Yeah but it could be only for 06 even so. Imagine Rouge was working for GUN and she will have a mission to retrieve the Scepter of Darkness (which actually happens). Shadow knows of it, think it's dangerous and decides to join GUN to help her. Then 06 is reset, Rouge would never have that mission, and Shadow wouldn't join GUN.
And to be fair, that line can be interpreted like the President asking for a specific agent to be sent in. I mean, that's going well out of the way for someone who Iizuka claims Shadow does not like. I'm know I'm probably going to get angry posts about "soapboxing", but it's the official word on Team Dark's relationship, even if the games in no way support it and in fact counter it.
If the games don't support Iizuka's claim, and my explanation is suported by them, and you reject Iizuka's claim because of them, then you can accept my explanation.
Unfortunately not: Shadow says "my assignment was to rescue you, nothing more" in the cutscene before the Egg Cerberus fight. It does come off as him being a focused Agent of G.U.N. Which is a shame it was removed, since I wouldn't mind Shadow the Hedgehog: Agent of G.U.N. games, where Shadow does assignments for G.U.N. Ah well, I'm learning Unity, I'll just make some.
Shadow telling Rouge his assignment was solely to rescue her doesn't deny the possibility of him having joined GUN precisely to rescue her. And he can be a jerk when he wants. He could totally say that to hide his relief for seeing her.
Fair. It could be a valid interpretation, though I feel the line seems too "focused agent on assignment" for me to believe he joined solely for Rouge's safety on that mission, especially since he could have just asked to be sent on the mission in her stead.
Politics. The president didn't want to be seen as someone who uses civilians to help his army, so he asked Shadow to join GUN officially before Rouge's mission.
I don’t think Iizuka ever said Shadow doesn’t like Rouge… where are you getting this from? I know Ian’s said that he was told Shadow only works with people when it’s convenient for him but I don’t think that translates to “Shadow hates everyone.”
It also requires the mission to have been ongoing for a while, long enough for a G.U.N. Agent to express it's been so. But as said, your interpretation is valid, I just don't think it to be the case. Somewhere in these several hundred pages, on the Bumblekast: Flynn was asked what was going on with Team Dark and said Shadow, Rouge and Omega are not friends specifically, to my recollection.
To my recollection it wasn't so much that they aren't friends/don't like eachother, but rather that their reasons for working together stand in stark contrast to everyother team. They aren't working together because they're pals, it just benefits them.
Yeah, that’s what I thought. It doesn’t suggest he dislikes any of them. I think you just tend to interpret these things to their extremes. Also, it’s more or less splitting hairs, but Iizuka did not personally say any of that.
Honestly I think this is one of those times where I can see either reading as being valid outside the context of out-of-universe (potentially revisionist) statements, so either setup for Shadow can work with the use of the given materials and, given that we only have this idea of Shadow not being a G.U.N. agent in the first place from Iizuka via Ian and it hasn’t been committed to within the text itself, SEGA does have the opportunity to backpedal in a TailsTube or something if they feel fan opinion sways enough that way.
No, he definitely said not friends: 10:14 See above, but I would think if Shadow liked them, he'd consider them friends since they interact with one another so often. But Aspergers, I don't grasp social interaction well so it might genuinely be me missing something. Anyway, apparently it's from SEGA, and Flynn doesn't like it, so perhaps, as raphael_fc says, it'll change.
Jesus fucking christ. "not friends" means "not friends". Not "hates them". Means he considers them not friends. This can mean a dozen different relations. They're comrades. He considers them people he works well with. Hell, considering the type of character, it can even be "he considers them friends without knowing it because he does not know what a friend is, in effect". I don't know. You don't know either. You're making a judgment based on someone telling you what someone told him that someone told him. You're several layers removed from the actual source of the information, speculating to extremes to make some sort of point, not even realising how your interpretation isn't the only possible one or even the most likely one, because to most people most everyone else they know is "not friend" without meaning they hate literally everyone they meet. Christ alive. Look here. Overlord is the mod. Is he your friend? Is he your buddy? Do you go to his house for dinner? What? No? That means you hate him, then? Come the fuck on. Please understand you're intentionally taking the most extreme takes to soapbox about your anger at changes you yourself asked for ages over something said in an unofficial podcast that's unregulated and uncontrolled by Sega yet is taken as word of God and official PR. Please understand how many layers of misunderstanding you're working under. Be fucking reasonable.
The fact that it's all so vague and ill-defined is what probably annoys fans more than anything, especially when Ian's ideas for Team Dark are being rejected for....very ill-defined reasons. Like, saying Team Dark "aren't friends" and equating that to "they hate each other" is an extreme interpretation, but it's also not entirely wrong either, because once again Sega have intentionally left it incredibly vague. So honestly, nobody really knows the nature of Team Dark's current relationship and I doubt anyone at Sega really cares to define it...except when telling comic writers what NOT to do with them apparently. I'm gonna take the neutral and less extreme approach and just say that they're comrades who occasionally work together for a common goal, but are content to just do their own thing unless needed. I know the fans love to portray them a found family and a close knit group as a means to develop them, but that's not how Sega sees it.
Shadow's mission that was a request from the president was "Help the agent that fucked up in White Acropolis", definitely a time sensitive thing, so he had to have joined officially at some point before it actually mattered, even if it was just to have it by some books. Or it was totally Shadow not being officially involved, a straight request from the President, and the mission writers who decided to make ones revolving him being involved with GUN didn't get the message and they're just meant to be here to fight off the uptick in Eggman bots and Iblis (Mephiles?) minions. But then that makes me ask, Was Rouge ever officially said to have joined GUN between SA2 and Heroes? She was working under the president in SA2, which is why she didn't give a shit about blowing up Prison Island and any GUN casualties. If she's not GUN either, that means Shadow was asked by the president to save Rouge but he didn't know Rouge was even captured so he just did it anyways. It's a very very weird thing that could even be way different in a Japanese script, so that makes me think there's a logical conclusion that was reached with the question of "Is Shadow GUN?" Even if they're factoring in 06 events. A mission like this (or like Rouge's in SA2) would be pretty classified, the public would never find out (or care really) that a spy who tried to sneak into enemy territory was in trouble.
Yes, that's just working a licensed comic. Can this fandom please stop treating that like the most bizarre unreasonable thing ever, especially when if anything Sega's pretty good at it when you look at other licensed comics under companies like Disney or Paramount? They tell you what not to do, if you do something wrong, and tell you what they'd like, sometimes. It's because you don't own the character, they do. You'd do the same if you had OCs and I was writing about them- you'd give me direction. If it seems that bad to you, general you, fanbase, it's often because of a lack of comparison point and because all this behind-the-scenes baseball info that normally would never reach your eyes is leaking left and right for years in ways that just confuse things and cause rumours and so on, leading to repeated confusion and then frustration back at a company for the crime of not defining things that don't need to be defined.
Yeah, "they're not friends" doesn't mean "they dislike each other" or "they don't care about each other". It just means that they don't officially call each other teammates or friends, which makes sense given Shadow and Omega's personalities. Seeing how they've been shown to appreciate each other in the past, I see little reason to assume that has changed. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's consistent with previous games. For instance, Sonic Battle showed that Shadow and Rouge weren't part of an official team but still cared about each other.
I mean, that's the thing, technically it CAN mean they hate each other. But that's just straight up an unreasonable assumption that doesn't make sense with how the characters act. So acting like "oh yeah sure but it's what Iizuka said" is just absurd, especially when again, you're not quoting Iizuka, you're quoting Ian quoting a translator possibly quoting an editor quoting Iizuka.
