'Pinball predates civilization.'
Played with BertKnot.
The release of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021) marked the de facto end of an era for Japanese animation. By recasting his franchise in a contemplative and optimistic light, Hideaki Anno emphasised the need to embrace life in all its complexity and to take care of ourselves. While fans remain divided over which version they prefer, with some favouring the ending of The End of Evangelion (1997), the change in tone has been recognised as Anno's new-found serenity. The 1997 film represented an excision of his otaku side through the flames of Purgatory, a bitter violence necessitated by the fans' deviation from the discourse developed in the anime. Thrice Upon a Time takes a much more contemplative approach, marking a genuine process of mourning and reconstruction. In particular, the film subtly weaves its characters into real-life scenes, highlighting their relationships with a wider society.
Rewriting and recontextualisation in Japanese pop-culture
This process of recontextualisation involves a dialogue between official production and fan production. Nicolle Lamerichs shows how the perception of characters is fluid and how fandom reclaims canonical characters to express themes beyond the author's control [1]. The figure of Shinji is particularly subject to these transformations, as he represents the otaku identity and the outcasts of Japanese society. By setting Shinji and the other characters in familiar settings – scenes similar to those in the anime and The End of the Evangelion, but also in everyday sceneries – Anno leaves it to the audience to completely reappropriate these characters, emphasising only their verisimilitude or, conversely, their artificiality. Such rewriting strategies are not uncommon in modern popular fiction, and the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has demonstrated a surprising plasticity in recent years.
Through fan imagination, recent games, the Sonic Boom series (2014), and the Sonic the Hedgehog films (2020, 2022), the franchise has slowly shed the remnants of its kawaī aestheticism and taken on a more serious tone. The culmination was the release of Sonic Frontiers, the marketing cycle of which initially highlighted the shift in the series. The advent of the open world was supposed to renew the game formula, and the visual direction was meant to reflect a new gravitas for the hero, pondering the interpersonal relationships he has with his friends. For a game about renewal, the communication around Sonic Frontiers was relatively timid: the first gameplay footage was withheld for a long time, particularly the Cyberspace stages. This was probably due to the chaotic state of the title, which suffered from multiple development iterations and a serious lack of budget.
Meaningless references: a futile search for identity
The player assumes the role of Sonic and must explore the Starfall Islands to rescue his friends who have been trapped in a parallel dimension by Dr Eggman and his artificial intelligence, Sage. The adventure consists of exploring five islands filled with micro-objectives that allow the player to collect Chaos Emeralds and engage with the local Titan, who protects the barrier between the real world and reality. Sonic Frontiers borrows extensively from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), to the point where the original project was intended to be a much slower experience, with Sonic able to walk slowly and ride a horse [2]. The game makes no attempt to hide its direct inspiration, so much so that it directly recreates the Blood Moon scene and simply turns it into a Starfall one. The title rips off ideas from all the recent productions, turning them into a crucible with no identity. The general setting is that of Breath of the Wild, with a soundtrack that loosely copies the ethereal piano sound design, while the battles against the Titans are largely inspired by Shadow of the Colossus (2005), with the same sense of gradual scaling.
The combat system is inspired by recent character action games, with a rather surprising emphasis on combos; the density of the puzzles recalls the exploration of Genshin Impact (2020) and the many activities that dot organically the Teyvat map and blend with the environment; there are many borrowings from Neon Genesis Evangelion as well and, above all, Sonic's own games. But this compilation is particularly clumsy. At Gamescom 2022, fans could see that the level design of Cyberspace stages was lifted from previous entries in the series, including Sonic Adventure 2 (2001), Unleashed (2008) and Generation (2011). While Takashi Īzuka cited the corruption of the hero's memories as the reason for this decision [3], it was more likely a lack of resources and time. Two major problems underline the flawed nature of this approach. Firstly, while the layout of the levels is often taken from previous games, the graphics only vary between four environments: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary and a new zone resembling Crisis City. The result is particularly dull and monotonous, with an overly detailed background and obnoxious visual filters designed to mimic computer corruption.
Inconsistent design between the various activities
More critically, the gameplay of Sonic Frontiers does not fit in with the old designs. The title opts for a jerky gameplay, with an Aim Attack that is only used for direction and never to gain speed, as Sonic is generally always faster when running unaided. This design dichotomy alters the relationship with the S rank: it seems alternately trivial and overly complicated. In reality, if the player chooses not to play according to the rules dictated by the old Sonic level design, and ignores the optimal and natural route in order to concentrate on Sonic's own movement, the S rank is relatively easy to achieve, although it feels meaningless due to the disconnect with the level. The same problem occurs in the overworld. The islands are particularly empty and visually abysmal, leaving the player to rush from objective to objective to solve uninspiring puzzles or complete ill-conceived mini-games. Gathering Kocos for Amy looks inordinately like the shepherd mini-game in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), while the hacking mini-games are literally lifted from NieR: Automata (2017). The pinball, in which Sonic does not even act as the ball, is astonishing in its unusual mediocrity, as is the final boss in Hard Mode, a particularly poor and unwelcome shoot'em-up sequence.
For a game that emphasises freedom of exploration, Sonic Frontiers feels commanding. The progression from activity to activity is artificial, with the player's attention drawn to the nearest hideous metal structure. When it comes to action, Sonic's and the camera's movements are always fixed by the rails and the level design, which tries to convince the player that the game is still a platformer. It is particularly peculiar that Chaos Island contains so many 2.5D sequences, which are completely at odds with the open-world spirit of the title. With map exploration dependent on completing micro-objectives, exploration is generally linear or bloated with pointless roundabouts. Sonic's stats do little to shake the game out of its formulaic shackles, and any player who decides to spend a little time fishing to raise Sonic's attributes will find the experience ludicrous, as battles are over in an instant, as they are merely designated as health bars to be lowered during the vulnerability cycle. The game does a particularly poor job of communicating its gameplay intentions, and fights suffer from particularly long downtimes to justify the inclusion of chase sequences. The staging is often unreadable and the camera is frequently in awkward places, blocked by the metal limbs of enemies, if not spinning around to the point of causing serious dizziness. The perspective is also generally very poor, and diving attacks are always rather unpleasant to perform.
The art of false contemplation
Sonic Frontiers also suffers from poor performance, with serious clipping every few metres. Visually, the various islands are homogeneous, with no visual landmarks to give a clear idea of the world's geography. The fourth and fifth islands are, in fact, direct extensions of the first, further reducing the visual variety of the title. The game tries to impose a darker tone on its atmosphere, relying heavily on simple broken piano chords and a melody that repeats after three bars. Unable to find an identity, the game intersperses this pseudo-contemplation with unwarranted jazz melodies for its mini-games and heroic jingles when the player triumphs. The tone of the story follows this inconsistency: Sonic Frontiers multiplies references without purpose, justifying its existence by exploring the lore of the Ancients-Chao in a modulation on the themes of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (2021) and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000). The dialogues between Sonic and his companions are an opportunity to rehash themes already dealt with in previous games, under the guise of false maturity.
For Dr Eggman, Sonic Frontiers is an opportunity to discover fatherhood through crude cinematics and shallow, flawed writing. It comes as no surprise that Sonic Frontiers takes up the theme of parenthood transcending blood ties, a subject that has been well-explored in popular Japanese fiction since the 2010s, and has recently been exacerbated. However, this addition seems unjustified, given that Eggman is such a passive character. The game seems to be a collection of ideas with no coherence, whether in its game design, narrative or artistic direction. Taking elements that have worked in other cultural productions, the title indulges in a chaotic jumble, defending its own identity through a sort of recapitulation, a moment of reflection in the light of a new maturity.
This was Anno's project with Thrice Upon a Time, bringing an era to a close and ushering in a new one. All the characters of Evangelion were contextualised in a new world, both in the diegesis and in the context of film's production. It was a final attempt to respond to a troubled Japanese youth, battered by the uncertainty of the labour market and the breakdown of traditional interpersonal relationships: it is from this observation and a mature optimism that hope is born. Sonic Frontiers draws no lessons from the past and says nothing. It revels in its own status as a game of transition, with no intention of defining the future direction of the franchise; ironically, Sonic Superstars seems to disavow Frontiers' project by once again taking the golden nostalgia route already exploited by Sonic Mania (2017). This is unfortunate, as the idea of an open-world Sonic game is not necessarily meaningless, but it deserves better than feeble half-measures.
__________
[1] Nicolle Lamerichs, ‘The Emotional Realism of Anime: Rewriting Characters and Affective Reception in Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time’, in Mechademia, vol. 15, no. 1, 2022, pp. 81-102.
[2] Yuzuke Takahashi, ‘［TGS2022］「ソニックフロンティア」制作者インタビュー。クラシック，モダンに続く第三世代ソニックに込められた思いとは’, on 4Gamer.net, 16th September 2022.
[3] Zackari Greif, ‘Sonic Team Leader Explains Sonic Frontiers' Use of Old Level Designs’, on gamerant.com, 30th August 2022, consulted on 16th June 2023.
Played with BertKnot.
The release of Evangelion: 3.0+1.0 Thrice Upon a Time (2021) marked the de facto end of an era for Japanese animation. By recasting his franchise in a contemplative and optimistic light, Hideaki Anno emphasised the need to embrace life in all its complexity and to take care of ourselves. While fans remain divided over which version they prefer, with some favouring the ending of The End of Evangelion (1997), the change in tone has been recognised as Anno's new-found serenity. The 1997 film represented an excision of his otaku side through the flames of Purgatory, a bitter violence necessitated by the fans' deviation from the discourse developed in the anime. Thrice Upon a Time takes a much more contemplative approach, marking a genuine process of mourning and reconstruction. In particular, the film subtly weaves its characters into real-life scenes, highlighting their relationships with a wider society.
Rewriting and recontextualisation in Japanese pop-culture
This process of recontextualisation involves a dialogue between official production and fan production. Nicolle Lamerichs shows how the perception of characters is fluid and how fandom reclaims canonical characters to express themes beyond the author's control [1]. The figure of Shinji is particularly subject to these transformations, as he represents the otaku identity and the outcasts of Japanese society. By setting Shinji and the other characters in familiar settings – scenes similar to those in the anime and The End of the Evangelion, but also in everyday sceneries – Anno leaves it to the audience to completely reappropriate these characters, emphasising only their verisimilitude or, conversely, their artificiality. Such rewriting strategies are not uncommon in modern popular fiction, and the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise has demonstrated a surprising plasticity in recent years.
Through fan imagination, recent games, the Sonic Boom series (2014), and the Sonic the Hedgehog films (2020, 2022), the franchise has slowly shed the remnants of its kawaī aestheticism and taken on a more serious tone. The culmination was the release of Sonic Frontiers, the marketing cycle of which initially highlighted the shift in the series. The advent of the open world was supposed to renew the game formula, and the visual direction was meant to reflect a new gravitas for the hero, pondering the interpersonal relationships he has with his friends. For a game about renewal, the communication around Sonic Frontiers was relatively timid: the first gameplay footage was withheld for a long time, particularly the Cyberspace stages. This was probably due to the chaotic state of the title, which suffered from multiple development iterations and a serious lack of budget.
Meaningless references: a futile search for identity
The player assumes the role of Sonic and must explore the Starfall Islands to rescue his friends who have been trapped in a parallel dimension by Dr Eggman and his artificial intelligence, Sage. The adventure consists of exploring five islands filled with micro-objectives that allow the player to collect Chaos Emeralds and engage with the local Titan, who protects the barrier between the real world and reality. Sonic Frontiers borrows extensively from The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (2017), to the point where the original project was intended to be a much slower experience, with Sonic able to walk slowly and ride a horse [2]. The game makes no attempt to hide its direct inspiration, so much so that it directly recreates the Blood Moon scene and simply turns it into a Starfall one. The title rips off ideas from all the recent productions, turning them into a crucible with no identity. The general setting is that of Breath of the Wild, with a soundtrack that loosely copies the ethereal piano sound design, while the battles against the Titans are largely inspired by Shadow of the Colossus (2005), with the same sense of gradual scaling.
The combat system is inspired by recent character action games, with a rather surprising emphasis on combos; the density of the puzzles recalls the exploration of Genshin Impact (2020) and the many activities that dot organically the Teyvat map and blend with the environment; there are many borrowings from Neon Genesis Evangelion as well and, above all, Sonic's own games. But this compilation is particularly clumsy. At Gamescom 2022, fans could see that the level design of Cyberspace stages was lifted from previous entries in the series, including Sonic Adventure 2 (2001), Unleashed (2008) and Generation (2011). While Takashi Īzuka cited the corruption of the hero's memories as the reason for this decision [3], it was more likely a lack of resources and time. Two major problems underline the flawed nature of this approach. Firstly, while the layout of the levels is often taken from previous games, the graphics only vary between four environments: Green Hill, Chemical Plant, Sky Sanctuary and a new zone resembling Crisis City. The result is particularly dull and monotonous, with an overly detailed background and obnoxious visual filters designed to mimic computer corruption.
Inconsistent design between the various activities
More critically, the gameplay of Sonic Frontiers does not fit in with the old designs. The title opts for a jerky gameplay, with an Aim Attack that is only used for direction and never to gain speed, as Sonic is generally always faster when running unaided. This design dichotomy alters the relationship with the S rank: it seems alternately trivial and overly complicated. In reality, if the player chooses not to play according to the rules dictated by the old Sonic level design, and ignores the optimal and natural route in order to concentrate on Sonic's own movement, the S rank is relatively easy to achieve, although it feels meaningless due to the disconnect with the level. The same problem occurs in the overworld. The islands are particularly empty and visually abysmal, leaving the player to rush from objective to objective to solve uninspiring puzzles or complete ill-conceived mini-games. Gathering Kocos for Amy looks inordinately like the shepherd mini-game in The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess (2006), while the hacking mini-games are literally lifted from NieR: Automata (2017). The pinball, in which Sonic does not even act as the ball, is astonishing in its unusual mediocrity, as is the final boss in Hard Mode, a particularly poor and unwelcome shoot'em-up sequence.
For a game that emphasises freedom of exploration, Sonic Frontiers feels commanding. The progression from activity to activity is artificial, with the player's attention drawn to the nearest hideous metal structure. When it comes to action, Sonic's and the camera's movements are always fixed by the rails and the level design, which tries to convince the player that the game is still a platformer. It is particularly peculiar that Chaos Island contains so many 2.5D sequences, which are completely at odds with the open-world spirit of the title. With map exploration dependent on completing micro-objectives, exploration is generally linear or bloated with pointless roundabouts. Sonic's stats do little to shake the game out of its formulaic shackles, and any player who decides to spend a little time fishing to raise Sonic's attributes will find the experience ludicrous, as battles are over in an instant, as they are merely designated as health bars to be lowered during the vulnerability cycle. The game does a particularly poor job of communicating its gameplay intentions, and fights suffer from particularly long downtimes to justify the inclusion of chase sequences. The staging is often unreadable and the camera is frequently in awkward places, blocked by the metal limbs of enemies, if not spinning around to the point of causing serious dizziness. The perspective is also generally very poor, and diving attacks are always rather unpleasant to perform.
The art of false contemplation
Sonic Frontiers also suffers from poor performance, with serious clipping every few metres. Visually, the various islands are homogeneous, with no visual landmarks to give a clear idea of the world's geography. The fourth and fifth islands are, in fact, direct extensions of the first, further reducing the visual variety of the title. The game tries to impose a darker tone on its atmosphere, relying heavily on simple broken piano chords and a melody that repeats after three bars. Unable to find an identity, the game intersperses this pseudo-contemplation with unwarranted jazz melodies for its mini-games and heroic jingles when the player triumphs. The tone of the story follows this inconsistency: Sonic Frontiers multiplies references without purpose, justifying its existence by exploring the lore of the Ancients-Chao in a modulation on the themes of Final Fantasy XIV: Endwalker (2021) and The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask (2000). The dialogues between Sonic and his companions are an opportunity to rehash themes already dealt with in previous games, under the guise of false maturity.
For Dr Eggman, Sonic Frontiers is an opportunity to discover fatherhood through crude cinematics and shallow, flawed writing. It comes as no surprise that Sonic Frontiers takes up the theme of parenthood transcending blood ties, a subject that has been well-explored in popular Japanese fiction since the 2010s, and has recently been exacerbated. However, this addition seems unjustified, given that Eggman is such a passive character. The game seems to be a collection of ideas with no coherence, whether in its game design, narrative or artistic direction. Taking elements that have worked in other cultural productions, the title indulges in a chaotic jumble, defending its own identity through a sort of recapitulation, a moment of reflection in the light of a new maturity.
This was Anno's project with Thrice Upon a Time, bringing an era to a close and ushering in a new one. All the characters of Evangelion were contextualised in a new world, both in the diegesis and in the context of film's production. It was a final attempt to respond to a troubled Japanese youth, battered by the uncertainty of the labour market and the breakdown of traditional interpersonal relationships: it is from this observation and a mature optimism that hope is born. Sonic Frontiers draws no lessons from the past and says nothing. It revels in its own status as a game of transition, with no intention of defining the future direction of the franchise; ironically, Sonic Superstars seems to disavow Frontiers' project by once again taking the golden nostalgia route already exploited by Sonic Mania (2017). This is unfortunate, as the idea of an open-world Sonic game is not necessarily meaningless, but it deserves better than feeble half-measures.
__________
[1] Nicolle Lamerichs, ‘The Emotional Realism of Anime: Rewriting Characters and Affective Reception in Evangelion 3.0+1.0: Thrice Upon a Time’, in Mechademia, vol. 15, no. 1, 2022, pp. 81-102.
[2] Yuzuke Takahashi, ‘［TGS2022］「ソニックフロンティア」制作者インタビュー。クラシック，モダンに続く第三世代ソニックに込められた思いとは’, on 4Gamer.net, 16th September 2022.
[3] Zackari Greif, ‘Sonic Team Leader Explains Sonic Frontiers' Use of Old Level Designs’, on gamerant.com, 30th August 2022, consulted on 16th June 2023.
6 Comments
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Loved your write-up on this on, even as someone who gave Frontiers a 4/5. Even though I found it a very enjoyable game, Frontiers is emblematic of everything I don't want this franchise to be. As an open world collectathon with spectacle-focused combat, sure it works! As a Sonic game it fails on quite literally all of its fundamentals. I could not be more thankful Sonic Team still has the wisdom to make something like Superstars, because a future building only off of Frontiers' establishments would be wholly bleak. Double hope in the wake of Izuka's announcement earlier that they're going to be making classic-style games in conjunction with their future modern-style titles from now on.
@smaench: Thank you! Admittedly, I'm not a Sonic fan, so it played against the game, but I do see why people might like it. Although I found the game tiring by its artistic direction and puzzle design, I think it works as a decent time-waster as you discuss with a friend or listen to a podcast? Hopefully, they will be able to exit their torpor and propose something really new for the future, for the sake of the fans that enjoyed Frontiers.
While I did enjoy the game, and thought its vision of worlds as massive skateparks to freely go from jaunt to jaunt stumbling onto minibosses that test said platforming process and challenges built around towers or underground caverns built into the world was a pretty sound foundation for the future, it’s also hard to deny that a lot of other elements outside of this core loop feel superfluously thrown in to check AAA game check boxes.
Having incredibly vestigial stats, an easily broken combat system with an unlimited parrh and full of flashy but repetitive moves of little difference, and a series of incredibly slow, banal puzzles to open the map bit by bit which only take advantage of Sonic’s speed in overly generous time challenges.
In comparison to the 2D classic titles, most modern Sonic games for the past 25 years or so latch hard onto some sort of common trend the time (arcade shooting, TPS gunplay, physics object manipulation, dual world gameplay, God of War combat, Mario Galaxy tilted levels, custom characters etc.) and in this case they chose player freedom. But I wish they would’ve gone further with it. BotW which it is very obviously inspired by at an incredibly surface level allowed for a healthy degree of sequence breaking and more chances of being able to accomplish that outside of glitches could allow for even greater expression of that philosophy. The first DLC update added music notes to find hidden around the maps but before that there was less interesting reward for a lot of exploration while the map when not being filtered is littered with Memory Token icons clouding the screen.
I appreciate the work the (free) updates are doing to understand the game’s strengths and build on them but I mainly hope the game actually being a massive success helps the team know what to refine going forward (also more colorful wacky worlds to skate around, please).
Having incredibly vestigial stats, an easily broken combat system with an unlimited parrh and full of flashy but repetitive moves of little difference, and a series of incredibly slow, banal puzzles to open the map bit by bit which only take advantage of Sonic’s speed in overly generous time challenges.
In comparison to the 2D classic titles, most modern Sonic games for the past 25 years or so latch hard onto some sort of common trend the time (arcade shooting, TPS gunplay, physics object manipulation, dual world gameplay, God of War combat, Mario Galaxy tilted levels, custom characters etc.) and in this case they chose player freedom. But I wish they would’ve gone further with it. BotW which it is very obviously inspired by at an incredibly surface level allowed for a healthy degree of sequence breaking and more chances of being able to accomplish that outside of glitches could allow for even greater expression of that philosophy. The first DLC update added music notes to find hidden around the maps but before that there was less interesting reward for a lot of exploration while the map when not being filtered is littered with Memory Token icons clouding the screen.
I appreciate the work the (free) updates are doing to understand the game’s strengths and build on them but I mainly hope the game actually being a massive success helps the team know what to refine going forward (also more colorful wacky worlds to skate around, please).
@SunlitSonata: I do genuinely believe that the open world formula can work, but the game is just to commandeering for its own good, especially considering the visual monotony and the lack of identity in the activities. People are indeed saying that the free DLCs are very good additions, but unfortunately, I don't plan to play that game again!
conman
11 months ago