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Sonic Frontiers immediately attracted comparisons to The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild when it was revealed. This was hardly surprising, as the shots we saw of Sonic running around an open green field definitely seemed reminiscent of Nintendo's own foray into the open-world genre. But now, Sonic Team head Takashi Iizuka seems eager to distance Frontiers from these comparisons.
In an interview with Shacknews, Iizuka says that Sonic Frontiers "isn't similar at all" to Breath of the Wild, as he feels that Frontiers is more action-focused. He also states that, despite its open zone design, Frontiers is still very much linear, and does not give the player as much freedom as Breath of the Wild does.
"From the development [team's] perspective, they're going out and making an action game. They see Breath of the Wild as a role-playing game, it's not similar at all to the action game that they're making," says Iizuka (9:40 mark).
"You know, there's the same element of freedom that has been applied to Breath of the Wild as a role-playing game, but they're taking the linear high-speed action Sonic game and implementing freedom into there," he continues. "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, but to them, they don't see a similarity between the games."
At another point in the interview, Iizuka says that he doesn't feel that there's really another game to compare Frontiers to. He also dismissed a comparison to The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess, suggesting he's very eager for fans to see Frontiers as something new and fresh. Yet as with any new entry in the open-world genre, it will also invite comparisons to others before it.
In just over a week, fans will be able to see if Sonic Frontiers really is as unique as Iizuka suggests. Frontiers launches November 8, and will be available on PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo Switch, and PC.