Sonic Frontiers copies old level layouts from Sonic Generations and Sonic Unleashed

metro.co.uk:

Fans have discovered that Sonic Frontiers seems to be reusing the level designs from older Sonic the Hedgehog games without acknowledging them.

Although there was initially a lot of optimism surrounding Sonic Frontiers, that’s slowly been leaking away the more people have seen of its open world environment. The more linear ‘Cyber Space’ levels have been more positively received but it turns out there’s something weird about them too.

Since Sega is one of the few publishers to make an effort for Gamescom in Germany, the game is currently playable on the show floor and fans have noticed that at least two of the Cyber Space levels reuse layouts from existing games.

They’re not presented as homages or remakes though, and there’s nothing to acknowledge the layouts are the same, they just reuse the level design and reskin it with a different graphical theme.

One of the levels on show is a version of the the iconic Green Hill Zone but fans have noticed that it uses the same level design as the tutorial stage from 2008’s Sonic Unleashed.

Another level reuses the same level design as Chemical Planet from 2011’s Sonic Generations and after going through trailer footage some fans think the Green Hill stage from Sonic Generations has been repurposed as well.

There’s nothing necessarily wrong with any of this – they’re Sega’s designs, so they can do whatever they want with them – but it is very odd, especially when they could’ve just been presented as straightforward remakes.

Updated versions of old levels regularly appear in Mario games, for example, but these aren’t remakes so much as reskins, where the original level design has been repurposed to appear as if it’s completely new.

Whether there’s going to be any story explanation for this