Is there any proof Tails was originally not meant to appear in SA2?

The things that make this hard is that magazines during that time either had stellar reporting or they were straight up pulling stuff out of their ass.

For example, some magazines had all the information we're talking about in this thread, but also had false information like Sonic going to revisit Station Square and Mystic Ruins.

(A lot of the Green Forest screenshots tended to be labeled as a stage in Mystic Ruins)

So who knows if the Tails wasn't playable or the choose your route are correct.

I get the feeling that there might've been some mistranslation around the time that caused this.

For example, Sonic Team saying that they only had some of the Sonic, Knuckles and Eggman gameplay ready to show, but they were still working on Tails and the others.

(And let's remember that Shadow and Rouge were being kept secret for a bit till the Jazwares leak)

But it was understood as only those 3 being playable.

With the "backlash" causing them to add Tails being just a rumor and guess that picked up steam as time went on.

 

White is good. Black is bad. Yin and yang. Just basic traditional colours.

The trailer explicitly mentions good/bad motifs. It never ever mentions neutral.



The idea that Knuckles represented neutral because the emblem originally had a bit of grey in between white and black as an artistic way to divide the two colors should just be straight up discarded.

 

Knuckles would be neutral because it fits him and Sonic and Eggman were already hero and dark, not because of the logo.

Nothing should be "straight up discarded" until proven wrong.

 

There's no proof whatsoever. People think neutral fits Knuckles. Whoop de doo. I think Hero suits Knuckles. Heroically and stoically defending the master emerald from Rouge. Saving Rogue from death. We shouldn't speculate about the game's development based upon subjective opinion on what goes best with each character.

There's no evidence for it other than an absurd claim about the emblem. Should be discarded.

 

Shadow and Rouge have done heroic acts at times. Even in SA2, Rouge was never truly on Eggman's side; she was a spy conspiring against him. Doesn't change the fact they're labeled as "dark". As far as Sonic and Eggman's war is concerned, Knuckles is a neutral player who isn't interested in taking part in it.

 

Well if they're basing it off the original Sonic Adventure, Tails' story in that game is little more than "Sonic but as a race", which isn't a new gameplay style per se. His is the most expendable, so when faced with a lesser budget, he was... expended.

I suspect one of the reasons Tails plays a non-playable supporting role in so many recent Sonic outings is because he's just "Sonic again" (which is absolutely fine, since that's what he was designed to be - a second Sonic for 2-player races). Making him anything else eats into the budget - giving him a walker and pretending his actions mean something is the best compromise... although personally I'd rather just have the original three characters, if that was the plan.


It's also worth noting that there was a six month delay added to Sonic Adventure 2. At E3 2000, the game was pencilled in for a Winter 2000 release, before being pushed back to June 2001. Enough extra time to make the jump from 3 characters to 6? Maybe, but probably not enough time to start manufacturing new styles of gameplay.

 

A mystery even I'd love to see solved one day, in a close future (hopefully) ^^"

 

But this is just speculation of yours, 'is believed to have been' is basically meaningless* if you don't support it with something more than your interoperation of an early logo.

Maybe I am missing the point of the topic then?

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Edit: * Meaningless in the sense that the original question is about if there is proof to support the claims.

 

No, the logo was first used in the E3 2000 trailer, the one that had only Sonic, Knuckles, and Eggman. That's why the logo is trying to be interpreted as representing "Neutrality", since otherwise the theory would immediately be discredited :P

I think my biggest rub with the theory is that it's out of character for Sonic Team. Their MO has always been to plan way more than they could pull off before downscaling heavily, eg Sonic 2, 3, Heroes, and infamously 06. Starting small and expanding throughout development isn't really like them. I also don't see the point of trying to keep Shadow/Rouge hidden if they were unplayable. SA2's hype campaign relied a lot on secrecy and dripfeeding info (at least according to our wiki); it would make sense that they'd be cagey about Tails, considering they rebooted his gameplay. Look at how much this forum speculated over that Tails icon in the Colors Remaster :B

I don't know, this just feels like an excuse to rationalize SA2's problems, because the actual reason isn't exciting enough (company has to make a sequel on a smaller budget)

 

I mean, none of the posts provided proof because nothing short of official word or official material can prove it. All we can do is analyze the facts and evidence.

 

Clownacy has it right, Sonic's plan is "Just before it fires, I'm gonna throw this right down that weapon's barrel!"

The issue is how it was localised and people confusing it as him continuing the original plan, but basically he's not taking it to where the Chaos Emeralds are, most likely since at this point Robotnik is aware of the plan, and instead is just throwing it into the Eclipse Cannon itself, which is what we see happen.

33:01

 

Maybe someone can ask Yuji Naka...I hear he's got a lot of free time on his hands right now

 

That explains Amy's unused chao relationship text in the dreamcast version, something the other 2P characters lack. The unused slot might have been created for a potential dark side counterpart for Amy, meaning she got dropped fairly late in development before being repurposed for multiplayer.

 

My interpretation of the ending of the hero/dark story and the beginning of the last story is that Sonic shoved the fake Emerald into the tip of the cannon, and when the cannon started powering up, the fake Emerald reacted to the energy and caused an explosion in the cannon, which is what Tails says it's designed to do when he reveals it initially. I don't think Gerald's program interfered with the cannon's operation at all; after all, he's trying to destroy the Earth anyway, what does it matter if someone shoots it beforehand?
After the attempted firing, the program kicks in, broadcasting Gerald's message and moving the Emeralds into the core so they couldn't be removed.

 

But you aren't analysing facts or evidence, you were injecting another fan theory and seem to think it is more than just speculation. Speculate sure but don't think any of that was analysis.

Another thread you shared on your first reply talks about 'seeking out the original sources of this information and attempting to verify it beyond', which I would love to know if there was any traction on. It's ironic that what you quoted from that thread was the magazine theory they were trying to find out was actually true or not.

 

Yeah, that's pretty much what Sonic did: I'm just noting people are mixing it up with the initial plan (plug it in with the other Chaos Emeralds and let it take out the Cannon Core) versus what they end up doing (throwing it into the Eclipse Cannon itself and let the backlash take out the cannon). The Japanese text, which is what is quoted, makes it clearer what Sonic's up to.

 

Not really? That the light vs dark theme was part of the game since early on is a general view, not my speculation, as there is little reason to assume otherwise.

Saying that the original logo seems to reflect the light vs dark theme is analyzing evidence, the logo in question being the evidence. Even the posters that felt that giving the gray border importance was overanalysing it admitted that the logo evoked the yin and yang.

And for the record, it wasn't even my analysis. I was simply paraphrasing that thread.

 

It is your speculation that Knuckles represented the 'neutral' side of the game, which you backed up by saying the logo has a grey outline. There's no marketing material that implies a neutral aspect. It's all 'Light and Dark', 'Yin and Yang' in trailers and promotions. So that neutral part which Knuckles represents is your fan theory based on the 3 characters being playable at that time.

And my point is, the quote you pulled wasn't referencing an actual magazine, it has a been a floating 'I remember reading...' tale that people have been trying to source.

I'm just annoyed that it reads as though you are actually referencing some proof, but that mysterious article can never be tracked down. And so that 'magazine' just continues on as the supported reason we speculate that Tails was not meant to be in SA2.

 

On the point that RankoChan made on Amy. It made me realize. Wasn't Blaze the Cat's original silhouetted design actually found to date back to the character development phase of SA2? Now I have to wonder if Amy was conceived as playable with that idea as her dark opposite.

 

Was it? That sounds like fan theorising. As far as I recall all we ever knew of it was AAUK posting it and going "here's Sonic Rush concept".