Sonic Team developed Sonic Frontiers to be beaten however players want

When a game first enters development, the team behind it typically has an initial vision for how they think players will experience their final product once it launches. And, as the game comes along and testing continues, that vision is refined into a more practical idea for how each aspect of the game can be approached by a player. 

Sonic Team started developing Sonic Frontiers with the idea that it would take the standard Sonic gameplay everyone knows and evolve it into something for the future without losing what makes the franchise tick—which includes giving players plenty of options in how to approach finishing the game. 

Frontiers might not be a fully open world, instead opting for an open zone approach to give players more freedom than ever before while still maintaining some linearity. The developers have, however, made it so players can experience the game at their own pace and focus mostly on what they want to accomplish with their time. 

“If you want to beat the game and just get through the story, as we have kind of explained, all you really need to do I beat the Guardians, get the Portal Gears, go to Cyberworld, and do all the things you need to do in order to get the Chaos Emeralds,” Frontiers producer and Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka said to Dot Esports. “But outside of that, there are other things that are on the island that, if you start exploring, you’ll soon run into.”

Those other pieces of content include puzzles to solve, challenges to complete, and so much more outside of just story progression. And yes, that includes fishing with Big the Cat. 

Sonic Team tried to approach Frontiers with an open mindset so that they could allow for as many different experiences within the game as possible. This includes allowing players to choose how to complete elements of the story and unlock content without utilizing certain mechanics such as Cyber Space as often as some might think. 

According to Iizuka, Vault Keys need to be collected in order to obtain the Chaos Emeralds and progress the game’s story. But Cyber Space isn’t the only place these can be obtained, though he wouldn’t specify how besides saying that they will be available in locations outside of Cyber Space. 

Iizuka even mentions speedrunning and time trials as something that Sonic Team took into account during development, saying that it was key to allow for replayability where players can improve their times or just have fun in different ways. 

That also plays into the open zone approach to Frontiers, which Iizuka and his team think fans will come to love for how many fun moments and surprises it will help create. 

“We think fans are going to have a lot of ‘aha!’ moments as they are playing through the game, kind of saying like ‘oh, now I get what they were talking about when they talked about open zone.’” Iizuka said. “Many things are hidden around the islands, I’m sure some people are going to want to complete an island and do absolutely everything. We are really interested in, how you’re going to like it and what you’re going to have to say about that.”

And, with the open zone approach giving players freedom, the Cyber Space levels will be more of a test of technical skills, prowess, and control. But overall, the team is just excited to see what players think of the gameplay at its core and the story.