The new Sonic the Hedgehog game is no longer called Sonic Rangers but apparently it’ll be taking cues from Link not Mario.
It’s mostly the fault of the pandemic but it’s fair to say that Sega has not taken full advantage of the surprise success of the Sonic the Hedgehog movie, in fact there hasn’t been a new mainline Sonic game in over four years now – seven if you don’t count the outsourced Sonic Mania.
Sega has announced a new game but only via a very vague teaser, which didn’t even offer a name. Previously it was thought the new game was called Sonic Rangers, but a new trademark filing suggests it’s actually called Sonic Frontiers.
On its own that doesn’t guarantee that the two games are the same thing but a leak on Reddit a few days before the trademark was filed predicted the name change, which seems to clinch it.
That makes everything else in the same post much more likely to be true than previously thought, with the leaker describing Sonic Frontiers as an ‘open world game with similar style to Zelda: Breath Of The Wild’.
When they say that though they seem to be referring more to the open world itself, rather than anything to do with the gameplay, which is instead compared to Sonic Generations – which featured the same style of 2D and 3D gameplay that’s been common for most modern Sonic games.
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The leaker claims that the game ‘is actually good’ but their promise to post actual screenshots never seems to have been carried out, perhaps because Sega caught them before they had the chance.
It’s a shame though, because without screenshots, or ideally a trailer, it’s hard to imagine exactly how the game works. It is easy to see the trailer as implying an open world environment, though, which certainly doesn’t seem an obvious choice for a Sonic game.
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