Despite how it might seem, not everyone is asking huge questions about specific details from old Sonic the Hedgehog games most people in the broader audience are thinking, "It's a plot in a Sonic the Hedgehog game, who cares?" Knowing how 06's Chaos Control Time Travel works won't help anybody better understand Sonic Frontiers, otherwise it would have been something addressed by Tails Tube, which was made to familiarize those people with the broader questions someone might have when playing Frontiers. So explanations for the sake of those people are on hold. Addressing that for us who pay attention to everything else would probably just end in disappointment when it doesn't match our little headcanons or end up impeding someone's willingness to tell a fan created story that involves that element. His answer could also just as easily change in a month because that's how fast these ideas move around. It's an ongoing conversation, not a definitive declaration... Which Sonic fans often take them through a game of Twitter telephone or something. (The same way "Gerald based Shadow off of the Super Sonic mural" traveled.) it does suck that we know there's an answer to a question we can't ask but we asked if there was an answer, so that's the response we get, that there is a current answer and they are thinking of these things but it's pointless to give it up now because nobody knows that's the answer they want to go with.
As far as I know from talking in the Bumblekast Discord Server, the lore team was around before Origins released. We just didn't know about the lore team publicly.
@Boxer Hockey already explained what happened with Origins cutscenes. Little time available for each vid and possible simplification to not alienate newcomers. They had to compromise somewhere... (This serves for both animation and writing)
I think Sega deserves the blame for Origins cut scenes. If they want to do animated re-tellings of the game prologues/epilogues, then they should give the animation/story team the time they need to tell the stories without making compromises. If Sega felt it was absolutely impossible to find the budget to give the team the time they needed, then they shouldn't have bothered with the prologue/epilogue animations. They could have instead just done an animated montage of game highlights (like Sonic CD does in its ending) and left it at that. This is a problem of the management level at the top having misguided agendas. The people writing the stories and animations aren't to blame, as they are just doing the best they can with the constraints that have been placed on them.
You should know though, the changes made to the stories of the classic games are not solely decided upon by a single individual or group. SEGA is a large cooperation with many different teams working on many different projects at once. Sonic Origins itself is a collaboration between many different parties, such as Sonic Team and Headcannon. You can not just point your finger towards one person and say they are entirely responsible for everything you don't like. (I mean, you can, but it wouldn't be true.) DC fans have been doing that with James Gunn since he and Peter Safran became co-chairmen and co-CEOs of DC Studios. We all do not understand really how complicated these projects are behind the scenes. Ian Flynn even said recently it was bigger than he knew.
And I evidenced how this could still be done without compromising the original story for Sonic the Hedgehog 3's cutscene, and I maintain they should have used the scene of Tails fawning over the Tornado for the Sonic the Hedgehog 2 cutscene. To remind: And I'm trying to use Blender to make animations to better relay how I feel they should've been written. Animation is still beautiful, though.
So something I'm pondering, sorry for the double post. Spoiler: Sonic Frontiers Final Boss What happened to The End in Sonic the Hedgehog (2006), when Solaris wiped out everything toward the end? I don't think Cyberspace would've been safe from Time Itself being devoured, but would Solaris have the power to consume The End? Or would The End have been freed, resumed it's form and attacked Solaris afterward? (I still kinda want to see that, Solaris vs The End...) Of course, the Chaos Emeralds were blocking Solaris' consumption for a time, and they empowered Cyberspace...
If I need to spoiler I will, but I think we're kinda in safe territory now. Solaris, in Eggman's words, is a "Super-dimensional lifeform" which while does exist above the confines of traditional spacetime, does exist and has a form that can be destroyed. The End is literally that, a formless (ultimately) entity that represents the end of everything and/or nothingness that can take multiple forms based upon those who see it. In The End's own words "You have fought machines and gods. They were mighty. They were finite. I am infinite. I am nothing." Solaris did physically exist, and while The End can take physical form, it's literally nothingness that is capable of destruction. I don't think we've seen half of what The End is capable of, and I have to believe that if it really is "nothingness" manifested (a paradox in itself) then it exists on some higher level than even Solaris that did have limits. Why The End didn't use it's full power in Frontiers is a good question, but it does appear arrogant and it probably didn't realize how capable Sonic and Sage were in defeating this (presumably, relatively weak) incarnation.
I think they were heading it off before it got to a state where it would become undefeatable, since it seemed to still be extracting itself from Cyberspace. I dunno, I'm pretty sure "God of Time" kind of suggests a form of infinity in their existence. And considering, instead of killing him, Sonic, Shadow and Silver in super forms could do nothing more than knock him out while The End was implicitly killed by Super Sonic and a Ancient Titan, though may have survived and is licking it's wounds elsewhere, if the 'I am infinite' comment is any indication. Even Mephiles and Iblis displayed immortality, tanking a lot of damage and only ever coming back. The only way to defeat them was to seal them away. Of course, Solaris was 'born' into the world via that flame Elise blows out, but that required time travel on her and Sonic's part that I'm pretty sure The End has no access to. And even then, apparently Mephiles could see a return to the series... Also, has anyone else noticed an alarming tendency that Gods in the Sonic the Hedgehog universe are evil? I think thus far, Light Gaia is the only non-malicious entity. Not counting Chaos since he's not an actual God, just a mutated Chao, but he did wipe out the Echidna civilization and attempted to continue on Humans millennia after the fact...
Mother Wisp seems to be some form of god, focused on creation rather than destruction (well, outside of when she was a Nega Wisp, but that's pretty much a Nega Wisp thing). Yacker says that she created not only them but the planets the wisps lived on, who knows what else she's done in her time. I was actually thinking about that last night. I don't think Mephiles is actually dead in-universe, and is either still sealed or is unsealed in a story yet to be told. I feel like Mr. Duke Soleanna's experiments were in attempt to merge Mephiles and Iblis, with him desperately calling out to the non-existent Solaris. He had one emerald but that probably was only enough to go all explodey, and the two were going their separate ways after the fact. Mephiles on the other hand collected the Chaos Emeralds himself to merge with the royal flame. If Elise blew out the royal flame, then there was nothing to do with Mephiles (at the time in the Scepter of Darkness) after the fact.
Wasn’t Mephiles being dead as a doornail something that SEGA explicitly told Flynn when he wanted to use him in a story? He was removed from the Forces script as well. I sincerely doubt Mephiles exists in any capacity other than possible merchandise at some point.
Ian wanted to use Mephiles and Black Doom in Archie's Sonic Universe series, after the reboot. Sega told him no, they were dead, so he created the character Eclipse instead.
Hm, fair. One would think they would have told Sonic Forces' script writers that before Mephiles was in the script as far as when they decided to connect Sonic Forces and Sonic Mania. I think it's more "the games lead the media", as in if the games killed them, nothing else can bring them back until the games do.
Which makes this answer from Kishimoto where someone asked about Mephiles coming back interesting. https://twitter.com/moq_46/status/1624232575157014528 Just like Infinite, he doesn't seem to feel too strongly about their "deaths".
Mephiles was an illusion like the others in the Forces script, so they weren't thinking of bringing him back to life.
