanese script was "reduce the entire planet into nothing", wouldn't be surprised if Ian's script was much more "down to earth" while Nakamura's hyped more of the series.
 
Thinking about the differences on Japanese and English Sonic, I can't stop but remember the "Sonic Adventure Stylebook", it had both English and Japanese profiles for the characters, and they are... very different. Here are some comparisons:

Sonic the Hedgehog
English: A quick bolt of lightning and Sonic's his name. Helping the needy - that's Sonic's game! Speed is his glory, it's what he does best Sonic's the fastest north, south, east & west!
Japanese: 自由気ままが大好きで、曲がったことが大キライ。 直情的で短気だが、 困っている人がいると放っておけない優しさも併せ持っている。 とにかくじっとしちゃいられない。 サウンドにはうるさい。
Japanese (Translated): He loves freedom and hates crookedness. He is impulsive and short-tempered but is also so kind that he won't ignore when someone is in trouble. He just can't sit still. Can be picky about sound.

Miles "Tails" Prower
English: A sweet little guy, his tails let him fly. Sonic's best pal 'til the day they die. He'll follow Sonic to the ends of the earth. He's been the spunkiest sidekick Since the day of his birth.
Japanese: ちょっと引っ込み思案だが、 気が優しくてまじめ。その特徴といえる二本のシッポをからかわれていじめられていたが、ソニックの姿を目にし、 あこがれ、後を追って走ることにより、 勇気と前向きな気持ちを持つようになる。
Japanese (Translated): He is a bit withdrawn but kind-hearted and serious. He was teased for his characteristic two tails, but when he saw Sonic's figure, he admired him and ran after him, gaining courage and a positive attitude.

Knuckles the Echidna
English: On Angel Island, up high in the air Guarding the emerald, he's stubborn but fair. Descended from a noble warrior clan, When there's business to be done, Knuckles is your man!
Japanese: 古の戦闘民族の末裔。 一本気で生真面目、 それゆえいささか融通がきかない。 エンジェルアイランドという空中に浮かぶ島で マスターエメラルドを守護して暮らしている。 そのためか純真で素直な面があり、 だまされやすい。 女の子が苦手。 ナックルズというのは一族の名称であったが、 残された最後のひとりとしてその名が名前になっているようだ。
Japanese (Translated): A descendant of an ancient warrior race. He is single-minded and serious, and therefore somewhat inflexible. He lives on an island called Angel Island, where he protects the Master Emerald. Perhaps because of this, he has an innocent and honest side and is easily deceived. He is not good with girls. Knuckles was the name of his family, but it seems that he is the last one left and his name has become his family's name.

Eggman
English: Evil and mean, full of ego and greed. He lives for robots and other machines. Late at night, dreaming, all tucked in his bed, His nemesis Sonic will fill him with dread.
Japanese: 自分勝手でわがままな、 自称悪の天才科学者。 三度の飯よりメカが好き。 己の美学を重んじるため、そのメカの設計思想は必要以上にデザインやギミックを重視していたりする。 目的は自らの理想とする都市 「エッグマンランド」の建設。 そのためにとった様々な行動が、 たまたま一般常識に照らすと 「悪いこと」 だったりするのである。 本人に悪気はないのだ、あくまでも。
Japanese (Translated): A selfish and self-indulgent self-proclaimed evil genius scientist. He loves mecha more than three meals a day. Because he values his own aesthetics, his mechanical design philosophy places more emphasis on design and gimmicks than what is necessary. His goal is to build his ideal city, "Eggman Land". The various actions he takes to achieve this goal happen to be "bad" in the eyes of common sense. He has no bad intentions, of course.

The constant way that the English profiles are made seems much more like one-note characters without nuance and more on showing "jokes and coolness" than anything else. The Japanese profiles, however, focus a lot more on their backstories and more detail on their way of thinking.

Eggman's profile is the one with the biggest difference in my opinion, as the English profile just jokes about Eggman being "evil and mean", while the Japanese profile goes in more detail about his way of thinking and the detail that Eggman doesn't see himself as "evil', that is just the common sense view of what he does because of his desire of creating the ideal city using modern machines. This has been mentioned on other Japanese profiles as well and explained by Naoto Oshima as Sonic is showing the battle between "modernity and nature, humanity and animals" with Eggman embodying the modern progress over the animals, but he doesn't do anything "evil", so much so that he never would attempt to destroy the world and he helps to save it in the ending of Sonic Adventure was a showcase of that.

Eggman would of course change a lot even on the Japanese side as in Sonic Adventure 2 (Which makes sense considering that Sonic Adventure was the last game that Naoto Oshima was a part of), but the fact of how a lot of details are Japanese exclusive even though Sonic is a series that is more famous and developed on the west just feels "wrong".

If anything, this is the one aspect that I fear from Ian Flynn becoming a lead writer for the games as I feel he could miss a lot of important background information because of the lack of knownledge from the Japanese lore (It doesn't help that SEGA seems to have no archive for that as well). I remember that for the Encyclospeedia there were some things he just made up from that and contradicted the Japanese lore such as Maria being on Ark because that would help her be cured due to the low gravity, when the official Japanese setting was that due to Ark being in space, she wouldn't be affected by Earth's disease, because NIDS was based on HIV. And fans discovered this just by asking Adventure 2's writer on Twitter...

I feel like if Sonic doesn't get someone who archives all of this stuff, they will just retcon the previous material again and again as Origins did. If the answer is on an old book or material, they shouldn't retcon it "because it's obscure", they should just make it more accessible. This is one thing that I'm liking from Digimon as there are people who work on the series that are archiving a lot of old lore and they are doing great things by reusing it, I feel like they should do something similar with Sonic.
 
The_Unknown_Warrior1 said:
@Executor_N0 if you don't mind answering, what did Origins change for Sonic in terms of lore? I never played the Genesis/CD games so my knowledge of that game is through Youtube videos
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Originally Sonic 1 was just another day in Sonic's life, as Sonic already fought Eggman before and they were already enemies. Origins changed this and Sonic 1 became the first time they meet each other.

Each of the games had a backstory that happened after some days or more time preparing for the start of the game, Sonic 2's was basically Sonic on a vocation after his last adventure and he just decided to rest on a new island where he meets Tails, had his entire backstory until the moment Eggman appears on the island.

Sonic Origins basically changes the adventure to a non-stop speed run as Sonic moves from one game to the other removing all the build-up time that the games had. So instead of finally showing what happened in that long time between games, they just rush to start the game.
 
That's.....a real thing to retcon.
I mean the question would be why did it need to be retconned? I doubt people were having issues with the timeline of Genesis games so I wonder what SEGA was smoking to come up with that idea
 
I think it's mostly because most of the fanbase never read the manuals that explained the backstory and also because a lot of the details of the story weren't adapted from western manuals. Since they are trying to unify the image of Sonic, they decided to greatly reduce the backstory of the games in order to make them easier to understand and explain in a quick game like Sonic Origins instead of using a lot of time to develop background details that most people never heard about. As, they didn't want to be limited while explaining the story with Japanese-only elements that were never been adapted before.
 
Origins doesn't contradict the manuals, they're just mini-scenes that can perfectly fit with the manual canon.

The Sonic 1 cutscenes makes no implication this is the first time Sonic and Eggman meet each other.
 
BlastX said:
Origins doesn't contradict the manuals, they're just mini-scenes that can perfectly fit with the manual canon.

The Sonic 1 cutscenes makes no implication this is the first time Sonic and Eggman meet each other.
Click to expand...
In the way of thinking that they are just short representations of them, yes. Although there are contradictions, such as Amy Rose appearing on the base of Little Planet and then reading the tarot cards, while the original material states she used fortune-telling and then went to Little Planet.
The notion of being a retcon is because Ian Flynn, who wrote the Origin story, stated as such, that Origins is the new origin story and shows the first encounter between Sonic and Eggman and retcons any of the previous versions of those games, so yes, he confirms it's a retcon of the previous story "after many discussion with Sonic Team", but still a retcon by their standards.
 
The guy outright contradicts himself more than once, can't remember stuff he said himself months later and even tried to take credit from one of the Tails tube episodes when it was Tyson Hesse that wrote it, I don't take his word for anything if I was honest.
 
You are definitely free to disagree with him or not trust what he says, but that doesn't change the fact that he wrote for that material and was now the main writer for Sonic Frontiers and is definitely talking with Sonic Team about this kind of stuff with Iizuka backing up some things he says in regards to the connection with the Sonic brand. Even if we just ignore what he said and headcanon the previous manuals as the true uncut version of those events, it doesn't change that at least from a production stand-point the Sonic Team, or at least Ian is fine with retconning old stuff that is obscure in order to streamline the series without all the details from previous materials. Even if not accepted by a "lore" standpoint, it shows how they are thinking about the development of the series from now on.
 
Talking about early Japanese material, the character profiles from Sonic Jam's guidebook.

SONIC THE HEDGEHOG PROFILE
A blue hedgehog (♂) who runs today under the motto of "whatever the mood strikes him". He is absolutely invincible, especially since his running speed is second to none (his speed is faster than Mach). His only weakness is that he cannot swim. He has precognition and sneezes when he senses danger.
↑An adventurous person, he is always traveling around the world. His favorite plane is the bright red biplane "Tornado.

MILES "TAILS" PROWER PROFILE
A yellow fox (♂) from West Side Island. Admiring Sonic's coolness, he eventually follows him. He is full of curiosity and loves tinkering with machines. He can fly in the sky using two tails. He actually hates thunder.
↑ In general, the nickname "Tails" is widely used, but the official name is "Miles".

KNUCKLES THE ECHIDNA PROFILE
The guardian of the "Master Emerald," a raw Chaos Emerald, which lies on the mythical floating island. His true identity is a bright red echidna (♂). In contrast to Sonic, he is short-tempered, shy, and hot-blooded. He is 15 years old and likes to stay in the shadows eating fruit and avoiding the strong sunlight.
↑ Nicknamed Knuckles. His true enemy is the resurrected Mecha Sonic.

Dr.EGGMAN PROFILE
An evil genius scientist who plans to mechanize everything in the world. He is a bad guy, or rather, he has a child-like personality who can't distinguish between right and wrong, and his self-centered thoughts end up being evil. Actually, Eggman is a nickname, and his real name is "Robotnik".
↑Age unknown. He has a serious fetish for mechanical devices and creates machines one after another that emphasize function over style.

GUEST CHARACTERS
One of the concepts behind the Sonic series is that each new title must feature a new character. This concept is not limited to the titles included in "Sonic Jam," as most of the games in which Sonic appears have been created based on this concept. Here we introduce some of the unique guest characters that have appeared in each title.

AMY
Sonic's girlfriend from "Sonic CD" ・・・ Actually she is more like chasing after him. Sonic himself is not that conscious of her, but she is an ardent Sonic fan and chases after him without any regard for the risks involved. Her real name is Amy Rose.

METAL SONIC
A robot modeled after Sonic, who also appeared in "Sonic CD". It has a titanium body and is equipped with an orgone fusion engine. Equipped with a custom chip made by Eggman, it can move partially at its own will. It follows Eggman faithfully and has strong hostility toward Sonic, who is similar to him. His elegant design and coloring have made him a favorite of many fans.

There is some short profiles for other guest characters, but they are more "these characters exist and they appear in this game".

Some comments here, as stated before by Yuji Naka, Sonic Jam was originally created using the basis for the Sega Saturn version of Sonic Adventure, so profiles here already make some references to settings changed in Sonic Adventure, like Dr. Eggman being a nickname and his real name being Eggman.

Also, Master Emeral is called "カオスエメラルドの原石" which would mean "raw/original stone/ore" of the Chaos Emeralds, an interesting detail (I wonder if Sonic Frontiers will mention something like this if they are addressing the origin of the Chaos Emeralds as implied by Ian).

Also, I like how it mentions Metal Sonic's Orgone Fusion Engine, it's another element I never see being mentioned in non-Japanese media.
 
I'm sure the writing of Sonic Frontiers will be pretty good as far as I've seen so far.
Certainly better then garbage like Sonic Forces and ESPECIALLY Sonic Lost World, the later of which is my all time least favorite Sonic story ever
 
And out of nowhere Yuji Naka now says that the story that he left the production of Sonic 2006 to create his own studio is a lie, some people say this as an example of how Naka was someone terrible to work with and his own desires resulted in the failure of the game. Instead of just leaving SEGA without any notice, he was instead fired while he was producing Sonic 06 and Phantasy Star Universe after the asked about the state of salary for all the other developers, he wasn't planning on leaving and was instead thinking about working on SEGA until retirement.
I do wonder if he would be able to ask for a delay for this game like he claims he asked for Balan.
 
Executor_N0 said:
And out of nowhere Yuji Naka now says that the story that he left the production of Sonic 2006 to create his own studio is a lie, some people say this as an example of how Naka was someone terrible to work with and his own desires resulted in the failure of the game. Instead of just leaving SEGA without any notice, he was instead fired while he was producing Sonic 06 and Phantasy Star Universe after the asked about the state of salary for all the other developers, he wasn't planning on leaving and was instead thinking about working on SEGA until retirement.
I do wonder if he would be able to ask for a delay for this game like he claims he asked for Balan.
Click to expand...

balan is a bad game,and i don't even play the game
 
Lollipop_The_King said:
That salt has to be stale af by now. Throw it away and buy some new salt.
Click to expand...
Typical contrarian Sonic fan response kek!

Anyway it's naive to believe some people won't stop bashing Forces and that bootleg Mario game, when some people keep bashing 06 to this very day and use it as a means to hold back Sonic (A game that's older than some of the user's on the Wiki). The best we can hope for is Frontiers being the catalyst for the Sonic franchise regaining it's full integrity and respect within the gaming community (partly helped by the movies, IDW comics and potentially Prime too).
The_Unknown_Warrior1 said:
I'm sure the writing of Sonic Frontiers will be pretty good as far as I've seen so far.
Certainly better then garbage like Sonic Forces and ESPECIALLY Sonic Lost World, the later of which is my all time least favorite Sonic story ever
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Meh... while the stories are subpar even when compared to other platformers, I literally can't take the story of Shadow 05 seriously (even as someone who unironically enjoyed it) I don't even hate the story but it's so nonsensical (especially with the alternate timelines with the illusion of "choice" morality system) funny enough I found "Shadow with a gun" one of the most believable aspects of story lol!
 
ShakeResounding said:
Also, can we all agree here to wait at least 3 or so days before any CRT is made on Frontiers?

That way we can avoid the rabid dog act and give everybody time to actually enjoy the game before dissecting what it means for Sonic and the prospective Titan profiles.
Click to expand...
Please lol
 
@The_Axiom_of_Virgo I mean it's fair to say that from a writing standpoint Shadow the Hedgehog could be objectively worse, but I just dislike Lost World more due to its horrendous dialogue and how badly it treated Sonic and Tails
@Lollipop_The_King yeah I'm aware that being salty about Lost World at this point seems stale, but I can't help it since I've sporadically been playing the game
 
Yeah I still am salty over forces since I had been playing it again the last 3 days and beat it confirming for myself that it really was just terrible
On the other side I'm replaying the adventure games and quite and enjoying those
 
Seems like the game still ended up rushed when compared to what was planned... No spoilers about the story, but might impact the exploration of the islands

Basically the game only has 3 islands instead of 5 in the game's code, the last two islands are in fact pieces of the first island. It seems that while developing the game they finished the first island as something very big and were unable to make the other two islands as big, maybe due to the time limit in development. As such, they decided to slice the first island in three in order to make the other two feel similar in size to the first, now sliced, island. Had they been able to work more on the game, maybe the game would have ended twice as big. So the other two islands are the same design as the first one and the story only seems to consider a three islands
 
Executor_N0 said:
Seems like the game still ended up rushed when compared to what was planned... No spoilers about the story, but might impact the exploration of the islands

Basically the game only has 3 islands instead of 5 in the game's code, the last two islands are in fact pieces of the first island. It seems that while developing the game they finished the first island as something very big and were unable to make the other two islands as big, maybe due to the time limit in development. As such, they decided to slice the first island in three in order to make the other two feel similar in size to the first, now sliced, island. Had they been able to work more on the game, maybe the game would have ended twice as big. So the other two islands are the same design as the first one and the story only seems to consider a three islands
Click to expand...
Well...

I'm honestly not surprised at all, that said it pretty much all but confirms that the rotten development cycle at Sonic Team still continues (A reminder this all started way back at Sonic 2 where it went through severe development hell on top of the creative divisions between Sega JP and Sega US being established with Sonic CD and Sonic 2 respectively). Honestly Sega may need to burn Sonic Team down to the ground and truly start fresh (whatever that truly means). It pretty much explains why the 4th and 5th islands were never shown off in the Frontiers traliers iirc (or perhaps they were and we just didn't notice?).

Yet more proof the amount of time put into development is pointless, it's all about how productively you use what limited time you're given. Five years of development went into Frontiers (one year more than Forces btw) and yet here we go with the cutting of corners and reusing assets to pad out game length yet again (there's nothing inherently wrong with reusing assets ofc but it's about how tactfully it is done).

Overall it's disappointing news to be sure (I would've loved a snow/winter theme island but getting a full baked 3D Sonic game seems to be still a dream) but I highly doubt it'll "ruin" the game especially since the normie audience will definitely eat it up thanks to how popular the open world/sandbox genre is. I'm kinda interested what DLC Frontiers will get but I'm not holding my breath (The Rathalos armour on Sonic is cute tho). Sega and Capcom that obvious videogame crossover is staring you directly in the face, "blue blur" and "blue bomber" it sells itself (the Archie comics crash is history now, no need to linger on it).


 
About development time, I recall being mentioned that Sonic Frontiers restarted development many times while the team still was trying to figure out "how to make it work". While Sonic Forces development was mostly developing engine and concepts (I recall that only one year was spent developing the game's software itself), I wonder if Frontiers spent at least many years still trying to figure out what to do and actual development only started later on...
 
Executor_N0 said:
About development time, I recall being mentioned that Sonic Frontiers restarted development many times while the team still was trying to figure out "how to make it work". While Sonic Forces development was mostly developing engine and concepts (I recall that only one year was spent developing the game's software itself), I wonder if Frontiers spent at least many years still trying to figure out what to do and actual development only started later on...
Click to expand...
I wouldn't be suprised honestly, it reminds me of the development of the final fantasy remake where the actual portion of the in game development was done in way less time since the original scenario was like scrapped and they restarted development after some years into the original stages of it
 
I guess that Sonic just can't have a game with simple game development... I think that the only Sonic game with a simple game development history was Sonic Adventure 2 because it was being made with the staff already knowing that the Dreamcast was being discontinued and was a much smaller project when compared to the first Adventure... So it seems Sonic games only have a good production when they already know it doesn't matters... Poetic isn't?
 
Sonic fans when they have to play through rehashed content (they are not fans of Shadow the Hedgehog or Sonic Heroes)
 
Development shit:

Not sure I would call them splitting up the first island rushed development, especially since the plan was only for the first 3 and the final 2 are kinda just a last minute addition, rushed would be if they did plan 5 islands but didn't have enough time to make the last 2, but it is padding for the sake of padding akin to something like, the Werehog in Unleashed for example, they decided to do it just to add a few more hours to the runtime since a very vocal portion of the fanbase has an obsession with game length and equates it to game quality, and Sonic Team scrambled to give them something closer to 20 hours because they listen to the fans just a little bit too much, I think they should've stuck to their guns and have a shorter game with just the 3 islands instead of haphazardly extending game length by trying to squeeze an extra 2 in, probably could've used the time spent shoving these last minute islands in to add a little bit more to the main 3 or other stuff, also can't be too upset at some of this stuff since this is one of the biggest, if not the biggest Sonic game they've ever worked on and it's serving as a foundation for future games so they can't go as crazy as they want without having the experinece working on this new style of Sonic first (Especially evident how at one point they had to start from scratch since their inital ideas and execution just wasn't cutting it), they're basically learning how to walk before they run and this does come with it's caveats

Gameplay shit:
Seen some footage of the Chaos Island titan fight, Super Sonic uses telekinesis to lift up and swing the titans sword back at it, also the cutscene preceding the final boss has a statement that at full power not even Super Sonic could stop it so that's neat
 
This is random, but I heard that Hard mode somewhat changes the ending (to keep things vague). If I may ask, without spoilers, is this true?
 
I appreciate the response. Thank you.
I can't believe Sonic robs the player of their household items, though. that's crazy
 
Dust_Collector said:
From what I've heard it might be true.

Apparently, not 100% certain about this, but the final boss is only a QTE on easy and normal but it gets a proper hard as balls fight on hard mode and that comes with a changed ending
Click to expand...
 
wait there's difficulty modes in Frontiers? When I tested out Frontiers on Yuzu, the options included gameplay styles for people not use to Sonic's high speed action or for those who are use to it
 
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