If you made it this far, thanks for reading! This is the end of the thread. Feel free to let me know what you think about the current state of Sonic Team, and whether you're as excited for that next mainline game as I am!

So when I say that LITERALLY EVERYTHING is lining up for this next Sonic game to be something truly special, I really do mean it. The open-zone idea of Frontiers, paired with the corporate backing of the last two years and the vision and passion of '06, is coming together before us.

I can't wait.

Sonic Team is finally complete for the first time since '06, including the Olympics devs. They have money. They have time. They have a brand-new UE5-shaped toy that they used CrossWorlds' dev time to get accustomed to. They have a vision from day one.

And they have a SEGA that will let them cook.

Since Frontiers, both major Sonic Team productions have been met with glowing praise from fans and general audiences alike, sporting Metascores in the 80s and unusually high user scores by the standards of this series.

The reason is simple: none of these previous hurdles affect Sonic Team anymore.

Yes.

That's because after this game, Sega started giving the devs what they have been needing all along: time, manpower, money, and above all, trust. Frontiers sold gangbusters, and the movies brought the GP's eye to the Sonic IP like never before, so now Sega understood that Sonic is important.

They got it, thankfully, and they were able to at least somewhat realize their vision for the open-zone formula in a presentable fashion. It's like the Bizarro-Forces: very fun, rich in content, and large in scope, but greatly lacking polish in vital areas.

Wait... didn't I just say "finally?"

Frontiers, finally, had Sega give the devs 5 years. Three of those years, however, were spent on making a version of Frontiers that followed a different template, which went over very poorly with playtesters. With only one year remaining until launch, the directors fought for another year.

Well, as many in-the-know Sonic heads are aware, three of those four years were spent making that very engine. This left about one year for the devs to actually make the game, and it shows in the level design, length of the game, and lacking amount of content, despite its polish in other areas.

Forces, oddly, comes the closest to Sonic Team's current state. They had 4 years, a re-united dev team (minus the Olympics devs), and a brand new internal engine that did everything HE1 does, but more advanced and supporting more state-of-the-art graphics options.

So what happened?

We know the previous factoid due to each group of games having very similar file structures and internal naming schemes, which are also very different from games in the opposite category.

Some devs on Sonic Team were also pulled away to work on the M&S Olympics titles throughout this time.

As a result of the '06 dev team schism, many following games were developed by only one half or the other of Sonic Team. The "A Team" worked on games like Unleashed and Generations, while the "B Team" worked on games like the Storybooks, Colors, and Lost World.