Sonic Frontiers director says the game’s combat was inspired by the Sonic movie

Sonic Frontiers director Morio Kishimoto has revealed that the game has taken inspiration from the Sonic the Hedgehog movie.

Kishimoto spoke about this in a new interview with IGN. He admitted that combat was never really a focus in the series until now, “but the movie showed us an entirely new approach.” The film’s take on Sonic “became a huge inspiration for Sonic Frontiers’ development,” he said.

According to Kishimoto:

“In previous titles, we never really put a high emphasis on combat. This time we implemented a more fleshed-out combat system, because we felt it was necessary to have more elements to enjoy within the Open Zone. There are plenty of action games with combat out there, but for this game we put an emphasis on making these battles feel like a true Sonic experience.

The first [Sonic the Hedgehog] movie really caught me by surprise. We have been focusing on how Sonic is supposed to run, jump and fight within our games, but the movie showed us an entirely new approach. They came up with a great interpretation of Sonic, which became a huge inspiration for Sonic Frontiers’ development.”

The direction we took for combat was inspired by the movie. After watching it, I came up with a vision for the game’s combat.”

Kishimoto added that Sonic Frontiers has other references to the movie. He himself actually asked the team to put those in. Kishimoto mentioned that it’s “great to have a positive rivalry like that,” adding: “Like, if the movies do one thing, we would want to counter that with our next game, and vice versa.”

Sonic Frontiers is due out on Switch this holiday. We recently had a chance to go hands-on with the title, and you can check out our impressions here.