 Why does Sonic Frontiers look like that? Over the past three decades, Sonic the Hedgehog's character design has gone through a variety of iterations, but the world around him has also changed dramatically. While his earliest games feature a bright, often abstract cartoon world filled with checkerbox ground and faux 3D rendered palm trees, Sonic Team has also shown a consistent interest in placing the blue blur in a grounded, realistic world. Before Sonic Frontiers, this juxtaposition of a fantastical cartoon hero with muted photo realism has appeared in games such as Sonic 06. While not appearing in every Sonic game, this art style is a recurring theme across the character's history. But why? The origins of this attempt to place Sonic in the real world originate from his former role as a sales figure for Sega Hardware. The original Sonic the Hedgehog on the Sega Mega Drive or Genesis wasn't designed to look realistic, but it was meant to show off the Mega Drive's visual dexterity as well as its processing speed. Almost a decade later, Sonic was used by Sega as proof of another console's graphical capabilities when Sonic Adventure was designed as a system seller for the Sega Dreamcast. Work on Sonic games had stalled, in large part because developers at various branches of Sega didn't really know how to adapt the character to 3D. Sonic Team had moved on to games like Knights Into Dreams, while Sega Technical Institute's Sonic Extreme was cancelled, amid negative feedback from Sega of Japan. In returning to Sonic, the developers at Sonic Team wanted to bring him back with a bang, and the then-indevelopment hardware that would become the Dreamcast seemed like the perfect opportunity to reimagine the company's mascot. Thus, Sonic Team began developing Sonic Adventure before the Dreamcast finished development. This had some drawbacks, as the team had to guess as to the console's final specifications, but it also had advantages. Sonic Team were able to request that the console feature additional RAM so that the Dreamcast could run Sonic Adventure smoothly. This also meant that Sonic Adventure quickly became seen as a flagship title for the new console, and with that came the expectation that the game would show off everything that the Dreamcast could do that previous consoles couldn't. According to Hoshino, as a Dreamcast launch title, we needed to be able to present the abilities of the machine in an appealing way to consumers. That was what our team was ordered to do. When we asked ourselves, what graphics give you the impression of being high-spec, the answer we decided upon were graphics that were realistic. It was for this reason that the game was designed around Sonic interacting with the real world, as opposed to the more stylized worlds of previous games. The idea of Sonic meeting humans has always been present throughout the series, but this was the point where developers tried specifically to make Sonic's environment feel grounded and realistic. Said Sonic Adventure director Takashi Izuka, game development up until then was all done with artists drawing all the textures by hand, but when developing on the Dreamcast, we were able to take real-life photos and use them as textures. Because this was possible, we planned to take a trip out to not only see ancient ruins that were a key story point to the title First Hand, but also use it as a trip where we could gather assets for the game. We went to the very famous ruins in Central and South America. We took photos of the walls and materials in the real ruins and used those real photos as assets in the game. Every effort was taken to make this photorealistic game world feel believable and rich with content. Izuka said of the game's hub areas, we implemented the adventure fields as something where you could ask locals about things, places to explore and get lost in. The adventure fields were there to draw the players deep into the world. I was probably inspired in some way through the Legend of Zelda series that I loved so much. This focus on photorealism and a richer hub world paired with the game's more involved story, itself having grown out of a desire to create a sonic role-playing game. In the years since adventure, some games have reverted to a more cartoonish environment design while others have continued this more realistic world. The moral of the story is never be afraid to try something new.