Sonic Frontiers, the latest installment in the long-running franchise, will be featured at Gamescom Opening Night Live, says Geoff Keighley. So far, we have seen a variety of gameplay deep dives from Sonic Frontiers, and fans have been sharing their concerns online. The game is seemingly taking on an open-world approach to its design, which has caused a massive conversation to emerge about whether or not the game will be any good, though that’s not unprecedented for Sonic games.
Sonic Frontiers was announced in December 2021 at The Game Awards after a few teasers earlier in the year. Not much was revealed back then, except for the obvious direction of an open-world setting. A variety of content creators and members of the press were able to experience a hands-on preview event at June’s Summer Game Fest, where they got a glimpse of what to expect in Sonic’s upcoming adventure.
Frontiers is not the only thing that’s happened to the blue blur this year, as Sega officially launched Sonic Origins, a collection that repackages Sonic the Hedgehog, Sonic the Hedgehog 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 3, and Sonic CD. However, the collection came under fire for its disappointing performance, especially on PC platforms. According to developer Headcannon, Sega made a bunch of unnecessary changes without informing the studio, which led to the poor performance of Sonic the Hedgehog 3 specifically.
Although Sega has promised future patches to counteract this, Sonic Origins is currently sitting at 60% positive reviews on Steam, which is a shame considering the excellence of the original versions of these games. Console versions do seem to be better received, though there are still some glitches that need fixing.
Hopefully, a release date announcement is what Sega and Geoff Keighley have planned for the event. We’re still anticipating a holiday 2022 launch for Frontiers, with current speculating setting it for either early November or mid-December. If that’s the case, then we have another title to look forward to this holiday season, and another game to add to our endless backlogs.
Gamescom Opening Night Live is scheduled for Tuesday, August 23 at 8 p.m. CEST / 2 p.m. ET / 11 a.m. PT / 7 p.m. BST. The event, hosted by Geoff Keighley, will feature never before seen games, and updates on previously announced titles. It has been rumored that Hogwarts Legacy, an open-world action-RPG set in the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, will finally receive a release date announcement after its long delay from 2021. However, industry insiders have speculated that the game is still set for launch in 2022, though it may skip the year due to the high volume of new titles launching this holiday season.
