Entertainment
Sonic Frontiers 2 may play more like Sonic Adventure suggests director-Michael Beckwith-Entertainment – Metro
In response to a fan, Sonic Frontiers’ director has admitted he’s considering going back to an older gameplay style for a future sequel.
Sonic Frontiers – the game certainly has some similarities to Sonic Adventure but should it play like it too? (pic: Sega)
In response to a fan, Sonic Frontiers’ director has admitted he’s considering going back to an older gameplay style for a future sequel.
For all its flaws, Sonic Frontiers wound up not only being a legitimately good 3D Sonic The Hedgehog game, but also one of the best open world platformers so far.
Series producer Takashi Iizuka already said that Sonic Frontiers would serve as the basis for the next 10 years of the franchise, and those plans are unlikely to change following the positive fan response and the fact that it’s the best selling entry in two decades.
Sonic Frontiers 2 is likely years away, but director Morio Kishimoto has posited ditching the series’ boost formula, that it’s used for years, and returning to gameplay more in line the Sonic Adventure titles.
For context, the boost formula is what most 3D Sonic games have used since 2008’s Sonic Unleashed, named for how you can hold down a button that makes Sonic boost at top speed through levels.
The Adventure games from the late 90s/early 2000s, however, offered free range movement and no boost button, allowing for more open level design compared to the rather linear levels seen in the boost games.
There remain insistent demands from some fans for a Sonic Adventure 3 and Kishimoto is well aware of that, calling the Adventure series ‘a legend’ in a response to a fan on Twitter.
When asked if there was anything he’d like to change about the boost formula, Kishimoto said (via Google Translate), ‘When I started working on this game, I thought a lot about whether or not it would be possible. … I’m still thinking of trying a Sonic game that doesn’t use boosts in my next game.’
もちろん、ブーストの利点は理解しています。ブーストとスピンダッシュの共存も実験もするつもりですので、ご安心下さい。ただ、ADVシリーズのような、ブーストの無いレベルデザインに挑戦してみたい気持ちも私にはある、ということです。なんといっても、ADVシリーズはレジェンドなので😅
— Morio Kishimoto (@moq_46) January 23, 2023
He later clarified that the series will continue to experiment with the formula, but ‘I also have a feeling that I want to challenge the level design without boosts like the Adventure series. After all, the Adventure series is a legend.’
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It’s obviously far too soon to tell what the next game will look like, but it’d be a bit disappointing to see it regress to an older gameplay style rather than refine and improve what already works.
Before that, though, Sonic Frontiers has a bunch of free DLC and updates planned for 2023, from new challenge modes to more playable characters.
Sonic Frontiers is available for Xbox One, PlayStation 4, Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X/S, PlayStation 5, and PC.
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