Sonic boss says Sonic Frontiers and Zelda: Breath of the Wild are “not similar at all”

Sonic Frontiers has drawn some comparisons to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild since its initial reveal, but Sonic boss Takashi Iizuka has indicated that the two are “not similar at all”.

Iizuka’s comments came about during an interview with Shacknews. When asked if the team was inspired by Breath of the Wild, he said:

“From the development (team’s) perspective, they’re going out and making an action game. So when they think about Breath of the Wild, they see Breath of the Wild definitely as a role-playing game, and it’s not similar at all to the action game that they’re making. Yeah there is the same freedom and element of freedom that has been applied to Breath of the Wild as a role-playing game, and they’re taking the linear high-speed action Sonic game and implementing freedom into there, but when we think about, ‘Is it an open world game? Is it similar to Breath of the Wild?’, a lot of people on the team love the Zelda series, they love Breath of the Wild, they’ve played it, but to them, they don’t really see a similarity between the games.”

Iizuka and SEGA as a whole have stressed that Sonic Frontiers is an “open zone” game – not an “open world” game. Zelda has one huge world to explore and you can go anywhere. Sonic Frontiers, on the other hand, is splintered off into different islands and has linear “Cyber Space” levels sprinkled throughout.

Sonic Frontiers launches for Switch on November 8, 2022. View the full interview with Iizuka below.