Does Sonic Boom Have a Day to Night Cycle?

Lately there has been some discussion around the idea that the E3 demo for Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric received a graphical update from the footage that was made available a week prior. You can view a comparison video below:

Here you can see more footage of Sonic Boom in its "improved" state:

As mentioned in the comparison video above, it seem as if the game looked much better at E3 than it did in its B-roll footage. I then started looking for more footage taken at E3, and found IGN's game-play footage:

As you can see, the graphical fidelity of this footage looks identical to the B-roll footage, but how could this be possible if the game was supposedly improved? Both videos were filmed on the show floor at E3 2014; and I think it unlikely that Sega would showcase two versions of the same demo (one version incomplete and not nearly as pretty as the other), so that leaves one other option. 

I believe that Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric will utilize a day to night cycle! It is the only way to explain the difference in lighting between the two game-play videos and when I thought about it, everything made perfect sense. I think that both the B-roll footage and the IGN footage were captured when the in-game clock was set to early morning, meaning that the sun was not yet shining.  This would explain the fog that seems to cover the hills in the background. This would also explain the difference in lighting from the Nintendo World Report footage, which would have been captured when the in-game clock was set to afternoon.

So there you have it! Nothing has been confirmed by Sega at the time of writing this, but I think that these two game-play videos (both taken from the E3 show floor) might just prove the existence of a day to night cycle in Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric.

For more news on Sonic Boom: Rise of Lyric and Sonic Boom: Shattered Crystal, be sure to keep up-to-date with the Nintendo Alliance!