Please let this be true. Bring my boy Big the Cat back.
Update: August 26th 2022, 8:40 a.m. AEST
It’s true. It’s all true. I’m bursting with joy.
Thanks to a sneaky little picture taken at Gamescom 2022 during playthroughs of the Sonic Frontiers demo, it is now confirmed that the big fishing boy himself will be appearing in the game with his fishing rod in tow.
Big the cat is in Frontiers.
Wooo. pic.twitter.com/VDhD8whISS— Bibs (@Bibouboul) August 25, 2022
Considering the fishing rod is in Sonic’s hands, one can only assume that this means there will be a fishing mini-game involved in Sonic Frontiers. Thankfully, this means that it is a Game of the Year contender now. You love to see it, folks.
We now also know that the Kodama mentioned in the original article is probably a reference to the little guys in Frontiers known as Koco, which seem to be small stone creatures. Sonic Frontiers continues to be a staple of little guy games.
Sonic Frontiers’ time at Gamescom has also shed light on the first 15 minutes of gameplay, outside of IGN’s previous looks into the title. From all accounts of folks at Gamescom, it’s a whole lot of fun. Can’t wait til November 8th!
Original: June 24th 2022, 11:37 a.m. AEST
Sonic Frontiers is, as we know, the next big mainline entry in the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise. While the game is currently under speculation due to the supposed lack of content in a vast open world, I for one am still pretty excited to see what they end up doing.
Sure, there feels like a bit of a disconnect between how Sonic looks and how the world around him looks, but I am also a bit of a Sonic tragic, so I genuinely have high hopes. I love video games, what can I say!
Until now, all we’ve really had to go off are the trailers for the game as well as gameplay and demo footage. However, dataminers have managed to dig up some leftover shaders and strings from Sonic Origins that may be indicators of what’s to come in Sonic Frontiers.
This conclusion seems to come from the fact that the shaders and strings found in Sonic Origins don’t seem to align with anything included in the game. Rather, they seem to be related to ‘”Frontiers’ message system”, according to Arsenic, one of the dataminers involved.
This video by Joey of GameXplain gives us a good rundown of what these dataminers found.
So let’s dissect this bad boy a bit. Mind you, this is all speculation and may not reflect what is seen in the end product of Sonic Frontiers.
Cyber Space
This wouldn’t be the first time Sonic has gone to space. In fact, the blue blur absolutely loves going to space. It really wouldn’t surprise me if they chuck our spikey friend into a rocket ship and blast him off!
Kodama
This could be related to something we saw in gameplay footage for Sonic Frontiers. Kodama are historically known as little tree spirits in Japanese folklore. If you’ve seen the Studio Ghibli film Princess Mononoke, you probably know them as these little sweeties:
Now if we go back to Sonic Frontiers, specifically the gameplay footage from IGN, we see these little buggers jumping around and making little noises.
Judging by the strings of ‘KodamaElder’, ‘KodamaHermit’, ‘KodamaFollowersNum’, and ‘KodamaStockNum’, these little guys might be the new NPCs introduced in Sonic Frontiers. In my personal opinion, I always have time for weird little guys.
Big the Cat
My favourite big fat fuck Big the Cat has often been sidelined to a Waluigi-type position, appearing mainly in sports and racing titles since his introduction into the Sonic the Hedgehog franchise.
Once a playable character, you could control the Duke Nukem-voiced cat as he searched for his bestie Froggy and went fishing. A simple big boy with simple big boy desires.
According to the datamine, a string named ‘FishingBigFirstTalked’ may suggest that Sonic Frontiers will not only include our boy Big the Cat, but will possibly include a whole-arse fishing game involving Big the Cat.
Some of my favourite games have fishing mini-games. Ocarina of Time, Animal Crossing, and more recently Cult of the Lamb are just a few.
If we are to believe that not only Big the Cat will be making an appearance in Sonic Frontiers, but that he will also be involved in fishing, an activity he loves very much, then I am in.
We still have a while to go before the release of Sonic Frontiers, so I have decided to keep my eyes peeled for what little bits and pieces pop up in terms of gameplay. There may really be more than meets the eye!
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