Everything we learned from the new Sonic Frontiers trailer

A new seven-minute showcase has illuminated the world of Sonic Frontiers.
sonic frontiers game

A brand new, seven-minute trailer for Sonic Frontiers has shown off more of the upcoming game, including its vast open world and gameplay, seemingly inspired by The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild. It’s also illuminated more about the game’s plot, the mysterious Starfall Islands, and how exactly the blue blur will get around.

Here’s everything we learned from the second major Sonic Frontiers trailer.

Sonic Frontiers: Plot

It appears the plot of Sonic Frontiers will follow the titular hedgehog as he finds himself somehow transported to Starfall Islands, where he’s ‘stranded’ at the start of the game.

At this stage, no further details of this plight have been revealed – although it does appear Sonic will need to explore the islands in great length to find a means of returning back home.

Sonic Frontiers: Gameplay

The Sonic Frontiers trailer kicked off with Sonic exploring a vast open plain filled with grass and strange, ancient towers. Sonic is able to run and pick up speed, as well as use classic bumpers to shoot himself into the air, and climb up the towers that way.

He can also ground-pound, run up slick sections of wall, ride on poles, and curl into a ball to hit objects. Essentially, these are Sonic’s classic moves translated to a 3D world.

The landscape of Sonic Frontiers appears to be littered with ride-on poles, bumpers and speed boost, which should allow Sonic to run, jump and speed his way across great distances. That’s one thing that appears to mark Frontiers out as different to Breath of the Wild – traversal speed and flying through the air are key to the game’s moment-to-moment satisfaction.

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The trailer also showed off Sonic completing a light-filled jigsaw puzzle – which seems very inspired by the temples of Breath of the Wild – and entering giant hamster wheel which sent ripples out across the land. Both these installations were marked by a ‘?’ symbol, which could indicate they’re both part of major puzzles that will dot the Starfall Islands.

Beyond this, there wasn’t much to the Frontiers gameplay reveal – it was essentially a high-speed romp through the many locales of the game, with some minor pitstops along the way. Still, the trailer gives a pretty good glimpse of what to expect from the upcoming title, and shows off exactly where Sonic’s adventures will take him next.

Sonic Frontiers is currently set to launch in the holiday 2022 period for PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Xbox One, Xbox Series X/S, Nintendo Switch, and Windows PC.

Leah J. Williams is a gaming and entertainment journalist who's spent years writing about the games industry, her love for The Sims 2 on Nintendo DS and every piece of weird history she knows. You can find her tweeting @legenette most days.