If they really wanted to be brave they'd drop boost for a game and see what happens. I love the boost era for what it is, but man it feels like they squeezed everything they could out of it over a decade ago and it just hasn't really felt fresh or exciting in a long time. I replayed the Adventure games and am going thru with 100%ing them for the first time and I really am constantly amazed at how fun and fluid these games feel. There is so much more you can do with the Adventure formula of gameplay and its a shame we'll likely never see that type of game again in favor of the same boost style we've had for far too long. At least when a new 3D Mario comes out there is some new core gimmick so each game ends up feeling super unique with tons of depth and expression within the movement. Boost Sonic allows for very little of that comparatively.
The open world formula with Frontiers is alright conceptually but the structure and content of the world was just barren and deeply uninteresting. If they do stick with the open areas, I really hope their top priority is just making exploration and puzzle solving more enjoyable somehow.
Writing wise Frontiers was really nice but it suffered from a Halo Infinite type of situation where it was largely a non-story that tries to just reset the status quo by fixing characterization that has been messed up for some 10-15+ years. The good news is that like Infinite it does indeed reset a lot of things and re-establishes the tone and characters as they were in what fans perceive as the narrative golden era, but it sucks that we have to wait for the sequel to see what they actually do with that going forward. Sonic as a franchise is just this endless barrage of "Wow this is cool but also underdeveloped, I sure hope they actually build upon it and go somewhere with this in the sequels," only for them to drop the story or gameplay style they were building. Seriously just need Sonic Team to buckle down and actually iterate on something. Even the thing that has been an almost constant factor in the series - boost gameplay - has barely evolved meaningfully in the past 17-18 or so years it has been in the series.
insanely embarrassing "serious" or melodramatic storyline just felt out of place
This kind of story and writing is what fans want to be honest. In fact the last 15ish years of deeply unserious and low stakes stories with regressive character arcs and a lack of Sonic's friends is the primary thing that fans have complained about almost universally. Non-Sonic/casual fans and more hardcore fans have generally had very opposite views on the what the franchise should be. Non/casual fans tend to hate more playable characters or more serious/melodramatic stories. Hardcore fans typically view the more melodramatic games as the best ones and long for more characters to be in the stories playable or otherwise.
