Sonic Team has just released the first teaser trailer for Sonic Frontiers, and dare we say it looks awfully familiar. By this, we don’t mean it looks like a generic Sonic early game trailer, we mean the trailer carries the same energy and has a similar feel to Breath of the Wild.
It’s become alarmingly clear that there is a vocal faction within the gaming community that despises the stock ‘X meets Breath of the Wild’ statement that we members of the gaming press employ when a newly released game vaguely resembles The Legend of Zelda. However, the new trailer for Sonic Frontiers fits the description almost perfectly.
The trailer depicts Sonic running free between futuristic ruins across a picturesque borderless world drenched with light and strewn with flowers. In terms of realism, it looks like a far more limitless and visually overhauled Sonic experience could be awaiting us when Sonic Frontiers finally drops.
The concept of having Sonic as a truly open-world game feels a little controversial. Yes, games change as the demand increases for characters, environments and gameplay to adapt with the times. But Sonic has always had a very different feel to what the trailer portrays.
It’s also pertinent to mention that this isn’t the kind of purely cinematic trailer that we get every time there’s a Minecraft update; this is most likely actual honest-to-goodness gameplay. This new trailer is likely what the new game will look like. It seems to play more like your general run-of-the-mill RPG.
Sonic Frontiers seems to represent a distinctly new direction for the Sonic franchise. This game drops Sonic into what looks to be a truly frontierless world. A world where the Blue Blur is no longer held back by previous titles’ more forced two, and three-dimensional perspectives. This time he seems to be able to run wild through an unequivocally open-world environment, picking up rings and doing battle with monstrous new beasts.
We’ll see more of Sonic Frontiers at next week’s Summer Games Fest. Until then, we’re still waiting for the launch of Sonic Origins. In preparation for the June 23rd launch, SEGA pulled a peculiar stunt; they’ve removed most of the classic Sonic games from various online platforms.
