The director of Sonic Frontiers has revealed how the upcoming game was influenced by the Sonic the Hedgehog live-action movies, especially when it comes to combat. A recent preview for Sonic Frontiers at Summer Games Fest gave players an in-depth look at the game's open-world and adventuring mechanics, and while reception to the new trailer was mixed, hopes are generally high for its release.
Sonic has enjoyed a nice resurgence in popularity due, in part, to the recent success of the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 movie, and Sega has certainly taken advantage. In the wake of the film’s acclaim, Sega has revealed several press releases for the upcoming Sonic Origins, an updated collection of four retro Sonic titles, and Sonic Frontiers, the newest mainline entry in the franchise. Over the past few days, Sega has released multiple trailers that gave fans a first glimpse at Sonic Frontiers' open-world gameplay, with one trailer offering fans a preview of combat in Sonic Frontiers. A few keen-eyed viewers of the combat trailer may have noticed a few similarities the combat animation of Sonic Frontiers had to its cinematic doppelganger.
In an interview with IGN, Sonic Team director Morio Kishimoto talked about how the Sonic film was an inspiration to Sonic Frontiers. Kishimoto was impressed with the movie's animations and went as far as to say:
“The first [Sonic the Hedgehog] movie really caught me by surprise. We have been focusing on how Sonic is supposed to run, jump and fight within our games, but the movie showed us an entirely new approach. They came up with a great interpretation of Sonic, which became a huge inspiration for Sonic Frontiers’ development."
Apart from using the film's animations as a baseline, Kishimoto's biggest takeaway was the look of the combat, noting: “the direction we took for combat was inspired by the movie. After watching it, I came up with a vision for the game’s combat.” IGN further reports Sonic Team has also placed other references to the movie in Sonic Frontiers and hopes that the team's work can influence future Sonic movies the way they influenced Sonic Team. “It’s great to have a positive rivalry like that. Like, if the movies do one thing, we would want to counter that with our next game, and vice versa,” said Kishimoto.
Learning from the Sonic the Hedgehog movie may have helped Kishimoto and Sonic Team animation-wise, however, Sonic Frontier’s open-world formula may have introduced other challenges. One major concern of fans has been that although Sonic Frontiers’ looks pretty, it's relatively empty compared to other open-world games. The fact that it's still scheduled for a holiday 2022 release date is a bit disconcerting for those hoping for a polished experienced. However, Kishimoto made it clear that he understands the importance of combat encounters in open-world games.
Though Sonic Frontiers has some challenges ahead, it’s heartening to see a positive influence between source and spin-off the way the Sonic franchise demonstrates here. Perhaps the biggest accomplishment of Sonic movies was their accurate representation of the source material, which has helped to dissolve the barrier between Hollywood and gaming. If the success of Sonic Frontiers is attributed to lessons learned from the movie, then that barrier may come down much quicker.
Source: IGN
The director of Sonic Frontiers has shared new details on the game's combat - and how it was influenced by the box office-hit Sonic movies.Lawrence Ortiz