Sanic Frontiers

Sonic Frontiers is a 2022 platform game developed by Sonic Team and published by Sega. As Sonic the Hedgehog, the player explores the mysterious Starfall Islands to collect the Chaos Emeralds after Sonic and his friends are separated when falling through a wormhole. Frontiers integrates platforming and traditional Sonic elements—such as rings and grind rails—into the series' first open world, where the player solves puzzles and beats challenges to collect items and fight against robotic enemies and colossal Titans.
Development began after the release of Sonic Forces (2017). Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka wanted Frontiers to set a new template for Sonic games to follow, as Sonic Adventure had done in 1998. Sonic Team settled on an open-ended design and focused on adapting Sonic's abilities to an open world. Sonic Frontiers was released for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S on November 8, 2022. Sonic Frontiers received mixed reviews; critics praised the open world and story but found the gameplay repetitive, while it was received more favorably by fans of the series. Frontiers sold over 2.5 million copies in over a month.

*Sonic Frontiers* is a 3D platformer and action-adventure game. The player, as Sonic, explores the Starfall Islands, which consist of various biomes including flowery fields, forests, ancient ruins, and deserts. Sonic retains his abilities from previous *Sonic the Hedgehog* games: he runs at high speeds, collects rings, grinds on rails, and homes in on enemies to attack. The player can double jump, sidestep using their gamepad's shoulder buttons, drop dash, and boost with the right trigger if they have enough energy. New abilities include combat attacks, running alongside walls, and using the Cyloop to create a circle of light around objects and interact with them. The Cyloop can perform different tasks by drawing certain shapes — for example, drawing an infinity symbol or an 8 will allow Sonic to boost indefinitely for a short time. Sonic also has the ability to boost even faster upon collecting the maximum amount of rings, gaining a blue aura reminiscent of his counterpart from the *Sonic the Hedgehog* film series. The player can customize the controls and adjust Sonic's speed, turning, acceleration, and sensitivity, and can upgrade Sonic's speed, attacks, defense, and ring capacity as they progress.

The Starfall Islands act as the series' first open world, which writers compared to *The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild*. The world retains traditional *Sonic* elements, such as springs, boost pads, and grind rails, akin to past hub worlds in the series like *Sonic Adventure* and *Sonic Unleashed* but on a greater scale. The player explores the islands as they scale towers in platforming challenges to reveal parts of the map, and solve puzzles, including orienting statues and speedrunning, to collect items. Collectibles include Kocos, which upgrade Sonic's moveset, and Memory Tokens, which are used to trigger cutscenes conversations with Sonic's friends — that either progress the plot (occasionally via minigames) or expand on their characters and relationships with Sonic in side stories. The main quest takes 20–30 hours to finish, while finding all collectibles, exploring all parts of the islands, and completing all side stories takes as much as 60 hours.

The player battles robots throughout the islands, all in various forms; Sonic can dodge and parry attacks and use the Cyloop to make enemies easier to strike. Defeating enemies grants the player experience points that allow them to purchase additional moves and abilities in combat and the open world. Alongside regular, small enemies, the player battles large "Guardian" bosses. Defeating a Guardian rewards the player with portal gears that, when placed in a portal, allow them to enter "Cyber Space" — short, linear levels similar to those from previous *Sonic* games. Each of the 30 Cyber Space levels, which shift between third-person and side-scrolling perspectives, contains three optional objectives, including time attack, collecting rings, and collecting five red rings; completing each objective rewards players with a key required to collect a Chaos Emerald. A fishing minigame is also included in set areas of the maps, where Sonic can exchange purple coins found in the overworld to catch fish and other objects that net him *fishing tokens* based on catch quality, which he can then redeem for items and collectables. Collecting all seven Chaos Emeralds allows the player to transform into Super Sonic, who is required to defeat the game's major bosses, the Titans. Although the game's difficulty can be changed at any time, the final boss, which is fought as Super Sonic and Sage (possessing the Supreme Titan) in a top-down shoot 'em up gameplay style similar to *Ikaruga*, requires the player to be playing on Hard to fight it and all of its phases.

SYNOPIS

Players control Sonic in exploring the Starfall Islands archipelago to collect the Chaos Emeralds and investigate the islands' relationship to them. One of Sonic's objectives is to rescue three of his friends — Miles "Tails" Prower and Amy Rose, who initially accompany Sonic in his investigation; and Knuckles the Echidna, who was transported there earlier from the ruins above Angel Island — from Cyber Space, a digital realm connected to the islands. Sonic's friends project themselves as holograms in the real world while trapped, allowing them to interact with and advise Sonic. They are opposed by Sage, a young female artificial intelligence entity created by Doctor Eggman, who is also trapped within Cyber Space; throughout the events of the game, Eggman and Sage are shown to develop a surrogate father-daughter relationship. Big the Cat makes an appearance as a host for a fishing minigame.

Doctor Eggman travels to the Starfall Islands in an attempt to steal the technological secrets created by powerful beings known as the Ancients (who are said to be related to Chaos, a character from *Sonic Adventure*). Upon reaching and interacting with a portal to Cyber Space, several robotic defense units are summoned. Sage, detecting a threat signature from the defense units, ceases hijacking the portal and initiates a protection protocol, dragging Eggman into Cyber Space.

Meanwhile, Sonic, Tails, and Amy decide to investigate activity that has drawn the Chaos Emeralds to the islands. Upon approach, their plane is sucked into a wormhole to Cyber Space, from which only Sonic escapes to the islands in the real world. A disembodied voice comments on Sonic's "impossible" escape, and tasks him with finding the Chaos Emeralds and destroying the island's robotic "Titans" to remove the boundary between the real and digital worlds. Believing this will save his friends, Sonic releases each of their projections from virtual cages created by Sage, who simultaneously works to free Doctor Eggman from Cyber Space; destroying the cages causes Sonic's body to become increasingly corrupted by their digital energy. Sage cautions Sonic to leave, influencing the islands' mechanical guardians and Titans to attack him, but grows to sympathize with him while observing his interactions with his friends.

During their exploration, Sonic and his friends learn about the islands' history through visions of their past inhabitants, the Ancients, that are stored within Cyber Space. The Ancients are revealed to have been an extraterrestrial race whose planet was destroyed by an entity called "The End"; the Ancients escaped their world using the Chaos Emeralds which originated from their planet, and were drawn to the Master Emerald on Earth and settled there. When The End followed them and attacked their new civilization, they used the Chaos Emeralds to fuel their armaments and seal The End within Cyber Space. The Ancients' essences remain within their accessories, the Koco, which become inert once Sonic and his friends help them fulfill their final desires in life.

After destroying three of the Titans and disabling the towers that maintain the spatial boundary, Sonic succumbs to his corruption and is trapped between dimensions. Released along with Sonic's friends and Eggman, the entity guiding Sonic reveals itself to be The End, which resumes its attack on Earth using the last Titan, Supreme, prompting Sonic's friends to purge the corruption from him by sacrificing their physical forms. Sage persuades Eggman to cooperate with Sonic in recollecting the scattered Chaos Emeralds. Sonic uses them to confront The End, forcing it to abandon Supreme. Sage then takes control of Supreme and pursues the true form of The End into space alongside Super Sonic, where she sacrifices herself to destroy it. Sonic's friends are restored and leave the islands with him, now wishing to make a difference in their lives after their experiences, while Eggman uses the island's technology to revive Sage.

### Conception

Following the release of *Sonic Forces* (2017), Sonic Team began exploring approaches for its next *Sonic the Hedgehog* game. In addition to celebrating the series' upcoming 30th anniversary, Sonic Team also sought to define what a modern *Sonic* game should be and solidify the series' direction for the next decade. *Forces* received criticism for its short length and level design, so its director, Morio Kishimoto, concluded that Sonic Team's method of designing levels that originated in *Sonic Unleashed* (2008) would no longer satisfy fans. Sonic Team ultimately determined that the series' traditional linear design contained "little room for evolution" and felt it could not progress in this direction. In particular, Sonic Team head and *Sonic* series producer Takashi Iizuka felt 3D *Sonic* games were not giving players enough freedom and constrained them to linear paths.

Iizuka felt the series needed to take an innovative direction that would inform future games, similar to how *Sonic the Hedgehog* (1991) and *Sonic Adventure* (1998) set templates used by later games. The idea to make an open-world *Sonic* game came from Kishimoto, who had enjoyed watching the evolution of the platform genre's world map concept since it was popularized by *Super Mario Bros. 3* in 1988. Some *Sonic* games, such as *Sonic Adventure*, featured world maps, but Kishimoto felt his idea evolved the concept by combining it with the gameplay. He thought it would allow for more freedom and diverse gameplay.

Kishimoto returned to direct *Frontiers*, while *Sonic Unleashed* (2008), *Generations* (2011), and *Forces* art director Sachiko Kawamura produced it. *Frontiers*' development lasted five years, longer than previous *Sonic* games' development cycles. Iizuka attributed the length in part to *Frontiers* not building on previous *Sonic* gameplay. Determining the direction required trial-and-error refinement, and the development restarted from scratch at one point. Sonic Team began regularly holding external playtesting during *Frontiers*' development. The COVID-19 pandemic began halfway during production, necessitating Sonic Team to shift to remote work for the first time in its history. Iizuka noted that this made it difficult for individual developers to "get a sense of the big picture", but the benefit of digital communication "accelerated" other aspects of the development.

### Design

The designers focused on transitioning Sonic's speed and abilities to an open-world design while remaining true to previous games, and opted for a mysterious tone to reflect Sonic exploring an unfamiliar landscape. Iizuka felt *Sonic*'s essence as a 3D action game separated *Frontiers* from adventure and role-playing games such as the *Legend of Zelda* series. As such, he declined to call it an open-world game, preferring the term "open zone". Sonic Team applied lessons learned from developing *Sonic Adventure*'s hub worlds when designing *Frontiers* and repeatedly tested how fast Sonic could race through the open world to determine how large it needed to be. Iizuka said the largest challenge was ensuring that fast-paced exploration would be fun. Sonic Team sought to address criticism that previous *Sonic* games were too short, and chose not to raise the difficulty level as the game progresses since the open world would provide plenty of content.

Sonic Team decided to prioritize combat to a greater extent, but despite the shift to open-world design, Sonic Team determined that *Frontiers* did not feel like a *Sonic* game without platforming elements. This presented the challenge of balancing platforming with exploration; Sonic Team's solution was to have the world open up as a reward for completing challenges. The developers wanted to ensure that players could choose between combat and platforming and would not be forced to fight enemies, so they included various methods to collect items outside platforming and combat, such as puzzles. The 2020 *Sonic the Hedgehog* feature film influenced the development; Kishimoto requested that Sonic Team incorporate Easter eggs referencing it and based the combat on the film's depiction of Sonic. With the Cyber Space levels, Kishimoto wanted *Sonic* to "once again... stand amongst the other 'stage-clear' action games" that he enjoyed, like the Sega Genesis-era *Sonic* games and the *Super Mario*, *Donkey Kong*, and *Kirby* series.

### Writing

Ian Flynn, who wrote *Sonic the Hedgehog* comics published by Archie Comics and IDW Publishing and episodes of the *Sonic Boom* TV series, wrote the script. Iizuka asked Flynn to write *Frontiers* after reading his work on the IDW comics. He felt Flynn understood the *Sonic* cast and would bring "a great improvement to the characters' emotions and dialogue". Iizuka noted that the story differs from previous *Sonic* games in that it is less humorous and does not make the player's goal obvious, instead challenging them to figure out how to solve problems themselves.

Whereas Flynn had pitched his previous *Sonic* stories himself, Sega dictated *Frontiers*'s premise and which characters Flynn was allowed to use. Flynn considered it "a dream come true" to write a major *Sonic* game, and he was able to present ideas for using more characters to Sonic Team. Kishimoto said this created a "cooperative back and forth". Given the nonlinear approach, Flynn found pacing the story was "the biggest question" and "had to be massaged and revised as the game's structure took shape". Kishimoto did the Japanese localization using Flynn's script as a base, making changes to suit the Japanese market.

### Music

Tomoya Ohtani was the lead composer and sound director for *Frontiers*. In accordance with the tone, the *Frontiers* soundtrack is less upbeat and is "focused more on helping to create a mysterious feeling surrounding the islands." The main theme, "I'm Here", was composed by Ohtani with vocals and lyrics by Merry Kirk-Holmes of the Australian metal band To Octavia, and plays during the second phase of the battle against Supreme, the fourth and final Titan of the game. Japanese rock band One Ok Rock wrote and performed one of the three ending themes, "Vandalize", which also appears on their tenth studio album *Luxury Disease*. Sleeping with Sirens vocalist Kellin Quinn appears on three Titan battle themes; "Undefeatable", "Break Through It All" and "Find Your Flame", and vocalist and producer Tyler Smyth of DangerKids features on the latter track. The other two ending themes are "Dear Father" and "One Way Dream", performed by Quinn Barnitt and Nathan Sharp respectively. The latter song plays in place of "Vandalize" if the game is completed on hard difficulty.

Additional music for the game was written by Kenichi Tokoi, Takahito Eguchi, Rintaro Soma, Kenji Mizuno, Kanon Oguni, and Hiroshi Kawaguchi. A soundtrack album, *Stillness & Motion*, was released on December 7, 2022. It features 150 tracks spanning 6 hours and 37 minutes, making it the longest in the series.

## Release

Sega originally planned to release *Sonic Frontiers* in 2021 to coincide with the franchise's 30th anniversary, but delayed it for 1 year for quality control. It officially went gold on October 22, 2022, and finally released on November 8, 2022, for the Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.

*Sonic Frontiers* was sold in physical and digital versions, both offering in-game items as pre-order bonuses, as well as a Digital Deluxe edition which includes additional items, a digital artbook and a mini digital soundtrack covering Kronos Island. In Japan, the game features various DLC items in collaboration with Hololive Production-affiliated VTuber Inugami Korone, who also serves as the Japanese brand ambassador of the *Sonic* series, offered by pre-ordering the game at different stores. These include DLC that replaces the various sound effects with Korone's voice, give Sonic cosmetics themed after Korone, and replaces the game's Koco characters with "Koronesukis". Signing up for the official newsletter before January 31st, 2023 will give players a free DLC code to unlock Sonic's Soap shoes from *Sonic Adventure 2* (2001) on the Dreamcast. A free DLC pack released on November 14 which gives Sonic additional cosmetics themed after Capcom's *Monster Hunter* series, as well as a cooking minigame. Planned updates for the game, scheduled for release during 2023, include a photo mode, new challenges, and additional playable characters and story content.

Some retailers sold copies of *Sonic Frontiers* before the street date, and the Nintendo Switch version was uploaded online. The composer, Tomoya Ohtani, said he was saddened by the leaks and urged players to not spoil the game.

### Marketing

Sega unveiled a teaser trailer, featuring Sonic running through a forest, at the end of a 30th anniversary livestream on May 27, 2021. The title was not announced, but the trailer metadata and a Sega press release included the title *Sonic Rangers*. Iizuka later said that he felt the game had been teased prematurely, but believed it was necessary given that it was the 30th anniversary and Sonic Team had not announced a game since *Forces*. Sega trademarked the name *Sonic Frontiers* in November 2021 and announced it the following month at the Game Awards 2021 in December.

Sega collaborated with the video game news website *IGN* to promote *Frontiers* throughout June 2022. A trailer was featured during the opening night of Gamescom on August 23, 2022. The game's backstory detailing how Sonic and his friends come to the Islands was elaborated on via pre-release promotional media under the name *Sonic Frontiers Prologue*. These included an eight-page comic, *Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Convergence*, released in October 2022; and an accompanying animated short, *Sonic Frontiers Prologue: Divergence*, released on November 1. The comic was drawn by Evan Stanley, an artist and writer on IDW's *Sonic* comic series, while the animation was directed by Tyson Hesse; both were written by Flynn.

## Reception

### Pre-release

*Nintendo Life* characterized early *Frontiers* gameplay footage as divisive. *Kotaku* felt the game looked fine but derivative and bland, lacking the series' unique identity, and *Polygon* and *Nintendo Life* found the open world desolate. Some fans demanded the game be delayed, and the hashtag #DelaySonicFrontiers briefly trended on Twitter. Iizuka said that Sonic Team expected early reactions to be polarized, as he felt the early footage would not give fans a good idea of what to expect.

### Post-release

Reception

Aggregate score
75/100 (PC)
81/100 (PS4)
71/100 (PS5)
61/100 (XSXS)

According to the review aggregate website Metacritic, the PlayStation 4 version and Windows version of *Sonic Frontiers* received "generally favorable reviews", while other console versions received "mixed or average reviews". *Game Informer* called *Sonic Frontiers* the best 3D *Sonic* game in years, praising its open-world formula. *GamesRadar+* praised the storytelling, but found the gameplay repetitive. Writing for *VG247*, Tom Orry criticized the Nintendo Switch port, citing a perceived poor frame rate and graphical glitches not found in the other versions of the game.

*Sonic Frontiers* was well received by *Sonic* fans. *The Washington Post* wrote that many enjoyed its controls, emphasis on freedom, story, references to prior *Sonic* games, and soundtrack. Some publications noted that user review scores were comparable to those for acclaimed games such as *Breath of the Wild* and *Elden Ring* (2022). *Sonic Frontiers* set the record for the largest number of concurrent players for a *Sonic* game on Steam, surpassing the record held by *Sonic Mania*. The game was nominated in the Players' Voice category at The Game Awards 2022.

### Post-release

Reception

Aggregate score
75/100 (PC)
81/100 (PS4)
71/100 (PS5)
61/100 (XSXS)

According to the review aggregate website Metacritic, the PlayStation 4 version and Windows version of *Sonic Frontiers* received "generally favorable reviews", while other console versions received "mixed or average reviews". *Game Informer* called *Sonic Frontiers* the best 3D *Sonic* game in years, praising its open-world formula. *GamesRadar+* praised the storytelling, but found the gameplay repetitive. Writing for *VG247*, Tom Orry criticized the Nintendo Switch port, citing a perceived poor frame rate and graphical glitches not found in the other versions of the game.

*Sonic Frontiers* was well received by *Sonic* fans. *The Washington Post* wrote that many enjoyed its controls, emphasis on freedom, story, references to prior *Sonic* games, and soundtrack. Some publications noted that user review scores were comparable to those for acclaimed games such as *Breath of the Wild* and *Elden Ring* (2022). *Sonic Frontiers* set the record for the largest number of concurrent players for a *Sonic* game on Steam, surpassing the record held by *Sonic Mania*. The game was nominated in the Players' Voice category at The Game Awards 2022.

### Sales

The Nintendo Switch version of *Sonic Frontiers* was the fourth best-selling retail game during its first week of release in Japan, with 26,067 physical copies being sold. The PlayStation 5 version was the seventh best-selling retail game in the country throughout the same week, selling 11,111 physical copies, with the PlayStation 4 version selling 9,098 physical copies and being the eighth best-selling retail game of the week in Japan, totaling 46,276 copies and outselling *God of War Ragnarök*. In the United States, *Sonic Frontiers* was the fourth best-selling game of November overall. On December 12, 2022, Sega announced that *Frontiers* had sold over 2.5 million copies worldwide.

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