Bullshit

So this whole discourse is driving me insane cause some people are arguing 'realisim isn't an art ditrction' (wrong) and others are arguing that the random rails and platforms and shit don't blend into the environment (correct) and that it's a sign of laziness or lack of time and care put into them (wrong)

Like... That IS the art direction. Natural beauty juxtaposed against the weird alien imposition of the unatural nature of the platforming elements.

Even before it was revealed in final frontiers that these are a hallucination by sonic as he interacts with bits of cyberspace crossing into our realm it seemed pretty clear that that was the intention.
(well not no one else being able to see em that's fuckin wild)

Like everything about the game thematically is the corruption of cyberspace, sonic is infected, his friends are trapped there, and the natural beauty of the islands is scarred by clearly unatural alien looking creatures and structures.

The platforming shit looks out of place and weird cause it is, thats the point. It's supposed to give you the vibe of like impossible alien sky's in sci fi, like the ring above you in halo to use a video game comparison. Something that is constantly in the background of what otherwise appears a lush beautiful natural environment to convey that something is wrong or off here.

People are looking at 'art direction' as the most surface level take and are interpreting a really intentional juxtaposition that is reinforced in the text of the game as 'wrong' and taking that as lazyness of the developers.

So playing breath of the wild for the first time. I was high on all this hype about it being truly open world. I could go anywhere do anything. The world was my oyster and I didn't need to follow the man's rules and guides.

And so like... That's all just straight up a lie. Breath of the wild is a game that overly cleverly obfusicats its systems and just hides the fact that it's a bunch of basic hubs that you can just choose what order to take them in.

Sonic frontiers, or more specifically the final frontiers dlc is hard as dick and turning a lot of people off. But also giving me the open world fuck it vibe I'd been promised with breath of the wild.

It just places a marker on your map and does not give an ounce of a shit how you get there. Figure it out, fuck you. It the marker 300m in the air off the island in the water? Sure. Does that series of floating platforms on the shore lead to it? No. Is it gonna tell you how to get there? Fuck you.

And like there is clearly an intended way for you to get to a lot of these positions but a bunch just... Don't? Figure it out yourself.

And if you find a super unintended way to bypass the challenges and just skip straight to the end. The game does not care, it doesn't even try and correct you. It is just like 'yeah I'm not your dad, do what you want' and it feels amazing.

Like is final frontiers a better game then breath of the wild? In a lot of ways no.

Is it the game I'm gonna come back to playing? Fuck yeah.