Gaming News Why isn’t Sonic Frontiers considered an open world by its creator?
If everyone calls Sonic Frontiers an open world game, this is not the case for its creator Morio Kishimoto, who prefers to define the world of his new game as Open Zone. The question we can then ask is: Why isn’t SEGA considering Sonic Frontiers an open world? answer right away.
An open area and not an open world, that’s Sonic Frontiers
For several days Sonic Frontiers has been making waves, revealing gameplay snippets here and there where we can see how Sonic roams a gigantic universe defined by everyone as an open world. However, as Morio Kishimoto, the game’s director, confirmed in an interview with IGN, Sonic Frontiers is not an open world game but a production that offers players an open zone. An amazing distinction, but one that makes sense.
Platformers that consist of levels often have a world map. Our open area is the world map, but we made it playable. A playable world map containing level elements has never been created before, so we had to come up with a new name. And what is commonly referred to as “world” in other platform games is called “zone” in Sonic games. So we took that name and combined it with that idea of openness, a free world. That’s what Open Zone is all about. Morio Kishimoto, director of Sonic Frontiers
It seems that Morio Kishimoto and his team chose the label Open Zone instead of Open World for two reasons. The first refers to previous Sonic games that always had “zones” as levels, such as the Green Hill Zone. Secondly, there is a distinction to be made with the world map, which is usually found in platform games, which allows access to all levels of a game. For example, the creator of Sonic Frontiers gives Super Mario Bros. 3, but we can also cite Yoshi’s Woolly World or Sackboy: A Big Adventure for more recent examples.
Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in Japan in 1988. I think it was the first game with a world map. This system has since been used in countless platform games. (…) We see a real evolution of this structure as the essence of the Sonic Frontiers playing field. Morio Kishimoto
For Morio Kishimoto, this Open Zone is therefore a further development of the principle of the world map.
A gigantic lifespan?
In the same interview, Morio Kishimoto also touches on the game’s lifespan, and according to its creator: The arrival of this gigantic Open Zone will allow Sonic Frontiers to become the greatest Sonic game of all time. In fact, to overcome it will take between 20 and 30 hours of gameplay, which is not nothing. Players who intend to 100% complete the production of the video game can play for almost 50 hours.
As a reminder, Sonic Frontiers is expected later this year on PC, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X|S and Nintendo Switch.
