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The Sonic the Hedgehog Continuity Thread of Love and Timelines

Discussion in 'General Sonic Discussion' started by dredd, Jul 6, 2020.

  1. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    He means there was no event that resulted in the Classic Cast changing appearances to the Modern cast. No Modernisation Incident.
     
  2. Rafa Stary

    Rafa Stary

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    Last edited: Feb 23, 2023
  3. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    Simplest answer is he grew up. We know the modern redesigns were done in a way to make them look older, though at the time it was most likely nothing more than just a redesign.
    [​IMG]
    Since he looks older, by the designer's admission, and Amy considers Classic Sonic younger, and she'd know through Sonic the Hedgehog CD, it's just he was younger, and grew up and learned new things like the homing attack as he did so.
     
  4. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    Could you please stop using that as proof of your interpretation? You're distorting its context.
    "but raised the age of his appearance" isn't "raised his age outright". It was an aesthetic change to make the cast cooler and more appealing to the audience of that time. Heck, it's all stated on that image, especially on the black box, read it and understand it properly.
    The only case of "Modernization Incident" was in the comics, as excuse to insert the aesthetical changes without having to break context in-universe. That's no evidence nor helps in your interpretations.
    The Classics followed a style that ST felt the need to update by the time of the Adventure games, that's all.

    Instead of you all trying to simplify the clusterfuck of continuities, you're simply overcomplicating it all.

    And I'll take @Boxer Hockey's explanation everyday, since it helps dispelling confusions of ages and growths never made clear in any game.
    In my opinion, Generations is a celebration/fanservice game, not meant to be taken fully seriously.
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2023
  5. raphael_fc

    raphael_fc

    Overthinking Sonic timelines. Member
    It doesn't?
    Looks icecappy to me.
     
  6. Rafa Stary

    Rafa Stary

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    Last edited: Feb 23, 2023
  7. Kyro

    Kyro

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    Blaze also brings it up, in english at least she mentions sonic looks less spikey to classic.

    I think knuckles mentions his weight, but im not home to check
     
  8. Battons

    Battons

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    It’s been said before but I’ll say again, I think you guys are giving what is supposed to be a simple visual gag too much consideration in regards to the Sonic Extended Universe™
     
  9. Rafa Stary

    Rafa Stary

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    Last edited: Feb 23, 2023
  10. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    @Rafa Stary, I indeed mentioned your "Modernization Incident" theory, but my reply was mainly directed at @BlackHole. I apologize for making you feel challenged.
    I even agree with your opinions on the line between 8-bit and 16-bit Classics, so I want to keep reading your opinions.
    People like you and BlackHole enjoy digging deep into the franchise and its mythos, but to most folks here it's more of a case of ST having added stuff over stuff over the years, to the point of being such a headache-inducing clusterfuck to deal with. People seem to gloss over some stuff to make discussions easier to process and digest ^^"

    But I'd also like to recommend you to check the Headcanon thread, in case some of your opinions stem from personal headcanons or so ^^
     
    Last edited: Jan 30, 2023
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  11. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    I really do need to highlight these things every time, don't I?
     
  12. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    I noticed you mentioning it. Yet, doesn't stop you from bringing it up every time age growth is brought up to the discussion, as a way to validate your interpretation of things. That was my point, it seems like you're distorting the context of the text in the image.

    I admit I'm not good at bringing up sources to argue others' opinions and interpretations. But sometimes I simply can't stop myself from intervening...
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2023
  13. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    Simply because Uekawa confirms the design was done with the intent to "raise the age of his appearance". I'm corroborating it with the characters calling Classic Sonic younger, less spikey, etc to reach a conclusion.

    Of course, they shoot that conclusion and bury it in a shallow grave in the next game with Classic Sonic being from an alternate dimension entirely for Sonic Forces, but I digress.
     
  14. RDNexus

    RDNexus

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    Well, that parallel reality portrayal seems more convincing to me, so I'm glad ST brought it up ^^"
     
  15. BlackHole

    BlackHole

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    I really don't understand how, but let's leave off this discussion.
     
  16. raphael_fc

    raphael_fc

    Overthinking Sonic timelines. Member
    30:54 - In 06 the characters traveled through time via Chaos Control using two Chaos Emeralds. Is this still possible or was it a one-game thing? Perhaps it was the accident in the Project Solaris that left the spacetime on Soleanna unstable enough to allow for this somehow?

    - As far as I'm aware, duo Chaos Control time travel is still a viable thing.


    1:19:31 - I've got a question about Sonic Origins. At the end of Sonic 1, Sonic had a vision of the Chaos Emeralds going to Westside Island. So why did Sonic decide to go to Never Lake next instead?

    - It was on the way.

     
  17. Blue Spikeball

    Blue Spikeball

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    That's assuming that the characters know they can use two emeralds to time travel. In the 06 timeline Sonic and co only learned about it from Shadow. Since 06 didn't happen in the current timeline, they wouldn't know about this "feature". As for Shadow, it's unknown whether or not he knows about it in the current timeline.

    Ever beat S&K without collecting all emeralds? Any emeralds you didn't grab in the special stages before reaching HPZ are absent in the altar. The implication is that they're the ones you collected, not a separate set. S3K further enforces this, with the altar being clearly empty when you first reach it through the flashing giant rings, and any emeralds you were holding are changed into Super Emeralds and placed on it.
     
    Last edited: Jan 31, 2023
  18. David The Lurker

    David The Lurker

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    If you are worried that your responses are causing issues, you can choose not to reply. Like, right now, I am going to talk about Knuckles in Sonic 3 and Triple Trouble, but you can just ignore it if you want. I know I haven't responded to every single question I've ever been asked on the Internet. Sometimes, you can't answer! And that doesn't mean you're being rude. Sometimes you're busy, got other things going on. Sometimes you forget. And sometimes, you just can't mentally deal with it at the moment. You do not need to debate something at every opportunity.

    Ok I'm going to talk about Knuckles the Echidna. I have put it in a spoiler box not because it contains spoilers, but because it is way too long.

    For me, it's not just a "oh it doesn't feel right that Triple Trouble could take place before Sonic 3." It's that the story, as presented in the two games, doesn't make much sense to me from an overall narrative standpoint. Character motivation gets lost, story beats are repeated for no reason, and even the geography is needlessly confusing.

    Let's start from the beginning. According to the Sonic 3 manual, Knuckles and Dr. Eggman meet after the Death Egg crashes on the island.

    The initial meeting gives Knuckles all the motivation he needs to explain what he does in Sonic 3. Meanwhile, Triple Trouble offers a more generic version of why Knuckles is fighting Sonic.

    If you want to say that Triple Trouble takes place before the events of Sonic 3, this means Knuckles is tricked by Eggman on Angel Island, is told Sonic has ambitions of worldwide conquest, and wants the Chaos Emeralds. The pair then proceed to travel to a different island (which may or may not be South Island) to go up against Sonic, who doesn't know Angel Island exists. If Knuckles is trying to protect his emeralds (or, if you want to ignore that part of the story, just the Master Emerald), why leave his island? Why not double down on staying there, especially if the Chaos Emeralds he was guarding are missing? If Eggman suggests that Sonic has somehow already stolen them, it might work, but that brings up a big question we'll address later. But I guess the biggest hurdle narratively is finding a reason why Eggman would even suggest leaving the island in the first place. Prior to Sonic 3, Eggman is in a prime position - he has crashed into an island that no one knows exists, with evidence of emerald energy, and Sonic is nowhere in sight. Best of all, the only intelligent life form is incredibly naive, and believes the first thing you tell him, no questions asked. Why leave? Why go look for yet another set of Chaos Emeralds on an island that you've tried to get multiple times and failed and immediately risk Sonic noticing you when there's a far better set of circumstances at your feet?

    But ok, Knuckles and Eggman leave Angel Island and go to maybe-South-Island. We could get into a weird discussion about what is actually happening in the story of Triple Trouble, because sometimes there are weird little disconnects between the Game Gear manuals and what we see on screen. When we start the game, we see Knuckles grab five Chaos Emeralds, then Sonic chases him. Meanwhile, the manual says that Fang the Sniper has already gotten them before the game started. The manual matches what the player ends up doing (fighting Fang in every special stage), but that sure is weird. Kinda like in Sonic 2 (8-bit) where the manual has Sonic find a note by Tails describing that he's been kidnapped by Eggman, even though the game begins with a cutscene of Sonic watching Tails being kidnapped! (or sometimes Sonic only appears after it's happened? Am I right in thinking the intro sometimes plays differently? But I digress...) Either way, Chaos Emeralds have been stolen, Knuckles is a foil to Sonic, Fang is running around.

    In the manual to Triple Trouble, Knuckles does not identify himself as a guardian of anything. He does not state that he's from Angel Island. I suppose he doesn't need to mention any of these things. But in Sonic Blast/G Sonic, you also have Knuckles the Echidna appearing as just...well, Knuckles the Echidna.

    Knuckles, the guardian of Angel Island, is just hanging out on South Island and overhears Eggman ranting, and intervenes. Why is he there? Sonic Blast is a sequel to Triple Trouble, which is a sequel to Chaos, which is a sequel to the 8-bit versions of Sonic 1 and 2. All adventures where Sonic has to gather the six Chaos Emeralds, four of them definitively taking place on South Island. The creators of these games were aware to some degree what Sonic Team was doing, but they were focusing on creating their own narratives with the Game Gear games. You could argue maybe they didn't realize a seventh Chaos Emerald had been added to Sonic 2, but they must have known by the time they worked on Chaos, or Triple Trouble. But they had settled on telling stories on South Island, with six emeralds and no interest on changing this status quo. It was their own private continuity, and Triple Trouble was telling their version of events involving the meeting of Sonic and Knuckles in a world where only six Chaos Emeralds exist. If they were insistent on having these match narratively with the 16-bit games, they could have taken certain steps to do that, like add the seventh emerald, or even say Triple Trouble takes place on the floating island (since Angel Island wasn't named yet, right?).

    I understand, though, that your point is there isn't a division there. So let's say none of that matters. The Sonic 3 manual happens, knuckles arrives in a totally new place. This has to be huge for him! He has grown up isolated from the rest of the world, on an island floating above the clouds. Eggman is the first person he's met since...ever? We don't know if he knew his parents or not. We don't know how much conversation he's having with the animals that live on his island. He's naive, isolated, and thrust into a new place where presumably other people live. This would have to challenge his worldview, right? New experiences can do that to a person.

    Let's look at what actually happens in Triple Trouble. We've got six levels. In the first five, you have to go a special stage, where you end up fighting Fang. You get a Chaos Emerald, because he's stolen them. You see Knuckles three times before you fight him - he creates a wall of flame in Great Turquoise and Meta Junglira, and a wall of snow in Robotnik Winter. Then you finally fight him in Tidal Plant, as he rides around in some submarine that doesn't have a top. So I guess it's not a submarine? Doesn't matter. Sonic defeats him, Knuckles *DROWNS* (yes he doesn't actually drown but it sure looks unsettling) and you move on to the next level.

    When you reach the end of Atomic Destroyer, you fight Metal Sonic. Then you see Fang, who looks ready to fight you again. Instead, he runs away scared because Dr. Eggman has shown up. So you fight Eggman, going deeper and deeper into the base as you do so, until you finally defeat him and recover the last Chaos Emerald. That's when you finally see Knuckles once more, trapped in that birdcage. The visual storytelling isn't meant to make you think Fang put him in there. Fang is an afterthought at this point - a nuisance that can't compete with Eggman. Fang runs away because he's afraid of him! He's not a self-assured, cool, tough character. He's a bit all over the place, goofy and not necessarily good at his job. It's hard to believe that he'd be able to capture Knuckles. It's harder to believe that after doing so, he'd run away panicking because Eggman showed up. And it's not Fang who is close to where Knuckles is captured, it's Eggman. You have to fight through Eggman's manned defenses to get to the echidna. If Fang was really the one to lock him up, then he also wasn't concerned with Eggman's traps, which makes little sense when you see his reaction moments later. Not to mention that Fang has no reason to capture Knuckles. The Triple Trouble is Eggman, Knuckles, and Fang, all three of them going after Sonic the Hedgehog. Knuckles has no interest in Fang. He might not even realize Fang exists? If the two met up, I'd expect Fang would try to also trick Knuckles, since they're after a common enemy.

    So why is Knuckles captured? Could be as simple as Eggman not wanting to take any chances. Knuckles couldn't defeat Sonic, but he recognizes that Knuckles could be a threat to him if he realized he's been tricked. It's not like Eggman was going to become friends with this guy - at some point, he'd have to betray him to claim the emeralds as his own, and take over the world. What's easier - waiting until Knuckles recovers, tries to defeat Sonic again, learns about his deception, and be forced to deal with both of them at once; or lock him up when he's at his weakest so you don't have to worry about him later?

    I think the moment where Sonic and Knuckles shake hands is shorthand for saying they've resolved their differences. They had been fighting just a zone earlier, and yet after Eggman is defeated, Sonic doesn't rush off and leave Knuckles to rot. He frees Knuckles, and sticks his hand out ready to shake hands and let bygones be bygones. Knuckles hesitates a moment, returns the handshake, and together escape Eggman's base. A base that Eggman has been in charge of the whole time, one where you had fight Eggman multiple times before getting to the center where Knuckles has been trapped.

    If the moment is anything less, why does Knuckles go on his merry way? Knuckles' motivation in Triple Trouble is to stop Sonic from gathering the Chaos Emeralds, but when Sonic frees him from his cell, Knuckles has already failed at that goal. If Knuckles is "an echidna with a strong sense of justice" yet chooses to let Sonic leave with the emeralds in his possession, that seems wildly out of character. Especially if we assume that, at this point, Knuckles is the guardian of a set of Chaos Emeralds! Protecting the emeralds would be his sole motivation. It's what convinced him to leave his home, which he's never done before. Even if we handwave that away and Knuckles is only guarding the Master Emerald (which he abandoned to go to some random island) he would know about the Chaos Emeralds from Eggman, and the power they hold. Either way, if he hasn't reached a moment where he trusts Sonic, he would not walk away from this encounter. He most definitely wouldn't just return to his island and sit there waiting for Sonic to show up, while letting Eggman do whatever. He's not going to his island to lure Sonic there, and Sonic is not following Knuckles. The Sonic 3 manual makes it clear that Sonic and Tails are experiencing some downtime, even if it's just been a few days.

    If Sonic and Knuckles went through this experience together, why would Knuckles immediately attack Sonic when he arrives on Angel Island in the beginning of Sonic 3? Why not exchange any dialogue whatsoever? Knuckles can be a hothead, but there is no reason to assume that Knuckles would still look at Sonic as an enemy and Eggman as an ally if Triple Trouble happened. If anything, it should be the opposite, that Knuckles learned a lesson and won't be so quick to judge those he hasn't met. It's also important to remember the 16-bit games were designed narratively to have 2 flow into 3, and the Game Gear developers weren't concerning themselves with making those games fit nicely into that narrative. Like, the opening of 3 is clearly dependent on the ending of 2, with Sonic having all the Chaos Emeralds as he arrives on Angel Island. Knuckles gets the jump on him and steals them, which is meant to show the player "hey, this guy is something serious. He can knock Super Sonic out!" That works better if Sonic and Knuckles do not know who each other is. If the two have already interacted with each other, if Sonic already saved Knuckles from Eggman, at the very least Knuckles would say something to Sonic. After all, that's what he does in Adventure. When he thinks Sonic has shards of the Master Emerald, he doesn't just punch Sonic in the head - he asks Sonic to hand them over. Yes, they fight because there's a misunderstanding, but the characters do have a dialogue. If you attach Triple Trouble ahead of Knuckles' introduction in Sonic 3, you have the baggage of that story, a story that makes little sense as to have occurred, and just muddies up the Death Egg Saga as a whole.

    I guess the point of this wall of text is simple: as presented, I don't see how Triple Trouble can lead into the events of Sonic 3. There's no good reason for the events of the Game Gear game to happen in that moment, which I think also back up the idea that the Game Gear games, as we saw them in the 90's, don't work in the overall Sonic the Hedgehog timeline. If they are now meant to be part of it, having them after the classic 16-bit games is really the only place for them to go, and even then, you still have to alter the stories of those games. Honestly? I think the idea of having the 8-bit games as canon is just so anyone working on the current games/comics/animated shorts/whatever can use those elements without having to introduce them as new concepts. Like in the Tails Anniversary comic when they used the villains of Tails Sky Patrol.

    Could something take place between Sonic 2 and 3? Hypothetically. But I don't think Triple Trouble is the game to fit.
     
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  19. Rafa Stary

    Rafa Stary

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    Last edited: Feb 23, 2023
  20. The tone of his response suggests he’s being slightly tongue in cheek.

    I never thought it was an issue to begin with because that there’s no reason to think Sonic is actively after the Chaos Emeralds following Sonic 1. With Eggman beaten he has no motive to collect the emeralds again. He instead decides to continue his travels and winds up at Never Lake (which as Ian points out, is where he stored his plane anyway).

    it isn’t until after he arrives on Westside Island that Eggman arrives himself and declares his intention to discover the emeralds once again. Only then does he have reason to pursue the emeralds as part of his fight against Eggman’s scheme.