Sega made a splash at The Game Awards this year with two trailers starring its blue hedgehog mascot. Fans got a double-feature with a Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie trailer and an in-engine Sonic Frontiers trailer. The visuals for the next Sonic game are teased to be something stunning, with the biggest and most ambitious bit of news so far being that the title will be open-world in some sense.
The idea of Sonic the Hedgehog being able to run around and explore an open area in the same vein as Breath of the Wild sounds enticing in theory. However, with Sonic's incredible speed at fans' disposal, there's a chance that they'll quickly run out of space to use the hedgehog's power to its fullest. It seems Sega is aware of this, and since it's adamant about calling Frontiers the first "open-zone" Sonic game, they may have already found some solutions.
What an Open-Zone Sonic Game Could Mean
It's interesting that Sonic Frontiers is referring to itself as an "open zone" Sonic game, as well as being the first of its kind. When thinking about the phrase in the sense that most Sonic levels are referred to as "zones," especially in 2D titles, there's a chance that in order to fix the issue of running out of space, each of the Starfall Islands will be their own explorable area akin to larger versions of Pokemon's Wild Areas rather than Breath of the Wild's huge map so players have numerous locations to explore rather than just one.
However, this still doesn't fix the problem of fans careening Sonic off the islands' ledges as they run out of space, or being unable to use Sonic's speed to the fullest if a big map isn't big enough for the blue hedgehog. One thing Sonic Team has revealed about the game may already have some answers. Morio Kishimoto, the director of Sonic Lost World, is returning to direct Frontiers. Alongside him is Sachiko Kawamura, Sonic Unleashed's art director, who is taking the new role of producing this title. While these aren't the only games these two creatives have worked on, looking at their mechanics may answer the conundrums behind Frontiers' main conceit.
Sonic Lost World's Parkour Dynamic
Sonic Lost World was a Sonic adventure lost to time until the Wii U exclusive was ported to PC years later. The reception to Lost World was generally mixed among Sonic fans, with some criticizing it that it had the power to experiment but didn't use its ideas to the fullest. One feature Sonic Lost World had that may play a key role in Frontiers is its dynamic controls featuring a run trigger and parkour mechanics.
While fans lamented that Sonic Lost World saw Sonic's general speed go down in comparison to boost games such as Sonic Generations, it could be argued that turning Sonic's speed down gave fans tighter controls, making it easier for the game to follow the players' directions and activate Sonic's parkour features easily. In Frontiers' trailer, there are clear paths on a tower overgrown by foliage that seem to suggest Sonic will be able to run onto structures, hinting that perhaps an improved parkour system from Lost World may return. Allowing players to run on structures would increase exploration potential and make the open zones feel much bigger.
Sonic Unleashed's Boost System in Frontiers
One important thing to consider regarding the supposed idea of each island being a different zone is how Sonic moves between islands. The potential flaw with bringing back Lost World's controls is that some players felt it was too slow. One way to get around this is to harken back to another Sonic game: Sonic Unleashed. Many long boost sections in Sonic Unleashed dealt with Sonic running on water.
In order to balance out how players may feel restricted by a slower playstyle on land, the game could make it so switching between islands offers full-speed freedom as they run on water for rings, items, and other small secrets like seaside caves. This would also expand the amount of areas players would have to explore, as essentially all of the map is at players' disposal when they can traverse sea and land with Sonic's abilities. This could make the most limiting zone or a map the size as Breath of the Wild's feel twice as large.
As much as the idea of an open-world Sonic game falling apart due to how fast Sonic can move a valid concern with Frontiers, there are also many methods the game can use to get around the problem. As impressive as the first trailer is, with beautiful visuals that are exciting plenty of fans, without proper gameplay there's no sense of how big the Starfall Islands stretch out or scale with Sonic's size.
How exactly Frontiers handles Sonic in a more free, open playstyle will be debated until true gameplay is finally shown. While this trailer has already given fans plenty of good starting details, there's a chance more won't be shown for a few months. Hopefully the next time Sonic Team has something it wishes to share, that will be live gameplay. If so, the open-zone nature of Frontiers will finally be understood beyond just speculation.
Sonic Frontiers is coming to PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S in holiday 2022.