Sonic Team Leader Explains Sonic Frontiers' Use of Old Level Designs

gamerant.com:

Sonic Frontiers' presence at Gamescom has arguably brought more relevant news to future players than the entirety of the drip feed back in June. Fans not only got a great look at two of the five Starfall Islands that they'll explore in the next Sonic game, but they were also treated to more defined Cyber Space stage gameplay, as well as a worldwide release date reveal. Not all the news was well received, though, as Sonic loyalists were quick to notice that some Cyber Space stages re-used previous level layouts from older titles.

Once the similarities were spotted, Sonic fan site The Sonic Stadium brought up the aesthetics found in Sonic Frontiers in an interview with Takashi Iizuka, the leader of Sonic Team, at Gamescom. When asked about the design of the Starfall Islands and the Cyber Space levels, Iizuka revealed that the re-used level designs are meant to represent how the digital zones are made from fragments of Sonic's memories.

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Sonic Stadium originally asked Iizuka about the areas shown in the recent Gamescom trailer for Frontiers while pointing out that the Starfall Islands look more realistic, yet the Cyber Space levels are rather similar to what fans expect from Sonic stages. The head of Sonic Team responded that this approach to the two different areas players can explore was a deliberate choice to make the Starfall Islands feel more mysterious and new as the Sonic cast has never visited the Islands before.

However, when it came to the Cyber Space stages, the direction that Sonic Team went with was to give the illusion of places Sonic's been to before being digitally re-created in an «unreal way» through his own memories.