ALANA: Not every open-world game is Breath of the Wild, but I think the comparison rings truer here because of what we’ve seen. Soft piano music. Green grassy fields. A couple of puzzles and big structures. It’s like a big open playground for Sonic, but filled with very few of the things that make Sonic… Sonic. There are grind rails and springs but they don’t feel natural. The enemies are un-Sonic-like, which is fine, but again, context. Breath of the Wild still felt like a Zelda game. This doesn’t look like a Sonic game yet, aside from the fact that Sonic is there.
OLLIE: Yeah, it’s clear Breath of the Wild was a huge influence, but as we’ve seen with other “copy-cats” over the past few years, that’s not always a good thing. You’re right that it feels like Sonic has been dropped into a completely different game world, and without the context there to explain what’s going on, it’s quite jarring. As has been said online, it does almost look like someone made an Unreal Engine video and said “hey, here’s what a realistic Sonic game could look like!” It’s weird, and I know we’ve had other 3D Sonic games that have strayed pretty far from the standard formula, but this one feels… different.
ALANA: Lots of people compared Sonic Lost World to Super Mario Galaxy, so it also feels a bit like SEGA are always chasing Nintendo’s tail a little bit. Lost World isn’t too bad a game, but with Frontiers again, it just feels like they’re making the step too late, and with not enough consideration for what we, the players, need to know, or how Sonic will work in an open-world.
OLLIE: That’s what frustrates me more than anything. Sonic Mania demonstrated that SEGA has a great formula for Sonic, but it insists on following Nintendo’s lead, as you say. It's like it knows what it needs to do to make a great Sonic game, but has spent the past two decades or so desperately trying to avoid it.
Rather than just clips of different gameplay elements, I need to know how it all fits together.
ALANA: SEGA has always been a bit more experimental with Sonic in 3D, though this is by far its biggest experiment, I’d say. I think it’s good to shake up a series, but 3D Sonic has had more ‘misses’ than ‘hits’, and probably its biggest hit was 50/50 on 2D and 3D gameplay. I’ve never made a game before, so I know saying “you need to take what makes 3D Sonic good and put it into an open-world environment” isn’t easy, but I haven’t quite seen that spark or energy yet.