Games Radar has recently had the chance to sit and chat with Sonic Team‘s creative officer Takashi Iizuka about SEGA’s new and intriguing seemingly open world Sonic adventure, Sonic Frontiers. Mr. Iizuka told the site that one of the biggest challenge to the project was nailing Sonic’s natural speed and actions to fit the expanded play space. One thing that Games Radar picked up on is that Sonic Team has been very careful with its language so far and hasn’t divulged whether you will be playing as Sonic in a completely open world environment or whether the different landscapes will be self-contained. Here’s a few key points about Sonic Frontiers from the interview which you can read here.
About developing Sonic Frontiers:
“With Sonic Frontiers, we are challenging ourselves to deliver an all-new style of Sonic action adventure. We’re once again expanding the Sonic Universe, bringing in new environments and additional features, to create a totally new type of open-zone experience.”
Introducing Sonic’s new combat styles and exploration:
“We pay extremely close attention to getting all the little Sonic details right to make sure that Sonic’s signature speed and characteristics remain consistent across every gaming iteration. With Sonic Frontiers, we’ll introduce new combat styles to bring Sonic’s signature dexterity onto the battlefield, and the new exploration options obviously play into his iconic speedy nature.”
Benefits of PS5 and Xbox Series consoles:
“We’re excited to bring the game onto next-gen consoles, as both the visual and technical gameplay elements will be elevated on the newest platforms. As games are beginning to be released natively onto next-gen, it’s exciting to be a part of the wave that will really deliver on the full potential of these consoles.”
If Sonic Team really wanted expand the Sonic universe, they should bring back old characters from the classic era or maybe bring in a few new characters that could be part of the Sonic Universe. I know Sonic Team has been trying to learn from there mistakes, but believe it or not I’m still not getting my hopes up until I see the actual gameplay of this game first.
I’m pretty hyped for it but I should temper my expectations a bit until we’ve seen some proper gameplay footage.
Yeah I guess your actually right.
Bark The Polar Bear coming back would be great reintroduction. I can see him having a rivalry with Knuckles in some way.
Yeah me too.
“We’re once again expanding the Sonic Universe, bringing in new environments and additional features, to create a totally new type of open-zone experience.”
I’m hoping these open-zone experiences have obstacles and enemies in their open worlds similar to fan games like Green Hill Paradise and Sonic Utopia. I’m honestly worried that the open world in Sonic Frontiers might have next to nothing to do in it. But that might just be the hub world so people can familiarize themselves with the open space like Peach’s Castle was for Mario 64.
I’m crossing my fingers that these zones are also open world so you can explore the vast area, but still have obstacles to platform, rings and chaos emeralds to collect, super forms to make traversal faster and easier, and enemies and bosses to challenge. If all we get is an empty hub world and narrow straight away corridor levels, its going to take all the excitement out of this game.
I just want Team [Adventure] Headcannon to become a thing already. They’ve broken down the Genesis games to a science, why not do the same with the TWO Adventure games. The only people I know who come close to doing that are YouTubers like Ruby of Blue, JebTube, and Geek Critique.