We've got just over a week to go until Sonic Frontiers is finally out, and in preparation for its release, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka has sat down with Shacknews to talk about what this "open-zone" Sonic title will bring to the table (thanks, TheGamer!).
During the interview, the discussion soon turned to the Koco, creatures that you can collect throughout the game, with comparisons being drawn with Zelda: Breath of the Wild's Korok Seeds. And back when Sonic Frontiers was first revealed, many thought this new vision for Sonic was taking inspiration from Nintendo's massive open-world game. But Izuka suggests that, aside from the "freedom", the two are very different games.
In the video (timestamped above at 9:20), Izuka lays out why both games should be considered different:
"From the development [team's] perspective, they're going out and making an action game. So when they think about Breath of the Wild, they see Breath of the Wild definitely as a role-playing game, and it's not similar at all to the action game that they're making... There is the same element of freedom that has been applied to Breath of the Wild as a role-playing game, and they're taking the linear high-speed action Sonic game and implementing freedom into there."
Izuka immediately sets the two games apart by defining their genres — Sonic Frontiers as an action game, and Breath of the Wild as a role-playing game. Even though both games take an established franchise and pop their characters into a new, more-open setting, they do enough differently to stand very separate.
As a result, many fans spotted similarities between the two games with each new trailer — us included! — but Izuka thinks the two games aren't similar at all, despite the team's love for Breath of the Wild:
"But when we think about, 'is it an open world game? Is it similar to Breath of the Wild?', a lot of people on the team love the Zelda series, they love Breath of the Wild, they've played it, but to them, they don't really see a similarity between the games."
The whole interview isn't just about the Breath of the Wild comparisons we all love to make, though, as Izuka also touches on Cyber Space, the game's combat, and the reason that Tails, Knuckles, and Amy are all in the game. We'll soon get to find out for ourselves whether Sonic in the open-zone formula is a success, as Sonic Frontiers launches on 8th November on Switch.
In the meantime, you can check out the game's prologue comic which establishes the reason Sonic has gone to the Starfall Islands, and we're also due to get an animated prequel short starring Knuckles before the game's launch: