Kishimoto Confirms Ian Flynn Will Return for Sonic Frontiers Story DLC

The director of Sonic Frontiers has confirmed that contributing writer (and IDW Sonic universe author) Ian Flynn will return to work on the upcoming story-based DLC for the game.

Morio Kishimoto responded to fan questions on his social media accounts about the content of the third expansion pack, which will come later in 2023 following Sonic’s birthday-themed DLC in the summer. “Of course, Ian Flynn will write it,” Kishimoto wrote in Japanese (English provided by machine translation).

“Although Sonic Frontier has a huge amount of settings, there are many episodes that could not be told,” the Sonic Team director added. “Now that we’ve decided which episode to go with, I’m sure we’ll be able to meet everyone’s expectations!”

The long-awaited story DLC for Sonic Frontiers will include new playable characters beyond Sonic for the first time in the game – heavily rumoured to be Tails, Knuckles and potentially Amy. It is assumed that the additional content will add much-needed context to many of the base game’s remaining mysteries and storytelling snafus, such as the meaning behind the familiar glyph symbol as well as questions raised by the ending (and post-credits) sequence.

Elsewhere, Kishimoto revealed the meaning behind the game’s working title, Sonic Rangers. The name was a holdover from a previous iteration of the game whilst in development, before Kishimoto took over the project as director.

“When I became director, the content of the game was changed to something completely different, but the development code name remained the same, so Rangers ended up being something completely unrelated to the content of the game.”

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Morio Kishimoto Appears to Confirm that Sonic Will Have more 2D Adventures in His Future

Morio Kishimoto, the director for Sonic Frontiers, has been pretty talkative on Twitter lately. In his latest surprise Twitter revelation, he appears to have confirmed that there will be more side-scrolling Sonic games at some point. Eventually. This came from a discussion between Kishimoto and Twitter user @RealJellyLord.

Many (including a few TSS staff members) took this to be a confirmation that a 2D Sonic game was in active development. But RealJellyLord quickly clarified this to not be the case. Of course, we already know that that more Sonic things are coming this year. Whether a 2D game will be among those things remains to be seen, but we’ll know soon enough.

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Kishimoto: First Major Sonic Frontiers DLC is in Final Stages of Production

It doesn’t sound like we’ll have to wait much longer for some fresh Sonic Frontiers content – the game’s director, Morio Kishimoto, has revealed that development of the first wave of DLC is now in the final stages of production.

Continue reading Kishimoto: First Major Sonic Frontiers DLC is in Final Stages of Production
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Kishimoto Interested In Making a Sonic Game Without Boost

Morio Kishimoto, director of the main-line Sonic series since Colors, was recently asked about the boost mechanic, and he is at least considering… well, not having it at some point.

Continue reading Kishimoto Interested In Making a Sonic Game Without Boost
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Kishimoto Confirms Sonic Frontiers Development Has Been Completed

The director of the upcoming Sonic Frontiers has announced on Twitter that the game has officially gone gold, with development now completed across all platforms.

Continue reading Kishimoto Confirms Sonic Frontiers Development Has Been Completed
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Sonic Team Reveals New Animated Studio Logo

Alongside the latest TGS Trailer for Sonic Frontiers last week, Sonic Team revealed a new animated logo bump. The 5-second clip shows the titular blue streak collecting rings as the trail forms the Sonic Team logo.

In an official blog post on Sonic Channel, producer and creative director Kazuyuki Hoshino optimistically touts the studio’s staff and legacy:

The Sonic Team is full of energy and motivation, consisting of veteran team members, who have been here for a long, long time, and newcomers bringing in their own fresh take on things. These talented groups of people are able to come together to make this team even stronger. We want our fans to know that when they see this logo, they are guaranteed to get a good game from Sonic Team.

This follows Sonic Frontiers’ director Morio Kishimoto hoping that the upcoming game bolsters the reputation of the studio. Confidence in Sonic Team has long been shaky within the fan community and especially outside of it. With Kishimoto approaching Frontiers as a generational shift in Sonic games, there is no time more pivotal for the studio to prove that its internal confidence is justified.

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Kishimoto Hopes Sonic Frontiers Will Take Sonic Team to the Top of the Gaming Industry

Sonic Frontiers’ director, Morio Kishimoto, has revealed in a Tokyo Game Show interview a secret goal of Sonic Team’s when developing the game – to restore the studio’s reputation and place it at the top of the gaming development world.

Continue reading Kishimoto Hopes Sonic Frontiers Will Take Sonic Team to the Top of the Gaming Industry
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Sonic Frontiers is 20-30 Hours Long, Will Have Different Difficulty Curve From Past Games

In an interview with IGN, Sonic Frontiers Director Morio Kishimoto talked about the game’s length and difficulty curve.

In terms of length, Kishimoto confirmed that the game would be around 20-30 hours, with full competition taking roughly double the time. Kishimoto stated that the game’s length was part of the reason they decided to make Sonic upgradeable throughout the adventure, in order to keep players invested.

Kishimoto also talked about the differences in the difficulty curve between Frontiers and past Sonic games. Specifically, Kishimoto mentioned how Sonic games typically become more difficult as they progress, and how such a curve was no longer necessary with Frontiers:

“In previous Sonic titles, we had to gradually make the stages more difficult in order to reach an amount of play time that would satisfy players. It is natural for level-based platformers to become more difficult as you progress. However, for Sonic games the problem has always been that higher difficulty can get in the way of the game’s sense of speed. In Sonic Frontiers, the Open Zone offers a lot of content already, so raising the difficulty in order to increase the play time was no longer necessary. From start to finish, we were able to maintain a sense of speed with ideal level design for a Sonic game.”

For the full interview, check out the source below.

via IGN

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