It’s been almost five years since the last main entry in theSonic the Hedgehogseries, an unusually long gap between Sonic Team-developed titles in Sega’s flagship platforming series. Sega has been taking its time withSonic Frontiers, the next ambitious entry in the series which seeks to introduce theSonicformula to an open-world environment for the first time ever. Now, Sega has revealed the first uncut gameplay fromSonic Frontiers.
Sonic Frontierswas first announced in May 2021 as part of the Sonic Central stream for the franchise’s 30th anniversary. The game was revealed without an official title and without any indication of how it would play, until leaks quickly started to emerge from alleged play testers of the game that revealed thatSonic Frontierswill be set in an open-world settingsimilar toThe Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. This was confirmed at the 2021 Game Awards, with a trailer that teased the game’s open world and the title.
RELATED:Sonic Frontiers Reveals First Gameplay In New Sneek Peak Trailer
As part of IGN First, which focuses on revealing information for specific games for an entire month similar to magazine cover stories, Sega has revealed seven minutes of uncut gameplay fromSonic Frontierswhich showcases the blue blur’s adventure in a mysterious open-world. Without beating around the bush,it all looks veryBreath of the Wild, with Sonic solving puzzles and climbing towers while running at fast speeds around the open world. Some elements of the footage are somewhat hard to follow, but this is likely due to the lack of UI, which has been turned off for cinematic purposes.
Sega has a lot of goodwill leading up to the release ofSonic Frontiers.Sonic Team has been very vocal about its desire to return the series to its former gloryand achieve high review scores with this title, especially after the string of disappointing entries in the series following 2011’sSonic Generations.Frontiersis also on track to have one of the longest development cycles in the series due to this, with the last main entry,Sonic Forces, releasing in November 2017 to mixed reception.
Sega itself has done a lot of brand rebuilding in the past few years, between licensing old IP such asShenmue,Streets of Rage, andToejam and Earlfor sequels, and growing its other properties in the west such asYakuza,Phantasy Star Online, and Atlus IP such asPersonaandShin Megami Tensei. With this in mind, it’s about time Sonic had a resurgence in popularity,especially with the major success of theSonic the Hedgehogfilm franchise.
Sonic Frontierswill release in 2022 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
