Sonic Frontiers' open-zone gameplay has been quite a hot topic ever since Sega revealed the game properly back in December. While the term is rather strange, recent trailers and preview footage have revealed that it aims to be an open world game with series staple stages that help to progress the story through non-linear means. These levels take place in a unique dimension known as “Cyber Space.”
These Cyber Space levels have kept fans guessing for a while as they weren’t revealed until the June Nintendo Direct. They function almost similarly to theSpecial Stages of previousSonicgames, allowing fans to work their way towards collecting the Chaos Emeralds. However, according to an interview with Sonic Team, these Cyber Space levels only account for a small fraction of the experience.
RELATED:Sega Reveals How Long Sonic Frontiers Takes to Beat
In June, the director ofSonic Frontiers, Morio Kishimoto, revealed in an interview that the game would take 20-30 hours to beat on a regular playthrough. Now, according to a new interview through Australian gaming website Press Start, Sonic Team has stated that the Cyber Space stages make up one-third of the title as a whole. This means that these stages will roughly take up under nine hours ofFrontiers.
In a way, this makes sense as Sega has openly been pushingthe “open-zone” nature ofFrontiersat the front of all of its advertising. The head of Sonic Team, Takashi Iizuka, also tells Press Start that players will spend most of their time in the open world of the Starfall Islands. However, the length of the stages also explains a statement from Kishimoto about how playthroughs for completionists will be “twice as long” as the Cyber Space stages have unique goals that may take more time to finish completely.
As more and more information regardingSonic Frontiersis revealed, it’s being made clear that fans will have a fair amount of things to do and look forward to in the nextSonicgame. Not only do players need to brave Cyber Space to collect the Chaos Emeralds, but they also need to work their way through five large islands whilegathering plenty of cute Koco creaturesto strengthen Sonic as they go along.
The Cyber Space stages are not just the part ofFrontiersthat fans were looking forward to a fair bit, but they were also the most highly praised in the first hands-on impressions of the game. It might make players upset to hear these linear stages are only a small part of this ambitious new title, but with recent gameplay footage,Sonic Frontiers' Starfall Islandsseem like they have their fair share of surprises as well.
Sonic Frontierswill launch on November 8 for PC, PS4, PS5, Switch, Xbox One, and Xbox Series X/S.
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