Sonic Frontiers/Development

Back to: Sonic Frontiers.

Writing Process

For Sonic Frontiers, long time Sonic comics writer Ian Flynn was brought in to pen the script to the story. He was picked because he was writing the overseas comics and he had tremendous support from fans. It was a very different experience to writing a Sonic narrative then what he is used to. Sega provided to Flynn the basic story, backstory, plot beats and characters.

One of Ian Flynn's objectives was to make it clear that Sonic Frontiers was part of a greater universe. This was a direction on top from the very beginning, Sega wanted a story that felt like it was part of a greater whole, not just another standalone game. They knew Ian Flynn had been doing this for awhile and knew his interconnected Sonic story stuff, he should bring it to the game.

The game features many callbacks to previous Sonic games in an effort to validate what came before and make it feel like the next chapter in the story of the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. Part of the reason Frontier's storyline includes as many references as it does is that by it self the events are not really connected to Sonic. With the story revolving around the Ancients, The End and the Titans, Ian Flynn wanted a little more connective tissue to make it feel part of Sonic's world.

Tangle the Lemur and Sticks the Badger were named dropped in the game to much surprise. They were put into the script simply because Ian Flynn asked if they could be mentioned in the game and then he put them into the script. Before this they were already talking in other departments and other groups about where the Sonic the Hedgehog (IDW comics) fit into everything. The decision was moving more towards make it all one cohesive brand, one universe. So Ian Flynn said to facilitate that, if there's an opportunity where it would make sense, where it isn't really too jarring, can we do some name drops? And they were like "yeah".

Ian Flynn didn't even know if the incidental lines in the field would even be used, it was a pitched idea. He also thought the islands were going to be much larger. He thought there was going to be more down time in between events. When the initial concept was pitched to Flynn, he was thinking something like The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild where you would have these expanses, where you can enjoy nature. In the final product it's much more compact, so that effected how everything played out in the end.

With the flashbacks to The End's attack on the Ancients' home world, what Ian Flynn intended in the script didn't necessarily translate into the final product. The original intent was more along the lines of while The End was feasting on the Ancients' world, they escaped. It wasn't supposed to be a one-shot kill from The End that destroyed the planet. And when The End arrived at Earth, originally, the Ancients were ready to fight, so The End didn't get a chance to attack like it normally does. It met resistance the second time around.

Ian Flynn also pitched the idea of Hyper Sonic battling The End instead of Super Sonic, which did not make it into the game.

Character arcs

There was a lot of internal discussion around Amy's character growth in the game. Ian Flynn feels her story is a little muddled in it's messaging and presentation. She had the most discussion on what to say and how to say it. It is left a fair bit open ended to be explored at another time. Ian Flynn's main goal was to give Amy a drive outside of Sonic, but was still very true to her character. Fixating on her love and compassion for others, and wanting to see that expand beyond just her own personal affections was the wide net Flynn cast. If that stuck and was well received then hopefully Sega will pick up and run with that torch. Ian Flynn hopes to get to be involved with that. A lot of Frontiers' story was Flynn planting seeds hoping that they will bear fruit in the future.

For Knuckles the direction came from on high to make him more serious in this game. When they were first getting Frontiers up and running, very first meeting to discuss stuff, one of the notes said Knuckles has been played very comedic over the past few years, and they wanted a more concentrated effort to make him more serious and cool again. Ian Flynn was in total agreement with this direction for Knuckles.

Promotional images

The following are various images released by Sega to promote the game.

Environments

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