Sonic Can't Cut Grass In Frontiers Because He's An "Ally Of Nature"
Sonic isn't just a blue hedgehog who runs fast - he's got his own moral code. And apparently, that code compels him to never harm nature, even if that "harm" is simply cutting the grass. In a recent interview, director for Frontiers director Morio Kishimoto revealed that a grass-harming feature was seemingly cut from the game, as to not harm Sonic's eco-friendly image.
In an initial draft, Sonic's new Cyloop ability - which sees him damage enemies by running in a loop around them - would have harmed the terrain caught up in the attack. However, this concerned some devs, and now Cyloop will only harm Sonic's foes.
Related: Sonic Frontiers Preview: Folks, Our Blue Boy Is Back
Speaking about the challenge of developing an open zone game, Kishimoto discussed how the Cyloop ability went undeveloped for some time.
"I was spending my time making the open zone interesting, so the reality was that I couldn't get around to Cyloop", says Kishimoto. "For the time being, what I was able to do with [Cyloop] at that time was 'mowing'.
"If you surround it, you can mow the grass, the sand will rise up, and it will interfere with the terrain Sonic is an ally of nature, so there was an opinion that 'cutting the grass is a bit...'". Kishimoto cuts off there, but we can get the gist of what he's saying from that - Sonic is a good boy, and he doesn't want to hurt the environment.
Because they threw this feature out, the devs had a policy of replacing it with something more interesting. This means that more was added to the Cyloop ability in terms of its effect on enemies. And having played around with it myself at Gamescom, I can confirm that it was pretty damn satisfying. This is also how we got the ability to affect objects with Cyloop,
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