LogInSonic Frontier's director explained why the studio refers to the game's open world as to the "open zone" and said that the title will feature plenty of locations with multiple puzzles so the game may take 20-60 hours to complete.
In a recent interview with IGN, the game director of Sonic Frontiers, Morio Kishimoto, shared some details about the upcoming game which will be released in winter 2022 on PC and consoles.
Unlike previous games in the series, Sonic Frontiers will be the first title that has a vast open world which Sega refers to as the "open zone" that players will be able to explore freely. The director explained that many level-based platformers often feature a world map where players can choose a certain location where they will go next. Meanwhile, Sonic Frontier's "Open Zone", according to Kishimoto, will be "entirely playable".
"A playable world map that includes stage-like elements is something that hasn’t really been done before, so we had to come up with a new name," Kishimoto said. "What is often defined as a World in other level-based platformers is called a Zone in Sonic games, so we took that and combined it with Open, which refers to a freely explorable field. So that’s what Open Zone stands for."
The game director noted that the game will feature the "high-speed gameplay", so this "open zone" approach will help the game not to lose its dynamics.
He also pointed out that in previous games in the series one of the main mechanics was making levels more and more difficult as the progression goes, however, this higher difficulty affected games' "sense of speed". Meanwhile, Sonic Frontiers' "open zone" will allow players to explore multiple locations that offer plenty of content, so increasing the difficulty of the game is not needed anymore.
In the open world, players will find a number of mini-games, puzzles, and riddles. However, Kishimoto emphasized that the game focuses on the sense of speed, so most of the puzzles will be optional. According to Kishimoto, the game will take around 20-30 hours to complete for an average player, while those who would like to explore all the locations might need almost 40-60 hours.
You can learn more about the game by reading the full interview with Morio Kishimoto here. Also, don't forget to join our new Reddit page, our new Telegram channel, follow us on Instagram and Twitter, where we are sharing breakdowns, the latest news, awesome artworks, and more.