Transcript for:
Sonic Frontiers Beta Content Iceberg Lecture

Sonic Frontiers has quickly become one of the best Sonic games in years but we can all agree that it's definitely not perfect the game is heavily flawed in many cases and this is mainly a result of his Rush development something that has always interested me is the beta of Sonic Frontiers and that's just because Frontiers was once a very different game in almost every aspect from the story to levels to even the boss fights Frontiers was drastically different from what we ended up getting so with the help of my friend paila I compiled a shitload of information about the Sonic Frontiers beta in even earlier stages of development into this Iceberg chart if you don't know how these work by now then no worries it's fairly simple information located near the top of the iceberg is stuff that's more wellknown but as we go lower in the chart we get to more obscure information but anyway enough rambling here it is the Sonic Frontiers beta content Iceberg [Music] enjoy all right starting with the tip of the iceberg there are only a few topics in this category and all of them are pretty well known by now but anyway let's just get into it Sonic Rangers this was the original internal name for Frontiers and this is actually what many play testers called the game before the actual title was revealed the game was even referred to as Rangers in press releases about the game that dropped shortly after the first teaser the exe file was even titled Rangers in the demo at summer gamefest even today you can find many things in the game's files that use the word Rangers in the file name unused enemy designs there are multiple concept images of unused difficult gold variants of many enemies we see in the game Kishimoto has confirmed that they were unfortunately removed due to memory issues which does kind of suck I do wonder where these were meant to be in the game though were they on a reos rehea I guess we'll never know beta Kronos Kronos Island was originally supposed to be much larger as it comprised of Kronos as we know it rehea and Ros all glued together to make this massive Island the decision to split Kronos into three separate Islands was actually made very late in development as we can actually see this original version of Kronos in the announcement trailer of Frontiers this version of Kronos lacked many of the obstacles and puzzles seen in the final version but it also had many puzzles that didn't make it in the actual release Kishimoto has actually gone on records saying that they split the island due to play testers complaining that the island was too large and empty and while yes this is most definitely a contributing factor to the decision it's very clear that time constraints were also a reason but yeah this is by far the biggest Topic in this video as most other topics on this chart relate to Beta Chronos in some way so now we're starting to get into more obscure information and I will warn you some of this stuff isn't 100% confirmed a lot of this info was actually taken from early 4chan leaks of the Frontiers beta so I advise you to take some of this stuff with a grain of salt leaked beta footage in April of 2023 an internal teaser for multiple unreleased Sega project was leaked on Twitter and this teaser actually included early 2021 footage for Sonic Frontiers and while it's only around 30 seconds of footage we learn a lot from it this is the first time we can actually see the beta version of Frontiers in a playable State and yeah we can see beta Kronos in all of its Glory but along with that we see a lot of other things that didn't make it into the final game and we'll talk about that stuff as well don't worry beta Chronos outline in the final game on Kronos rehea or oros you can use certain glitches or mods to get way up into the sky and from there you can see the water outline of how Kronos was supposed to connect to oros and this gives us an idea of exactly how massive this island was unused cutcenes there are multiple unused cut scenes in the files of Frontiers however most of them were just made to test certain things like qtes and Sonic's animations but there are a couple that just went completely unused like one with Tales giving Sonic a Chaos Emerald but there's another one that was found in wyvern's files that shows two caterpillar Guardians fighting each other and this is most definitely just the devs fing around but it's just funny to see nonetheless drift an unused drift mechanic was found in the game files unlike the one found in that one cyberspace level this was a part of Sonic's move set and it was actually mapped to the left trigger but oddly enough it's already in the game it's just only usable with Supersonic in Kishimoto confirmed on Twitter that it was left in the game as sort of a remnant of its original use tails's unused homing attack so this is from update 3 so I thought I would include it as a bonus thing in the files of Sonic Frontiers update 3 you can find this unused icon for Tales of skill tree which is definitely for a homing attack why this wasn't included is kind of known but it was probably due to the fact that they decided to replace it with his wrench attack instead ghost girl all right so now we're getting into the very early forchan leag territory many fourchan leagues from play testers mention a ghost girl that would follow Sonic around and refill your rings and whatnot and I mean it doesn't take a genius to figure out that they were definitely talking about Sage it seems that Sage was originally supposed to be an ally to Sonic however they could also be referring to Amy as hishimoto stated in a video interview that Amy once refill your rings in the giganto boss fight thick fog this just refers to how in in the beta gigantos Arena or Supremes arena in the final game was surrounded by a thick fog that you couldn't walk through until you had all the chaos emeralds we can actually see this fog surrounding the Boss Arena in the beta footage as well spin cycle this is just the original name for the silop that's it though it does sound much cooler if you ask me Ubisoft Towers in the final game you reveal more of the map by completing timer challenges spread throughout the open Zone but you can still access the rest of the island if you wanted to but originally that wasn't the case as a 4chan leaker mentioned the use of what are known as Ubisoft Towers which completely blocked off certain sections of Kronos until you activated them my theory is that these giant Towers in Kronos rehea and arenos were originally supposed to unlock more of the map as you progressed and this was also reiterated in other leaks but who knows infinite theme placeholder this just refers to how infinite's theme from Sonic forces was used as a placeholder for giganto Boss music that's it Sonic's Amnesia many early leaks from play testers mentioned that Sonic had Amnesia at the beginning of the game and that he had to regain his memory by going through cyberspace and this was was apparently even present in the summer gamefest demo of the game this particular aspect of the original story kind of leads into the next topic so let's just move on breath of the wild story inspiration this is mainly just a theory and nothing more along with Sonic Amnesia it's clear that the Titans were treated a lot like the Divine beasts and the Titan Pilots were similar to the Champions obviously Sonic Frontiers took a lot of inspiration from breath of the wild during [Music] development all right so now we're getting into more obscure territory this is very specific stuff about the beta that doesn't really get talked about too much and is found pretty deep in the files unused achievement there is an unused achievement in the files called inexhaustible it is unknown what this achievement was for but it is theorized that it had something to do with the power boost early titles a Sega survey from all the way back in November of 2019 showed multiple working titles for Sonic Frontiers including Starfall freedom and much more oddly enough enough though neither Frontiers nor Rangers were included in this list original Coco behavior in the game's code you can find that the KOCO had entirely different Behavior instead of just collecting them you had to lead them to the Elder Coco and I'm definitely glad they changed this because this just seems like a hassle original Guardian locations guardians from other islands in the final game were supposed to be on Kronos at one point spider for example was originally supposed to be on Old Kronos instead of chaos Island that's pretty cool original Guardian moves and drops this forchan league mentions that Guardians dropped orbs that were meant to get into cyberspace levels instead of portal gears and speaking of Guardians in the beta footage you can see that caterpillar had completely different moves compared to what we see in the final game this alludes to the theory that other Guardians had different attacks as well original giganto fights data for two unused giganto fight variants were found in the game's code one of them doesn't really attack you at all but has more Health while the other one just Spam attacks and has less Health in the beta footage we can see the first variant I mentioned along with some attacks and animations that we don't see in the final game original cyberspace and chaos Emerald locations similar to the Guardians Chaos Emerald vaults and cyberspace portals were also in different locations on Old Kronos beta Kronos actually included some cyberspace levels that are found on different islands in the final game and every fishing spot is here as well which is definitely odd but the naming Convention of northern southern eastern and western definitely makes much more sense now tales on Kronos an NPC version of tales is found throughout the original Kronos Island but he doesn't really do anything you can't talk to him or interact with him in any way unfortunately chaos Island intro dialogue in the files there are unused scripts for the end in Sonic that would have seemingly taken place at the end of Aries island or the beginning of chaos the end says thy next foe hides amid fire and ruin which obviously refers to chaos Island I have no idea why this didn't make it into the final game but whatever chaos Island Factory in concept art we can see that chaos Island had sort of a factory in which the Titans were built this art actually shows a giganto Titan being constructed on chaos Island but I don't think this ever got past the conceptual stages unfortunately CG footage tyin multiple CG footage clips of Frontier show Sonic on the original Kronos Island the gigantos arena being surrounded by trees spider Guardian on Kronos and Amy in a forest are all examples of this this shows that the CG for Frontiers was made well before the game was released it was actually made before they decided to split Kronos ancients worldship in the files of Frontiers there are unused voice lines of sage mentioning the ruins of the ancient worldship Sonic I believe I can access the ship's ruins join me it is what remains of the ancient worldship it was their Ark to this world now there are two theories on what this thing could have been the first theory is that the worldship was supposed to be the fourth island of the game since there were always originally supposed to be four unique Islands even with Kronos and oros combined World ship on Kronos the second theory states that the worldship was just a landmark that sage and Sonic discovered on Kronos Island and looking back at the leaked beta footage we can see this floating structure above the tutorial area comparing this shot with a screenshot of modded beta Chronos in the final game shows that this is definitely an object that was removed later in development all right so now we're getting into the really juicy stuff some of this stuff is so obscure to the point where I didn't find any of it online so let's just get right into it unfinished cutcenes in the frontier's digital art book on the page that talks about the egg device we can see very tiny screenshots of An Unfinished version of the intro cut scene not much else to say there it's just kind of cool Aries Island City similar to the chaos Island Factory early concept artart of Aries Island showed a city that was probably supposed to be explored in a mission or something concept art actually shows that Aries Island as a whole seemed to have much more to do in early stages of its conceptualization chaos Island scrap Titan fight so remember that Titan that was being built in the chaos Island concept art well it turns out that it was actually supposed to be a boss fight this was stated by Kishimoto on Twitter however unfortunately there was absolutely no work done to this fight and it never left the conceptual stages Knuckles and intro in the files of Frontiers you can find unused scripts for the intro cut scene and these unused scripts actually included dialogue from Knuckles who clearly was supposed to be with the gang when they all traveled to the islands I'm glad they didn't go with this though because if they did we would have never gotten that amazing Knuckles prologue animation so I'm more than happy that they changed it caterpillar on Rhea island in the beta footage we can see caterpillar in a forest that is on Rhea island in the final game in the final game however you can see ruined and broken caterpillar Guardians in the same area I wonder if this was an Easter egg left by the devs after they split up ch chros but this is most likely just a coincidence Alpha Kronos all right so there are actually two versions of beta Chronos in the files of the game the first one which goes by W1 r01 in the files is the earliest version of Kronos we know of this is the version that many people played during play testing what makes this interesting though is that this version of Kronos has absolutely no platforming challenges or obstacle courses which was definitely a contributing factor as to why many play testers complained that the island was empty and lifeless it has Guardians Chaos Emeralds cyberspace levels and all that good St stuff which was already mentioned before but memory token challenges and puzzles were mostly non-existent the game awards 2021 build do not research nah I just put that there for and Giggles anyway this version of Kronos used in The Game of Wars trailer for Frontiers goes by W1 r02 in the files what's odd about this version is that Kronos has all three islands combined but it has absolutely no object data in the arenos portion I mean it's not completely empty as it has some rings and springs here and there but that's it there are no cyers space levels no Guardians and no chaos emeralds this shows that when they recorded footage for the trailer they were actively in the process of splitting Kronos that's kind of insane though this version does actually have some platforming challenges in the new Kronos portion what's also interesting is that this build has some puzzles and obstacles on the rehea portion there are many of these rail creating puzzles similar to the one we see on Kronos Island which is really cool it is unfortunate how none of this was kept in the new Rhea Island though shrunken Aries similar to Kronos Aries Island was supposed to be much larger at one point and like Kronos in the final game in Aries if he use mods or glitches to get high up in the sky you can actually see the water outline of the original much larger Aries Island now instead of just having huge chunks separated from the island it seems that Aries was supposed to be the same island as it is in the final game just on a much larger scale and this also explains why the canyons and Aries felt very cramped and small at times otani's demo tracks tooo Otani confirmed on Twitter that he composed many demo tracks for Sonic Frontiers now unfortunately these tracks will most likely never see the light of day as they are unfinished but in the B footage it is possible that the music playing in the background is indeed one of those tracks but we'll never know for certain entrance to the world ship so as I said before in the beta footage what seems to be the Ancients worldship is located above the tutorial segment in Kronos island in the final game though if we use mods or glitches to get to that area we can find a set of ruins that forms a circle moving down the path we can also find this large flower field which is the perfect size for a worldship so yeah it is theorized that these ruins had something to do with how you access the worldship in the beta because otherwise why would they be here but I guess we'll never know for certain until more footage of the Frontiers beta leaks but there you have it that is the Sonic Frontiers unused content in beta Iceberg I really hope you all enjoyed this video and maybe you learned a thing or two about how different Frontiers was in earlier stages of its development before ending this one though I just wanted to give a huge thanks to everyone who helped me put this thing together I'll be sure to include shout outs to everyone who contributed to this project along with sources I Ed for research in the description down below and on screen before the outro as well but that's it for this one guys thank you all so much for watching and I'll see you all later [Music] [Music] goodbye [Music]