Sonic Frontiers made some big changes to the classic Sonic the Hedgehog formula, giving players big Open Zones to explore. It's probably the biggest change since the series first made the jump to 3D, but it seems that developer Sonic Team nearly took it even further. Dataminer "Death" has shared a video of cut content found in the files of the Switch version. The biggest revelation from this footage is the fact that the Kronos, Rhea, and Ouranos islands were originally intended to be one big zone, rather than being split apart. That would have given players a much bigger area to freely explore!

The video can be found embedded below.



It's always interesting to get a glimpse of what might have been. It's unclear exactly why Sega decided to break up these locations, and players will have to decide for themselves if it was the right decision. The company sees Sonic Frontiers as a "global playtest" for the franchise's future, and it's clear that a lot of thought went into every aspect of the game, even if a lot of players are split on the results.

While reviews and player opinions on Sonic Frontiers have been all over the map, ComicBook.com's official review for the game gave it four out of a possible five stars. The game's Open Zones received a lot of praise from this writer, particularly in the way that the areas allowed Sonic to cut loose in a way that the series has never allowed before. If three of the game's islands had been combined into one big area, that might have opened this element up even more, and that might have even changed some of the negative opinions towards the game. At the end of the day, that's something Sega can keep in mind for the next entry in the series!

Sonic Frontiers is available on Nintendo Switch, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, and PC.

Posted: Nov 27, 2022 11:12 pm
Related Forum: Gaming Discussion

Source: https://comicbook.com/gaming/news/sonic-frontiers-nintendo-switch-datamine-big-change-open-zones/