Sonic Frontiers' 'Open Zone' World Is Finally Explained By Game Director

thegamer.com:

Since the game’s initial announcement, Sega has referred to Sonic Frontiers’ open world as "open zone," a term that seemed like a meaningless distinction for the longest time. However, in a new interview with IGN, game director Morio Kishimoto finally tells us what "open zone" actually means.

"Level-based platformers often have a world map. Our open zone is a world map, only we’ve made it entirely playable," Kishimoto explained. "A playable world map that includes stage-like elements is something that hasn’t really been done before, so we had to come up with a new name. What is often defined as a World in other level-based platformers is called a zone in Sonic games, so we took that and combined it with open, which refers to a freely explorable field. So that’s what open zone stands for.

Related: Sonic Frontiers Preview: Folks, Our Blue Boy Is Back

"The open zone stands central in Sonic Frontiers’ gameplay, and the game’s levels exist as elements within this area. From grind rails to platform objects, loops and so on, the open zone is packed with the athletic action we love in Sonic games."

In his preview, our own Eric Switzer expressed some misgivings about the open zone structure of Sonic Frontiers thanks to a "lack of flow" between points of interest. Part of the reason why platformers have overworld maps is to simply get players to the good stuff--the levels--as quickly as possible.

Instead, it seems like Sonic Frontiers will simply have Sonic run there using his signature speed. Kishimoto noted how opening up Sonic's world meant a better emphasis on his speed even at the later stages of the game.

"In previous Sonic titles, we had to gradually make the stages more difficult in order to reach an amount of play time