When Sonic Frontiers was revealed during The Game Awards it surprised everyone, but not because a new game was getting announced. Everyone was surprised because the game that was being shown was an open world game. Sonic in an open world? How is that going to work?
While we’re obviously excited to find out and see how it all goes, the trailer also made everyone immediately think about another very popular open world game, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. While it’s not very fair to call every open world game a BOTW clone, it was hard to not see the similarities with this one. They even used one of the same camera shots.
(You all saw this coming…)
Wow! I’m getting Breath of the Wild vibes from this! #TheGameAwards #SonicFrontiers pic.twitter.com/DK2eLhbd8p
— Zelda Universe (@ZeldaUniverse) December 10, 2021
yo who modded sonic into breath of the wild pic.twitter.com/nk8qYTvxh9
— fan1glam (@fan1glam2) December 10, 2021
Since there were some clear similarities between this new Sonic game and BOTW, the jokes immediately came flying out about the possibility that Sonic had just copied it.
the history of mobius is the history of the calamity eggman
— austin walker (@austin_walker) December 10, 2021
— Luke Plunkett (@LukePlunkett) December 10, 2021
There is one downside to immediately comparing Sonic to BOTW though and it’s that we might be getting a little too lazy with our comparison. Giant open world? Lots of grass everywhere A character standing upon a cliffside? Obviously, that means any game with grass is a BOTW clone.
Everybody knows Breath of the Wild invented green grass, hills, and mountains. Don’t pretend sonic frontiers didn’t copy them.
— mario (@mc_castile) December 10, 2021
Also STOP calling it Sonic breath of the Wild. Open world games are not all breath of the wild good lord this is annoying even me and I usually don’t care about this crap but sheesh
— Sora Gold @ Nero loving hours (@SoraGold_2302) December 10, 2021
That said, anyone that’s played BOTW probably knows the true reason this isn’t going to be a straight up BOTW clone. The story around BOTW is maybe a little too depressing for a Sonic game.
Also while we’re at it I certainly hope SEGA doesn’t draw inspiration from BOTW in making all of Sonic’s friends dead
— sitar68k (comms closed, hiatus until finals done) (@hisaturn_v) December 10, 2021
We like our Sonic games positive and happy, thank you. So let’s hope that BOTW comparisons are in style only and not in plot.